There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
Perhaps he was showing off his legendary fatherly concern....
Angela Rayner is a success story the Labour Party should make more of. Left school at 16 with no GCSEs and a baby, became a carer then into the Labour Party via the union route. She talks northern, understands what its like to have nothing but responsibilities and no money. She could cut through to the ex-red wall.
But too many in the party hate her for saying Tony Blair changed her life.
Fair enough but you can walk down any housing estate in the country and find someone who left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had a baby, you can use them in an election broadcast, you do not need to make them your candidate to be PM!
You are really quite the university and qualifications snob aren't you?
Well I would like the PM of the UK representing the country on the world stage and taking difficult decisions to at least have a few GCSEs and A Levels and ideally a degree as well and I would hope most sensible people would too, otherwise you may as well just pick the PM by lottery from people in the street
So no John Major, James Callaghan or Winston Churchill?
No those 3 would be included, Major had a few O Levels and banking qualifications, Callaghan passed his Senior Oxford Certificate and civil service exams and Churchill passed the Harrow and Sandhurst entrance exams (pre even O Levels)
The missing graph from that series is the one on the number of vaccinations conducted.
Why are the Government being so reticent in updating the figures? Is there a problem? Those on the Worldindata site have figures that date back to 27th December, when most other countries are showing data for 3rd or 4th Jan and updating data daily.
Watching the presser, Vicky Young is an excellent political correspondent. Much better than LauraK and Peston. Great questions, inadequately answered by Johnson.
I have thought that Vicki is far better than the rest for sometime
Is there any other nation more obsessed with class than the British?
I find it a bit weird, even my Scottish boss said there's plenty of classism in Scotland, although that's more of an Edinburgh/Glasgow rivalry.
I don't know, nobody would claim that Bearsden was lower class than Wester Hailes. And the Byres Road is every bit as twee as Broughton Street or Newington. It's a geographical thing , like the States - East and West Coast separated by the great plains and arid deserts of West Lothian and Linlithgowshire, inhabited by pink sheep and giant water horses.
My boss is an Posh Jock as he's from Edinburgh, home of classy places like the Caley, the fringe, and the castle.
Glasgow has places like Gorbals and Govan.
You ought to ask him about Craigmillar and Wester Hailes!
I've just texted him that, his reply 'The worst bits of Edinburgh are better than the best bits of Glasgow.'
Is there anywhere in either worse than Cumbernauld? Because I wouldn't want to go there.
Gorbals, before they flattened it a decade or so ago.
I could bet my last pound you will never have seen or been to the Gorbals, you may be looking at wiki from 1940's, this does not look very shabby does it ................arse
Fake news - blue sky in Glasgow - no way!
They had 50 years to wait for it - the relentless rain has meant that these works have been in plan since the 70s.
I think these photos were taken in 2008 when God popped along to give Brown his halo and dispense aircraft carriers all round.
There is nothing better than a bright Scottish morning. Nothing more dismal than a Scottish rainy afternoon. Oddly I feel that these two undoubted facts sum up someone or other..
You
I may not have been referring to you! What presumption!
I was though.
Anyway Mr G, do flash your sunny uplands at us more than exposing your dark glens. (If Malcom turns out to be 17 and female I'll get arrested!)
If only I was 17 , I will be more cheery but the site needs someone to shake them up and be grumpy.
You might have your birthday on the 29 February ... (as a friend of mine did: fortunately his family allowed him an honorary one on the 28 Feb in intercalary years).
My birthday is the 29th February and I am 20 in 2024
And my many honorary birthdays have always been on the 28th February but my driving licence was issued for the 1st March
I have always thought that those born on 29 Feb should celebrate successive birthdays on 1 March. Your 1st birthday is then the day after 28 February, so the first anniversary of your birth, and you proceed from there.
Well the pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes and nightclubs and non essential shops are shut and you cannot see your friends in person so for political anoraks like us he is probably spot on, though for some of us it would be the highlight anyway
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
CMO just said the CMOs met yesterday to review data. So perhaps the question is why they did not meet on Sunday in order to know what their view was with time to stop schools reopening and adding a whole day of mixing into the mess?
If it follows the ONS reporting that is not 1 in 50 newly infected in the last 7 days - it is genuinely 'currently infected' and an infection lasts something over a week on average. If we're still at around 40-50% detection, we are back at around 100k-ish being infected a day and a little over 1% infected in the last 7 days: i.e. just about at March peak and still rising in a lot of the country. Although Christmas is still a complicating factor in last 7 day vs previous 7 day figures.
Very welcome news for the BBC. It might do well to revive some other Reithian or Wilsonian connections with the Open University during the pandemic too.
Is there any other nation more obsessed with class than the British?
I find it a bit weird, even my Scottish boss said there's plenty of classism in Scotland, although that's more of an Edinburgh/Glasgow rivalry.
I don't know, nobody would claim that Bearsden was lower class than Wester Hailes. And the Byres Road is every bit as twee as Broughton Street or Newington. It's a geographical thing , like the States - East and West Coast separated by the great plains and arid deserts of West Lothian and Linlithgowshire, inhabited by pink sheep and giant water horses.
My boss is an Posh Jock as he's from Edinburgh, home of classy places like the Caley, the fringe, and the castle.
Glasgow has places like Gorbals and Govan.
You ought to ask him about Craigmillar and Wester Hailes!
I've just texted him that, his reply 'The worst bits of Edinburgh are better than the best bits of Glasgow.'
Is there anywhere in either worse than Cumbernauld? Because I wouldn't want to go there.
Gorbals, before they flattened it a decade or so ago.
I could bet my last pound you will never have seen or been to the Gorbals, you may be looking at wiki from 1940's, this does not look very shabby does it ................arse
Fake news - blue sky in Glasgow - no way!
They had 50 years to wait for it - the relentless rain has meant that these works have been in plan since the 70s.
I think these photos were taken in 2008 when God popped along to give Brown his halo and dispense aircraft carriers all round.
There is nothing better than a bright Scottish morning. Nothing more dismal than a Scottish rainy afternoon. Oddly I feel that these two undoubted facts sum up someone or other..
You
I may not have been referring to you! What presumption!
I was though.
Anyway Mr G, do flash your sunny uplands at us more than exposing your dark glens. (If Malcom turns out to be 17 and female I'll get arrested!)
If only I was 17 , I will be more cheery but the site needs someone to shake them up and be grumpy.
You might have your birthday on the 29 February ... (as a friend of mine did: fortunately his family allowed him an honorary one on the 28 Feb in intercalary years).
My birthday is the 29th February and I am 20 in 2024
And my many honorary birthdays have always been on the 28th February but my driving licence was issued for the 1st March
I have always thought that those born on 29 Feb should celebrate successive birthdays on 1 March. Your 1st birthday is then the day after 28 February, so the first anniversary of your birth, and you proceed from there.
28/2 makes more sense for celebrations as you are a February child. Last day of February then.
Not the same thing but my youngest was due early May and born in June. As a result she will always be a June baby now.
You can guess how happy at the time MrsT was three weeks past her due date.
Do remember that exactly zero AZN vaccines have been administered so far. That is changing as we speak.
Yes, this is the big week for vaccination. The NHS and government have to hit at least 1m if they have any hope of getting to Boris' stated target of the top 4 priority groups being done by the middle of Feb.
Is there any other nation more obsessed with class than the British?
I find it a bit weird, even my Scottish boss said there's plenty of classism in Scotland, although that's more of an Edinburgh/Glasgow rivalry.
I don't know, nobody would claim that Bearsden was lower class than Wester Hailes. And the Byres Road is every bit as twee as Broughton Street or Newington. It's a geographical thing , like the States - East and West Coast separated by the great plains and arid deserts of West Lothian and Linlithgowshire, inhabited by pink sheep and giant water horses.
My boss is an Posh Jock as he's from Edinburgh, home of classy places like the Caley, the fringe, and the castle.
Glasgow has places like Gorbals and Govan.
You ought to ask him about Craigmillar and Wester Hailes!
I've just texted him that, his reply 'The worst bits of Edinburgh are better than the best bits of Glasgow.'
Is there anywhere in either worse than Cumbernauld? Because I wouldn't want to go there.
Gorbals, before they flattened it a decade or so ago.
I could bet my last pound you will never have seen or been to the Gorbals, you may be looking at wiki from 1940's, this does not look very shabby does it ................arse
Fake news - blue sky in Glasgow - no way!
They had 50 years to wait for it - the relentless rain has meant that these works have been in plan since the 70s.
I think these photos were taken in 2008 when God popped along to give Brown his halo and dispense aircraft carriers all round.
There is nothing better than a bright Scottish morning. Nothing more dismal than a Scottish rainy afternoon. Oddly I feel that these two undoubted facts sum up someone or other..
You
I may not have been referring to you! What presumption!
I was though.
Anyway Mr G, do flash your sunny uplands at us more than exposing your dark glens. (If Malcom turns out to be 17 and female I'll get arrested!)
If only I was 17 , I will be more cheery but the site needs someone to shake them up and be grumpy.
You might have your birthday on the 29 February ... (as a friend of mine did: fortunately his family allowed him an honorary one on the 28 Feb in intercalary years).
My birthday is the 29th February and I am 20 in 2024
And my many honorary birthdays have always been on the 28th February but my driving licence was issued for the 1st March
I have always thought that those born on 29 Feb should celebrate successive birthdays on 1 March. Your 1st birthday is then the day after 28 February, so the first anniversary of your birth, and you proceed from there.
Lots of arguments between my mother and father over that point when I was a lad.
Mother maintained I was born on the last day of February and Father the first day after the 28th
In truth it confused many of the family and as a lad I did not object to having it over the two days
If you cant smell it you have Covid if you can all is well even if it makes you cough
How does Mrs BJO feel about this revolution in testing technique?
She is a Paraplegic and sleeps downstairs otherwise my testing regime would have been halted weeks ago
I see you need to move to Booster Chicken Tandoori Extra Hot to give her the benefit of your discovery also. And leave your bedroom door open to be sure.
1 in 30 people in London have Covid-19 and yet the PM and Williamson still thought opening some schools in London was a good idea.
Press reports suggested 3m kids went into school yesterday. If 1 in 50* of them had it that is 60,000 infected kids perhaps in close contact with 5-10 each over the day, to give 300k-600k at risk of catching and passing it on further. Wonderful.
* It wont actually be quite so bad as some would be isolating but symptoms are often low in kids so many wont know they have it.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
CMO just said the CMOs met yesterday to review data. So perhaps the question is why they did not meet on Sunday in order to know what their view was with time to stop schools reopening and adding a whole day of mixing into the mess?
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
My theory is a prosaic one. He has to pay the rent and this is the only way he can do it. It's too late now to retrain as a medic or a teacher or to go into IT.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
The missing graph from that series is the one on the number of vaccinations conducted.
Why are the Government being so reticent in updating the figures? Is there a problem? Those on the Worldindata site have figures that date back to 27th December, when most other countries are showing data for 3rd or 4th Jan and updating data daily.
Nah, that isn't going to fly if everyone has been jabbed twice and we have 95% immunity. No way will people live with restrictions after the vaccine, it's why politicians need to make decisions not medical people, in normal times. Otherwise we'd have banned smoking, drinking and bacon a long time ago.
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
My theory is a prosaic one. He has to pay the rent and this is the only way he can do it. It's too late now to retrain as a medic or a teacher or to go into IT.
Being a lunatic on twitter probably earns more than being a teacher.
Once Covid becomes a risk like several other illnesses including flu (I know we're not supposed to mention Covid and flu in the same sentence) then why would extra or continued measures be needed?
Do remember that exactly zero AZN vaccines have been administered so far. That is changing as we speak.
But the daily average administration of the Pfizer has declined over the past week.
Is the data the PM quoted for the full week? It's not usually announced until later in the week. In any case, it's highly unlikely it will stay in the tens of thousands.
Do remember that exactly zero AZN vaccines have been administered so far. That is changing as we speak.
But the daily average administration of the Pfizer has declined over the past week.
Trying to read much into numbers at the start of the system will yield little data - you have limited vaccine deliveries interacting with the effects of the holiday period.
Do remember that exactly zero AZN vaccines have been administered so far. That is changing as we speak.
But the daily average administration of the Pfizer has declined over the past week.
Is the data the PM quoted for the full week? It's not usually announced until later in the week. In any case, it's highly unlikely it will stay in the tens of thousands.
No indeed. And now they are publishing it that is a great step forward.
Do remember that exactly zero AZN vaccines have been administered so far. That is changing as we speak.
But the daily average administration of the Pfizer has declined over the past week.
I think I'm ok to give them a pass for the one between the 24th and yesterday as "Christmas, everything is more difficult", but from today that isn't acceptable and we also have the AZ vaccine approved so the numbers should be more than double given the supply increase. If we don't have something like 2.5-2.7m done this time next week I'd consider it a failure.
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
People are fed up with Covid-19.
The reality is so crap they are starting to believe and live their preferred alternative one, which is much easier to do if you haven't been directly affected by it.
Once Covid becomes a risk like several other illnesses including flu (I know we're not supposed to mention Covid and flu in the same sentence) then why would extra or continued measures be needed?
I think it'll be things other than full fat lockdowns.
Such as stay at home if you have symptoms, wear a mask, wash your hands, etc.
Is there any other nation more obsessed with class than the British?
I find it a bit weird, even my Scottish boss said there's plenty of classism in Scotland, although that's more of an Edinburgh/Glasgow rivalry.
I don't know, nobody would claim that Bearsden was lower class than Wester Hailes. And the Byres Road is every bit as twee as Broughton Street or Newington. It's a geographical thing , like the States - East and West Coast separated by the great plains and arid deserts of West Lothian and Linlithgowshire, inhabited by pink sheep and giant water horses.
My boss is an Posh Jock as he's from Edinburgh, home of classy places like the Caley, the fringe, and the castle.
Glasgow has places like Gorbals and Govan.
You ought to ask him about Craigmillar and Wester Hailes!
I've just texted him that, his reply 'The worst bits of Edinburgh are better than the best bits of Glasgow.'
Is there anywhere in either worse than Cumbernauld? Because I wouldn't want to go there.
Gorbals, before they flattened it a decade or so ago.
I could bet my last pound you will never have seen or been to the Gorbals, you may be looking at wiki from 1940's, this does not look very shabby does it ................arse
Well you’d lose your last pound. My grannie, may she rest in peace, was from Rutherglen.
Wasn't Cumbernauld where Gregor's Girl was set/filmed?
It was indeed and was not so bad in those days, the shopping centre etc did not wear well , there must have been lots of crap architects going about in those days.
Aside from Cumbernauld, what I never quite understand driving through the central belt is the preponderance of grey pebbledash.
Why?? At least paint it a slightly more interesting colour!
I know there probably aren't many historic brick manufacturers in Scotland due to the geology but surely it doesn't have to look quite so grim.
Harling is what we call it. Helps to waterproof against the driven rain and to some extent also a sacrificial covering against frost. Or so I see it. For some reason painting is not common unless it is country cottages.
Edit: Lots of bricks in Central Belt and Tayside - a lot of the local bricks are from fireclay seams (ie Coal Measures seatearths) and others from fluvioglacial or glacial marine clays (Quaternary).
I wonder also if there is something about the local bricks. it may be that they are not pretty enough, or that tradition was not to leave exposed brickwork anywhere.
But not just bricks. My grandfather's drapery and house above is Dumfriesshire stone on the front, but cheaper local stone at the sides and back which is harled and always has been.
I always thought traditional harling was sand & lime rather than pebble based. That's certainly what you find on older buildings. It is the concrete/pebble mixture that looks particularly bad and seems rather unnecessary on modern buildings.
Dumfries stone (assuming you mean the red sandstone and not the grey granite) is definitely worth showing though. You find it in a lot of unexpected places (wasn't it used for the Statue of Liberty?). I had to survey one of the quarries once and it was pretty impressive.
The grey roughcasting was mainly if not all 50's social housing. Many have been redone in cream , etc but it was so well done it si still in good shape after nearly 70 years, so depends on councils to update it.
The Zoe app reckons 757,000 symptomatic cases as of today. Adding asymptomatic cases will take it to about 900,000. (I think they said that only about 20% of people are truly asymptomatic but about 30% just have minor symptoms such as a runny nose or headache that can be mistaken for a cold)
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
My theory is a prosaic one. He has to pay the rent and this is the only way he can do it. It's too late now to retrain as a medic or a teacher or to go into IT.
Being a lunatic on twitter probably earns more than being a teacher.
Nah, that isn't going to fly if everyone has been jabbed twice and we have 95% immunity. No way will people live with restrictions after the vaccine, it's why politicians need to make decisions not medical people, in normal times. Otherwise we'd have banned smoking, drinking and bacon a long time ago.
If we could achieve 100% vaccinated and 95% efficacy there wouldn't be a problem. The virus would fade away very quickly.
But we won't, and it won't, and hence we have to think about what the steady state is going to be and how to get there.
Nah, that isn't going to fly if everyone has been jabbed twice and we have 95% immunity. No way will people live with restrictions after the vaccine, it's why politicians need to make decisions not medical people, in normal times. Otherwise we'd have banned smoking, drinking and bacon a long time ago.
All leading medics talk like this.
They don't see it as their job to take a view on risk appetite. They'll just follow whatever eliminates the medical risk absolutely to its logical conclusion.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Nah, that isn't going to fly if everyone has been jabbed twice and we have 95% immunity. No way will people live with restrictions after the vaccine, it's why politicians need to make decisions not medical people, in normal times. Otherwise we'd have banned smoking, drinking and bacon a long time ago.
If we could achieve 100% vaccinated and 95% efficacy there wouldn't be a problem. The virus would fade away very quickly.
But we won't, and it won't, and hence we have to think about what the steady state is going to be and how to get there.
By the winter we absolutely should have, and chances are the Pfizer vaccine will be approved for 13-17 year olds as well further reducing the available pool of hosts. If we haven't got through 55m people jabbed twice by the end of September then I'd consider it a failure of governing.
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
People are fed up with Covid-19.
The reality is so crap they are starting to believe and live their preferred alternative one, which is much easier to do if you haven't been directly affected by it.
I'm always fascinated by this phenomenon. The belief that you can bend reality to your will.
I think I mentioned a play of The Cold Equations we put on at university. It was interesting to hear the *anger* at the ending of the play from some people, during the production and staging.
FFS, any angle the media can use to spread the doom and gloom, as per usual...
What Whitty said was eminently sensible. You need to monitor these things and you may need to put some measures in effect. Measures doesn't mean locking everyone in their house, in all likelihood. You could just be asked to self-isolate if you're not feeling well.
As usual the media is desperate for another angle to spread the misery.
Look, I'm sorry, but with this shocking data, wasn't the opening of schools yesterday, knowing how infectious the virus is, knowing that children are efficient catchers and spreaders of it, knowing that many of those children will interact with more vulnerable adults, wasn't this verging on the criminally negligent?
Nah, that isn't going to fly if everyone has been jabbed twice and we have 95% immunity. No way will people live with restrictions after the vaccine, it's why politicians need to make decisions not medical people, in normal times. Otherwise we'd have banned smoking, drinking and bacon a long time ago.
If we could achieve 100% vaccinated and 95% efficacy there wouldn't be a problem. The virus would fade away very quickly.
But we won't, and it won't, and hence we have to think about what the steady state is going to be and how to get there.
By the winter we absolutely should have, and chances are the Pfizer vaccine will be approved for 13-17 year olds as well further reducing the available pool of hosts. If we haven't got through 55m people jabbed twice by the end of September then I'd consider it a failure of governing.
If you get two jabs would that be 'getting the full Prescott'
Do remember that exactly zero AZN vaccines have been administered so far. That is changing as we speak.
But the daily average administration of the Pfizer has declined over the past week.
I think I'm ok to give them a pass for the one between the 24th and yesterday as "Christmas, everything is more difficult", but from today that isn't acceptable and we also have the AZ vaccine approved so the numbers should be more than double given the supply increase. If we don't have something like 2.5-2.7m done this time next week I'd consider it a failure.
Yes it's early days and was Christmas. Party's over now though.
Nah, that isn't going to fly if everyone has been jabbed twice and we have 95% immunity. No way will people live with restrictions after the vaccine, it's why politicians need to make decisions not medical people, in normal times. Otherwise we'd have banned smoking, drinking and bacon a long time ago.
All leading medics talk like this.
They don't see it as their job to take a view on risk appetite. They'll just follow whatever eliminates the medical risk absolutely to its logical conclusion.
One interesting item that I would like to be asked is this - has anyone done or is planning a test of the antibody tests combined with vaccination.
In other words, can we use the antibody tests to see if the vaccine has worked on a particular person?
Very welcome news for the BBC. It might do well to revive some other Reithian or Wilsonian connections with the Open University during the pandemic too.
Almost enough to forgive them for ‘The Wheel’.
We love The Wheel in our house. Apart from my wife, who has more highbrow taste.
Do remember that exactly zero AZN vaccines have been administered so far. That is changing as we speak.
But the daily average administration of the Pfizer has declined over the past week.
I think I'm ok to give them a pass for the one between the 24th and yesterday as "Christmas, everything is more difficult", but from today that isn't acceptable and we also have the AZ vaccine approved so the numbers should be more than double given the supply increase. If we don't have something like 2.5-2.7m done this time next week I'd consider it a failure.
Yes it's early days and was Christmas. Party's over now though.
Absolutely. Time to get serious, hit 2m per week by the middle of January and 3m per week by the middle of February and ramp up to 5m per week by the middle of April so that second jabs don't slow down or halt the process for those who haven't had the first jab.
Once Covid becomes a risk like several other illnesses including flu (I know we're not supposed to mention Covid and flu in the same sentence) then why would extra or continued measures be needed?
I think it'll be things other than full fat lockdowns.
Such as stay at home if you have symptoms, wear a mask, wash your hands, etc.
At 11billion for a weekly pop, one day it will surely have to be.
Look, I'm sorry, but with this shocking data, isn't the opening of schools yesterday, knowing how infectious the virus is, knowing that children are efficient catchers and spreaders of it, knowing that many of those children will interact with more vulnerable adults verging on the criminally negligent?
Are you suggesting Drakeford is criminally negligent
He opened senior schools yesterday and upto last night all primary schools
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris got a Tory majority of 80 to beat Corbyn and has delivered Brexit, that was exactly what Tory members elected him to do
Once Covid becomes a risk like several other illnesses including flu (I know we're not supposed to mention Covid and flu in the same sentence) then why would extra or continued measures be needed?
I think it'll be things other than full fat lockdowns.
Such as stay at home if you have symptoms, wear a mask, wash your hands, etc.
Perhaps but it is right to be wary of government powers introduced with the best of intentions.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris Johnson appears to be a useless buffoon, unfit to shovel shit, but the men and women in grey suits have still to find the courage to send 50 or so letters to start the ball rolling to oust him. Do they have the balls to act or not?
Nah, that isn't going to fly if everyone has been jabbed twice and we have 95% immunity. No way will people live with restrictions after the vaccine, it's why politicians need to make decisions not medical people, in normal times. Otherwise we'd have banned smoking, drinking and bacon a long time ago.
If we could achieve 100% vaccinated and 95% efficacy there wouldn't be a problem. The virus would fade away very quickly.
But we won't, and it won't, and hence we have to think about what the steady state is going to be and how to get there.
By the winter we absolutely should have, and chances are the Pfizer vaccine will be approved for 13-17 year olds as well further reducing the available pool of hosts. If we haven't got through 55m people jabbed twice by the end of September then I'd consider it a failure of governing.
The AZ vaccine has only been demonstrated to be 70% effective, a significant minority are unwilling to get vaccinated, and younger children could still turn out to be a significant transmission vector (especially with further mutations). All of which means herd immunity isn't a foregone conclusion given the enormous unrestricted R.
Nah, that isn't going to fly if everyone has been jabbed twice and we have 95% immunity. No way will people live with restrictions after the vaccine, it's why politicians need to make decisions not medical people, in normal times. Otherwise we'd have banned smoking, drinking and bacon a long time ago.
If we could achieve 100% vaccinated and 95% efficacy there wouldn't be a problem. The virus would fade away very quickly.
But we won't, and it won't, and hence we have to think about what the steady state is going to be and how to get there.
By the winter we absolutely should have, and chances are the Pfizer vaccine will be approved for 13-17 year olds as well further reducing the available pool of hosts. If we haven't got through 55m people jabbed twice by the end of September then I'd consider it a failure of governing.
The AZ vaccine has only been demonstrated to be 70% effective, a significant minority are unwilling to get vaccinated, and younger children could still turn out to be a significant transmission vector (especially with further mutations). All of which means herd immunity isn't a foregone conclusion given the enormous unrestricted R.
Once Covid becomes a risk like several other illnesses including flu (I know we're not supposed to mention Covid and flu in the same sentence) then why would extra or continued measures be needed?
I think it'll be things other than full fat lockdowns.
Such as stay at home if you have symptoms, wear a mask, wash your hands, etc.
Perhaps but it is right to be wary of government powers introduced with the best of intentions.
Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yes, glad that Parliament force the government into needing to renew the powers every six months rather than the three years that was initially on the cards. There's no way Tory MPs will go along with autumn/winter lockdowns if the numbers are in single digits for deaths and double digits for cases.
Once Covid becomes a risk like several other illnesses including flu (I know we're not supposed to mention Covid and flu in the same sentence) then why would extra or continued measures be needed?
I think it'll be things other than full fat lockdowns.
Such as stay at home if you have symptoms, wear a mask, wash your hands, etc.
Perhaps but it is right to be wary of government powers introduced with the best of intentions.
Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Seeing the prospect of the virus abating, these journalists are like children watching their snowman melt.
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
People are fed up with Covid-19.
The reality is so crap they are starting to believe and live their preferred alternative one, which is much easier to do if you haven't been directly affected by it.
I'm always fascinated by this phenomenon. The belief that you can bend reality to your will.
I think I mentioned a play of The Cold Equations we put on at university. It was interesting to hear the *anger* at the ending of the play from some people, during the production and staging.
Is there any other nation more obsessed with class than the British?
I find it a bit weird, even my Scottish boss said there's plenty of classism in Scotland, although that's more of an Edinburgh/Glasgow rivalry.
I don't know, nobody would claim that Bearsden was lower class than Wester Hailes. And the Byres Road is every bit as twee as Broughton Street or Newington. It's a geographical thing , like the States - East and West Coast separated by the great plains and arid deserts of West Lothian and Linlithgowshire, inhabited by pink sheep and giant water horses.
My boss is an Posh Jock as he's from Edinburgh, home of classy places like the Caley, the fringe, and the castle.
Glasgow has places like Gorbals and Govan.
You ought to ask him about Craigmillar and Wester Hailes!
I've just texted him that, his reply 'The worst bits of Edinburgh are better than the best bits of Glasgow.'
Is there anywhere in either worse than Cumbernauld? Because I wouldn't want to go there.
Gorbals, before they flattened it a decade or so ago.
I could bet my last pound you will never have seen or been to the Gorbals, you may be looking at wiki from 1940's, this does not look very shabby does it ................arse
Fake news - blue sky in Glasgow - no way!
They had 50 years to wait for it - the relentless rain has meant that these works have been in plan since the 70s.
I think these photos were taken in 2008 when God popped along to give Brown his halo and dispense aircraft carriers all round.
There is nothing better than a bright Scottish morning. Nothing more dismal than a Scottish rainy afternoon. Oddly I feel that these two undoubted facts sum up someone or other..
You
I may not have been referring to you! What presumption!
I was though.
Anyway Mr G, do flash your sunny uplands at us more than exposing your dark glens. (If Malcom turns out to be 17 and female I'll get arrested!)
If only I was 17 , I will be more cheery but the site needs someone to shake them up and be grumpy.
You might have your birthday on the 29 February ... (as a friend of mine did: fortunately his family allowed him an honorary one on the 28 Feb in intercalary years).
My birthday is the 29th February and I am 20 in 2024
And my many honorary birthdays have always been on the 28th February but my driving licence was issued for the 1st March
I have always thought that those born on 29 Feb should celebrate successive birthdays on 1 March. Your 1st birthday is then the day after 28 February, so the first anniversary of your birth, and you proceed from there.
Lots of arguments between my mother and father over that point when I was a lad.
Mother maintained I was born on the last day of February and Father the first day after the 28th
In truth it confused many of the family and as a lad I did not object to having it over the two days
Maybe I have devoted too much time to this, but I think you should celebrate on the 28th the year after a leap year and 1st of March the year before a leap year, while either is equally right/wrong in the middle year. My rationale is that the solar year is around 365.25 days. So one year after a leap year your birthday should be on Feb 28.25, which rounds to Feb 28. One year before it should be Feb 28.75, which rounds to Mar 1. In the middle year it is Feb 28.5, and so it's a toss-up.
FFS, any angle the media can use to spread the doom and gloom, as per usual...
What Whitty said was eminently sensible. You need to monitor these things and you may need to put some measures in effect. Measures doesn't mean locking everyone in their house, in all likelihood. You could just be asked to self-isolate if you're not feeling well.
As usual the media is desperate for another angle to spread the misery.
And to be fair to Whitty he did also go on to expand that additional limited measures for next winter may not even be needed, just something we have to consider.
No-one knows yet with any high degree of certainty how quickly the vaccine will be rolled out, how effective it will be and how the virus will behave in general once the main vaccination programme is completed. We know flu still kills thousands per year and we have to have a new vaccine every year for it. It's prudent to at least consider that limited things may still be needed.
What he did say about basically a societal decision on the level of risk was, weirdly, the most uplifting thing I have heard for a while. Yes, we will have to accept that for soceiety to go back to normal there will probably still be some covid deaths. The end game here is not going to be zero covid deaths, that's not realistic, and structuring society around that as a goal is not going to fly.
If we get it down to a manageable level like the flu then that will merely have to suffice for normality.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris Johnson appears to be a useless buffoon, unfit to shovel shit, but the men and women in grey suits have still to find the courage to send 50 or so letters to start the ball rolling to oust him. Do they have the balls to act or not?
No as he leads the polls still which for most Tory MPs is all they care about ie keeping their seats
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris got a Tory majority of 80 to beat Corbyn and has delivered Brexit, that was exactly what Tory members elected him to do
In hindsight I think the Tories got their PMs the wrong way round.
Should have gone with Boris in 2016 to get the Brexit mess done. May, ironically, might have been a better leader for a serious crisis like Covid.
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
People are fed up with Covid-19.
The reality is so crap they are starting to believe and live their preferred alternative one, which is much easier to do if you haven't been directly affected by it.
I'm always fascinated by this phenomenon. The belief that you can bend reality to your will.
I think I mentioned a play of The Cold Equations we put on at university. It was interesting to hear the *anger* at the ending of the play from some people, during the production and staging.
Cognitive dissonance. Classic human frailty.
Yes, the abuse was interesting. Apparently we (the producers of the play) were EVUL. Because of the ending.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris Johnson appears to be a useless buffoon, unfit to shovel shit, but the men and women in grey suits have still to find the courage to send 50 or so letters to start the ball rolling to oust him. Do they have the balls to act or not?
Boris is not the right personality for covid and others including Jeremy Hunt or Rishi would be a huge improvement
However, he has just got Brexit done, his poll ratings are reasonable , Starmer is not taking the political scene by storm when he should, and it reality his MPs are backing him by a large majority
I do not believe Boris is going anywhere and if he does succeed with the vaccine then who cares
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris got a Tory majority of 80 to beat Corbyn and has delivered Brexit, that was exactly what Tory members elected him to do
In hindsight I think the Tories got their PMs the wrong way round.
Should have gone with Boris in 2016 to get the Brexit mess done. May, ironically, might have been a better leader for a serious crisis like Covid.
They didn't have a chance to go with Boris in 2016, he chickened out.
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
People are fed up with Covid-19.
The reality is so crap they are starting to believe and live their preferred alternative one, which is much easier to do if you haven't been directly affected by it.
I'm always fascinated by this phenomenon. The belief that you can bend reality to your will.
I think I mentioned a play of The Cold Equations we put on at university. It was interesting to hear the *anger* at the ending of the play from some people, during the production and staging.
Were they engineers ? (Wikipedia) ...Critic and engineer Gary Westfahl has said that because the proposition depends upon systems that were built without enough margin for error, the story is good physics, but lousy engineering, and that it frustrated him so much he decided it was "not worth (his) time. Very poor Engineering."[1] Writer Cory Doctorow has made a similar argument, noting that the constraints under which the characters operate are decided by the writers, and not therefore the "inescapable laws of physics". He argues that the decision of the writer to give the vessel no margin of safety and a marginal fuel supply focuses reader attention on the "need" for tough decisions in time of crisis and away from the responsibility for proper planning to ensure safety in the first place. Doctorow sees this as an example of moral hazard...
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris Johnson appears to be a useless buffoon, unfit to shovel shit, but the men and women in grey suits have still to find the courage to send 50 or so letters to start the ball rolling to oust him. Do they have the balls to act or not?
He's useless, but they're still more or less even in the polls with 3.5 years till a GE.
He's got the job for the next 2 years, I suspect, if he wants it. After that things might get trickier for him but it will depend on the lie of the land.
The vaccination programmes hasn't even started in my part of Sussex. We have an elderly population, so this is rather worrying.
The issue has been with take-up in some areas. Some GPs decided not to participate with the Pfzier vaccine - too tricky - for example. So the supplies went to those who *could* get it done - there is more capacity to jab than there is vaccine.
Hence the Sunday Times complaint about postcode lotteries.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris got a Tory majority of 80 to beat Corbyn and has delivered Brexit, that was exactly what Tory members elected him to do
In hindsight I think the Tories got their PMs the wrong way round.
Should have gone with Boris in 2016 to get the Brexit mess done. May, ironically, might have been a better leader for a serious crisis like Covid.
She might have been but would have needed Boris to get the Tory majority to beat Corbyn and deliver Brexit first, yes
Is there any other nation more obsessed with class than the British?
I find it a bit weird, even my Scottish boss said there's plenty of classism in Scotland, although that's more of an Edinburgh/Glasgow rivalry.
I don't know, nobody would claim that Bearsden was lower class than Wester Hailes. And the Byres Road is every bit as twee as Broughton Street or Newington. It's a geographical thing , like the States - East and West Coast separated by the great plains and arid deserts of West Lothian and Linlithgowshire, inhabited by pink sheep and giant water horses.
My boss is an Posh Jock as he's from Edinburgh, home of classy places like the Caley, the fringe, and the castle.
Glasgow has places like Gorbals and Govan.
You ought to ask him about Craigmillar and Wester Hailes!
I've just texted him that, his reply 'The worst bits of Edinburgh are better than the best bits of Glasgow.'
Is there anywhere in either worse than Cumbernauld? Because I wouldn't want to go there.
Gorbals, before they flattened it a decade or so ago.
I could bet my last pound you will never have seen or been to the Gorbals, you may be looking at wiki from 1940's, this does not look very shabby does it ................arse
Fake news - blue sky in Glasgow - no way!
They had 50 years to wait for it - the relentless rain has meant that these works have been in plan since the 70s.
I think these photos were taken in 2008 when God popped along to give Brown his halo and dispense aircraft carriers all round.
There is nothing better than a bright Scottish morning. Nothing more dismal than a Scottish rainy afternoon. Oddly I feel that these two undoubted facts sum up someone or other..
You
I may not have been referring to you! What presumption!
I was though.
Anyway Mr G, do flash your sunny uplands at us more than exposing your dark glens. (If Malcom turns out to be 17 and female I'll get arrested!)
If only I was 17 , I will be more cheery but the site needs someone to shake them up and be grumpy.
You might have your birthday on the 29 February ... (as a friend of mine did: fortunately his family allowed him an honorary one on the 28 Feb in intercalary years).
My birthday is the 29th February and I am 20 in 2024
And my many honorary birthdays have always been on the 28th February but my driving licence was issued for the 1st March
I have always thought that those born on 29 Feb should celebrate successive birthdays on 1 March. Your 1st birthday is then the day after 28 February, so the first anniversary of your birth, and you proceed from there.
Lots of arguments between my mother and father over that point when I was a lad.
Mother maintained I was born on the last day of February and Father the first day after the 28th
In truth it confused many of the family and as a lad I did not object to having it over the two days
Maybe I have devoted too much time to this, but I think you should celebrate on the 28th the year after a leap year and 1st of March the year before a leap year, while either is equally right/wrong in the middle year. My rationale is that the solar year is around 365.25 days. So one year after a leap year your birthday should be on Feb 28.25, which rounds to Feb 28. One year before it should be Feb 28.75, which rounds to Mar 1. In the middle year it is Feb 28.5, and so it's a toss-up.
Thank you but after not far off 80 years doing it the way I have the 28th remains my non leap year day, and it was my Mother's wish
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
People are fed up with Covid-19.
The reality is so crap they are starting to believe and live their preferred alternative one, which is much easier to do if you haven't been directly affected by it.
I'm always fascinated by this phenomenon. The belief that you can bend reality to your will.
I think I mentioned a play of The Cold Equations we put on at university. It was interesting to hear the *anger* at the ending of the play from some people, during the production and staging.
Cognitive dissonance. Classic human frailty.
Yes, the abuse was interesting. Apparently we (the producers of the play) were EVUL. Because of the ending.
Odd. It was all her fault anyway. Like poking around on the launch pad when nobody knew she was there. Could just as well have been fried or dissolved.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
And considering that under Johnson's government this country has bought, organised, provided and injected more vaccines than the rest of the entire continent put together then I take great pleasure in saying "I told you so" that he is a good Prime Minister. 😎
Swings and roundabouts. It's far too early to make clichéd soundbites about how bad things supposedly are but I have every confidence that Boris is going to lead us out of this pandemic before Macron does France or even Merkel does Germany.
Is there any other nation more obsessed with class than the British?
I find it a bit weird, even my Scottish boss said there's plenty of classism in Scotland, although that's more of an Edinburgh/Glasgow rivalry.
I don't know, nobody would claim that Bearsden was lower class than Wester Hailes. And the Byres Road is every bit as twee as Broughton Street or Newington. It's a geographical thing , like the States - East and West Coast separated by the great plains and arid deserts of West Lothian and Linlithgowshire, inhabited by pink sheep and giant water horses.
My boss is an Posh Jock as he's from Edinburgh, home of classy places like the Caley, the fringe, and the castle.
Glasgow has places like Gorbals and Govan.
You ought to ask him about Craigmillar and Wester Hailes!
I've just texted him that, his reply 'The worst bits of Edinburgh are better than the best bits of Glasgow.'
Is there anywhere in either worse than Cumbernauld? Because I wouldn't want to go there.
Gorbals, before they flattened it a decade or so ago.
I could bet my last pound you will never have seen or been to the Gorbals, you may be looking at wiki from 1940's, this does not look very shabby does it ................arse
Fake news - blue sky in Glasgow - no way!
They had 50 years to wait for it - the relentless rain has meant that these works have been in plan since the 70s.
I think these photos were taken in 2008 when God popped along to give Brown his halo and dispense aircraft carriers all round.
There is nothing better than a bright Scottish morning. Nothing more dismal than a Scottish rainy afternoon. Oddly I feel that these two undoubted facts sum up someone or other..
You
I may not have been referring to you! What presumption!
I was though.
Anyway Mr G, do flash your sunny uplands at us more than exposing your dark glens. (If Malcom turns out to be 17 and female I'll get arrested!)
If only I was 17 , I will be more cheery but the site needs someone to shake them up and be grumpy.
You might have your birthday on the 29 February ... (as a friend of mine did: fortunately his family allowed him an honorary one on the 28 Feb in intercalary years).
My birthday is the 29th February and I am 20 in 2024
And my many honorary birthdays have always been on the 28th February but my driving licence was issued for the 1st March
I have always thought that those born on 29 Feb should celebrate successive birthdays on 1 March. Your 1st birthday is then the day after 28 February, so the first anniversary of your birth, and you proceed from there.
Lots of arguments between my mother and father over that point when I was a lad.
Mother maintained I was born on the last day of February and Father the first day after the 28th
In truth it confused many of the family and as a lad I did not object to having it over the two days
Maybe I have devoted too much time to this, but I think you should celebrate on the 28th the year after a leap year and 1st of March the year before a leap year, while either is equally right/wrong in the middle year. My rationale is that the solar year is around 365.25 days. So one year after a leap year your birthday should be on Feb 28.25, which rounds to Feb 28. One year before it should be Feb 28.75, which rounds to Mar 1. In the middle year it is Feb 28.5, and so it's a toss-up.
Thank you but after not far off 80 years doing it the way I have the 28th remains my non leap year day, and it was my Mother's wish
Is there any other nation more obsessed with class than the British?
I find it a bit weird, even my Scottish boss said there's plenty of classism in Scotland, although that's more of an Edinburgh/Glasgow rivalry.
I don't know, nobody would claim that Bearsden was lower class than Wester Hailes. And the Byres Road is every bit as twee as Broughton Street or Newington. It's a geographical thing , like the States - East and West Coast separated by the great plains and arid deserts of West Lothian and Linlithgowshire, inhabited by pink sheep and giant water horses.
My boss is an Posh Jock as he's from Edinburgh, home of classy places like the Caley, the fringe, and the castle.
Glasgow has places like Gorbals and Govan.
You ought to ask him about Craigmillar and Wester Hailes!
I've just texted him that, his reply 'The worst bits of Edinburgh are better than the best bits of Glasgow.'
Is there anywhere in either worse than Cumbernauld? Because I wouldn't want to go there.
Gorbals, before they flattened it a decade or so ago.
I could bet my last pound you will never have seen or been to the Gorbals, you may be looking at wiki from 1940's, this does not look very shabby does it ................arse
Fake news - blue sky in Glasgow - no way!
They had 50 years to wait for it - the relentless rain has meant that these works have been in plan since the 70s.
I think these photos were taken in 2008 when God popped along to give Brown his halo and dispense aircraft carriers all round.
There is nothing better than a bright Scottish morning. Nothing more dismal than a Scottish rainy afternoon. Oddly I feel that these two undoubted facts sum up someone or other..
You
I may not have been referring to you! What presumption!
I was though.
Anyway Mr G, do flash your sunny uplands at us more than exposing your dark glens. (If Malcom turns out to be 17 and female I'll get arrested!)
If only I was 17 , I will be more cheery but the site needs someone to shake them up and be grumpy.
You might have your birthday on the 29 February ... (as a friend of mine did: fortunately his family allowed him an honorary one on the 28 Feb in intercalary years).
My birthday is the 29th February and I am 20 in 2024
And my many honorary birthdays have always been on the 28th February but my driving licence was issued for the 1st March
I have always thought that those born on 29 Feb should celebrate successive birthdays on 1 March. Your 1st birthday is then the day after 28 February, so the first anniversary of your birth, and you proceed from there.
Lots of arguments between my mother and father over that point when I was a lad.
Mother maintained I was born on the last day of February and Father the first day after the 28th
In truth it confused many of the family and as a lad I did not object to having it over the two days
Maybe I have devoted too much time to this, but I think you should celebrate on the 28th the year after a leap year and 1st of March the year before a leap year, while either is equally right/wrong in the middle year. My rationale is that the solar year is around 365.25 days. So one year after a leap year your birthday should be on Feb 28.25, which rounds to Feb 28. One year before it should be Feb 28.75, which rounds to Mar 1. In the middle year it is Feb 28.5, and so it's a toss-up.
Thank you but after not far off 80 years doing it the way I have the 28th remains my non leap year day, and it was my Mother's wish
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
And considering that under Johnson's government this country has bought, organised, provided and injected more vaccines than the rest of the entire continent put together then I take great pleasure in saying "I told you so" that he is a good Prime Minister. 😎
Swings and roundabouts. It's far too early to make clichéd soundbites about how bad things supposedly are but I have every confidence that Boris is going to lead us out of this pandemic before Macron does France or even Merkel does Germany.
Europe seems a horror story of ineptitude and real in fighting
On covid and vaccination we left at the right time
What is it that makes people turn absolutely potty? I'm beginning to think there may be some virus that people are contracting that makes them believe the most absurd things.
People are fed up with Covid-19.
The reality is so crap they are starting to believe and live their preferred alternative one, which is much easier to do if you haven't been directly affected by it.
I'm always fascinated by this phenomenon. The belief that you can bend reality to your will.
I think I mentioned a play of The Cold Equations we put on at university. It was interesting to hear the *anger* at the ending of the play from some people, during the production and staging.
Cognitive dissonance. Classic human frailty.
Yes, the abuse was interesting. Apparently we (the producers of the play) were EVUL. Because of the ending.
Odd. It was all her fault anyway. Like poking around on the launch pad when nobody knew she was there. Could just as well have been fried or dissolved.
It's a reaction a non-trivial minority have to the idea of inescapable facts. The whole "Science Is Evul" thing. Because it doesn't do feelings.
Look, I'm sorry, but with this shocking data, wasn't the opening of schools yesterday, knowing how infectious the virus is, knowing that children are efficient catchers and spreaders of it, knowing that many of those children will interact with more vulnerable adults, wasn't this verging on the criminally negligent?
Yes.
It's a consequence of the Johnsonian insistence all along (regularly used as a political weapon against Starmer) that 'schools are absolutely safe', when we have known for some considerable time that they are a very significant vector of transmission.
If Johnson had taken an honest line from the start, there'd probably have been a far more sensible discussion of the costs/benefits, better planning for times when schools were closed - and quite possibly less time lost to closure overall.
Teachers are not stupid (in the main), and have demonstrated over the last year that they have been prepared to accept significant risks to keep schools open. Insulting their intelligence over a long period of time has been counterproductive. Though it has produced, for the credulous, another set of scapegoats.
There has to be some explanation. God knows what it is but as you say the sequence of events is just so bonkers that there must be more to it than we know right now.
That, or Boris is the utterly useless twat we have said he is all along.
The 'useless twat' hypothesis is pretty much proven now. Boris just can't stop himself putting off a difficult decision in the hope that something will turn up to make the decision unnecessary, and of course inevitably that means we end up with the worst of both worlds. I cut him a lot of slack for what in hindsight were mistakes at the beginning of the pandemic, but by now you'd have hoped he'd have learnt something. It was completely obvious by early December that things were getting out of control; his dithering in the hope he could avoid 'cancelling Christmas' has simply meant that many, many lives will have been lost, and the distribution of the vaccines which is the only way out of the nightmare will be unnecessarily disrupted. And of course Christmas was effectively cancelled anyway, and the panic lockdown at zero notice has simply piled on even greater losses for restaurants and other venues who were hoping to recoup some of their losses with Xmas and New Year bookings.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
I take no pleasure in saying to those members of the party to which I used to belong "I told you so". Boris Johnson has no leadership skills. He is a political and leadership cretin; a joke candidate who should never have even been made a junior minister let alone PM. We are reaping what idiot Tory members sowed, which was in no small part caused by those idiot Labour members that voted for Corbyn.
Boris Johnson appears to be a useless buffoon, unfit to shovel shit, but the men and women in grey suits have still to find the courage to send 50 or so letters to start the ball rolling to oust him. Do they have the balls to act or not?
He's useless, but they're still more or less even in the polls with 3.5 years till a GE.
He's got the job for the next 2 years, I suspect, if he wants it. After that things might get trickier for him but it will depend on the lie of the land.
The difficulty is that the things that make him a terrible Prime Minister- especially the ability to tell people what they want to hear with no loss of fluency, whether it's true or not- are the things that make him a formidable campaigner.
Winning is important, you can't do much from the wrong side of an 80 seat majority. The question is when does the price of winning exceed its value?
Look, I'm sorry, but with this shocking data, isn't the opening of schools yesterday, knowing how infectious the virus is, knowing that children are efficient catchers and spreaders of it, knowing that many of those children will interact with more vulnerable adults verging on the criminally negligent?
Are you suggesting Drakeford is criminally negligent
He opened senior schools yesterday and upto last night all primary schools
My post was directed at Johnson but if it applies to others too, well then it does.
Regarding vaccinations I know lots of nurses in various surgeries. They all have got vaccine plans for the next few weeks. It will be hard to get an appointment at your local surgery over the next few weeks as they will be concentrating so much on vaccinations. This week there will be over a million vaccinations, by the end of January there will be at least 5 million per week.
Comments
Oh......
Not the same thing but my youngest was due early May and born in June. As a result she will always be a June baby now.
You can guess how happy at the time MrsT was three weeks past her due date.
Mother maintained I was born on the last day of February and Father the first day after the 28th
In truth it confused many of the family and as a lad I did not object to having it over the two days
* It wont actually be quite so bad as some would be isolating but symptoms are often low in kids so many wont know they have it.
He's a world-class ditherer who makes even Gordon Brown look decisive in comparison. We really did draw the short straw having him as PM in this pandemic.
The constraint at the moment is vaccine supply.
Once Covid becomes a risk like several other illnesses including flu (I know we're not supposed to mention Covid and flu in the same sentence) then why would extra or continued measures be needed?
He's desperately insecure and wants a following. So he's chasing the altiest of the alt right to find one.
https://twitter.com/benphillips76/status/1346507084884561922
In April Johnson's key concern was bigging-up the Nightingales. Hats off to him for the Nightingales.
No real interest from Johnson on pretty well anything else, from the questions answers. Just waffling on aimlessly.
The reality is so crap they are starting to believe and live their preferred alternative one, which is much easier to do if you haven't been directly affected by it.
Such as stay at home if you have symptoms, wear a mask, wash your hands, etc.
But we won't, and it won't, and hence we have to think about what the steady state is going to be and how to get there.
They don't see it as their job to take a view on risk appetite. They'll just follow whatever eliminates the medical risk absolutely to its logical conclusion.
I think I mentioned a play of The Cold Equations we put on at university. It was interesting to hear the *anger* at the ending of the play from some people, during the production and staging.
What Whitty said was eminently sensible. You need to monitor these things and you may need to put some measures in effect. Measures doesn't mean locking everyone in their house, in all likelihood. You could just be asked to self-isolate if you're not feeling well.
As usual the media is desperate for another angle to spread the misery.
I'll get my coat.
In other words, can we use the antibody tests to see if the vaccine has worked on a particular person?
He opened senior schools yesterday and upto last night all primary schools
Ask Walter Wolfgang.
If he didn't pull a face, he still had it.
No-one knows yet with any high degree of certainty how quickly the vaccine will be rolled out, how effective it will be and how the virus will behave in general once the main vaccination programme is completed. We know flu still kills thousands per year and we have to have a new vaccine every year for it. It's prudent to at least consider that limited things may still be needed.
What he did say about basically a societal decision on the level of risk was, weirdly, the most uplifting thing I have heard for a while. Yes, we will have to accept that for soceiety to go back to normal there will probably still be some covid deaths. The end game here is not going to be zero covid deaths, that's not realistic, and structuring society around that as a goal is not going to fly.
If we get it down to a manageable level like the flu then that will merely have to suffice for normality.
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1346101605758881797?s=20
Should have gone with Boris in 2016 to get the Brexit mess done. May, ironically, might have been a better leader for a serious crisis like Covid.
However, he has just got Brexit done, his poll ratings are reasonable , Starmer is not taking the political scene by storm when he should, and it reality his MPs are backing him by a large majority
I do not believe Boris is going anywhere and if he does succeed with the vaccine then who cares
(Wikipedia) ...Critic and engineer Gary Westfahl has said that because the proposition depends upon systems that were built without enough margin for error, the story is good physics, but lousy engineering, and that it frustrated him so much he decided it was "not worth (his) time. Very poor Engineering."[1] Writer Cory Doctorow has made a similar argument, noting that the constraints under which the characters operate are decided by the writers, and not therefore the "inescapable laws of physics". He argues that the decision of the writer to give the vessel no margin of safety and a marginal fuel supply focuses reader attention on the "need" for tough decisions in time of crisis and away from the responsibility for proper planning to ensure safety in the first place. Doctorow sees this as an example of moral hazard...
He's useless, but they're still more or less even in the polls with 3.5 years till a GE.
He's got the job for the next 2 years, I suspect, if he wants it. After that things might get trickier for him but it will depend on the lie of the land.
* Although quite a chunk also went to charities
Hence the Sunday Times complaint about postcode lotteries.
Swings and roundabouts. It's far too early to make clichéd soundbites about how bad things supposedly are but I have every confidence that Boris is going to lead us out of this pandemic before Macron does France or even Merkel does Germany.
Whose virus sequence got bent
It made him no sicker
But passed on much quicker
So faster and faster it went
Via Dr John Campbell
On covid and vaccination we left at the right time
Gravity isn't just a good idea. It's The Law.
It's a consequence of the Johnsonian insistence all along (regularly used as a political weapon against Starmer) that 'schools are absolutely safe', when we have known for some considerable time that they are a very significant vector of transmission.
If Johnson had taken an honest line from the start, there'd probably have been a far more sensible discussion of the costs/benefits, better planning for times when schools were closed - and quite possibly less time lost to closure overall.
Teachers are not stupid (in the main), and have demonstrated over the last year that they have been prepared to accept significant risks to keep schools open. Insulting their intelligence over a long period of time has been counterproductive.
Though it has produced, for the credulous, another set of scapegoats.
This is a long thread which sets out the evidence.
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1346362159446577154
Winning is important, you can't do much from the wrong side of an 80 seat majority. The question is when does the price of winning exceed its value?