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George Osborne argues that the way Trump’s been constrained shows that democracy is working – politi

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  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,898

    Andy_JS said:

    "Boris Johnson blames Chinese for coronavirus pandemic telling world leaders it was triggered by 'demented' people who 'grind up the scales of a pangolin' in bid to become more 'potent'"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9138117/Boris-Johnson-blames-Chinese-Covid-saying-pandemic-triggered-demented-traditional-medicine.html

    Completely wrong.

    The correct way to eat a pangolin is just like a globe artichoke.

    You pull off the outer scales, dipping them in Hollondaise sauce and scraping away the tender part with your teeth.

    And then tuck into the delicious heart.
    (makes note to self for next Con Club BBQ.....)
    Bat for afters?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,889


    If Trump isn't on the ballot, I strongly suspect 2024 will see a large decline in turnout on BOTH sides. That isn't necessarily a problem for the GOP candidate. The fact is they are unlikely to need anything like 81 million votes or even 74 million to win.

    Turnout dropping on both sides is a bigger issue for the GOP than the Democrats now, Democrats have higher propensity voters I think.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,870
    edited January 2021

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.

    He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
  • Pulpstar said:

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    He's never making that money now. If he had been grown up big boy after the election, I think despite being very divisive, he would have been looking at making big bucks.
    I've dabbled in altfi a bit and can tell you Personal Guarantees aren't worth shit. Particularly when you're dealing with the likes of Trump. That Deutsche haven't realised this is astonishing.
    First charges over stuff like his golf course is what you need.
    These ones are apparently. Was the only way he could get the credit line, apparently the whole family would be on the hook, and are secured against personal properties and other assets, as well as the mortgaged properties.

    One way or another DB will get most of their money back.

    It is the rumour why Trump hasn't spent much money himself recently, he needs to have a certain about of liquid and illiquid assets.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,528
    @rcs1000 if you're about - could you enable posting of html iframes in comments?
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,898
    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Trump is going to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two. Nobody is going to do business with him.

    The thing is, even given his behaviour before the election, if he had acted maturely upon losing, I think he would have been looking making big bucks...big tv show, loads of products flogged to the faithful, etc.
    He may still do so

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348780623574405121?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348750903365406721?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348754366904193028?s=20
    The 7% who will never vote Republican ever again are not going to make it easy for whoever they pick as their candidate.
    They'll have to do some kind of New Labour rebranding and purge everyone associated with Trump.

    Isn't a problem with the US system that they don't really get a new "leader" until the next presidential primaries, which are years away? Makes it very difficult for the party to put its house in order and rebrand meantime, even if they wanted to.
    The Republicans have the same sort of problem that Labour had with Corbyn - cult of peronality followers.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    Andy_JS said:

    "Boris Johnson blames Chinese for coronavirus pandemic telling world leaders it was triggered by 'demented' people who 'grind up the scales of a pangolin' in bid to become more 'potent'"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9138117/Boris-Johnson-blames-Chinese-Covid-saying-pandemic-triggered-demented-traditional-medicine.html

    Completely wrong.

    The correct way to eat a pangolin is just like a globe artichoke.

    You pull off the outer scales, dipping them in Hollondaise sauce and scraping away the tender part with your teeth.

    And then tuck into the delicious heart.
    (makes note to self for next Con Club BBQ.....)
    As a healthy alternative to baby for more progressive members?
  • FossFoss Posts: 992
    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,687
    Andy_JS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Priti goin to be hostin the Press Conference:

    https://twitter.com/AlexofBrown/status/1348963046388084736?s=20

    I think they picked the wrong day to send her out. She is going to get questions on Boris biking, the terrorist asylum seeker who got released and immediately killed the guys in the park, and the food boxes....
    Do you mean questions about Boris bikin' and the stabbin' in Readin'?
    Something that Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan and Beth Rigby have in common.
    Good. The more people who talk like normal people in public life the better. Maybe one day people will realise how odd it is that so many of those in public life come from the same narrow segment of society and all sound the same, when our country has such a wide breadth of talent and so much diversity in how we speak.
    No-one talks like that in the Midlands where I live. In fact a feature of the local accent here is to pronounce the "g" at the end of "ing" words in a particularly emphatic way.
    How many sound like Johnson, Cameron or Osborne in your part of the world? Why no comment on their accent, which in statistical terms is a much more unusual way to speak. It would be much less notable if the Cabinet had Brummie, Estuary, Geordie, Scouse accents in it, it seems odd to focus on the Cabinet member who at least sounds like a regular person from some part of the country. It's not like she has made herself unintelligible.
  • FF43 said:

    isam said:
    Very Lib Dem Bar Charts. "Winning the vaccination race here ..."

    You don't normally use red and green, unless green means a fully compliant end state has been reached. Normally you would use a graduated scale of one colour to represent different states of completion. As the data is sourced from ourworldindata.org, we could even use the map the same organisation helpfully provides, that presents the data perfectly well:




    Why would you have an exponential rather than linear colour scale?

    Does everyone vaccinated then go on to vaccinate someone else?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,528

    Andy_JS said:

    "Boris Johnson blames Chinese for coronavirus pandemic telling world leaders it was triggered by 'demented' people who 'grind up the scales of a pangolin' in bid to become more 'potent'"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9138117/Boris-Johnson-blames-Chinese-Covid-saying-pandemic-triggered-demented-traditional-medicine.html

    Completely wrong.

    The correct way to eat a pangolin is just like a globe artichoke.

    You pull off the outer scales, dipping them in Hollondaise sauce and scraping away the tender part with your teeth.

    And then tuck into the delicious heart.
    (makes note to self for next Con Club BBQ.....)
    Bat for afters?
    Babies, actually.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,357
    Andy_JS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Priti goin to be hostin the Press Conference:

    https://twitter.com/AlexofBrown/status/1348963046388084736?s=20

    I think they picked the wrong day to send her out. She is going to get questions on Boris biking, the terrorist asylum seeker who got released and immediately killed the guys in the park, and the food boxes....
    Do you mean questions about Boris bikin' and the stabbin' in Readin'?
    Something that Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan and Beth Rigby have in common.
    Good. The more people who talk like normal people in public life the better. Maybe one day people will realise how odd it is that so many of those in public life come from the same narrow segment of society and all sound the same, when our country has such a wide breadth of talent and so much diversity in how we speak.
    No-one talks like that in the Midlands where I live. In fact a feature of the local accent here is to pronounce the "g" at the end of "ing" words in a particularly emphatic way.
    It's a linguistic throwback to the Danelaw, with the Vikings occupying the Midlands (or so I was told, as I pronounce it with that obvious emphasis).
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344

    DavidL said:

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    I wonder what he will get for his memoirs. In fairness, they will be an entertaining read, assuming they are not gutted by nervous defence counsel worrying about forthcoming trials.
    There's laws in America that prevent criminals from profiting/selling their stories. It can in some circumstances be applied retroactively.
    How about Melania's memoirs?
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,456
    edited January 2021

    HYUFD said:
    Not to speak ill of the dead, but it is a tragic loss to irony that he didn't die of Covid....
    I read the notice with some interest - complications surrounding treatment. Does not rule out COVID being the complication.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 56,920
    edited January 2021

    HYUFD said:

    Trump is going to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two. Nobody is going to do business with him.

    The thing is, even given his behaviour before the election, if he had acted maturely upon losing, I think he would have been looking making big bucks...big tv show, loads of products flogged to the faithful, etc.
    He may still do so

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348780623574405121?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348750903365406721?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348754366904193028?s=20
    The 7% who will never vote Republican ever again are not going to make it easy for whoever they pick as their candidate.
    I suspect that (ignoring youngsters who'd never been able to vote before) Trump's support includes more than 7% who'd never voted prior to 2016/2020. If Trump has run his last race, it may well be that they never vote again.

    But, equally, a lot of people specifically voted to beat Trump, and wouldn't to beat Marco Rubio or Nikki Haley.

    If Trump isn't on the ballot, I strongly suspect 2024 will see a large decline in turnout on BOTH sides. That isn't necessarily a problem for the GOP candidate. The fact is they are unlikely to need anything like 81 million votes or even 74 million to win.
    That's the thing isn't it.

    The Democratic vote increased Bigly everywhere. In Texas, the number of people voting for Biden increased from 3.9 million to 5.3m. Across large parts of America, the Democratic vote (in absolute terms) was up 30% or more.

    And that vote wasn't because Biden was an inspiring candidate, it was an anti-Trump vote.

    If 2024 is a non-crazy Republican and a dull and uninspiring Democrat, then I think turnout will be down sharply.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,774
    kle4 said:

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.

    He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
    Not if he is removed by impeachment
  • Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    That seems rather low given doing 200k the other day and the big centres opened yesterday.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,870
    Sandpit said:

    For anyone who’s worried about forgetting passwords - meet the guy who’s used up 8 of his 10 guesses at an encrypted memory stick password - containing 7,000 Bitcoin.

    https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/01/12/1415248/lost-passwords-lock-millionaires-out-of-their-bitcoin-fortunes

    Be even more tragic if he has already guessed correctly, but he mistyped without realising.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,889
    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    Not where we need it to be but not terrible either.

    The logistics should become smoother over time.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,528
    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    A bit slow for my liking but it could be Sunday data being backfilled. A daily by event date chart would be very useful.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,870
    IanB2 said:

    kle4 said:

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.

    He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
    Not if he is removed by impeachment
    He loses pension if convicted by the senate? Amusing.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,889
    kle4 said:

    IanB2 said:

    kle4 said:

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.

    He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
    Not if he is removed by impeachment
    He loses pension if convicted by the senate? Amusing.
    He'll be formally removed AFTER he's gone I think.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,528

    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    That seems rather low given doing 200k the other day and the big centres opened yesterday.
    I think it may actually be Sunday data being backfilled. I highly doubt that the actual Sunday data was ready for Monday's release very much like testing and case data I expect vaccine data to have a 2-3 day reporting lag.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,700
    Mr. Mark, hmm. Yorkshiremen sometimes use Viking slang (kecks, lekking/laking) but I've not heard people pronouncing the G at the end of 'ing'.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,451
    edited January 2021
    MaxPB said:

    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    That seems rather low given doing 200k the other day and the big centres opened yesterday.
    I think it may actually be Sunday data being backfilled. I highly doubt that the actual Sunday data was ready for Monday's release very much like testing and case data I expect vaccine data to have a 2-3 day reporting lag.
    Back to media confusion over day of jab vs day of announcement of jab...
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,477
    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    Nowhere near enough in a day. Very disappointing.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,889

    DavidL said:

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    I wonder what he will get for his memoirs. In fairness, they will be an entertaining read, assuming they are not gutted by nervous defence counsel worrying about forthcoming trials.
    There's laws in America that prevent criminals from profiting/selling their stories. It can in some circumstances be applied retroactively.
    How about Melania's memoirs?
    That's another huge payment Trump's going to have to make of money he doesn't have.
  • DavidL said:

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    I wonder what he will get for his memoirs. In fairness, they will be an entertaining read, assuming they are not gutted by nervous defence counsel worrying about forthcoming trials.
    There's laws in America that prevent criminals from profiting/selling their stories. It can in some circumstances be applied retroactively.
    How about Melania's memoirs?
    Depends if she's an indicted or unindicted co-conspirator.

    Apparently one of the reasons why Trump is in the financial doo-doo is that he used to use the Trump charity as his own money, ever since the SDNY started investigating him that's not an option for him.

    His wife and kids are all at risk from the SDNY investigation as they were/are trustees.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 56,920
    MaxPB said:

    @rcs1000 if you're about - could you enable posting of html iframes in comments?

    I don't think Vanilla supports that
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,344
    MaxPB said:

    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    That seems rather low given doing 200k the other day and the big centres opened yesterday.
    I think it may actually be Sunday data being backfilled. I highly doubt that the actual Sunday data was ready for Monday's release very much like testing and case data I expect vaccine data to have a 2-3 day reporting lag.
    Very, very patchy round here. Priti's constituency, too!
  • Pulpstar said:

    DavidL said:

    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
    I wonder what he will get for his memoirs. In fairness, they will be an entertaining read, assuming they are not gutted by nervous defence counsel worrying about forthcoming trials.
    There's laws in America that prevent criminals from profiting/selling their stories. It can in some circumstances be applied retroactively.
    How about Melania's memoirs?
    That's another huge payment Trump's going to have to make of money he doesn't have.
    It was probably in the prenup.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,528

    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    Nowhere near enough in a day. Very disappointing.
    If it's Sunday then it might be okay, if it's 150k in tomorrow's data then I'd agree we're at around half the rate we need to be at this point.
  • Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    Nowhere near enough in a day. Very disappointing.
    Probably Sunday data, though I wish they were going full pelt 7 days a week it doesn't seem too surprising.

    Lets see what tomorrow shows. I'd hope for at least a quarter of a million tomorrow.
  • Pulpstar said:


    If Trump isn't on the ballot, I strongly suspect 2024 will see a large decline in turnout on BOTH sides. That isn't necessarily a problem for the GOP candidate. The fact is they are unlikely to need anything like 81 million votes or even 74 million to win.

    Turnout dropping on both sides is a bigger issue for the GOP than the Democrats now, Democrats have higher propensity voters I think.
    Do they? My assumption is that Dems are a little less likely to vote, in line with the fact urban turnout is lower than rural. Happy to be proved wrong on that.

    I guess one thing you could say is that Dems did very well in the 2018 elections when Trump wasn't on the ballot. But, equally, they did poorly in 2014 when he wasn't either. Overall, historically, low turnout elections seem quite good for Republicans.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,451
    edited January 2021
    Maybe just my web browser, but the official gov site hasn't updated with todays new data yet. Where are we getting the vaccine data from?
  • FossFoss Posts: 992

    Maybe just my web browser, but the official gov site hasn't updated with todays new data yet. Where are we getting the vaccine data from?

    https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-vaccinations/

  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited January 2021

    Pulpstar said:


    If Trump isn't on the ballot, I strongly suspect 2024 will see a large decline in turnout on BOTH sides. That isn't necessarily a problem for the GOP candidate. The fact is they are unlikely to need anything like 81 million votes or even 74 million to win.

    Turnout dropping on both sides is a bigger issue for the GOP than the Democrats now, Democrats have higher propensity voters I think.
    Do they? My assumption is that Dems are a little less likely to vote, in line with the fact urban turnout is lower than rural. Happy to be proved wrong on that.

    I guess one thing you could say is that Dems did very well in the 2018 elections when Trump wasn't on the ballot. But, equally, they did poorly in 2014 when he wasn't either. Overall, historically, low turnout elections seem quite good for Republicans.
    Historically aren't low turnout elections good for the party challenging for the Oval Office? 2014 that was Republicans, 2018 it was the Democrats. 2022 it will be the Republicans again.
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,060
    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Trump is going to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two. Nobody is going to do business with him.

    The thing is, even given his behaviour before the election, if he had acted maturely upon losing, I think he would have been looking making big bucks...big tv show, loads of products flogged to the faithful, etc.
    He may still do so

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348780623574405121?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348750903365406721?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348754366904193028?s=20
    The 7% who will never vote Republican ever again are not going to make it easy for whoever they pick as their candidate.
    I suspect that (ignoring youngsters who'd never been able to vote before) Trump's support includes more than 7% who'd never voted prior to 2016/2020. If Trump has run his last race, it may well be that they never vote again.

    But, equally, a lot of people specifically voted to beat Trump, and wouldn't to beat Marco Rubio or Nikki Haley.

    If Trump isn't on the ballot, I strongly suspect 2024 will see a large decline in turnout on BOTH sides. That isn't necessarily a problem for the GOP candidate. The fact is they are unlikely to need anything like 81 million votes or even 74 million to win.
    That's the thing isn't it.

    The Democratic vote increased Bigly everywhere. In Texas, the number of people voting for Biden increased from 3.9 million to 5.3m. Across large parts of America, the Democratic vote (in absolute terms) was up 30% or more.

    And that vote wasn't because Biden was an inspiring candidate, it was an anti-Trump vote.

    If 2024 is a non-crazy Republican and a dull and uninspiring Democrat, then I think turnout will be down sharply.
    That is a well known phenomenon called regression to the mean.
  • Incidentally, but important: is there going to be a thread on next Saturday's CDU meeting, which will choose Angela Merkel's replacement? There's been very little coverage in the UK media about it.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,528
    The reason why I think it's actually Sunday data is because there isn't a realtime recording system in place for this. AIUI it's being done by pen and paper with each centre manually auditing then entering the figures into into a webform rather than capturing appointment data or counting the increment in main patient database.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 77,889

    Pulpstar said:


    If Trump isn't on the ballot, I strongly suspect 2024 will see a large decline in turnout on BOTH sides. That isn't necessarily a problem for the GOP candidate. The fact is they are unlikely to need anything like 81 million votes or even 74 million to win.

    Turnout dropping on both sides is a bigger issue for the GOP than the Democrats now, Democrats have higher propensity voters I think.
    Do they? My assumption is that Dems are a little less likely to vote, in line with the fact urban turnout is lower than rural. Happy to be proved wrong on that.

    I guess one thing you could say is that Dems did very well in the 2018 elections when Trump wasn't on the ballot. But, equally, they did poorly in 2014 when he wasn't either. Overall, historically, low turnout elections seem quite good for Republicans.
    Low turnout was good for the GOP previously but they've switched suburban voters for massive rural dominance (Even more so than before) & a bit more urban vote which is fine for a presidential election, less good for midterms and so forth.
    I think suburban voters are the highest propensity of all.
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    Sandpit said:

    For anyone who’s worried about forgetting passwords - meet the guy who’s used up 8 of his 10 guesses at an encrypted memory stick password - containing 7,000 Bitcoin.

    https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/01/12/1415248/lost-passwords-lock-millionaires-out-of-their-bitcoin-fortunes

    Not my area of expertise, but surely there's computer forensics kit that can image the encrypted data and so make as many copies as you need to try passwords against?

  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,661
    edited January 2021

    An interesting suggestion, and one to watch (although I think he shouldn't be using a straight line regression):

    https://twitter.com/reactionlife/status/1348988355200102400

    The negative regression slope depends entirely on the first and last datapoints.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,528
    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    @rcs1000 if you're about - could you enable posting of html iframes in comments?

    I don't think Vanilla supports that
    No worries then.
  • Incidentally, but important: is there going to be a thread on next Saturday's CDU meeting, which will choose Angela Merkel's replacement? There's been very little coverage in the UK media about it.

    Not that I am aware of.
  • MaxPB said:

    The reason why I think it's actually Sunday data is because there isn't a realtime recording system in place for this. AIUI it's being done by pen and paper with each centre manually auditing then entering the figures into into a webform rather than capturing appointment data or counting the increment in main patient database.

    Also the 7 big centres opened yesterday. Hard to believe they didn't do lots, even with possible first day teething issues.
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    HYUFD said:
    I think in the long run, it's this that will prove to be the worst news for Trumpism and the Republican party this week.
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,060

    FF43 said:

    isam said:
    Very Lib Dem Bar Charts. "Winning the vaccination race here ..."

    You don't normally use red and green, unless green means a fully compliant end state has been reached. Normally you would use a graduated scale of one colour to represent different states of completion. As the data is sourced from ourworldindata.org, we could even use the map the same organisation helpfully provides, that presents the data perfectly well:




    Why would you have an exponential rather than linear colour scale?

    Does everyone vaccinated then go on to vaccinate someone else?
    Now that is an idea. A vaccine which is itself infectious.
  • From a court reporter.

    In a High Court hearing where the judge has just asked the DWP's QC if he's competing with someone using the Netflix downstairs. Not sure I can quite get used to the new normal..

    Update: The QC is now setting off someone's Siri/Bixby etc, which is saying: "I didn't catch that. Try again?" Brief points of humour in a very, very tragic case...
  • rpjs said:

    HYUFD said:
    I think in the long run, it's this that will prove to be the worst news for Trumpism and the Republican party this week.
    $100 millions in donations no longer guaranteed.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,695
    My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.

    On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,375

    MaxPB said:

    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    That seems rather low given doing 200k the other day and the big centres opened yesterday.
    I think it may actually be Sunday data being backfilled. I highly doubt that the actual Sunday data was ready for Monday's release very much like testing and case data I expect vaccine data to have a 2-3 day reporting lag.
    Very, very patchy round here. Priti's constituency, too!
    In Southern Hampshire the vaccinations are going very well with a number of centres doing 1000+ per day
  • First @SavantaComResWestminster voting intention poll of 2021: Con 40% -1; Lab 37% -2; LibDem 8% -1; Others 15% +2 (change from 18-21 Dec)
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,597
    edited January 2021
    eristdoof said:

    FF43 said:

    isam said:
    Very Lib Dem Bar Charts. "Winning the vaccination race here ..."

    You don't normally use red and green, unless green means a fully compliant end state has been reached. Normally you would use a graduated scale of one colour to represent different states of completion. As the data is sourced from ourworldindata.org, we could even use the map the same organisation helpfully provides, that presents the data perfectly well:




    Why would you have an exponential rather than linear colour scale?

    Does everyone vaccinated then go on to vaccinate someone else?
    Now that is an idea. A vaccine which is itself infectious.
    Isn't that called Covid? The problem is that it has a few side effects and didn't pass the safety criteria.

    Perhaps if it could be genetially modified to become less lethal...
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,357
    kjh said:

    My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.

    On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.

    You are in good hands - the best comfort you can take. Good luck and hope it turns out to be a straightforward treatment.
  • Pulpstar said:


    If Trump isn't on the ballot, I strongly suspect 2024 will see a large decline in turnout on BOTH sides. That isn't necessarily a problem for the GOP candidate. The fact is they are unlikely to need anything like 81 million votes or even 74 million to win.

    Turnout dropping on both sides is a bigger issue for the GOP than the Democrats now, Democrats have higher propensity voters I think.
    Do they? My assumption is that Dems are a little less likely to vote, in line with the fact urban turnout is lower than rural. Happy to be proved wrong on that.

    I guess one thing you could say is that Dems did very well in the 2018 elections when Trump wasn't on the ballot. But, equally, they did poorly in 2014 when he wasn't either. Overall, historically, low turnout elections seem quite good for Republicans.
    Historically aren't low turnout elections good for the party challenging for the Oval Office? 2014 that was Republicans, 2018 it was the Democrats. 2022 it will be the Republicans again.
    I suppose for midterms. I think 2002 were the most recent mid-terms to buck that trend, and partly because Bush was polling reasonably well at that point (well off his post-9/11 high but still around 60%).

    For run-off elections, where these happen, the balance seems to be that run-offs are lower turnout and better for the GOP. I know there are two very recent data points which go the other way, but more broadly that seems to be an effect.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,266

    Incidentally, but important: is there going to be a thread on next Saturday's CDU meeting, which will choose Angela Merkel's replacement? There's been very little coverage in the UK media about it.

    It will be interesting, the German Federal election in September is by far the most important international election this year and if Merz is elected as Chancellor Candidate that would see a significant shift to the right in the CDU as he is more conservative than Merkel is
  • geoffw said:

    An interesting suggestion, and one to watch (although I think he shouldn't be using a straight line regression):

    https://twitter.com/reactionlife/status/1348988355200102400

    The negative regression slope depends entirely on the first and last datapoints.
    Yes, exactly. Might be a bit more meaningful in a few days' time, but even then you wouldn't expect a straight-line fit. I'd expect there to be a plateau initially (which we is perhaps what the first few points show), and then the ratio beginning to curve downwards in response to the gradual ramp-up of jabs for the over-80s, time-lagged for the intervals between receiving the vaccination and achieving good immunity + typical time lag from infection to death. I'd then expect it to flatten off and eventually start rising again as most of the over 80s will have been protected and more of the younger cohort follow them..
  • First @SavantaComResWestminster voting intention poll of 2021: Con 40% -1; Lab 37% -2; LibDem 8% -1; Others 15% +2 (change from 18-21 Dec)

    Dirty sleazy everybody on the slide.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753
    I think that the number of those who will have the vaccine will rise in the coming days and weeks. As everyone is having it, even those who are against it will know friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc who has had it and who will reassure them that all is ok (inasmuch as such reassurance is possible).

    Hence I suspect many of the waverers will fall into line.
  • First @SavantaComResWestminster voting intention poll of 2021: Con 40% -1; Lab 37% -2; LibDem 8% -1; Others 15% +2 (change from 18-21 Dec)

    Dirty sleazy everybody on the slide.
    Even the SNP
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,060
    TimT said:



    Yes, an entire thread derailed by an extended argument about colour codes on a map is not quite, but nor far off, Peak PB.

    True, but I think we can do better:

    Guys [I expect it is..], you've missed the main point. The problem isn't so much the colour scheme, it's the use of a map. The map adds absolutely nothing, it's much clearer just to use a bar chart.

    OK, off you go...
    Richard, if only you'd said pie chart, I could agree with you.
    Don't use a pie chart. If you really must use a pie chart, then it absoulutely must not be a 3-d pie chart. They distort the proportions.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,528

    MaxPB said:

    The reason why I think it's actually Sunday data is because there isn't a realtime recording system in place for this. AIUI it's being done by pen and paper with each centre manually auditing then entering the figures into into a webform rather than capturing appointment data or counting the increment in main patient database.

    Also the 7 big centres opened yesterday. Hard to believe they didn't do lots, even with possible first day teething issues.
    Yes, though it was concerning that the Birmingham one is only looking to do 2600 per day when it is fully operational. It should be at least 10x that number. Don't see the point of them if they're only going to do 18-20k each, better to have many smaller centres.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753
    kjh said:

    My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.

    On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.

    Sorry to hear that. Are you still at work and holding meetings? I have had a sore throat on and off for the past few months and realised that it is because I am sitting here shouting at zoom/teams meetings all day.

    IANAD, obvs!
  • Football...having a worse pandemic than Belgium.

    Brentford games against Bristol City & Reading postponed because of Covid-19 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/556309

    Grimsby Town: League Two club fined after Covid-19 fixture postponements - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55605876
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 49,586
    edited January 2021

    MaxPB said:

    Foss said:

    England up to 2,474,205 jabs, +140000 from yesterday.

    That seems rather low given doing 200k the other day and the big centres opened yesterday.
    I think it may actually be Sunday data being backfilled. I highly doubt that the actual Sunday data was ready for Monday's release very much like testing and case data I expect vaccine data to have a 2-3 day reporting lag.
    Back to media confusion over day of jab vs day of announcement of jab...
    From the file for 12th (today)

    "Only records with a vaccination date between the 8th December 2020 and the 11th January 2021 have been included."

    Learning the reporting lag in this will be interesting.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,266
    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Trump is going to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two. Nobody is going to do business with him.

    The thing is, even given his behaviour before the election, if he had acted maturely upon losing, I think he would have been looking making big bucks...big tv show, loads of products flogged to the faithful, etc.
    He may still do so

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348780623574405121?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348750903365406721?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348754366904193028?s=20
    The 7% who will never vote Republican ever again are not going to make it easy for whoever they pick as their candidate.
    They'll have to do some kind of New Labour rebranding and purge everyone associated with Trump.

    Isn't a problem with the US system that they don't really get a new "leader" until the next presidential primaries, which are years away? Makes it very difficult for the party to put its house in order and rebrand meantime, even if they wanted to.
    They have leaders in the House and Senate, often as Speaker of the former and Majority of the latter, even if out of power in the White House
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,357

    Mr. Mark, hmm. Yorkshiremen sometimes use Viking slang (kecks, lekking/laking) but I've not heard people pronouncing the G at the end of 'ing'.

    More a Notts/Debys/Lincs thing.
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    On vaccine rollouts here in the US, my wife now qualifies for vaccination under New York State's latest priority criteria (she's a teacher at a language school) and has an appointment for her first shot in March. Her workplace is trying to get an on-site vaccination session set up sooner if they can.

    Wife's sister's husband (brother-in-law-in-law?) who is an ER doc in Las Vegas has now had both rounds. He reported feeling pretty lousy for the twenty-four hours after the second jab (chills and lethargy) but is now fine. The COVID situation in Vegas appears to have stabilized a little: case numbers are still sky high and the ICU at his hospital is at capacity with them frequently having to overflow new ICU patients to the Emergency Room. It's not getting any better, but for now it doesn't appear to be getting noticeably worse.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,231

    HYUFD said:
    Not to speak ill of the dead, but it is a tragic loss to irony that he didn't die of Covid....
    Uncharacteristically coarse from you.
    rpjs said:

    HYUFD said:
    I think in the long run, it's this that will prove to be the worst news for Trumpism and the Republican party this week.
    Unless he's left them everything.
  • Did we ever get to the bottom of Hancock's 2million vaccinated in the last week comments?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753
    kjh said:

    My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.

    On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.

    And good to hear about your father.

    I called up her local hospital to organise my mother's second jab and was given an appointment nine weeks after her first.

    The hospital rang me up again today to organise her second jab and was surprised to hear that it was already scheduled.

    Good old NHS! Still, better twice than not at all.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    edited January 2021
    England Total 140,441 jabs of which 121,129 were first time and 19,312 second.

    Lets hope the pace picks up.
  • Did we ever get to the bottom of Hancock's 2million vaccinated in the last week comments?

    Wasn't 2 million the new total, not the last week figure?
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,609

    Selebian said:

    TimT said:

    felix said:

    In Spain - only registered nurses are allowed to give the jabs and thet are holding doses back to give the 2 injections. Meanwhile the figures are rising relentlessly and it is unlikely that anyone under 65 will receive anything possibly before the summer. I have to say the EU has not covered itself in glory on this one - and there seems no real sense of urgency. Quite bizarre.

    But the EU as a whole overtook the UK yesterday in total number of jabs given, so that's something ...
    Some Brexiteers were happy to compare EU-27 exports to UK against UK exports to EU-27 to argue that the EU had more to lose from no deal than the UK, so I'm sure they'd also admit that the EU is better than us on vaccinations :wink:
    I am absolutely delighted if they are doing more jabs than us. As long as we are all doing as many as we can it just means fewer people will die. I think comparisons are useful for highlighting where countries are seriously falling down and trying to analyse why - as with the high death rates in Italy, Spain and the UK earlier last year. I have lots of friends in France and worry hugely about them with the poor way the French rollout is being handled.

    More acutely I have lots of friends in the US and am seeing weekly comments about friends and family of them who have died. One lady I have known for 40 years or more lost both her parents and her in laws in the last month to covid. No one wins if people die unecessarilly when there is a vaccine available. No matter what country they are from.
    Well, that makes me look a bit of a tit...

    I agree, of course, with everything you say. If we hit our targets for roll out and are jabbing arms as fast as vaccine supplies are coming in and still get overtaken by others then that's great. A big task for the rich parts of the world when we've sorted out our own vaccination programmes will be ensuring that everyone else gets access too, no only because it's the right thing to do, but because we need to kill this thing off, not let it fester on in other countries and have the chance to adapt and come again.
  • SandraMcSandraMc Posts: 690
    edited January 2021
    I've just been out for a local walk and was staggered by the number of white vans around and maskless workmen going in and out of houses. Chris Whitty was asked about tradesmen being allowed to enter houses on BBC Breakfast this week and he said that it was important to keep the economy going. But given the hospitality industry has been ravaged and there has been suggestions in the press that support bubbles might be axed, should tradesmen be allowed in for non-emergency work?
  • Football...having a worse pandemic than Belgium.

    Brentford games against Bristol City & Reading postponed because of Covid-19 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/556309

    Grimsby Town: League Two club fined after Covid-19 fixture postponements - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55605876

    As much as I love football I just cannot understand why the Premier league continues, especially with the behaviour of the players on scoring a goal.

    It is just a dreadful example and must be hard to take for those who are hardly allowed out of their front door
  • Talking of crap colour schemes on graphs and charts ComRes would like to enter the contest.

    https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1349023951826145280
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Trump is going to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two. Nobody is going to do business with him.

    The thing is, even given his behaviour before the election, if he had acted maturely upon losing, I think he would have been looking making big bucks...big tv show, loads of products flogged to the faithful, etc.
    He may still do so

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348780623574405121?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348750903365406721?s=20

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1348754366904193028?s=20
    The 7% who will never vote Republican ever again are not going to make it easy for whoever they pick as their candidate.
    They'll have to do some kind of New Labour rebranding and purge everyone associated with Trump.

    Isn't a problem with the US system that they don't really get a new "leader" until the next presidential primaries, which are years away? Makes it very difficult for the party to put its house in order and rebrand meantime, even if they wanted to.
    They have leaders in the House and Senate, often as Speaker of the former and Majority of the latter, even if out of power in the White House
    Yes, but there is no real leader of the party in the British sense. Outside of holding the presidency or having a selected presidential candidate, the two party National Committee chairs are the people that the press would go to when they want an official comment from the party, but no-one would consider them to be the party "leader".
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,661

    geoffw said:

    An interesting suggestion, and one to watch (although I think he shouldn't be using a straight line regression):

    https://twitter.com/reactionlife/status/1348988355200102400

    The negative regression slope depends entirely on the first and last datapoints.
    Yes, exactly. Might be a bit more meaningful in a few days' time, but even then you wouldn't expect a straight-line fit. I'd expect there to be a plateau initially (which we is perhaps what the first few points show), and then the ratio beginning to curve downwards in response to the gradual ramp-up of jabs for the over-80s, time-lagged for the intervals between receiving the vaccination and achieving good immunity + typical time lag from infection to death. I'd then expect it to flatten off and eventually start rising again as most of the over 80s will have been protected and more of the younger cohort follow them..
    An isotonic regression would be in order. That is, a regression subject only to a monotonicity constraint.
  • FF43 said:

    isam said:
    Very Lib Dem Bar Charts. "Winning the vaccination race here ..."

    You don't normally use red and green, unless green means a fully compliant end state has been reached. Normally you would use a graduated scale of one colour to represent different states of completion. As the data is sourced from ourworldindata.org, we could even use the map the same organisation helpfully provides, that presents the data perfectly well:




    Why would you have an exponential rather than linear colour scale?

    Does everyone vaccinated then go on to vaccinate someone else?
    Depends on what you want to show. If you want to show differences in the categories with smaller numbers, an exponential graph is useful. If you want to show the differences between the categories with the higher numbers, go linear.
    Importantly, humans aren't that great at mapping colour to number, so a choropleth map is probably more useful in trying to show shapes in regional distribution rather than comparisons. This is a bad vis whether linear or exponential.

    A better use of choropleths would be the one someone posted of the UK showing the infection numbers spreading up from Kent, which tells a better story than a bar chart of local authorities does.
    The virus spreads "geographically", the vaccine doesn't really.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,360
    edited January 2021
    "Last Wednesday could easily have had a different outcome"

    Not so sure. Of course it could have had an immediate terrible outcome with lots of deaths including big time political assassinations. But only if the armed forces had turned against the constitution could there have been a seriously different outcome. The mismatch of fire power is too great.

    If in the next weeks there is a massive outbreak of local insurrections all over the USA and clear evidence that the constitutional process is being demolished by people and officials a rethink may be needed.

    Lots of people have a huge investment in civil order. Replacing it with another one is not easy in a developed society. Ask anyone trying to fix a minor matter (compared with this) like Brexit.
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,060



    He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.

    Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.

    DB=Deutsche Bahn
    Which begs the question why does Trump owe so much money to the German railway?
  • rpjs said:

    HYUFD said:
    I think in the long run, it's this that will prove to be the worst news for Trumpism and the Republican party this week.
    Rich old men die all the time and new ones keep popping up to replace them. I don't suppose anyone was really predicting an 87 year old was going to be around for that long - in US politics there just seems to be a conveyor belt of elderly tycoons with more money than they can spend wishing to engage in philanthropy and buying the favour of senior politicians.

    Personally, I'd get myself a 25 year old bride and some blue pills instead. But each to his own.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,231

    Talking of crap colour schemes on graphs and charts ComRes would like to enter the contest.

    https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1349023951826145280

    As others have replied to that Tweet - we need to know who these 'others' are that are nicking votes off everyone. Farage already?
  • kjh said:

    My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.

    On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.

    I don't think it's a particularly rare condition. It's easy to diagnose with a camera.

    Someone in my choir had it. It was temporary and they were able to resume singing. I'm not sure if that was because of treatment or because it resolved spontaneously. I hope that's at least one positive data point for you!

    --AS
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753

    Football...having a worse pandemic than Belgium.

    Brentford games against Bristol City & Reading postponed because of Covid-19 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/556309

    Grimsby Town: League Two club fined after Covid-19 fixture postponements - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55605876

    As much as I love football I just cannot understand why the Premier league continues, especially with the behaviour of the players on scoring a goal.

    It is just a dreadful example and must be hard to take for those who are hardly allowed out of their front door
    Not at all. It's fantastic to be able to watch MOTD after lunch on a Sunday. The music takes you to a very happy place.

    But if you want to turn everything off, Big G then I respect that view.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,695
    TOPPING said:

    kjh said:

    My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.

    On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.

    Sorry to hear that. Are you still at work and holding meetings? I have had a sore throat on and off for the past few months and realised that it is because I am sitting here shouting at zoom/teams meetings all day.

    IANAD, obvs!
    I'm retired. However I am (normally) very loud and talk a lot (I'm guessing that comes as no surprise). My first concern was cancer (as it appeared was my GPs concern), but it seems there are multitude of other equally horrible things it can be. I am of course ignoring the mild causes.
  • TOPPING said:

    Football...having a worse pandemic than Belgium.

    Brentford games against Bristol City & Reading postponed because of Covid-19 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/556309

    Grimsby Town: League Two club fined after Covid-19 fixture postponements - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55605876

    As much as I love football I just cannot understand why the Premier league continues, especially with the behaviour of the players on scoring a goal.

    It is just a dreadful example and must be hard to take for those who are hardly allowed out of their front door
    Not at all. It's fantastic to be able to watch MOTD after lunch on a Sunday. The music takes you to a very happy place.

    But if you want to turn everything off, Big G then I respect that view.
    No I really do not and it is good so much is on live TV, but I am making a point that does seem to set a bad example
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,456
    Not sure I am allowed to post this here. It is an article suggesting another country might learn from the way the UK has handled things (at least in relation to genomic sequencing)

    https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/2020/12/30/new-sars-cov-2-strain-in-the-united-states/
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753

    kjh said:

    My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.

    On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.

    I don't think it's a particularly rare condition. It's easy to diagnose with a camera.

    Someone in my choir had it. It was temporary and they were able to resume singing. I'm not sure if that was because of treatment or because it resolved spontaneously. I hope that's at least one positive data point for you!

    --AS
    You're in a choir?
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,360
    Scott_xP said:
    At this point Labour being anything other than miles ahead is a major headache for them.

  • Selebian said:

    Selebian said:

    TimT said:

    felix said:

    In Spain - only registered nurses are allowed to give the jabs and thet are holding doses back to give the 2 injections. Meanwhile the figures are rising relentlessly and it is unlikely that anyone under 65 will receive anything possibly before the summer. I have to say the EU has not covered itself in glory on this one - and there seems no real sense of urgency. Quite bizarre.

    But the EU as a whole overtook the UK yesterday in total number of jabs given, so that's something ...
    Some Brexiteers were happy to compare EU-27 exports to UK against UK exports to EU-27 to argue that the EU had more to lose from no deal than the UK, so I'm sure they'd also admit that the EU is better than us on vaccinations :wink:
    I am absolutely delighted if they are doing more jabs than us. As long as we are all doing as many as we can it just means fewer people will die. I think comparisons are useful for highlighting where countries are seriously falling down and trying to analyse why - as with the high death rates in Italy, Spain and the UK earlier last year. I have lots of friends in France and worry hugely about them with the poor way the French rollout is being handled.

    More acutely I have lots of friends in the US and am seeing weekly comments about friends and family of them who have died. One lady I have known for 40 years or more lost both her parents and her in laws in the last month to covid. No one wins if people die unecessarilly when there is a vaccine available. No matter what country they are from.
    Well, that makes me look a bit of a tit...

    I agree, of course, with everything you say. If we hit our targets for roll out and are jabbing arms as fast as vaccine supplies are coming in and still get overtaken by others then that's great. A big task for the rich parts of the world when we've sorted out our own vaccination programmes will be ensuring that everyone else gets access too, no only because it's the right thing to do, but because we need to kill this thing off, not let it fester on in other countries and have the chance to adapt and come again.
    Not at all. We all make sweeping statements and assume things about other posters here. No one is immune to it and it is just part and parcel of the mix. It makes life fun :smile:)

    Agree entirely about the Third World. That is why the Oxford vaccine is so important. We ned the ability to get vaccines to every part of the world as quickly as possible. That is why I am so pleased the Government realises this and has put nearly £800 million so far into the project to get 1 billion doses of vaccine to developing nations.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753
    kjh said:

    TOPPING said:

    kjh said:

    My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.

    On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.

    Sorry to hear that. Are you still at work and holding meetings? I have had a sore throat on and off for the past few months and realised that it is because I am sitting here shouting at zoom/teams meetings all day.

    IANAD, obvs!
    I'm retired. However I am (normally) very loud and talk a lot (I'm guessing that comes as no surprise). My first concern was cancer (as it appeared was my GPs concern), but it seems there are multitude of other equally horrible things it can be. I am of course ignoring the mild causes.
    Who was it who said that whenever they get a symptom, or even read about something in the papers, they are absolutely certain that they have the serious, inoperable version of it.

    Whereas the vast majority of conditions are, literally, nothing - nice post from @AlwaysSinging upthread which should be of some comfort.
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787

    rpjs said:

    HYUFD said:
    I think in the long run, it's this that will prove to be the worst news for Trumpism and the Republican party this week.
    Rich old men die all the time and new ones keep popping up to replace them. I don't suppose anyone was really predicting an 87 year old was going to be around for that long - in US politics there just seems to be a conveyor belt of elderly tycoons with more money than they can spend wishing to engage in philanthropy and buying the favour of senior politicians.

    Personally, I'd get myself a 25 year old bride and some blue pills instead. But each to his own.
    Up to a point, Lord Passmore. Adelson did stand out for the sheer scale of the donations he made, often into the hundred million at a time.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,753

    TOPPING said:

    Football...having a worse pandemic than Belgium.

    Brentford games against Bristol City & Reading postponed because of Covid-19 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/556309

    Grimsby Town: League Two club fined after Covid-19 fixture postponements - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55605876

    As much as I love football I just cannot understand why the Premier league continues, especially with the behaviour of the players on scoring a goal.

    It is just a dreadful example and must be hard to take for those who are hardly allowed out of their front door
    Not at all. It's fantastic to be able to watch MOTD after lunch on a Sunday. The music takes you to a very happy place.

    But if you want to turn everything off, Big G then I respect that view.
    No I really do not and it is good so much is on live TV, but I am making a point that does seem to set a bad example
    Big G no one else is allowed to play football so I'm not sure it makes much difference.
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