Good politicking from Nicola. I believe her fans on here were insisting that international travel was a reserved matter and there was nothing she could do to prevent it the other day...
Good politicking from Nicola. I believe her fans on here were insisting that international travel was a reserved matter and there was nothing she could do to prevent it the other day...
You're confusing international travel with actually crossing the airport threshold and travelling within Scotland. THough as the SG own the airport, there may be other responses available.
Good politicking from Nicola. I believe her fans on here were insisting that international travel was a reserved matter and there was nothing she could do to prevent it the other day...
You're confusing international travel with actually crossing the airport threshold and travelling within Scotland. THough as the SG own the airport, there may be other responses available.
Actually I'm not - if people travelling in to Scottish airports were banned from leaving, she would de facto have used her existing powers to ban international air travel into Scotland. My point being that she does have that power, and has (like the UK Government decided not to use it. I'm not even sure she should do that, but it's disingenuous to say she couldn't.
Not sure if a kite is being flown, but perhaps someone didn't notice that the US managed a whole set of elections in November 2020.
I assumed that simply to spread the load the 2020 elections would take place in May and the 2021 elections delayed to 2022, but so far that does not even seem to have been floated.
If all of them are to be delayed I do hope it is only for a few months. Turnout generally isn't massive for locals and I assume mayorals as well, postal voting would surely be well up like with the US as you note, and with a year of Covid behind us I don't think it beyond the wit of authorities to have safe voting and counting arrangements - they're already planning to spread verification and counts over multiple days rather than overnight/next day it, and so it may be more of an issue staffing polling stations with so many elderly volunteers. But by May most of those should be vaccinated.
FPT: Leon, commiserations, fellow kidney stone sufferer. First one I had was the "WTF is this indescribable pain?" Not helped by my spending the night with somebody I shouldn't have been, who was terrified I was going to die on her and she would have to explain/leg it and leave a body.
After a while, you know what they are and know the drill. Worst was probably having one in Pakistan. Had to decide - go to hospital now to get some relief, or get on a plane for about eight hours and be met by an ambulance at Heathrow.
I chose Heathrow.
Sufferers do the weirdest dance, because it is almost impossible to get comfortable with renal colic, but you try anyway. They used to prescribe pretty much pure heroin for the pain. Some addicts became very adept at feigning stones to get a prescription, I was told.
Why not allow councils to hold them when they like? I see no reason why they need to be held on the same day.
The date is set by legislation. And in any case what advantage is there to councils holding them on different days? There being an election in, say, Dorset, doesn't impact whether the election in Buckinghamshire can go ahead ok, there's no crossover there.
No, but it won't matter so long as the rollout pace increases significantly regardless. There were bad headlines about not joining the EU vaccination scheme, but it has worked out - if the rollout does ok, such a snub won't matter. If it doesn't go well, then it will.
For TSE's benefit, my posts on political betting all pre Alastair Meek's piece.
January 2020
'Strange reaction to Coronavirus over here. I know a LOT of people who say they 'just don't want to know.' My brother is flying through Hong Kong shortly and was cross that everyone is wearing face masks. We have a somewhat peculiar antipathy to masks when they quite clearly have 'some' effect.
I'm scratching my head. I understand the desire not to read bad news and also that we have a habit of overreacting to things.
On the other hand, and at the other end of the spectrum, coronavirus could wipe out 1/10th of the world's population.
Preparing the public with messages about sanitisation, use of face masks and non-essential travel would seem to me to be sensible precautions that don't fall into scaremongering.
January 2020
'I watched the film Contagion (2011) again last night. The problem with it is that's like watching a documentary i.e. entirely plausible in almost every regard and eerily close to the opening sequences of the Coronavirus. The first half hour of the film is pretty gripping.
It doesn't need to be said, I guess, but we're standing quite close to a precipice.'
Feb 2020:
'We are in deep, deep, deep trouble ... a global tsunami'
'This is fast becoming a crisis'
'This is probably going to be far worse than those apparently bleak posts you [Eadric] put up a week ago. It's not necessarily the human toll that will be the biggest wipeout ...'
'If things pan out as Eadric suggests then we could be a long way from the bottom.'
Good politicking from Nicola. I believe her fans on here were insisting that international travel was a reserved matter and there was nothing she could do to prevent it the other day...
You're confusing international travel with actually crossing the airport threshold and travelling within Scotland. THough as the SG own the airport, there may be other responses available.
Actually I'm not - if people travelling in to Scottish airports were banned from leaving, she would de facto have used her existing powers to ban international air travel into Scotland. My point being that she does have that power, and has (like the UK Government decided not to use it. I'm not even sure she should do that, but it's disingenuous to say she couldn't.
I don't believe she does have that power in itself of controlling who comes in, as it is an immigration issue, so not devolved. To close down the airports is a separate thing, but they need to be kept open for other purposes. Mail, freight, and some passengers.
It's a good question why proper quarantine has not been imposed - but again that is an internal Scottish matter, like travel within Scotland, for which the SG undoubtedly has the powers anyway.
Public Health England needing a slapping down. Get the fucking jabs in arms, you pillocks.
Sounds it is the same old mentality that messed up testing for so long. Not invented here, must be centralised, central control, paperwork and so on and on and on.
No doubt the entire system is on a Windows 95 excel spreadsheet somewhere.
Maybe the supermarkets should handle the vaccine roll out and not PHE.
No, but it won't matter so long as the rollout pace increases significantly regardless. There were bad headlines about not joining the EU vaccination scheme, but it has worked out - if the rollout does ok, such a snub won't matter. If it doesn't go well, then it will.
Maybe more will come out tomorrow but on the face of it looks bad decision making. No doubt layers of bureaucracy and so on and on and on...
Johnson needs to be over all this every waking minute.
As I understand it over 1,000 vaccination centres are being opened no doubt set up solely for covid which keeps pharmacists clear to dispense medications and deal with day today general medication
To be honest once the daily count starts next Monday everyone will be able to see and comment or criticise everyday
Yoiu sure? My memory is that they bumped the Holyrood election to make room for the Wesmtinster GE.
Because the Scottish Government wanted to move it to avoid the fiasco of 2007.
In 2007, the Holyrood and Scottish council elections took place on the same day, and saw the introduction of a new design of ballot paper for the parliament vote and a new voting system for the council seats.
Voters were to put crosses on one ballot paper and numbers on the other, while everything was counted by machine.
Confused? It seems many voters were.
The first real concerns on counting night came in the early hours, when the number of spoiled papers in the Airdrie and Shotts seat was confirmed at 1,536 - just 90 votes away from Labour's majority.
By 0400 BST, the Strathkelvin and Bearsden count was suspended, while problems in Edinburgh and Aberdeen and other areas of the central belt emerged.
Shortly after 0700, the Scotland Office, which is in charge of running Holyrood elections, insisted the e-counting system was "working well", saying the results were accurate and final.
A BBC investigation later found tens of thousands of votes in the Holyrood election were rejected by the electronic counting machines without any human adjudication.
Basically, the machines had been programmed to reject some of the new style ballot papers automatically.
It was the middle of the afternoon on Friday before the outcome of the election - a historic win for the SNP - had been decided.
Feelings ran high and my senior colleague, Brian Taylor, even described the events of that night as a "mach five bourach".
In the aftermath, the Electoral Commission brought in Canadian elections expert Ron Gould to look into what happened.
In his scathing conclusion, he stated the voters had been "treated as an afterthought" in the planning and organising of the elections.
So, how have things changed to avoid a repeat?
For a start, the date of the Holyrood election has been separated from council elections, which will take place next year.
Back in 2004, a foresighted backbench Tory MSP named David Mundell tried to bring forward legislation to make this change, but parliament wasn't interested.
Mr Mundell, now an MP and Scotland Office minister, is in charge of running the Scottish election.
Public Health England needing a slapping down. Get the fucking jabs in arms, you pillocks.
Sounds it is the same old mentality that messed up testing for so long. Not invented here, must be centralised, central control, paperwork and so on and on and on.
No doubt the entire system is on a Windows 95 excel spreadsheet somewhere.
Maybe the supermarkets should handle the vaccine roll out and not PHE.
Why not allow councils to hold them when they like? I see no reason why they need to be held on the same day.
The date is set by legislation. And in any case what advantage is there to councils holding them on different days? There being an election in, say, Dorset, doesn't impact whether the election in Buckinghamshire can go ahead ok, there's no crossover there.
Local councils should be allowed to hold them whenever they feel suitable, subject to maximum intervals of course. It strikes me as being symptomatic of how little power we give councils. Even on something as trivial as the election date. Just tell them they have to hold this year's between July and December, and the next one in 11-13 months' time. For example.
Public Health England needing a slapping down. Get the fucking jabs in arms, you pillocks.
Sounds it is the same old mentality that messed up testing for so long. Not invented here, must be centralised, central control, paperwork and so on and on and on.
No doubt the entire system is on a Windows 95 excel spreadsheet somewhere.
Maybe the supermarkets should handle the vaccine roll out and not PHE.
Public Health England needing a slapping down. Get the fucking jabs in arms, you pillocks.
Sounds it is the same old mentality that messed up testing for so long. Not invented here, must be centralised, central control, paperwork and so on and on and on.
No doubt the entire system is on a Windows 95 excel spreadsheet somewhere.
Maybe the supermarkets should handle the vaccine roll out and not PHE.
Couldn't we recruit our army of drug dealers to handle the distribution side?
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue. Its small beer to pay people really good money to jab people 7 days a week, as many hours as they want to work.
Public Health England needing a slapping down. Get the fucking jabs in arms, you pillocks.
Sounds it is the same old mentality that messed up testing for so long. Not invented here, must be centralised, central control, paperwork and so on and on and on.
No doubt the entire system is on a Windows 95 excel spreadsheet somewhere.
Maybe the supermarkets should handle the vaccine roll out and not PHE.
Tescos have apparently offered to help.
Strange jump on my phone there. Was reading about Trump, and your comment came up. Had visions of him claiming asylum in Ayr Tescos.
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Swift vaccinations help both save lives and the economy. It's really a no brainer.
Good politicking from Nicola. I believe her fans on here were insisting that international travel was a reserved matter and there was nothing she could do to prevent it the other day...
He's got to get out of the airport. Does he get continuing use of The Beast? A cavalcade of black armoured Caddies smashing though a roadblock of Poileas Beemers is something to conjure with.
He's got it over his left shoulder, what more do they want?
Anyone getting that upset at a flag, or absence of a flag, needs to calm the heck down.
But we need to disect this scene further.
The desk is entirely clear of obstructions, showing his intention to provide simple, clear policies and communication in contrast to his opponent.
The lamp is off to the right and slightly green, showing both his willingness to reach out to voters on the right but also his committment to green issues. It's also illuminating a number of books, showcasing he is learned man, but unlike Boris is not gratuitous in throwing it in people's faces - the books are discreetly placed, modest in number.
The fireplace is walled off, another nod to the need to be green, but it's retained as a feature of the room to show his respect for heritage. It is black, a nod to Labour's history supporting coal miners and that he has the back, as it were, of the black community.
Lastly, directly above his head is the clock, highlighting that he is a man for this moment, and aware of this historic importance of leading in these difficult times. The clock is almost out of reach, to show he knows he has not seized the moment yet, but it is a goal to accomplish, together with the audience.
This flag business seems a bit ridiculous - mere tokenism. I do not recall Thatcher, Wilson , Callaghan et al feeling the need to be seen with the flag when broadcasting.
Well perhaps people are a bit more prominent with symbols now.
Certainly it really doesn't matter, so even if it is tokenism it is harmless, and that it doesn't matter makes it really funny for those who get upset at a flag/lack of flag.
The fact that 25% of over-80s have already been vaccinated should by itself make a significant dent in the fatality statistics. Some weeks the majority of deaths are in that age group.
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue.
The rumours doing the rounds is that the government will not have the required number of vaccines to achieve their targets, so there's no point hiring extra staff and space to inject the vaccine.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue. Its small beer to pay people really good money to jab people 7 days a week, as many hours as they want to work.
The Trumps would lend some interest to Scotland. Perhaps Trump could buy and live in the penthouse of the new Golden Turd Hotel in Edinburgh city centre - it's already a vulgar golden tower that everyone hates.
I wonder if we could speed it up. As the TUC suggests, furlough all working parents until schools are fully open again. The extra costs of that might help to focus minds in government to get the vaccination done pronto and get opening up out of lockdown again?
I fear what will happen is lots of red tape, lots of Yes Minister can't be done, all these forms need filling before you can be involved for the next 6 weeks, then like testing the press will be terrible and finally Hancock will give the man from delmonte a ring and pay a load of money to organize it properly.
My late father used to tell me as a child "aim for the sky and you might reach the chimney pots, aim for the chimney pots and you might not get off the ground". Good on Johnson for shooting for the moon...whatever happened to the moonshot?
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue.
The rumours doing the rounds is that the government will not have the required number of vaccines to achieve their targets, so there's no point hiring extra staff and space to inject the vaccine.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
Well. They are still advertising for folk to help with the mass testing in schools. At least they were this afternoon.
The Trumps would lend some interest to Scotland. Perhaps Trump could buy and live in the penthouse of the new Golden Turd Hotel in Edinburgh city centre - it's already a vulgar golden tower that everyone hates.
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue.
The rumours doing the rounds is that the government will not have the required number of vaccines to achieve their targets, so there's no point hiring extra staff and space to inject the vaccine.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
Grim. So lockdown 3.0 until the warm weather reduces infections to a manageable level and then hope we can get sufficient vaccination achieved to avoid an autumn lockdown?
The Trumps would lend some interest to Scotland. Perhaps Trump could buy and live in the penthouse of the new Golden Turd Hotel in Edinburgh city centre - it's already a vulgar golden tower that everyone hates.
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue.
The rumours doing the rounds is that the government will not have the required number of vaccines to achieve their targets, so there's no point hiring extra staff and space to inject the vaccine.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
AZN want a rocket up their arse. They have had 9 months to get this up and running. They promised 30 million doses no problemo by September...we aren't talking revolutionary technology to produce this, it is all well understood.
Looks like an absolute landslide for Covid in Georgia.
Weirdly despite cases surging for the last month an positivity figures hitting the 20%s (and not through lack of testing either) Georgia is not seeing a surge in deaths. Just a very slow steady uptick.
I have a slight wonder if they are hiding this on the graph by introducing a new "Suspected" Death Category and shutting some mainline deaths to there.
Why not allow councils to hold them when they like? I see no reason why they need to be held on the same day.
The date is set by legislation. And in any case what advantage is there to councils holding them on different days? There being an election in, say, Dorset, doesn't impact whether the election in Buckinghamshire can go ahead ok, there's no crossover there.
Local councils should be allowed to hold them whenever they feel suitable, subject to maximum intervals of course. It strikes me as being symptomatic of how little power we give councils. Even on something as trivial as the election date. Just tell them they have to hold this year's between July and December, and the next one in 11-13 months' time. For example.
I really don't see the benefit to making election dates unpredictable and inconsistent with one another as well as subject to individual whim. That doesn't increase the power and responsibility of local authorities, it just makes things more complicated than they need to be for an illusion of authority. What about in May every 4 years, (or in May 3 years out of 4, but that's a separate annoyance) not suitable?
Elections have been held at different times, but making the timing bespoke? What's the point?
I can think of much better ways to actually give power to councils.
For TSE's benefit, my posts on political betting all pre Alastair Meek's piece.
January 2020
'Strange reaction to Coronavirus over here. I know a LOT of people who say they 'just don't want to know.' My brother is flying through Hong Kong shortly and was cross that everyone is wearing face masks. We have a somewhat peculiar antipathy to masks when they quite clearly have 'some' effect.
I'm scratching my head. I understand the desire not to read bad news and also that we have a habit of overreacting to things.
On the other hand, and at the other end of the spectrum, coronavirus could wipe out 1/10th of the world's population.
Preparing the public with messages about sanitisation, use of face masks and non-essential travel would seem to me to be sensible precautions that don't fall into scaremongering.
January 2020
'I watched the film Contagion (2011) again last night. The problem with it is that's like watching a documentary i.e. entirely plausible in almost every regard and eerily close to the opening sequences of the Coronavirus. The first half hour of the film is pretty gripping.
It doesn't need to be said, I guess, but we're standing quite close to a precipice.'
Feb 2020:
'We are in deep, deep, deep trouble ... a global tsunami'
'This is fast becoming a crisis'
'This is probably going to be far worse than those apparently bleak posts you [Eadric] put up a week ago. It's not necessarily the human toll that will be the biggest wipeout ...'
'If things pan out as Eadric suggests then we could be a long way from the bottom.'
I wouldn't pay much attention to whatever that Eadric character said. OK yes, sure, he was eerily right when he said in early Feb, to much incredulity, that Coronavirus would completely dominate the news for the rest of 2020, dwarfing everything else, but did he predict it would continue to do the same in 2021?
The Trumps would lend some interest to Scotland. Perhaps Trump could buy and live in the penthouse of the new Golden Turd Hotel in Edinburgh city centre - it's already a vulgar golden tower that everyone hates.
To make the target they need to be doing 2 million a week, every week, from now. If delays in vaccine production mean they won't be up to speed for several weeks, there is no way they make the target without round the clock, 7 day a week effort.
I said yesterday, Boris was a idiot for setting such a target. If he had said end of March to get top 4 groups done, the public wouldn't have been any more unhappy. If they got it done quicker, would get an extra gold star.
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue.
The rumours doing the rounds is that the government will not have the required number of vaccines to achieve their targets, so there's no point hiring extra staff and space to inject the vaccine.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
AZN want a rocket up their arse. They have had 9 months to get this up and running. They promised 30 million doses no problemo by September...we aren't talking revolutionary technology to produce this, it is all well understood.
There's been discussion of the glass vials and shortages. Surely it is not beyond the whit of man to recycle these?
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue.
The rumours doing the rounds is that the government will not have the required number of vaccines to achieve their targets, so there's no point hiring extra staff and space to inject the vaccine.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
AZN want a rocket up their arse. They have had 9 months to get this up and running. They promised 30 million doses no problemo by September...we aren't talking revolutionary technology to produce this, it is all well understood.
There's been discussion of the glass vials and shortages. Surely it is not beyond the whit of man to recycle these?
Might not be up to being washed and sterilised a second time. Glass needs ot be fairly thick to cope with that.
The Trumps would lend some interest to Scotland. Perhaps Trump could buy and live in the penthouse of the new Golden Turd Hotel in Edinburgh city centre - it's already a vulgar golden tower that everyone hates.
The fact that 25% of over-80s have already been vaccinated should by itself make a significant dent in the fatality statistics. Some weeks the majority of deaths are in that age group.
It should indeed, as long as the rise in case numbers can be halted.
The Trumps would lend some interest to Scotland. Perhaps Trump could buy and live in the penthouse of the new Golden Turd Hotel in Edinburgh city centre - it's already a vulgar golden tower that everyone hates.
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue.
The rumours doing the rounds is that the government will not have the required number of vaccines to achieve their targets, so there's no point hiring extra staff and space to inject the vaccine.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
AZN want a rocket up their arse. They have had 9 months to get this up and running. They promised 30 million doses no problemo by September...we aren't talking revolutionary technology to produce this, it is all well understood.
There's been discussion of the glass vials and shortages. Surely it is not beyond the whit of man to recycle these?
Might not be up to being washed and sterilised a second time. Glass needs ot be fairly thick to cope with that.
The Trumps would lend some interest to Scotland. Perhaps Trump could buy and live in the penthouse of the new Golden Turd Hotel in Edinburgh city centre - it's already a vulgar golden tower that everyone hates.
We literally should be using anybody who has training in injections, dentists, pharmacists, vets, the army medics....and working 7 days a week, as many hours a day that can be covered.
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue.
The rumours doing the rounds is that the government will not have the required number of vaccines to achieve their targets, so there's no point hiring extra staff and space to inject the vaccine.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
It is utterly inconceiveable that they are asking prospective vaccinators whether they have sufficient training in "diversity and equality" and some are failing thereby. Retired doctors. Nurses. Vets. God help us.
To make the target they need to be doing 2 million a week, every week, from now. If delays in vaccine production mean they won't be up to speed for several weeks, there is no way they make the target without round the clock, 7 day a week effort.
I said yesterday, Boris was a idiot for setting such a target. If he had said end of March to get top 4 groups done, the public wouldn't have been any more unhappy. If they got it done quicker, would get an extra gold star.
The fact that 25% of over-80s have already been vaccinated should by itself make a significant dent in the fatality statistics. Some weeks the majority of deaths are in that age group.
Comments
And good for Nicola
Since announced that it wont apparently.
This might be a complex area of the coverage of diplomatic immunity.
And diplomatic immunity for US is a dirty word in the UK now.
If all of them are to be delayed I do hope it is only for a few months. Turnout generally isn't massive for locals and I assume mayorals as well, postal voting would surely be well up like with the US as you note, and with a year of Covid behind us I don't think it beyond the wit of authorities to have safe voting and counting arrangements - they're already planning to spread verification and counts over multiple days rather than overnight/next day it, and so it may be more of an issue staffing polling stations with so many elderly volunteers. But by May most of those should be vaccinated.
After a while, you know what they are and know the drill. Worst was probably having one in Pakistan. Had to decide - go to hospital now to get some relief, or get on a plane for about eight hours and be met by an ambulance at Heathrow.
I chose Heathrow.
Sufferers do the weirdest dance, because it is almost impossible to get comfortable with renal colic, but you try anyway. They used to prescribe pretty much pure heroin for the pain. Some addicts became very adept at feigning stones to get a prescription, I was told.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-12849105
January 2020
'Strange reaction to Coronavirus over here. I know a LOT of people who say they 'just don't want to know.' My brother is flying through Hong Kong shortly and was cross that everyone is wearing face masks. We have a somewhat peculiar antipathy to masks when they quite clearly have 'some' effect.
I'm scratching my head. I understand the desire not to read bad news and also that we have a habit of overreacting to things.
On the other hand, and at the other end of the spectrum, coronavirus could wipe out 1/10th of the world's population.
Preparing the public with messages about sanitisation, use of face masks and non-essential travel would seem to me to be sensible precautions that don't fall into scaremongering.
January 2020
'I watched the film Contagion (2011) again last night. The problem with it is that's like watching a documentary i.e. entirely plausible in almost every regard and eerily close to the opening sequences of the Coronavirus. The first half hour of the film is pretty gripping.
It doesn't need to be said, I guess, but we're standing quite close to a precipice.'
Feb 2020:
'We are in deep, deep, deep trouble ... a global tsunami'
'This is fast becoming a crisis'
'This is probably going to be far worse than those apparently bleak posts you [Eadric] put up a week ago. It's not necessarily the human toll that will be the biggest wipeout ...'
'If things pan out as Eadric suggests then we could be a long way from the bottom.'
Johnson needs to be over all this every waking minute.
It's a good question why proper quarantine has not been imposed - but again that is an internal Scottish matter, like travel within Scotland, for which the SG undoubtedly has the powers anyway.
Well. That's another.
No doubt the entire system is on a Windows 95 excel spreadsheet somewhere.
Maybe the supermarkets should handle the vaccine roll out and not PHE.
Don't you know he's a Knight?
To be honest once the daily count starts next Monday everyone will be able to see and comment or criticise everyday
In 2007, the Holyrood and Scottish council elections took place on the same day, and saw the introduction of a new design of ballot paper for the parliament vote and a new voting system for the council seats.
Voters were to put crosses on one ballot paper and numbers on the other, while everything was counted by machine.
Confused? It seems many voters were.
The first real concerns on counting night came in the early hours, when the number of spoiled papers in the Airdrie and Shotts seat was confirmed at 1,536 - just 90 votes away from Labour's majority.
By 0400 BST, the Strathkelvin and Bearsden count was suspended, while problems in Edinburgh and Aberdeen and other areas of the central belt emerged.
Shortly after 0700, the Scotland Office, which is in charge of running Holyrood elections, insisted the e-counting system was "working well", saying the results were accurate and final.
A BBC investigation later found tens of thousands of votes in the Holyrood election were rejected by the electronic counting machines without any human adjudication.
Basically, the machines had been programmed to reject some of the new style ballot papers automatically.
It was the middle of the afternoon on Friday before the outcome of the election - a historic win for the SNP - had been decided.
Feelings ran high and my senior colleague, Brian Taylor, even described the events of that night as a "mach five bourach".
In the aftermath, the Electoral Commission brought in Canadian elections expert Ron Gould to look into what happened.
In his scathing conclusion, he stated the voters had been "treated as an afterthought" in the planning and organising of the elections.
So, how have things changed to avoid a repeat?
For a start, the date of the Holyrood election has been separated from council elections, which will take place next year.
Back in 2004, a foresighted backbench Tory MSP named David Mundell tried to bring forward legislation to make this change, but parliament wasn't interested.
Mr Mundell, now an MP and Scotland Office minister, is in charge of running the Scottish election.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9116135/Is-Matt-Hancock-backing-mid-February-vaccine-target-ALREADY.html
Lockdown until end.of March incoming....
Pay them whatever overtime, it doesn't matter. The Adam Smith Institute report said it costs £5bn a week in government funding for a lockdown and £6bn in lost revenue. Its small beer to pay people really good money to jab people 7 days a week, as many hours as they want to work.
Had visions of him claiming asylum in Ayr Tescos.
Certainly it really doesn't matter, so even if it is tokenism it is harmless, and that it doesn't matter makes it really funny for those who get upset at a flag/lack of flag.
Existing staffing numbers will be sufficient for the numbers vaccines they'll have.
It explains why they're not vaccinating on Sundays.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/kaf6nc/the_golden_turd_intent_on_ruining_edinburghs/
https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2016/01/scottish-parliament-elections-set-one-year-delay-avoid-westminster-clash
I had had a notion that this had happened before - but can't pin it down.
I have a slight wonder if they are hiding this on the graph by introducing a new "Suspected" Death Category and shutting some mainline deaths to there.
https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
Elections have been held at different times, but making the timing bespoke? What's the point?
I can think of much better ways to actually give power to councils.
No. He was just a bipolar hysteric.
1) London mayoral election - supplementary vote
2) London assembly election - additional member vote
3) European election - D'hondt PR
So I had five votes in three elections with three different voting systems.
I said yesterday, Boris was a idiot for setting such a target. If he had said end of March to get top 4 groups done, the public wouldn't have been any more unhappy. If they got it done quicker, would get an extra gold star.
If you look at the sheer number of rejected ballots compared to similar elections it was clear something had gone wrong with the voting process.
Something that David Mundell had accurately predicted in 2004.
Absolutely pathetic on the vaccines.
Get on with it.
Wokeness is, now, literally, killing us
I am stunned.
Absolute classic case of thinking technology is best.