The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
I think people on here will be surprised in two weeks at the extent of the vaccination prgramme in this country.
I agree. Once the supply issues are resolved there is masses of capacity.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
Indeed, and looking at some of their ‘output’, those still here are not in the beach resorts any more. There’s only so long you can put up £300 or £400 a night, even if you’re well off.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
There is a balance though. Targets do motivate, but they can also distract and the target becomes the goal even if there is a long term loss by doing so eg by diverting resources from elsewhere that are of a higher priority (difficult to think that possible in this case), producing a substandard or dangerous product, or by loss of reputation.
The 100K target was a classic of that. Matt Hancock and the Govt rubbished their reputation for being honest on the pandemic. Up until then the Govt had done (or appeared to be doing a decent job). The blatant manipulating of the numbers was the start of the population not trusting the Govt over the pandemic. Up to that point they had done ok.
This target should be the goal though. That is not a bad thing.
Getting people vaccinated is the route out of this. If the entire machinery of government gets a bloody minded focus to get this target achieved then that is not a bad thing, it is a good one!
For once I agree with you on a Covid-19 matter. Over the past year, Johnson and his Government's performance on the virus has been utterly inept. But in this case, Johnson deserves credit for sticking his neck out and coming up with a stretching target, something that in terms of pure political calculations was probably a mistake. It will as you say galvanise the machinery of government and the NHS towards maximising the rate of virus roll out, and that is the point. Nor is it obvious how the target could distorting priorities, given that there is very clear prioritisation of recipients in operation and a centralised NHS number-based system in place to deliver that. That's in contrast, say, to the disgraceful freefall in Florida where you have overnight queues of pensioners wrapped in blankets in the street in an effective first come first served free for all for over 65s.
So I see it as a motivational target, and not one to be used as a specific benchmark for measuring success or failure.
One reason for a high level target is the resistance in large organisation to changes in policy.
For example, on testing, there was (and is) a non-trivial part of the medical establishment* that is opposed to anything that smacks of "mass screening".
You can see the effects of *not doing this* in France etc. Vaccination there seems to be (at least until now) just something that is supposed to happen, by itself.
We're still not doing mass screening. And the large organisation you're talking about was basically set up from scratch last year.
You are unaware that there was very considerable opposition to whole Pillar 2 testing concept - that testing hundreds of thousands per day was wrong and shouldn't be done?
The point I was making is that when dealing with large organisations, setting targets from the top can be important for making a policy change actually happen.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
The markets need an isolationist, anti trade, fiscally incontinent, wannabe fascist in power in order to sleep at night?
I'm no believer in market wisdom - quite the opposite - but that doesn't sound quite right.
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
Another good, clear article - this time about the transmission of coronavirus. All that hand-washing and surfaces stuff is minor. You catch it by sitting indoors with other people, breathing. That’s it
Fits with the pattern of increased transmission as the summer slipped away and weather forced social life back indoors, around the world. Also an under-commented explanation for why Oz and NZ are looking so good right now. And for air travel - which is basically sitting indoors and breathing - having been key to the initial spread.
Yes. I confess I was vaguely and amorally tempted to go do some essential flint-knapping in Dubai this winter. I have friends out there, the lucky bastards. But then I remembered that means sitting in an plane with 200 other people, sharing their air for seven hours. And, if this article is right, even masks aren’t much good at that level of exposure
It's only right that you experience your first lockdown with the rest of us, who are now experts at amusing ourselves at home (no laughs at the back).
There seems to be some confusion this morning if the elections are going ahead or not in May.
Surely worth delaying them to July. No need to have a mass superspreading event just as we're tipping the balance in our favour. Two more months means 20m more people jabbed and 14m more people immunised.
We shouldn't have expectations management, we should have ambition.
Who would the Boris-haters rather have in charge of our vaccine roll-out - Macron?
Why can't we have someone competent and British? As the Tories are in government I would say "and Tory". But almost all of the competent and clever Tories have been booted.
Jeremy Hunt is the obvious candidate. Hunt is everything that Johnson is not. I would have a lot more confidence if he were in charge.
That Hunt is now the obvious candidate shows how shallow the candidate list now is. I'm sure the NHS hasn't forgiven or forgotten his efforts last time round as health secretary. How many of the Junior Doctors he went to war with are now critical to our front line efforts?
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
Indeed, and looking at some of their ‘output’, those still here are not in the beach resorts any more. There’s only so long you can put up £300 or £400 a night, even if you’re well off.
Also, I wonder how long Dubai will remain so welcoming. Cases are beginning to rise quite steeply. Boozing Europeans might find themselves much less popular
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
There is a balance though. Targets do motivate, but they can also distract and the target becomes the goal even if there is a long term loss by doing so eg by diverting resources from elsewhere that are of a higher priority (difficult to think that possible in this case), producing a substandard or dangerous product, or by loss of reputation.
The 100K target was a classic of that. Matt Hancock and the Govt rubbished their reputation for being honest on the pandemic. Up until then the Govt had done (or appeared to be doing a decent job). The blatant manipulating of the numbers was the start of the population not trusting the Govt over the pandemic. Up to that point they had done ok.
This target should be the goal though. That is not a bad thing.
Getting people vaccinated is the route out of this. If the entire machinery of government gets a bloody minded focus to get this target achieved then that is not a bad thing, it is a good one!
For once I agree with you on a Covid-19 matter. Over the past year, Johnson and his Government's performance on the virus has been utterly inept. But in this case, Johnson deserves credit for sticking his neck out and coming up with a stretching target, something that in terms of pure political calculations was probably a mistake. It will as you say galvanise the machinery of government and the NHS towards maximising the rate of virus roll out, and that is the point. Nor is it obvious how the target could distorting priorities, given that there is very clear prioritisation of recipients in operation and a centralised NHS number-based system in place to deliver that. That's in contrast, say, to the disgraceful freefall in Florida where you have overnight queues of pensioners wrapped in blankets in the street in an effective first come first served free for all for over 65s.
So I see it as a motivational target, and not one to be used as a specific benchmark for measuring success or failure.
One reason for a high level target is the resistance in large organisation to changes in policy.
For example, on testing, there was (and is) a non-trivial part of the medical establishment* that is opposed to anything that smacks of "mass screening".
You can see the effects of *not doing this* in France etc. Vaccination there seems to be (at least until now) just something that is supposed to happen, by itself.
We're still not doing mass screening. And the large organisation you're talking about was basically set up from scratch last year.
You are unaware that there was very considerable opposition to whole Pillar 2 testing concept - that testing hundreds of thousands per day was wrong and shouldn't be done?
The point I was making is that when dealing with large organisations, setting targets from the top can be important for making a policy change actually happen.
I'm talking about mass antigen testing. PCR just isn't that, even at serveral hundred thousand a day.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
There is a balance though. Targets do motivate, but they can also distract and the target becomes the goal even if there is a long term loss by doing so eg by diverting resources from elsewhere that are of a higher priority (difficult to think that possible in this case), producing a substandard or dangerous product, or by loss of reputation.
The 100K target was a classic of that. Matt Hancock and the Govt rubbished their reputation for being honest on the pandemic. Up until then the Govt had done (or appeared to be doing a decent job). The blatant manipulating of the numbers was the start of the population not trusting the Govt over the pandemic. Up to that point they had done ok.
This target should be the goal though. That is not a bad thing.
Getting people vaccinated is the route out of this. If the entire machinery of government gets a bloody minded focus to get this target achieved then that is not a bad thing, it is a good one!
For once I agree with you on a Covid-19 matter. Over the past year, Johnson and his Government's performance on the virus has been utterly inept. But in this case, Johnson deserves credit for sticking his neck out and coming up with a stretching target, something that in terms of pure political calculations was probably a mistake. It will as you say galvanise the machinery of government and the NHS towards maximising the rate of virus roll out, and that is the point. Nor is it obvious how the target could distorting priorities, given that there is very clear prioritisation of recipients in operation and a centralised NHS number-based system in place to deliver that. That's in contrast, say, to the disgraceful freefall in Florida where you have overnight queues of pensioners wrapped in blankets in the street in an effective first come first served free for all for over 65s.
So I see it as a motivational target, and not one to be used as a specific benchmark for measuring success or failure.
One reason for a high level target is the resistance in large organisation to changes in policy.
For example, on testing, there was (and is) a non-trivial part of the medical establishment* that is opposed to anything that smacks of "mass screening".
You can see the effects of *not doing this* in France etc. Vaccination there seems to be (at least until now) just something that is supposed to happen, by itself.
We're still not doing mass screening. And the large organisation you're talking about was basically set up from scratch last year.
You are unaware that there was very considerable opposition to whole Pillar 2 testing concept - that testing hundreds of thousands per day was wrong and shouldn't be done?
The point I was making is that when dealing with large organisations, setting targets from the top can be important for making a policy change actually happen.
I'm talking about mass antigen testing. PCR just isn't that, even at serveral hundred thousand a day.
Yes - but there were quite a few people saying that several hundred thousand a day PCR testing was too "mass screening" like, for their taste.
This sounds like bollocks. If true, this policy would render the company in question in breach of the Equality Act in the UK and of the EU Equal Treatment Framework Directive in the EU. Right to work is not the same as citizenship - it's as unlawful in the UK as in the EU to discriminate on the grounds of citizenship. Admittedly you can say must have right to work in a jurisdiction, but you shouldn't discriminate on the grounds of citizenship - for example my wife is an American citizen with ILR and has as much right to apply for work here as I do. Any job ad that said you have to be a citizen of a country is an actionable breach of the Equality Act and its EU equivalents.
Arch-Remainer as I am this post is either bollocks or it is breaking the law.
Another good, clear article - this time about the transmission of coronavirus. All that hand-washing and surfaces stuff is minor. You catch it by sitting indoors with other people, breathing. That’s it
Fits with the pattern of increased transmission as the summer slipped away and weather forced social life back indoors, around the world. Also an under-commented explanation for why Oz and NZ are looking so good right now. And for air travel - which is basically sitting indoors and breathing - having been key to the initial spread.
Yes. I confess I was vaguely and amorally tempted to go do some essential flint-knapping in Dubai this winter. I have friends out there, the lucky bastards. But then I remembered that means sitting in an plane with 200 other people, sharing their air for seven hours. And, if this article is right, even masks aren’t much good at that level of exposure
It's only right that you experience your first lockdown with the rest of us, who are now experts at amusing ourselves at home (no laughs at the back).
To top it all off, there is apparently an extreme blast of cold weather pointed our way. Brilliant.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
I think people on here will be surprised in two weeks at the extent of the vaccination prgramme in this country.
I agree. Once the supply issues are resolved there is masses of capacity.
Injecting people isn't hard - why I've been mystified at the stories of plans to only vaccinate 1 million a week that were about.
I'd be really pissed if they can't organise using doses as they become available.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
Indeed, and looking at some of their ‘output’, those still here are not in the beach resorts any more. There’s only so long you can put up £300 or £400 a night, even if you’re well off.
Needless to say we don't see eye-to-eye on Europe. I suspect that would have let him down, as it did for Ken Clarke.
It is a sad fact of life that some of the best politicians are in marginal seats as you need that real ability and hard work to hold on. There are/were some real donkeys in safe seats. Obviously that is a generalization.
There seems to be some confusion this morning if the elections are going ahead or not in May.
Surely worth delaying them to July. No need to have a mass superspreading event just as we're tipping the balance in our favour. Two more months means 20m more people jabbed and 14m more people immunised.
Just make them all-postal.
Counting will have to take a bit longer, but we delayed a whole heap of elections from last spring. There's no need to delay again.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
As Covid restrictions tighten again and millions of Brits face a new lockdown, tone deaf celebs are still living it up on luxury holidays around the world.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
and up to 80% of Repubs believe him!
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
Indeed, and looking at some of their ‘output’, those still here are not in the beach resorts any more. There’s only so long you can put up £300 or £400 a night, even if you’re well off.
Also, I wonder how long Dubai will remain so welcoming. Cases are beginning to rise quite steeply. Boozing Europeans might find themselves much less popular
UAE is up around 2k cases a day, which is a U.K. equivalent of about 12k.
Compulsory testing on arrival for visitors though, which is likely accounting for a fair few of these.
Vaccines are 8% of the population so far, mostly oldies, and about to expand rapidly to everyone. Only Israel is ahead on the vaccines.
Life here is like U.K. level 1. I’m currently sitting in a mall Starbucks, where they’ve removed half the seats and installed some Perspex panels. Bars are open but seating only and fewer seats than usual. Masks compulsory outside the home, temperature checks in most buildings and hand sanitiser everywhere.
The place relies heavily on tourist income, and are doing everything they can to stay open to the world.
Bloody forriners imposing their rules. Why shouldn't she be allowed to board a BRITISH aircraft and fly home with Cockney Covid? She'd have been welcomed with open borders arms
Needless to say we don't see eye-to-eye on Europe. I suspect that would have let him down, as it did for Ken Clarke.
It is a sad fact of life that some of the best politicians are in marginal seats as you need that real ability and hard work to hold on. There are/were some real donkeys in safe seats. Obviously that is a generalization.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
I still don't get the concept of someone who is pig-shit thick influencing anybody, by just shouting "Look at me! Me! ME!!"
There seems to be some confusion this morning if the elections are going ahead or not in May.
They've been preparing for months, counts are already to be spread over multiple days, most volunteers of age should be vaccinated by then and logistical challenges at polling places are not insurmountable. So I hope they do go ahead.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
Indeed, and looking at some of their ‘output’, those still here are not in the beach resorts any more. There’s only so long you can put up £300 or £400 a night, even if you’re well off.
They'll probably just get sent home. With no checks at Heathrow...
I bet they don’t! I reckon six months in the clink, the locals in Barbados are furious with idiotic tourists and the politicians want to send a clear message.
There seems to be some confusion this morning if the elections are going ahead or not in May.
They've been preparing for months, counts are already to be spread over multiple days, most volunteers of age should be vaccinated by then and logistical challenges at polling places are not insurmountable. So I hope they do go ahead.
And its not as if the main parties are afraid of voters' verdict on their conduct over the last year.......ahem....
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
I think people on here will be surprised in two weeks at the extent of the vaccination prgramme in this country.
I agree. Once the supply issues are resolved there is masses of capacity.
Injecting people isn't hard - why I've been mystified at the stories of plans to only vaccinate 1 million a week that were about.
I'd be really pissed if they can't organise using doses as they become available.
My guess is that we will peak at something like 3-4m a week once we have enough supply. I still think that Boris was being a lot more conservative in his estimates than many would want to admit for entirely political reasons. My guess is that we will exceed 14m by 14th February.
On the 14m target, personally I think it's unambitious. When you consider that AZ have declared doses of 19m for domestic use already produced and more on the way we should be thinking about how we can use all of that supply as quickly as possible, what are the pain points and how can we resolve them as quickly as possible. Production isn't a pain point, supply is, so what has broken down in between those two? Right now we know it's regulatory testing and approval of doses, the MHRA isn't set up to test and approve this many doses of two different types of vaccines. It needs to scale that process up so that it can test and approve many, many more batches of vaccine simultaneously. The Times say that this is already underway and they will be in a much better position by next week when we expect millions of doses per week to be reaching the end of the chain.
The next pain point is who does the jabs and when? There's a lot of talk about not doing Sundays, it seems like a completely mental idea not to run this 7 days a week, and hopefully that will get addressed, what we've also seen this morning is a government u-turn on not using pharmacies and pharmacists to dole it out.
A lot of this process is going to be learn by doing, setting a target of 14m is exactly what we need to do to ensure we address these pain points early on as the NHS is forced to scale up the process as quickly as possible. If we plod along at 1m per week and a 7m target it would mean we hit it easily but ultimately we never find out what needs fixing for when we need to double, and then double again the rate of vaccination.
We should have set a 20m ambition and 14m target. We have 19m doses produced of the AZ vaccine and around 1.5m per week from Pfizer of continuous supplely. If we don't use all of what is available, it would constitute a failure IMO.
There seems to be some confusion this morning if the elections are going ahead or not in May.
Everyone uses a postal vote ?
Can't see there being much opposition to it in parliament. I'm not going to bother switching if I don't have to - my local polling station will be very quiet, particularly for a local election but if I'm switched to postal as part of a national effort then I'm not going to complain about it.
This has not been set out by Johnson as a target, but as an "Edstone" pledge. Had Johnson not had form with his previous (recent) pledges this would be OK.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
Indeed, and looking at some of their ‘output’, those still here are not in the beach resorts any more. There’s only so long you can put up £300 or £400 a night, even if you’re well off.
They'll probably just get sent home. With no checks at Heathrow...
I bet they don’t! I reckon six months in the clink, the locals in Barbados are furious with idiotic tourists and the politicians want to send a clear message.
+1 - Barbados have gone from having zero cases to more per head than the UK in very short order and that's before the likes of St Vincent embarrassed them by placing in St Vincent's high risk category.
Another good, clear article - this time about the transmission of coronavirus. All that hand-washing and surfaces stuff is minor. You catch it by sitting indoors with other people, breathing. That’s it
Fits with the pattern of increased transmission as the summer slipped away and weather forced social life back indoors, around the world. Also an under-commented explanation for why Oz and NZ are looking so good right now. And for air travel - which is basically sitting indoors and breathing - having been key to the initial spread.
Also means that safety measures in pubs, theaters, taxis and so on are little more than safety theatre. They help a bit, but they do not make them safe.
(If you got to take a taxi, make it a black cab with its separate driver compartment. And maybe insist on a good airing before getting in.)
There seems to be some confusion this morning if the elections are going ahead or not in May.
They've been preparing for months, counts are already to be spread over multiple days, most volunteers of age should be vaccinated by then and logistical challenges at polling places are not insurmountable. So I hope they do go ahead.
And its not as if the main parties are afraid of voters' verdict on their conduct over the last year.......ahem....
If that was the concern theyd have gone ahead last year, all postal style.
There seems to be some confusion this morning if the elections are going ahead or not in May.
Everyone uses a postal vote ?
Can't see there being much opposition to it in parliament. I'm not going to bother switching if I don't have to - my local polling station will be very quiet, particularly for a local election but if I'm switched to postal as part of a national effort then I'm not going to complain about it.
I think I’m right that the method of voting is down to the local authorities concerned, whereas changing the date of the local elections requires primary legislation in Parliament.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
If there are 100 senators split 50-50 then no senator is senator "Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg"
The Dems will find it impossible to get anything radical requiring Senate approval past West Virginia Dem senator Joe Manchin, for a start. Even assuming Biden would want to do much radical (going by his record he won't).
Republicans have such big electoral advantages at every level, and such a willingness to use their power to disenfranchise voters who vote against them, and to gerrymander, it's a wonder Democrats win anything at all outside of solidly blue states.
Imagine the situation now if none of the vaccines had made headway with their clinical trials or had had to be dropped?
Yeah, total panic. Do we just accept that the herd immunity people were right and let it rip or do we lockdown until the printing presses run out of ink? Horrendous choices and probably an extra 500k deaths this year in the UK alone.
This sounds like bollocks. If true, this policy would render the company in question in breach of the Equality Act in the UK and of the EU Equal Treatment Framework Directive in the EU. Right to work is not the same as citizenship - it's as unlawful in the UK as in the EU to discriminate on the grounds of citizenship. Admittedly you can say must have right to work in a jurisdiction, but you shouldn't discriminate on the grounds of citizenship - for example my wife is an American citizen with ILR and has as much right to apply for work here as I do. Any job ad that said you have to be a citizen of a country is an actionable breach of the Equality Act and its EU equivalents.
Arch-Remainer as I am this post is either bollocks or it is breaking the law.
It isn't bollocks - TSE has already said it is happening. And its hardly a surprise. Someone will end up doing a test case to ask can an EU company in the EU discriminate to only allow applications from people who have the automatic right to work there? Its not discriminatory against UK citizens specifically is it?
As a recruiting manager this one feels like the basic question about location. If you are a great candidate with a ludicrous commute not willing to move you probably aren't getting an interview. So even if EU/EEA only gets banned, if you have great candidates who have the right to work and one who may have the right to work once they go through a whole lengthy paperwork saga, are you going to bother?
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Yet still there was only a couple of percent at most in the Georgia results and most of those voters still therefore turned out anyway.
It remains the case that if the Biden-Harris administration has a low approval rating in the 2022 the GOP will almost certainly retake the House as per the usual pattern in the midterms, regardless of whether Trump runs again in 2024 or not and likely Democratic wins for the foreseeable future at the presidential level
This has not been set out by Johnson as a target, but as an "Edstone" pledge. Had Johnson not had form with his previous (recent) pledges this would be OK.
Just give over. You're coming across as wanting him to fail. And when he doesn't fail....
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
I still don't get the concept of someone who is pig-shit thick influencing anybody, by just shouting "Look at me! Me! ME!!"
Think pound shop* Donald Trumps. Then throw up.
*I wish to apologise to Pound Shops everywhere - they are often useful, effective places.
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
I think people on here will be surprised in two weeks at the extent of the vaccination prgramme in this country.
I agree. Once the supply issues are resolved there is masses of capacity.
Injecting people isn't hard - why I've been mystified at the stories of plans to only vaccinate 1 million a week that were about.
I'd be really pissed if they can't organise using doses as they become available.
My guess is that we will peak at something like 3-4m a week once we have enough supply. I still think that Boris was being a lot more conservative in his estimates than many would want to admit for entirely political reasons. My guess is that we will exceed 14m by 14th February.
3-4 million was the original target for the mass vaccination planning - for when supply was available.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Yet still there was only a couple of percent at most in the Georgia results and most of those voters still therefore turned out anyway.
It remains the case that if the Biden-Harris administration has a low approval rating in the 2022 the GOP will almost certainly retake the House as per the usual pattern in the midterms, regardless of whether Trump runs again in 2024 or not and likely Democratic wins for the foreseeable future at the presidential level
"If" does a lot of heavy lifting here, particularly, considering the Biden/Harris Presidency isn't even out of the blocks yet. Wishful thinking is getting you ahead of yourself.
On the 14m target, personally I think it's unambitious. When you consider that AZ have declared doses of 19m for domestic use already produced and more on the way we should be thinking about how we can use all of that supply as quickly as possible, what are the pain points and how can we resolve them as quickly as possible. Production isn't a pain point, supply is, so what has broken down in between those two? Right now we know it's regulatory testing and approval of doses, the MHRA isn't set up to test and approve this many doses of two different types of vaccines. It needs to scale that process up so that it can test and approve many, many more batches of vaccine simultaneously. The Times say that this is already underway and they will be in a much better position by next week when we expect millions of doses per week to be reaching the end of the chain.
The next pain point is who does the jabs and when? There's a lot of talk about not doing Sundays, it seems like a completely mental idea not to run this 7 days a week, and hopefully that will get addressed, what we've also seen this morning is a government u-turn on not using pharmacies and pharmacists to dole it out.
A lot of this process is going to be learn by doing, setting a target of 14m is exactly what we need to do to ensure we address these pain points early on as the NHS is forced to scale up the process as quickly as possible. If we plod along at 1m per week and a 7m target it would mean we hit it easily but ultimately we never find out what needs fixing for when we need to double, and then double again the rate of vaccination.
We should have set a 20m ambition and 14m target. We have 19m doses produced of the AZ vaccine and around 1.5m per week from Pfizer of continuous supplely. If we don't use all of what is available, it would constitute a failure IMO.
As I've said, jabs should be 24/7. If people are prepared to go out and queue in a Sainsbury's car-park at 3.00 am, they are the sort of people who are likely going to be out and about anyway. And that is exactly who we need to be jabbing.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
and up to 80% of Repubs believe him!
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
Nobody denies Trump is a talented snake oil salesman. But to what effect? If he actually wants to preserve and extend his legacy, he's best ensuring Republicans control the Senate. Now they don't. He still has a load of people who will lick up anything he pukes out, but his political leverage is over people who aren't actually in power at the national level.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
They are far more worried about their winter sun break.....
Don’t start me!
Mid-range hotels in this part of the world have started offering monthly rates to tourists, as many here already quite like the idea of sitting out the next couple of months somewhere sunny, but can’t afford to do so in the expensive beach resorts. About £1,500 a month, for a 4* with wifi, pool and bar.
I don't think there is a UK "social media influencer" who isn't in Dubai or the Carribean is there?
I still don't get the concept of someone who is pig-shit thick influencing anybody, by just shouting "Look at me! Me! ME!!"
I don't either, but it appears to work e.g. GymShark, has grown in a few years from a bloke in his mum's bedroom making clothes to a multi-billion dollar company and has been driven by spending the vast bulk of their advertising revenue on using online fitness influencers.
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
Delay the Olympics to October, Tokyo is still warm until the end of October. It would also give international fans a chance to attend because globally lots of people will have been vaccinated by then. We should be reaching the end of ours and be looking to studies for 13-17 year olds to be jabbed too.
On the 14m target, personally I think it's unambitious. When you consider that AZ have declared doses of 19m for domestic use already produced and more on the way we should be thinking about how we can use all of that supply as quickly as possible, what are the pain points and how can we resolve them as quickly as possible. Production isn't a pain point, supply is, so what has broken down in between those two? Right now we know it's regulatory testing and approval of doses, the MHRA isn't set up to test and approve this many doses of two different types of vaccines. It needs to scale that process up so that it can test and approve many, many more batches of vaccine simultaneously. The Times say that this is already underway and they will be in a much better position by next week when we expect millions of doses per week to be reaching the end of the chain.
The next pain point is who does the jabs and when? There's a lot of talk about not doing Sundays, it seems like a completely mental idea not to run this 7 days a week, and hopefully that will get addressed, what we've also seen this morning is a government u-turn on not using pharmacies and pharmacists to dole it out.
A lot of this process is going to be learn by doing, setting a target of 14m is exactly what we need to do to ensure we address these pain points early on as the NHS is forced to scale up the process as quickly as possible. If we plod along at 1m per week and a 7m target it would mean we hit it easily but ultimately we never find out what needs fixing for when we need to double, and then double again the rate of vaccination.
We should have set a 20m ambition and 14m target. We have 19m doses produced of the AZ vaccine and around 1.5m per week from Pfizer of continuous supplely. If we don't use all of what is available, it would constitute a failure IMO.
Reports from the past few days suggested that the average clinic can do 1,000 vaccines per day. One of those in each of the 650 Parliamentary constituencies is almost exactly 5m a week - everyone done twice by the end of June.
The Sunday’s thing needs to be read carefully - it’s the release of vaccines by PHE that’s not happening on Sundays, the vaccine centres will still be open seven days a week if they have vaccine in stock.
Needless to say we don't see eye-to-eye on Europe. I suspect that would have let him down, as it did for Ken Clarke.
Yep I agree with this. I think he was utterly wrong on Europe and I think that would have killed any chance he had of being PM even had he kept his seat. But he has been right on many other things not least his calls for us to welcome Hong Kong residents we abandoned after the handover in 1999. This is a great wrong I hope we are now righting.
... we should be thinking about how we can use all of that supply as quickly as possible, what are the pain points and how can we resolve them as quickly as possible. ..
Agree with all of that, but I'd add that there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to continuously ramp up the rate of vaccinations.
It would be a bit disappointing if they hit a rate of 3 million injections a week to hit this target and then didn't push on to resolving the next constraint, and the next.
Single targets are a bit less important than seeing evidence of continuous improvement.
Had to go in to top up the N2 tanks. Lovely walk on the way out - snow falling in big old clumps. Mostly hi-vis on the street on the way out but a few others walking into city centre. Knowing nods between us.
University is at 2nd level of risk - so not a total shutdown like the summer but staff allowed in for key jobs and 'if cannot work from home'. There's a small number of student-facing people on site.
Walk back - practically every cafe and greasy spoon open for Takeaway. Not many people on street but they're having a crack at it. Even the littlest one near my house is open today, after saying yesterday they'd be shut.
Just a shame takeaway pints have been banned - I was enjoying my Friday night tinny pub crawls.
I see today's catastrophizing revolves around the idea that the Government will never be able to vaccinate enough people in time, their targets are impossible, woe, wibble, etc. ad nauseam.
And yet according to Worldometers, the UK has now carried out more testing per head of population than any other major country in the world (the only ones ahead of us have populations under 10m). This despite the exact same people who told us we wouldn't be able to ramp up testing saying exactly the same thing about our vaccine programme now.
Even the much-maligned Test & Trace, run by the queenly Dido (remember her?) is now reaching the vast majority of contacts - 92.6% as of last week:
The EU shouldn't be doing any deals at all with China whilst it arbitrarily detains democratic activists, represses Hong Kong, and puts the Uighurs in labour camps - and worse. If it does its foreign policy is morally bankrupt:
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
I think people on here will be surprised in two weeks at the extent of the vaccination prgramme in this country.
I agree. Once the supply issues are resolved there is masses of capacity.
Injecting people isn't hard - why I've been mystified at the stories of plans to only vaccinate 1 million a week that were about.
I'd be really pissed if they can't organise using doses as they become available.
My guess is that we will peak at something like 3-4m a week once we have enough supply. I still think that Boris was being a lot more conservative in his estimates than many would want to admit for entirely political reasons. My guess is that we will exceed 14m by 14th February.
3-4 million was the original target for the mass vaccination planning - for when supply was available.
Indeed. I don't think I am suggesting anything outrageous here. Maybe 14m by 14th Feb and 28m by 14th March?
The EU shouldn't be doing any deals at all with China whilst it arbitrarily detains democratic activists, represses Hong Kong, and puts the Uighurs in labour camps - and worse. If it does its foreign policy is morally bankrupt:
This sounds like bollocks. If true, this policy would render the company in question in breach of the Equality Act in the UK and of the EU Equal Treatment Framework Directive in the EU. Right to work is not the same as citizenship - it's as unlawful in the UK as in the EU to discriminate on the grounds of citizenship. Admittedly you can say must have right to work in a jurisdiction, but you shouldn't discriminate on the grounds of citizenship - for example my wife is an American citizen with ILR and has as much right to apply for work here as I do. Any job ad that said you have to be a citizen of a country is an actionable breach of the Equality Act and its EU equivalents.
Arch-Remainer as I am this post is either bollocks or it is breaking the law.
You would be astonished by what HR departments are capable of.
On one occasion, I was told off. For reporting that one of my team was being bullied.
The idiot involved was astonished when I pointed out that I (and they) had legal obligations in the matter. The said idiot was clearly discriminatory herself - according to her own words!
You know, it could also be that voters in Georgia have rather liked what they have seen and heard from Joe Biden since he won the Presidential election. The Democrats may now have a real opportunity as the GOP is likely to go to war with itself for the next few years.
A commentator on CNN - a democrat - said it would be still very difficult to get the more extreme agenda of the left-wing of the Democratic party through the Senate as they would need a 60/40 majority. I think thar is a useful tool for Biden to plot a centrist course.
An agenda so extreme, that approaches the middle of the UK Conservative party. From the right.
That is rubbish, AOC et al are left of Starmer, they would certainly never be in Boris Johnson's Conservative Party, they are closer to Corbyn than Boris
Can you point to an AOC policy position that is to the left of Starmer? I admit that Starmer's policy positions are thin on the ground at the moment but you are making the assertion so must have examples.
AOC wants a 70% top rate of income tax, Starmer does not for one
The article you link to says "Ocasio-Cortez suggested offhandedly that income above $10m (my emphasis) may need to be taxed up to 70%" that's not the same as the "top rate" which is 45% on income above a mere £150,000 (or about $200,000) even under Johnson. It's an arresting suggestion but doesn't necessarily put her to the left of Starmer. I can't see him adopting it but I could see, for example, a mansion tax targetting similar wealth brackets.
It doesn't even put her to the left of many post war US presidents. A quick google shows that the marginal highest tax rates in the US were:
The highest rates of US tax didn't come down below 70% until 1981.
I mean I am not actually advocating these levels of tax but the idea they are either unusual or only enacted by raving left wingers is clearly fanciful.
The problem is that these tax rates never actually result in people paying the tax mentioned.
Instead, what happened was
- Populist "I am squeezing the rich" votes in Congress - "Give me contributions and I'll give you tax breaks" - voted through in Congress. Often in the same bill to raise tax.
Net result - *less* tax raised every time.
This is how the US tax code came into existence. And it's carefully defended by the fact that everyone gets tax breaks. Even a jobbing carpenter.... So when the Republicans suggested flattening the system in the 90s, the tax industry funded a campaign of "EVUL Republicans are here to steal your tax breaks".
It's not especially difficult to pay no federal income tax in the US - if you are rich enough to play the games with assets and charitable contributions. Hence the problem.
By comparison, the UK tax rates are hard to avoid.
As I made clear, my point was not that I support tax rates at these levels - I don't. What I was pointing out is that it is wrong to claim that such tax rates make AOC some raving communist. Every President from FDR to Carter (including right wingers like Nixon) presided over tax rates as high if not higher than what she proposes.
The EU shouldn't be doing any deals at all with China whilst it arbitrarily detains democratic activists, represses Hong Kong, and puts the Uighurs in labour camps - and worse. If it does its foreign policy is morally bankrupt:
Another good, clear article - this time about the transmission of coronavirus. All that hand-washing and surfaces stuff is minor. You catch it by sitting indoors with other people, breathing. That’s it
Fits with the pattern of increased transmission as the summer slipped away and weather forced social life back indoors, around the world. Also an under-commented explanation for why Oz and NZ are looking so good right now. And for air travel - which is basically sitting indoors and breathing - having been key to the initial spread.
Also means that safety measures in pubs, theaters, taxis and so on are little more than safety theatre. They help a bit, but they do not make them safe.
(If you got to take a taxi, make it a black cab with its separate driver compartment. And maybe insist on a good airing before getting in.)
The suggestion is, if you can't open all the windows because you'd get cold sit at the opposite end of the taxi from the driver (as you'd expect) and open the window on the side away from you, and have them open the one on the side away from them, so there's diagonal airflow between you and the driver. This seems to work better than the obvious thing of opening the window next to each human.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
I'm not sure the traditional midterm logic will entirely hold. Democrats are favoured in lower turnout elections now I think.
That depends entirely on the Biden Harris approval ratings in 2022, if they are low the GOP will almost certainly take back the House and maybe even the Senate too in the 2022 midterms.
Hyufd, don't the Republicans have a difficult slate in 2022 - more seats to defend than attack?
In the Senate maybe, not in the House though where every seat will be up in 2022 and the Democrats will be defending a majority of just 10 over the GOP
Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
Because the problem is not delivery, its supply. Its blindingly obvious. The NHS have structures in place every year which allows it to deliver 2m flu jabs a week. Its not hard. It doesn't require vets or dentists or Tesco's. We don't need more capacity, we need more vaccine.
Why the hell our benighted media are not asking about the supply and availability of vaccine to the exclusion of all else is completely beyond...no wait, they're just stupid aren't they?
I think people on here will be surprised in two weeks at the extent of the vaccination prgramme in this country.
I agree. Once the supply issues are resolved there is masses of capacity.
Injecting people isn't hard - why I've been mystified at the stories of plans to only vaccinate 1 million a week that were about.
I'd be really pissed if they can't organise using doses as they become available.
My guess is that we will peak at something like 3-4m a week once we have enough supply. I still think that Boris was being a lot more conservative in his estimates than many would want to admit for entirely political reasons. My guess is that we will exceed 14m by 14th February.
3-4 million was the original target for the mass vaccination planning - for when supply was available.
Indeed. I don't think I am suggesting anything outrageous here. Maybe 14m by 14th Feb and 28m by 14th March?
That will defintely happen, and as I said earlier we are already vaccinating on Sundays and will continue to do so.
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
Delay the Olympics to October, Tokyo is still warm until the end of October. It would also give international fans a chance to attend because globally lots of people will have been vaccinated by then. We should be reaching the end of ours and be looking to studies for 13-17 year olds to be jabbed too.
In terms of weather, October would actually be pretty much perfect in Japan. Whether there are logistical reasons not to do it, I don't know.
Needless to say we don't see eye-to-eye on Europe. I suspect that would have let him down, as it did for Ken Clarke.
Yep I agree with this. I think he was utterly wrong on Europe and I think that would have killed any chance he had of being PM even had he kept his seat. But he has been right on many other things not least his calls for us to welcome Hong Kong residents we abandoned after the handover in 1999. This is a great wrong I hope we are now righting.
Agreed. What was different about him is that he had little time for the pomposity of Heseltine and Heath either, and was clearly patriotic - believing Britain's interests could best be asserted via the EU.
I didn't agree with him on that, but I respect anyone (of whatever view) who has moral and political courage.
Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
One piece of good news - the old lady who responded to the call and was told all the slots were full, last week, has now been re-booked with her husband for Monday.
Needless to say we don't see eye-to-eye on Europe. I suspect that would have let him down, as it did for Ken Clarke.
Yep I agree with this. I think he was utterly wrong on Europe and I think that would have killed any chance he had of being PM even had he kept his seat. But he has been right on many other things not least his calls for us to welcome Hong Kong residents we abandoned after the handover in 1999. This is a great wrong I hope we are now righting.
Chris Patten is a great statesman but yes arguably both he and Ken Clarke would have been left of Blair in 1997 and 2001, if the Tories elected Hague and IDS over Clarke, Patten would have faced the same fate
This has not been set out by Johnson as a target, but as an "Edstone" pledge. Had Johnson not had form with his previous (recent) pledges this would be OK.
Just give over. You're coming across as wanting him to fail. And when he doesn't fail....
I am not sure how you make the extrapolation from my post. It would be rather foolish (yes, yes, I know you already view me as pig-s*** thick, Boris- hating scum - an analysis with some accuracy- I doubt, rather than hate Boris) when it is in my own interests to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
I am just saying that Mr Johnson could perhaps communicate with realism rather than blind optimism.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
There is a balance though. Targets do motivate, but they can also distract and the target becomes the goal even if there is a long term loss by doing so eg by diverting resources from elsewhere that are of a higher priority (difficult to think that possible in this case), producing a substandard or dangerous product, or by loss of reputation.
The 100K target was a classic of that. Matt Hancock and the Govt rubbished their reputation for being honest on the pandemic. Up until then the Govt had done (or appeared to be doing a decent job). The blatant manipulating of the numbers was the start of the population not trusting the Govt over the pandemic. Up to that point they had done ok.
This target should be the goal though. That is not a bad thing.
Getting people vaccinated is the route out of this. If the entire machinery of government gets a bloody minded focus to get this target achieved then that is not a bad thing, it is a good one!
For once I agree with you on a Covid-19 matter. Over the past year, Johnson and his Government's performance on the virus has been utterly inept. But in this case, Johnson deserves credit for sticking his neck out and coming up with a stretching target, something that in terms of pure political calculations was probably a mistake. It will as you say galvanise the machinery of government and the NHS towards maximising the rate of virus roll out, and that is the point. Nor is it obvious how the target could distorting priorities, given that there is very clear prioritisation of recipients in operation and a centralised NHS number-based system in place to deliver that. That's in contrast, say, to the disgraceful freefall in Florida where you have overnight queues of pensioners wrapped in blankets in the street in an effective first come first served free for all for over 65s.
So I see it as a motivational target, and not one to be used as a specific benchmark for measuring success or failure.
One reason for a high level target is the resistance in large organisation to changes in policy.
For example, on testing, there was (and is) a non-trivial part of the medical establishment* that is opposed to anything that smacks of "mass screening".
You can see the effects of *not doing this* in France etc. Vaccination there seems to be (at least until now) just something that is supposed to happen, by itself.
We're still not doing mass screening. And the large organisation you're talking about was basically set up from scratch last year.
You are unaware that there was very considerable opposition to whole Pillar 2 testing concept - that testing hundreds of thousands per day was wrong and shouldn't be done?
The point I was making is that when dealing with large organisations, setting targets from the top can be important for making a policy change actually happen.
I'm talking about mass antigen testing. PCR just isn't that, even at serveral hundred thousand a day.
Yes - but there were quite a few people saying that several hundred thousand a day PCR testing was too "mass screening" like, for their taste.
It has been an enormously expensive and not very cost effective program in terms of limiting the spread of the virus. Had even a quarter of that effort gone into mass testing coupled with better managed isolation of those infected, we'd be in a far better place.
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
Delay the Olympics to October, Tokyo is still warm until the end of October. It would also give international fans a chance to attend because globally lots of people will have been vaccinated by then. We should be reaching the end of ours and be looking to studies for 13-17 year olds to be jabbed too.
In terms of weather, October would actually be pretty much perfect in Japan. Whether there are logistical reasons not to do it, I don't know.
Yup, October is lovely, and July/August is horrible. IIUC the reason they insist on doing them in August is to do with other sporting events competing for TV viewers.
You know, it could also be that voters in Georgia have rather liked what they have seen and heard from Joe Biden since he won the Presidential election. The Democrats may now have a real opportunity as the GOP is likely to go to war with itself for the next few years.
A commentator on CNN - a democrat - said it would be still very difficult to get the more extreme agenda of the left-wing of the Democratic party through the Senate as they would need a 60/40 majority. I think thar is a useful tool for Biden to plot a centrist course.
An agenda so extreme, that approaches the middle of the UK Conservative party. From the right.
That is rubbish, AOC et al are left of Starmer, they would certainly never be in Boris Johnson's Conservative Party, they are closer to Corbyn than Boris
Can you point to an AOC policy position that is to the left of Starmer? I admit that Starmer's policy positions are thin on the ground at the moment but you are making the assertion so must have examples.
AOC wants a 70% top rate of income tax, Starmer does not for one
The article you link to says "Ocasio-Cortez suggested offhandedly that income above $10m (my emphasis) may need to be taxed up to 70%" that's not the same as the "top rate" which is 45% on income above a mere £150,000 (or about $200,000) even under Johnson. It's an arresting suggestion but doesn't necessarily put her to the left of Starmer. I can't see him adopting it but I could see, for example, a mansion tax targetting similar wealth brackets.
It doesn't even put her to the left of many post war US presidents. A quick google shows that the marginal highest tax rates in the US were:
The highest rates of US tax didn't come down below 70% until 1981.
I mean I am not actually advocating these levels of tax but the idea they are either unusual or only enacted by raving left wingers is clearly fanciful.
The problem is that these tax rates never actually result in people paying the tax mentioned.
Instead, what happened was
- Populist "I am squeezing the rich" votes in Congress - "Give me contributions and I'll give you tax breaks" - voted through in Congress. Often in the same bill to raise tax.
Net result - *less* tax raised every time.
This is how the US tax code came into existence. And it's carefully defended by the fact that everyone gets tax breaks. Even a jobbing carpenter.... So when the Republicans suggested flattening the system in the 90s, the tax industry funded a campaign of "EVUL Republicans are here to steal your tax breaks".
It's not especially difficult to pay no federal income tax in the US - if you are rich enough to play the games with assets and charitable contributions. Hence the problem.
By comparison, the UK tax rates are hard to avoid.
As I made clear, my point was not that I support tax rates at these levels - I don't. What I was pointing out is that it is wrong to claim that such tax rates make AOC some raving communist. Every President from FDR to Carter (including right wingers like Nixon) presided over tax rates as high if not higher than what she proposes.
True - but the further point is that 75% won't actually mean 75%. Maximum would be half of that.
I have had much fun with American colleagues over the years. Overwhelmingly liberal, they often have an initial WTF when they realise that the UK tax system is going to get its 40%.
As, in "But I *have the right* to claim it all back"
They are generally totally conditioned to the idea that tax is something to game.
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
Delay the Olympics to October, Tokyo is still warm until the end of October. It would also give international fans a chance to attend because globally lots of people will have been vaccinated by then. We should be reaching the end of ours and be looking to studies for 13-17 year olds to be jabbed too.
Not an option, that's monsoon/typhoon weather that time of the year in Japan.
This sounds like bollocks. If true, this policy would render the company in question in breach of the Equality Act in the UK and of the EU Equal Treatment Framework Directive in the EU. Right to work is not the same as citizenship - it's as unlawful in the UK as in the EU to discriminate on the grounds of citizenship. Admittedly you can say must have right to work in a jurisdiction, but you shouldn't discriminate on the grounds of citizenship - for example my wife is an American citizen with ILR and has as much right to apply for work here as I do. Any job ad that said you have to be a citizen of a country is an actionable breach of the Equality Act and its EU equivalents.
Arch-Remainer as I am this post is either bollocks or it is breaking the law.
It did strike me that if the firm were in fact to exist and if it were to follow through reciprocally for vacancies in its UK arm, it would be the equivalent of putting up a "No Irish" sign on its notice board.
Needless to say we don't see eye-to-eye on Europe. I suspect that would have let him down, as it did for Ken Clarke.
Yep I agree with this. I think he was utterly wrong on Europe and I think that would have killed any chance he had of being PM even had he kept his seat. But he has been right on many other things not least his calls for us to welcome Hong Kong residents we abandoned after the handover in 1999. This is a great wrong I hope we are now righting.
Agreed. What was different about him is that he had little time for the pomposity of Heseltine and Heath either, and was clearly patriotic - believing Britain's interests could best be asserted via the EU.
I didn't agree with him on that, but I respect anyone (of whatever view) who has moral and political courage.
He had it. In spades.
And quite a good sense of humour. His time at the BBC wasn't great, though.
Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
If there’s too much vaccine, there will be no need for appointments, people will be asked to just turn up at the hospital or their local GP surgery.
Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
I'm not a high priority so I have no personal experience to draw on but my local neighbourhood whatsapp group tells me that our GP surgery (South London) was hoping to start vaccination this week but there have been unspecified "delays."
Comments
Meanwhile, in the Carribean today, a couple of British covidiots are about to learn their fate.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9117583/Barbados-Prime-Minister-warns-Zara-Holland-held-accountable-breaking-Covid-rules.html
The point I was making is that when dealing with large organisations, setting targets from the top can be important for making a policy change actually happen.
I'm no believer in market wisdom - quite the opposite - but that doesn't sound quite right.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/united-arab-emirates/
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
To be fair, that's a bit more cautious than my theory of Boris saying it will be over in time to watch the Boat Race.
Arch-Remainer as I am this post is either bollocks or it is breaking the law.
I'd be really pissed if they can't organise using doses as they become available.
Counting will have to take a bit longer, but we delayed a whole heap of elections from last spring. There's no need to delay again.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/13606608/stars-escaping-lockdown-dubai-abbey-clancy-simon-cowell/
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
Compulsory testing on arrival for visitors though, which is likely accounting for a fair few of these.
Vaccines are 8% of the population so far, mostly oldies, and about to expand rapidly to everyone. Only Israel is ahead on the vaccines.
Life here is like U.K. level 1. I’m currently sitting in a mall Starbucks, where they’ve removed half the seats and installed some Perspex panels. Bars are open but seating only and fewer seats than usual. Masks compulsory outside the home, temperature checks in most buildings and hand sanitiser everywhere.
The place relies heavily on tourist income, and are doing everything they can to stay open to the world.
bordersarmsThe next pain point is who does the jabs and when? There's a lot of talk about not doing Sundays, it seems like a completely mental idea not to run this 7 days a week, and hopefully that will get addressed, what we've also seen this morning is a government u-turn on not using pharmacies and pharmacists to dole it out.
A lot of this process is going to be learn by doing, setting a target of 14m is exactly what we need to do to ensure we address these pain points early on as the NHS is forced to scale up the process as quickly as possible. If we plod along at 1m per week and a 7m target it would mean we hit it easily but ultimately we never find out what needs fixing for when we need to double, and then double again the rate of vaccination.
We should have set a 20m ambition and 14m target. We have 19m doses produced of the AZ vaccine and around 1.5m per week from Pfizer of continuous supplely. If we don't use all of what is available, it would constitute a failure IMO.
Can't see there being much opposition to it in parliament. I'm not going to bother switching if I don't have to - my local polling station will be very quiet, particularly for a local election but if I'm switched to postal as part of a national effort then I'm not going to complain about it.
This has not been set out by Johnson as a target, but as an "Edstone" pledge. Had Johnson not had form with his previous (recent) pledges this would be OK.
(If you got to take a taxi, make it a black cab with its separate driver compartment. And maybe insist on a good airing before getting in.)
The Dems will find it impossible to get anything radical requiring Senate approval past West Virginia Dem senator Joe Manchin, for a start. Even assuming Biden would want to do much radical (going by his record he won't).
Republicans have such big electoral advantages at every level, and such a willingness to use their power to disenfranchise voters who vote against them, and to gerrymander, it's a wonder Democrats win anything at all outside of solidly blue states.
Thank you science. You have played a blinder.
As a recruiting manager this one feels like the basic question about location. If you are a great candidate with a ludicrous commute not willing to move you probably aren't getting an interview. So even if EU/EEA only gets banned, if you have great candidates who have the right to work and one who may have the right to work once they go through a whole lengthy paperwork saga, are you going to bother?
It remains the case that if the Biden-Harris administration has a low approval rating in the 2022 the GOP will almost certainly retake the House as per the usual pattern in the midterms, regardless of whether Trump runs again in 2024 or not and likely Democratic wins for the foreseeable future at the presidential level
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55546614
*I wish to apologise to Pound Shops everywhere - they are often useful, effective places.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
The Sunday’s thing needs to be read carefully - it’s the release of vaccines by PHE that’s not happening on Sundays, the vaccine centres will still be open seven days a week if they have vaccine in stock.
Still, it makes for a great boardroom atmosphere until reality bites.
It would be a bit disappointing if they hit a rate of 3 million injections a week to hit this target and then didn't push on to resolving the next constraint, and the next.
Single targets are a bit less important than seeing evidence of continuous improvement.
Had to go in to top up the N2 tanks. Lovely walk on the way out - snow falling in big old clumps. Mostly hi-vis on the street on the way out but a few others walking into city centre. Knowing nods between us.
University is at 2nd level of risk - so not a total shutdown like the summer but staff allowed in for key jobs and 'if cannot work from home'. There's a small number of student-facing people on site.
Walk back - practically every cafe and greasy spoon open for Takeaway. Not many people on street but they're having a crack at it. Even the littlest one near my house is open today, after saying yesterday they'd be shut.
Just a shame takeaway pints have been banned - I was enjoying my Friday night tinny pub crawls.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9117819/Supermarket-shelves-stripped-bare-day-lockdown.html
And yet according to Worldometers, the UK has now carried out more testing per head of population than any other major country in the world (the only ones ahead of us have populations under 10m). This despite the exact same people who told us we wouldn't be able to ramp up testing saying exactly the same thing about our vaccine programme now.
Even the much-maligned Test & Trace, run by the queenly Dido (remember her?) is now reaching the vast majority of contacts - 92.6% as of last week:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-test-and-trace-reaches-record-number-of-people-as-demand-increases-significantly
Will we hear a single word about it now that it can't be used as a stick to bash the Government? Of course we bloody won't!
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/independence-of-hong-kong-courts-on-beijing-s-target-list-hnqf9w58m
On one occasion, I was told off. For reporting that one of my team was being bullied.
The idiot involved was astonished when I pointed out that I (and they) had legal obligations in the matter. The said idiot was clearly discriminatory herself - according to her own words!
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201207/Study-shows-how-airflow-inside-a-car-may-affect-risk-of-COVID-19-transmission.aspx
The suggestion is, if you can't open all the windows because you'd get cold sit at the opposite end of the taxi from the driver (as you'd expect) and open the window on the side away from you, and have them open the one on the side away from them, so there's diagonal airflow between you and the driver. This seems to work better than the obvious thing of opening the window next to each human.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
I didn't agree with him on that, but I respect anyone (of whatever view) who has moral and political courage.
He had it. In spades.
I am just saying that Mr Johnson could perhaps communicate with realism rather than blind optimism.
Had even a quarter of that effort gone into mass testing coupled with better managed isolation of those infected, we'd be in a far better place.
I have had much fun with American colleagues over the years. Overwhelmingly liberal, they often have an initial WTF when they realise that the UK tax system is going to get its 40%.
As, in "But I *have the right* to claim it all back"
They are generally totally conditioned to the idea that tax is something to game.
It caused havoc at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
His time at the BBC wasn't great, though.
You can never be on the losing side.