I think Labour need to decide more fundamentally what their purpose is, what problems they are trying to solve, and build an election-winning proposition from there.
Otherwise they are swimming in electoral currents defined by their opponents.
I can now view the 2024 list.
It's very striking to see seats like Stevenage as easier targets than Sedgefield, Worcester ahead of Bolsover. Though some things never change - I think Kingswood was around about the seat Labour needed to win for a majority in 2015.
Taking a step back from the details is all that much changed from the old METTHs analysis?
Towns where many of the things that can work well in cities because of scale - public transport, most obviously - currently don't.
I think that's one of the more tricky problems for Labour. They mostly have big city solutions, speak with a big city voice, based on big city assumptions.
Having southern towns be easier targets than northern towns is still a big change. But ultimately it's still towns that need to be won over.
We'd be a better country if both parties considered the North to be the key battleground for a bit, if only for the political attention it would get.
One of the biggest damaging effects of our voting system is that large swathes of the country get ignored.
I fear that will prove optimistic. Given the infectivity of the new variant even closing all schools will not get R below 1. All we can hope to achieve now is to reduce the rate of increase until the vaccine is rolled out in sufficient numbers to slow this down.
On present trends I see the NHS overwhelmed within 10 days. Nearly all of that is already baked in. We must do everything we can not to make it worse which means, amongst other things, no schools open in January.
Cases in London and the South East are showing signs of slowing down. And they've been stable in Wales for a few days (although that might be the decline of the old strains masking the increase of the new one). But it's all with Christmas still in there and the message of how bad it is not having got through yet properly. So I think there is still hope of getting below 1.
But you're right, a large further increase is already baked in, and reopening schools is madness. As is having parts of the country like Liverpool still in tier 3.
I am not sure I believe the statistics currently coming out of Wales, they seem to have failed to cope with the holiday period. The charts shared here last night did not indicate a slowing down in London or the SE even if there was a hint that the rate of increase was moderating somewhat. This showed to me that even tier 4 doesn't work against the new variant. Its just too easy to catch.
The "evidence of slowing down" comes from a huge Christmas Effect, followed immediately by a weekend.
So you have a massive drop in cases at Christmas followed by a huge catchup - as people get tested.
At the same time, you have an underlying increase. We shall see Tuesday/Wednesday - my guess is that it won't be above the 29th peak, but the next peak will be a massive increase on the underlying (excluding Christmas Effect) rates.
Would anyone take the vaccine but not take it delivered by a vet? Wouldn't bother me in the slightest if it was a vet jabbing me.
I put the well-being of my dog in their hands - and my dog is a member of my family. Of couure I'd take a jab from a vet. I'd probably be happy for them to take my appendix out too, if the immediate prospect of it bursting was the alternative. Brain surgery - might take a pass.
We need to be getting hundreds of thousands of jabs a day. By whatever safe means we can concoct. Based around upermarket car-parks. People who are going out and about to supermarkets are not people holed up - so are more likley to be a vector for transfer. Jab any adult shopping that wants one.
In my experience the one person you don't want sticking anything into you is a doctor.
I'm working on the assumption that the closure of all schools in England and Wales for at least six weeks is announced at some point in the next few days.
This may form part of a new March-style national lockdown, with the same sort of restrictions we had then.
Yes we are probably just waiting for some kids to go back to school first so they can spread the virus around, and then wait for university students to travel to their universities before we tell them it will be online only.
Quite why we are waiting for the inevitable is hard to explain. Hancock quite clear this morning Tier 3 is not working, which we could have guessed with confidence two weeks ago, yet is still dithering, or more likely his boss is.
Yesterday I predicted Johnson would be doing a 5pm hour of doom this evening announcing huge clampdown.
Surely he's not just going to just dither for a more few days?
He needs to wait for Sturgeon's announcement before he can begin to move. She's made an emergency recall of the Scottish Parliament today, so he won't have long to wait.
Would anyone take the vaccine but not take it delivered by a vet? Wouldn't bother me in the slightest if it was a vet jabbing me.
I put the well-being of my dog in their hands - and my dog is a member of my family. Of couure I'd take a jab from a vet. I'd probably be happy for them to take my appendix out too, if the immediate prospect of it bursting was the alternative. Brain surgery - might take a pass.
We need to be getting hundreds of thousands of jabs a day. By whatever safe means we can concoct. Based around upermarket car-parks. People who are going out and about to supermarkets are not people holed up - so are more likley to be a vector for transfer. Jab any adult shopping that wants one.
In my experience the one person you don't want sticking anything into you is a doctor.
Not sure about that; I've known some very attractive doctors in my time.
Would anyone take the vaccine but not take it delivered by a vet? Wouldn't bother me in the slightest if it was a vet jabbing me.
I put the well-being of my dog in their hands - and my dog is a member of my family. Of couure I'd take a jab from a vet. I'd probably be happy for them to take my appendix out too, if the immediate prospect of it bursting was the alternative. Brain surgery - might take a pass.
We need to be getting hundreds of thousands of jabs a day. By whatever safe means we can concoct. Based around upermarket car-parks. People who are going out and about to supermarkets are not people holed up - so are more likley to be a vector for transfer. Jab any adult shopping that wants one.
When the Nightingale hospitals were created, vets were in the group of "people with any medical skills to be drafted in".
Humans are pretty much the same as any other mammal the vet would be used to. We have a brain, a heart and two lungs, which is all you need to know to monitor someone on a ventilator. I’d rather a vet than a squaddie looking after me in hospital, which is the alternative.
Above anything Labour need to stop being so apologetic and regain confidence. Politics is volatile. Anything can happen. 2019 was a disaster, but in 2017 Labour got 40% even under Corbyn. Who knows where we will be by 2024.
OF COURSE Trumpsky's incredible, stark commission of a crime recorded in real time is startling.
But my own instinct is to NOT go into full-outrage mode. Which God knows is legally, ethnically, politically justified. However, outrage is NOT emotionally or psychologically propitious. NOT right now.
Strong criticism, sure. Rush to action, investigation, etc, etc by Congress, courts, administration, etc. etc, no thanks. Not just now.
Let's get Uncle Joe finally ELECTED and INAUGURATED as President of the United States BEFORE we do anything else.
AND let's give the incoming and seriously challenged (regardless of GA) Biden administration a wee bit of breathing room.
ABOVE ALL, lets NOT feed The Beast aka The Donald.
Outrage is the oxygen that fuels Trumpsky's rocket from Hell. That is why he is always eager to stoke it up - among his supporters AND his opponents.
He is truly the Moloch. Like his inspiration and role model, the foul false god Baal, Trumpsky feeds on the blood of others AND upon the publicity generated by his crimes and blasphemies.
Outage is not the answer. Not at present. But maybe contempt, disgust, mockery and ridicule are good starting points.
"You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" - Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), June 9, 1954
Agreed. The Trumpian right enjoys the outrage of their opponents; being held in contempt, not so much.
Btw, what did you make of the letter from all the former US defence secretaries. ?
Remarkable that they had to write it. And incredibly sad.
WHAT would George Washington say? Or Dwight Eisenhower? Or even Andrew Jackson & Douglas MacArthur?
George Washington was a slave-owning, tax-dodging traitor who led an armed uprising against the legitimate government of the day, colluding with foreign powers in doing so. He'd certainly be on Trump's side.
Andrew Jackson was a violent white supremacist - again, every key Trump demographic surely?
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Who doesn't know how to prepare an avocado? You cut it in half and remove the stone. It's not rocket science.
Given the incidence of avocado-related injury, I'm not so sure.
I see it didn;t take the SAGE committee long to find a virus variant that is resistant to vaccines. The dreaded South African variant.
Its clear now, quicker than I expected, that vaccines will not set us free.
Indeed, restrictions are not lifting as vaccines roll out, they are intensifying. The spread of the virus cannot be because of anything the government is doing and so it must be our fault.
Maoists blamed 'speculators' when markets crashed or ceased to exist in response to their policies and rounded them up in camps or executed them.
What we have here from Hancock and SAGE is tghe beginning of something in the same vein.
As I posted on here before, we are never getting out of this. We are never getting out until the economy breaks, or we decide we have had enough. Even then we face a gargantuan struggle to get any of our liberties back
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Is that what the Conservatives did? Do you not like your voters?
The Conservatives don't sneer at aspiration. They don't look down their nose at patriotism. The honest working man or woman, trying to make a living for their family? Come aboard.
The Conservative Party doesn't get very bothered by race, creed or religion these days. Look at the make-up of the Cabinet. They have had two women Prime Ministers (ahem, Labour....) Although Conservatives are probably more likely to see Muslim suicide bombers and tar the whole of Islam with the same "they are out to get us" brush. But then, they just share that prejudice with the wider electorate. It's just what happens when some of your adherents blow us up on buses and trains and at pop concerts.
Option 3 in particular is fascinating. Were I the Labour leadership that is a route worth investigating.
I am still convinced that GE 2024 hinges on Johnson. I believe the red wall is more vulnerable without Johnson at the helm and the Southern seats less so. I see none of his rivals coming close to retaining the broad support lent to Johnson.
Assuming Johnson is still in play in 2024 the result of the election will be based on how his Government are "perceived" to have performed from now until May 2024. The economy could be shot to shreds, but if enough voters still believe Johnson's "good times are ahead of us" message he could still win at a canter.
Labour’s biggest problem is that the people being repelled by the current government appear to be disproportionately in seats Labour already holds (with the possible exception of the most recent Tory gains, if you believe some recent subsamples). In the South outside London the more modest fall in Tory vote share won’t deliver many more opposition seats.
It would be interesting to see -- for each of the 3 strategies -- which is the seat that Labour must take to get an overall majority.
I suspect that will tell us that not one of the 3 strategies alone will work (in the sense of delivering a Labour majority).
I don't rule out Labour as largest party in 2024, but it looks really tough to get a majority -- it needs an unusually gifted and nimble politician to do it.
SKS is not that politician, he is too pedestrian. He is no Jacinda.
Jacinda of course not only failed to get a majority in 2017 but failed to even be largest party, she first came to power only with the support of the Greens and New Zealand First and despite the Nationals having won most seats
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Is that what the Conservatives did? Do you not like your voters?
The Conservatives don't sneer at aspiration. They don't look down their nose at patriotism. The honest working man or woman, trying to make a living for their family? Come aboard.
The Conservative Party doesn't get very bothered by race, creed or religion these days. Look at the make-up of the Cabinet. They have had two women Prime Ministers (ahem, Labour....) Although Conservatives are probably more likely to see Muslim suicide bombers and tar the whole of Islam with the same "they are out to get us" brush. But then, they just share that prejudice with the wider electorate. It's just what happens when some of your adherents blow us up on buses and trains and at pop concerts.
So more of a standard Tory rant, than insight or practical advice.
OF COURSE Trumpsky's incredible, stark commission of a crime recorded in real time is startling.
But my own instinct is to NOT go into full-outrage mode. Which God knows is legally, ethnically, politically justified. However, outrage is NOT emotionally or psychologically propitious. NOT right now.
Strong criticism, sure. Rush to action, investigation, etc, etc by Congress, courts, administration, etc. etc, no thanks. Not just now.
Let's get Uncle Joe finally ELECTED and INAUGURATED as President of the United States BEFORE we do anything else.
AND let's give the incoming and seriously challenged (regardless of GA) Biden administration a wee bit of breathing room.
ABOVE ALL, lets NOT feed The Beast aka The Donald.
Outrage is the oxygen that fuels Trumpsky's rocket from Hell. That is why he is always eager to stoke it up - among his supporters AND his opponents.
He is truly the Moloch. Like his inspiration and role model, the foul false god Baal, Trumpsky feeds on the blood of others AND upon the publicity generated by his crimes and blasphemies.
Outage is not the answer. Not at present. But maybe contempt, disgust, mockery and ridicule are good starting point.
"You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" - Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), June 9, 1954
Agreed. The Trumpian right enjoys the outrage of their opponents; being held in contempt, not so much.
Btw, what did you make of the letter from all the former US defence secretaries. ?
Remarkable that they had to write it. And incredibly sad.
WHAT would George Washington say? Or Dwight Eisenhower? Or even Andrew Jackson & Douglas MacArthur?
Andrew Jackson would cheer it on. He is Trumpsky's role model. 'The voters have made their decision, now let them enforce it'
And before one gets too misty eyed, what if there were a J. Edgar Hoover or a MacArthur around today who had decided that Trump suited their ideological and geostrategic aims? The GOP is morally fecked for at least a generation, but US civil society, law and public service seem a bit more resilient.
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
You've identified the Labour totems. Ownership and unions. And frankly neither of them are really relevant any more.
Ownership doesn't matter if regulation works. Providing your energy market fulfils both national strategic requirements and offers a fair and competitive range of products to consumers does it matter who owns them?
Unions aren't something I have really bothered and the same is true for the majority of working people. I think that they remain an important bulwark in principle, in practice they aren't relevant to the modern workforce.
Blair understood this instinctively and framed both policies and messages to reflect this - I will deliver to you a fair society without having to renationalise everything and recreating the closed shop.
Labour would connect with the majority of people again if it accepted the world as it is and started talking about how it could be improved, rather than railing against the modern world seeking a transformation of 2020 so that it looks more like 1970.
Trade unions are relevant to the individual when in conflict with employer, they have no real place in collective bargaining.
I was briefly a GMB member which overlapped with me being made redundant in 2018. I found GMB to be utterly useless on a practical basis - it was fun waving them at the employer as a threat but it was an empty threat.
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Who doesn't know how to prepare an avocado? You cut it in half and remove the stone. It's not rocket science.
Given the incidence of avocado-related injury, I'm not so sure.
Ha ha. Maybe you're right. Perhaps the cheerful flag-waving plebs of PB Tory caricature should stick to pies. Know your place! This fruit is not for the likes of you!
But, tonight, the Trump tape is the story. Just staggering, but the most staggering thing of all is that we're not really surprised. Whatever happened to the United States to get to this?
When the history is written, it’ll begin with Gingrich.
It begins with Nixon.
I think that was a previous political age. The present polarisation dates to the post-Cold War Clinton era.
The GOP were (and still are) furious that Nixon was forced out.
When they came to select their next Presidential Candidate they selected a Nixon loyalist in Reagan.
Reagan then selected and promoted Nixon lackeys. He put for Bork for the SC! The GOP still bring up Bork being rejected to this day.
The GOP then go apoplectic when Clinton beats Bush (who spends his time pardoning the shit out of the Iran Contra crew) which leads to Gingrich.
In the interim Stone/Ailes is founding Fox News. Its stated aim is to prevent a sitting GOP president from being forced out like Nixon was, no matter what the crime.
Which leads us to now.
Sorry, but most polite way to characterize your view of history here is "revisionist".
Notion that Ronald Reagan was "a Nixon loyalist" is incorrect, to put it mildly.
And whuke SOME in the Republican Party back in 1974 were furious re: Nixon resigning. But please note that it was the REPUBLICANS who forced him to resign, was when his support among Congressional Republicans collapsed after the release of the "smoking gun" tape.
OF course that was before criminal scum like Ailes and Trump took over the GOP, in much the same way that Al Capone cornered bootlegging in Chicago.
Motive for many of today's Republicans like to rail about Nixon being "forced out" and the like, is similar to that of Germans propagating the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht".
Some of the same folks will tell you that Herbert Hoover was also "forced out"! Which has a LOT more truth to it!
It’s quite true to say that Reagan defended Nixon throughout Watergate, even when others gave him up as a crook.
That was political calculation. NOT same thing as political loyalty.
Nixon was NOT conservative enough - not by a long shot - for the likes of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, John Ashcroft, William F. Buckley and most of the rest of the core of late-mid 20th century American conservatism.
I don’t disagree - but it’s hardly revisionist history to say that the degradation of the conservative movement started with Nixon. As did their adoption of the theory of executive supremacy.
The biggest issue now, is how does everyone walk back from this hyperpartisanship?
It’s the Prisoners’ Dilemma - if one side does it, they win, but if both sides do it, everybody loses.
It’s possible Biden reaches out to centrist Republicans at the expense of his own left wing, but I can’t see it happening with actions rather than words. Happy to say I was wrong in a couple of years’ time though.
Nothing Biden could do would get him Republican Senate votes. We've seen this movie before.
Romney or Collins would probably be prepared to work with Biden on some things and if the GOP hold at least 1 seat in Georgia tomorrow they will have the casting vote, if not and the Democrats win both Georgia seats forget bipartisanship the Democrats will control the entire Federal Government, the Presidency and both Houses of Congress and AOC etc will push the agenda left.
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Who doesn't know how to prepare an avocado? You cut it in half and remove the stone. It's not rocket science.
Whats an avocado? Is there really any need to know or care how to prepare one?
Any new measures must be coupled with a clear timeline for vaccination of the vulnerable.
Show us how we reach 15m in 7-9 weeks, by the end of the winter. Then explain how the country will be opened up in early spring.
Call for a nationwide volunteer drive to increase vaccination rates.
Even school closures all winter will be tolerated if there is a clear timetable and end goal.
Why do I fear the government will be incapable of building such a strategy?
They've had nine bloody months to build a vaccination strategy. Maybe we will see some serious action tomorrow.
It’s simply pathetic that having ordered 100m AZ doses, they start off tomorrow with just 500k, and we have only learned of this in the last few days. They need to step everything up, and fast. Get this done.
Once again: how? They ordered vaccine and the manufacturer is slow due to production problems. What do you propose that they do about it?
Illegally nationalize the UK facility and attempt to run it themselves? That a) is unlikely to make it happen faster, and b) would have shall we say unfortunate consequences for the future of the pharma sector in the UK.
Build their own facility? You know it's actually quite complicated and difficult, and can't be done at short notice?
--AS
Annoyingly, we pretty much HAVE our own facility. Almost.
They brought forwards the Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre at Harwell to accelerate its creation. This was the state from outside as of the end of August (I took a shot from the air)
Why the hell they haven't been doing 24/7 shifts to get this finished and start churning out ChAdOx1 under licence beats me.
By the end of August, it was pretty clear that at least one, probably more, of the vaccine candidates was going to be successful. They should have finished this off, negotiated to produce one of them under licence through November, and been in full on production by the start of December.
Indeed. I knew this was coming, but not how close it is to completion.
My guess is that AZ promised them enough doses quickly enough, perhaps weren't willing to license production, and it didn't seem quite as urgent in the summer. Also they didn't know which vaccine was going to be successful. Then events happened to make it a lot more urgent. (This is always going to be a problem with vaccine production, until and unless new production methods are found: there's a long lead time.)
Having two strains of virus running concurrently that require different vaccines (one of which hasn't been developed yet) must be the Government's worse case scenario.
That they have allowed it to happen because of a total failure to prevent exposure to that second strain is quite possibly the biggest mis-step to date. And one for which the Government seems to have no rational answer as to why it has happened.
As far as I can see no one is even challenging the government on this. I presume because the media class is made up of people who see airtravel as 'essential'
They know best (and appear to have lost any sense of self awareness or shame that they might once have possessed).
Excellent analysis - thank you Mr Meeks. All this opens up the big long term questions: What is the party for? And in what way does that identity make clear choices between rational options? And what does it offer that others don't? Despite its obvious and multilateral problems I can answer that question for the Tories much more clearly than I can for Labour.
One other comment: The party appeals strongly to the comfortably well off, especially in the public sector, who possess a social conscience of sorts and also to the most deprived urban communities. This has much to commend it; but if it is not the party of the aspirational working class and middling sorts throughout the UK - and the evidence is overwhelming that it isn't - it cannot win, and cannot be Labour in heart and soul.
Corbynism has trashed the brand for middle Britain. If it had not they would be 25 points ahead right now. Until Labour have a cultural change - and this involves the wholesale removal of the Pidcock tendency - they are stuck.
Not sure about that, the latest MRP poll has a swing to Labour across the UK since 2019, the only swing to the Tories being found in solid Corbyn areas ironically like East London and South Wales and Merseyside
I think Labour need to decide more fundamentally what their purpose is, what problems they are trying to solve, and build an election-winning proposition from there.
Otherwise they are swimming in electoral currents defined by their opponents.
I can now view the 2024 list.
It's very striking to see seats like Stevenage as easier targets than Sedgefield, Worcester ahead of Bolsover. Though some things never change - I think Kingswood was around about the seat Labour needed to win for a majority in 2015.
Taking a step back from the details is all that much changed from the old METTHs analysis?
Towns where many of the things that can work well in cities because of scale - public transport, most obviously - currently don't.
I think that's one of the more tricky problems for Labour. They mostly have big city solutions, speak with a big city voice, based on big city assumptions.
Having southern towns be easier targets than northern towns is still a big change. But ultimately it's still towns that need to be won over.
We'd be a better country if both parties considered the North to be the key battleground for a bit, if only for the political attention it would get.
One of the biggest damaging effects of our voting system is that large swathes of the country get ignored.
The North, certainly outside the biggest cities, is now more of a battleground than London which is safe Labour
Cases rising in the SE; worst districts in Essex. Vaccine arriving in this part of the county Mid-January. And apparently there'll be a 20+ round trip to the administering centre.
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Who doesn't know how to prepare an avocado? You cut it in half and remove the stone. It's not rocket science.
Given the incidence of avocado-related injury, I'm not so sure.
Ha ha. Maybe you're right. Perhaps the cheerful flag-waving plebs of PB Tory caricature should stick to pies. Know your place! This fruit is not for the likes of you!
What is actually quite startling, from that paper, is how dangerous avocadoes are in terms of the damage one can do to oneself.
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Who doesn't know how to prepare an avocado? You cut it in half and remove the stone. It's not rocket science.
Whats an avocado? Is there really any need to know or care how to prepare one?
There's nothing to know. It's a fruit. Like many fruits, you don't want to eat the skin or the stone. That's it. The fact that its consumption has become politicised is a signal of a degraded political discourse (ie if a politician wants us to be taking about avocados, there's probably something more important that he doesn't want us to be talking about).
I see it didn;t take the SAGE committee long to find a virus variant that is resistant to vaccines. The dreaded South African variant.
Its clear now, quicker than I expected, that vaccines will not set us free.
Indeed, restrictions are not lifting as vaccines roll out, they are intensifying. The spread of the virus cannot be because of anything the government is doing and so it must be our fault.
Maoists blamed 'speculators' when markets crashed or ceased to exist in response to their policies and rounded them up in camps or executed them.
What we have here from Hancock and SAGE is tghe beginning of something in the same vein.
As I posted on here before, we are never getting out of this. We are never getting out until the economy breaks, or we decide we have had enough. Even then we face a gargantuan struggle to get any of our liberties back
Never mind that, can you update us on those empty ICU beds?
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Who doesn't know how to prepare an avocado? You cut it in half and remove the stone. It's not rocket science.
Given the incidence of avocado-related injury, I'm not so sure.
Ha ha. Maybe you're right. Perhaps the cheerful flag-waving plebs of PB Tory caricature should stick to pies. Know your place! This fruit is not for the likes of you!
What is actually quite startling, from that paper, is how dangerous avocadoes are in terms of the damage one can do to oneself.
De-stoning seems to be the issue. It's actually extremely simple to remove the stone. Cut the fruit in half lengthways, cutting around the stone. Remove the half without the stone. Bring the knife down fairly hard into the stone, then twist and remove the stone. It's pretty much impossible to hurt yourself this way, since you have no chance of cutting right through the stone and into your hand. Avocados are delicious.
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Who doesn't know how to prepare an avocado? You cut it in half and remove the stone. It's not rocket science.
Given the incidence of avocado-related injury, I'm not so sure.
Ha ha. Maybe you're right. Perhaps the cheerful flag-waving plebs of PB Tory caricature should stick to pies. Know your place! This fruit is not for the likes of you!
What is actually quite startling, from that paper, is how dangerous avocadoes are in terms of the damage one can do to oneself.
De-stoning seems to be the issue. It's actually extremely simple to remove the stone. Cut the fruit in half lengthways, cutting around the stone. Remove the half without the stone. Bring the knife down fairly hard into the stone, then twist and remove the stone. It's pretty much impossible to hurt yourself this way, since you have no chance of cutting right through the stone and into your hand. Avocados are delicious.
Indeed, that's the way I do it, on a cutting board, when Mrs C wants one (I don't). One does wonder what others are doing ...
Above anything Labour need to stop being so apologetic and regain confidence. Politics is volatile. Anything can happen. 2019 was a disaster, but in 2017 Labour got 40% even under Corbyn. Who knows where we will be by 2024.
Labour did relatively well under Corbyn which is why Boris ran on Labour's 2017 platform and did even better. Conservative conversion to Corbynism is masked by Covid but for all the talk of what Labour must do next, it is hard to pin down where their Conservative opponents will be. Will SKS be facing Boris or someone else? Cameroon socially liberal austerity hawks, Borisite investment in public services, or a Mayite appeal to traditional Conservative JAMs?
Are we not close to reaching some form of herd immunity in London, regardless of vaccine?
I finally succumbed over Christmas. Four or five days of sheer awfulness, but thankfully now very much on the mend as of Day 8. My wife (Day 13) is sadly slower in her recovery and likely needs another week.
Most everyone I know either has it, had it, or had a family member with it.
But, tonight, the Trump tape is the story. Just staggering, but the most staggering thing of all is that we're not really surprised. Whatever happened to the United States to get to this?
When the history is written, it’ll begin with Gingrich.
It begins with Nixon.
I think that was a previous political age. The present polarisation dates to the post-Cold War Clinton era.
The GOP were (and still are) furious that Nixon was forced out.
When they came to select their next Presidential Candidate they selected a Nixon loyalist in Reagan.
Reagan then selected and promoted Nixon lackeys. He put for Bork for the SC! The GOP still bring up Bork being rejected to this day.
The GOP then go apoplectic when Clinton beats Bush (who spends his time pardoning the shit out of the Iran Contra crew) which leads to Gingrich.
In the interim Stone/Ailes is founding Fox News. Its stated aim is to prevent a sitting GOP president from being forced out like Nixon was, no matter what the crime.
Which leads us to now.
Sorry, but most polite way to characterize your view of history here is "revisionist".
Notion that Ronald Reagan was "a Nixon loyalist" is incorrect, to put it mildly.
And whuke SOME in the Republican Party back in 1974 were furious re: Nixon resigning. But please note that it was the REPUBLICANS who forced him to resign, was when his support among Congressional Republicans collapsed after the release of the "smoking gun" tape.
OF course that was before criminal scum like Ailes and Trump took over the GOP, in much the same way that Al Capone cornered bootlegging in Chicago.
Motive for many of today's Republicans like to rail about Nixon being "forced out" and the like, is similar to that of Germans propagating the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht".
Some of the same folks will tell you that Herbert Hoover was also "forced out"! Which has a LOT more truth to it!
It’s quite true to say that Reagan defended Nixon throughout Watergate, even when others gave him up as a crook.
That was political calculation. NOT same thing as political loyalty.
Nixon was NOT conservative enough - not by a long shot - for the likes of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, John Ashcroft, William F. Buckley and most of the rest of the core of late-mid 20th century American conservatism.
I don’t disagree - but it’s hardly revisionist history to say that the degradation of the conservative movement started with Nixon. As did their adoption of the theory of executive supremacy.
The biggest issue now, is how does everyone walk back from this hyperpartisanship?
It’s the Prisoners’ Dilemma - if one side does it, they win, but if both sides do it, everybody loses.
It’s possible Biden reaches out to centrist Republicans at the expense of his own left wing, but I can’t see it happening with actions rather than words. Happy to say I was wrong in a couple of years’ time though.
Nothing Biden could do would get him Republican Senate votes. We've seen this movie before.
Romney or Collins would probably be prepared to work with Biden on some things and if the GOP hold at least 1 seat in Georgia tomorrow they will have the casting vote, if not and the Democrats win both Georgia seats forget bipartisanship the Democrats will control the entire Federal Government, the Presidency and both Houses of Congress and AOC etc will push the agenda left.
Not true, the Democrats have their equivalents of Romney and Collins. A 50:50 Senate wouldn't allow AOC toget her way even if Biden supported her, which he doesn't.
Are we not close to reaching some form of herd immunity in London, regardless of vaccine?
I finally succumbed over Christmas. Four or five days of sheer awfulness, but thankfully now very much on the mend as of Day 8. My wife (Day 13) is sadly slower in her recovery and likely needs another week.
Most everyone I know either has it, had it, or had a family member with it.
Sorry to hear that, but glad things seem to be improving.
Interestingly, almost no-one I know has had it (including pals in London). A few friends of friends or biz acquaintances only. All with secondary school age children.....
Are we not close to reaching some form of herd immunity in London, regardless of vaccine?
I finally succumbed over Christmas. Four or five days of sheer awfulness, but thankfully now very much on the mend as of Day 8. My wife (Day 13) is sadly slower in her recovery and likely needs another week.
Most everyone I know either has it, had it, or had a family member with it.
Sorry to hear that, but glad things seem to be improving.
Interestingly, almost no-one I know has had it (including pals in London). A few friends of friends or biz acquaintances only. All with secondary school age children.....
My 6 year old daughter brought it into the home. First my wife, then my son, then me.
I am furious that the government is simply lying about the risk of school openings.
Above anything Labour need to stop being so apologetic and regain confidence. Politics is volatile. Anything can happen. 2019 was a disaster, but in 2017 Labour got 40% even under Corbyn. Who knows where we will be by 2024.
Labour did relatively well under Corbyn which is why Boris ran on Labour's 2017 platform and did even better. Conservative conversion to Corbynism is masked by Covid but for all the talk of what Labour must do next, it is hard to pin down where their Conservative opponents will be. Will SKS be facing Boris or someone else? Cameroon socially liberal austerity hawks, Borisite investment in public services, or a Mayite appeal to traditional Conservative JAMs?
Austerity largely died with the Coalition, the Tory coalition is also different to 2015 anyway, seats like Bishop Auckland and Stoke, Grimsby and West Bromwich the Tories hold now but did not in 2015 are anti austerity and socially conservative and pro Brexit while fiscally conservative seats socially liberal Remain seats like Warwick and Leamington, Richmond Park, Kingston and Surbiton, St Albans, Enfield Southgate are now Labour or LD
Would anyone take the vaccine but not take it delivered by a vet? Wouldn't bother me in the slightest if it was a vet jabbing me.
I put the well-being of my dog in their hands - and my dog is a member of my family. Of couure I'd take a jab from a vet. I'd probably be happy for them to take my appendix out too, if the immediate prospect of it bursting was the alternative. Brain surgery - might take a pass.
We need to be getting hundreds of thousands of jabs a day. By whatever safe means we can concoct. Based around upermarket car-parks. People who are going out and about to supermarkets are not people holed up - so are more likley to be a vector for transfer. Jab any adult shopping that wants one.
In my experience the one person you don't want sticking anything into you is a doctor.
Not sure about that; I've known some very attractive doctors in my time.
Two very attractive female doctors in a practice near here.
But, tonight, the Trump tape is the story. Just staggering, but the most staggering thing of all is that we're not really surprised. Whatever happened to the United States to get to this?
When the history is written, it’ll begin with Gingrich.
It begins with Nixon.
I think that was a previous political age. The present polarisation dates to the post-Cold War Clinton era.
The GOP were (and still are) furious that Nixon was forced out.
When they came to select their next Presidential Candidate they selected a Nixon loyalist in Reagan.
Reagan then selected and promoted Nixon lackeys. He put for Bork for the SC! The GOP still bring up Bork being rejected to this day.
The GOP then go apoplectic when Clinton beats Bush (who spends his time pardoning the shit out of the Iran Contra crew) which leads to Gingrich.
In the interim Stone/Ailes is founding Fox News. Its stated aim is to prevent a sitting GOP president from being forced out like Nixon was, no matter what the crime.
Which leads us to now.
Sorry, but most polite way to characterize your view of history here is "revisionist".
Notion that Ronald Reagan was "a Nixon loyalist" is incorrect, to put it mildly.
And whuke SOME in the Republican Party back in 1974 were furious re: Nixon resigning. But please note that it was the REPUBLICANS who forced him to resign, was when his support among Congressional Republicans collapsed after the release of the "smoking gun" tape.
OF course that was before criminal scum like Ailes and Trump took over the GOP, in much the same way that Al Capone cornered bootlegging in Chicago.
Motive for many of today's Republicans like to rail about Nixon being "forced out" and the like, is similar to that of Germans propagating the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht".
Some of the same folks will tell you that Herbert Hoover was also "forced out"! Which has a LOT more truth to it!
It’s quite true to say that Reagan defended Nixon throughout Watergate, even when others gave him up as a crook.
That was political calculation. NOT same thing as political loyalty.
Nixon was NOT conservative enough - not by a long shot - for the likes of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, John Ashcroft, William F. Buckley and most of the rest of the core of late-mid 20th century American conservatism.
I don’t disagree - but it’s hardly revisionist history to say that the degradation of the conservative movement started with Nixon. As did their adoption of the theory of executive supremacy.
The biggest issue now, is how does everyone walk back from this hyperpartisanship?
It’s the Prisoners’ Dilemma - if one side does it, they win, but if both sides do it, everybody loses.
It’s possible Biden reaches out to centrist Republicans at the expense of his own left wing, but I can’t see it happening with actions rather than words. Happy to say I was wrong in a couple of years’ time though.
Nothing Biden could do would get him Republican Senate votes. We've seen this movie before.
Romney or Collins would probably be prepared to work with Biden on some things and if the GOP hold at least 1 seat in Georgia tomorrow they will have the casting vote, if not and the Democrats win both Georgia seats forget bipartisanship the Democrats will control the entire Federal Government, the Presidency and both Houses of Congress and AOC etc will push the agenda left.
Not true, the Democrats have their equivalents of Romney and Collins. A 50:50 Senate wouldn't allow AOC toget her way even if Biden supported her, which he doesn't.
If the Democrats hold complete power they will ram through their agenda, when what I think Americans really wanted was divided government and compromise and otherwise just to remove Trump which they have not had for an incoming President since Bush Snr in 1989
Labour is nowhere near regaining power yet. It seems to think not being Corbyn and moving on from Brexit is enough, but it isn't.
FWIW, I think Starmer understands this at a visceral level but has so far struggled to be consistent and is trying to cover too many flanks.
The problem I think is that Labour knows what it is *for* in a very abstract sense ("the working people") but the Blair era eviscerated it of what that meant in practical terms ("redistribution", "public ownership"), and actually took it away from more than just "clause 4" of the objects. I'm specifically thinking of Clause 2 re: Unions, and clauses 6 and 7 re: internationalization, which have been lost in the overseas wars of the Blair era, and the acceptance of Brexit today - they seem to be afraid of being too outward looking in the current climate.
So they need both a compass, and a map, and a plan, and that's a very challenging place to start from. They do at least have that north star of being for "the working people"/"the workers", and that is probably the place from which to build.
Far too many in Labour think "the working people" are racist, Brexiteer oiks who hang the cross of St. George from their windows and who wouldn't know how to prepare an avocado if their life depended on it.
Labour is down to holding the seats where it feels comfortable. And some of them are hanging on a gossamer thread. If it wants power, it is going to have move W-A-Y out of its comfort zone - and start embracing people it really doesn't like.
Who doesn't know how to prepare an avocado? You cut it in half and remove the stone. It's not rocket science.
Given the incidence of avocado-related injury, I'm not so sure.
Ha ha. Maybe you're right. Perhaps the cheerful flag-waving plebs of PB Tory caricature should stick to pies. Know your place! This fruit is not for the likes of you!
What is actually quite startling, from that paper, is how dangerous avocadoes are in terms of the damage one can do to oneself.
De-stoning seems to be the issue. It's actually extremely simple to remove the stone. Cut the fruit in half lengthways, cutting around the stone. Remove the half without the stone. Bring the knife down fairly hard into the stone, then twist and remove the stone. It's pretty much impossible to hurt yourself this way, since you have no chance of cutting right through the stone and into your hand. Avocados are delicious.
A fortune awaits the person who develops a stoneless avocado. It's been done with grapes and oranges....
Are we not close to reaching some form of herd immunity in London, regardless of vaccine?
I finally succumbed over Christmas. Four or five days of sheer awfulness, but thankfully now very much on the mend as of Day 8. My wife (Day 13) is sadly slower in her recovery and likely needs another week.
Most everyone I know either has it, had it, or had a family member with it.
Sorry to hear that, but glad things seem to be improving.
Interestingly, almost no-one I know has had it (including pals in London). A few friends of friends or biz acquaintances only. All with secondary school age children.....
A few weeks ago we knew very few people who had had it. Then a niece, a prison worker got it, as did her family. Then a (secondary school) teacher relative, although her husband doesn't appear to have done so and others in the wider 'family and friends' range.
I fear that will prove optimistic. Given the infectivity of the new variant even closing all schools will not get R below 1. All we can hope to achieve now is to reduce the rate of increase until the vaccine is rolled out in sufficient numbers to slow this down.
On present trends I see the NHS overwhelmed within 10 days. Nearly all of that is already baked in. We must do everything we can not to make it worse which means, amongst other things, no schools open in January.
Cases in London and the South East are showing signs of slowing down. And they've been stable in Wales for a few days (although that might be the decline of the old strains masking the increase of the new one). But it's all with Christmas still in there and the message of how bad it is not having got through yet properly. So I think there is still hope of getting below 1.
But you're right, a large further increase is already baked in, and reopening schools is madness. As is having parts of the country like Liverpool still in tier 3.
I don't think we can say that yet for London, we'll need to see what kind of catch up there is in the stats tomorrow and Wednesday.
Are we not close to reaching some form of herd immunity in London, regardless of vaccine?
I finally succumbed over Christmas. Four or five days of sheer awfulness, but thankfully now very much on the mend as of Day 8. My wife (Day 13) is sadly slower in her recovery and likely needs another week.
Most everyone I know either has it, had it, or had a family member with it.
Glad to hear you're on the mend, but watch out for the virus's second wind, and best of luck to your family. On the herd immunity point, when is that achieved? When ~ 60% of the population have antibodies from either infection or vaccine I suppose. So at the societal level catching the bug assists the vaccine towards this goal. People have said we need ~2million vaccinations per week to get there by early summer. Has that factored in the naturally acquired immunity?
Comments
One of the biggest damaging effects of our voting system is that large swathes of the country get ignored.
So you have a massive drop in cases at Christmas followed by a huge catchup - as people get tested.
At the same time, you have an underlying increase. We shall see Tuesday/Wednesday - my guess is that it won't be above the 29th peak, but the next peak will be a massive increase on the underlying (excluding Christmas Effect) rates.
Andrew Jackson was a violent white supremacist - again, every key Trump demographic surely?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33115349/
Its clear now, quicker than I expected, that vaccines will not set us free.
Indeed, restrictions are not lifting as vaccines roll out, they are intensifying. The spread of the virus cannot be because of anything the government is doing and so it must be our fault.
Maoists blamed 'speculators' when markets crashed or ceased to exist in response to their policies and rounded them up in camps or executed them.
What we have here from Hancock and SAGE is tghe beginning of something in the same vein.
As I posted on here before, we are never getting out of this. We are never getting out until the economy breaks, or we decide we have had enough. Even then we face a gargantuan struggle to get any of our liberties back
The Conservative Party doesn't get very bothered by race, creed or religion these days. Look at the make-up of the Cabinet. They have had two women Prime Ministers (ahem, Labour....) Although Conservatives are probably more likely to see Muslim suicide bombers and tar the whole of Islam with the same "they are out to get us" brush. But then, they just share that prejudice with the wider electorate. It's just what happens when some of your adherents blow us up on buses and trains and at pop concerts.
My guess is that AZ promised them enough doses quickly enough, perhaps weren't willing to license production, and it didn't seem quite as urgent in the summer. Also they didn't know which vaccine was going to be successful. Then events happened to make it a lot more urgent. (This is always going to be a problem with vaccine production, until and unless new production methods are found: there's a long lead time.)
--AS
https://twitter.com/juliahb1/status/1344757328948686855?s=21
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1345760586626461699?s=20
The fact that its consumption has become politicised is a signal of a degraded political discourse (ie if a politician wants us to be taking about avocados, there's probably something more important that he doesn't want us to be talking about).
I finally succumbed over Christmas. Four or five days of sheer awfulness, but thankfully now very much on the mend as of Day 8. My wife (Day 13) is sadly slower in her recovery and likely needs another week.
Most everyone I know either has it, had it, or had a family member with it.
Interestingly, almost no-one I know has had it (including pals in London). A few friends of friends or biz acquaintances only. All with secondary school age children.....
I am furious that the government is simply lying about the risk of school openings.
It would assist greatly with mangoes too.
On the herd immunity point, when is that achieved? When ~ 60% of the population have antibodies from either infection or vaccine I suppose. So at the societal level catching the bug assists the vaccine towards this goal. People have said we need ~2million vaccinations per week to get there by early summer. Has that factored in the naturally acquired immunity?