Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not much to be proud of there, as things turned out.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
If NI was combined with Income Tax, most pensioners would presumably pay more than they do currently, unless there was an adjustment to the tax free allowance. It would certainly be fairer, but would the government dare to do it?
No, they won't be brave enough to do it. Sadly.
Of course, it's not just pensioners like myself who would pay more, those living on investment income and the self-employed would also pay more.
True but it would certainly be fairer and, with more and more people working after their retirement age and more and more self employed it strikes me it is inevitable. In the end I think it would be a good thing. And I speak as someone who is both self employed and will hopefully be retired in 10-15 years.
The tax system has to reflect society today and at the moment it doesn't.
A good tax system is simple, fair, consistent and hard to avoid.
A lot of tax avoidance schemes play on the fact that the 'self employed' don't have to pay national insurance thus evading the tax and putting ever more complicated schemes together to try and sort between the genuinely self-employed and the employed . . . rather than cleaning up the system to be simple, flat, fair and consistent.
Probably doesn't help that much of the media is 'self-employed' so benefit from the current system.
Philip, this is actually wrong a lot of companies will use "self-employment" as a means of avoiding their responsibilities to pay minimum wage either because of the way the work arrives (Deliveroo) or because they are doing badly (you see it a few times a year as people try to keep the pub / shop going).
Most current tax avoidance schemes will employ you, pay minimum wage and then "loan" you the rest of the money after taking a large cut. Now I could bore for hours on this so I won't but it's remarkable how stupid most of these schemes are and how bright you would think the people using them should be.
As for the furlough schemes - sadly HMRC needed 3rd party evidence to know what needed to be paid and for the self employed that was only available from very old tax returns. A lot of people have lost out but all of the people who did lose out are due to identified and unavoidable reasons.
Whilst a few people on here peed themselves with excitement and delight that the big social media platforms purged a lot of far right accounts, I mentioned that this was not such a good thing as those involved had terrible comms security.
The Washington Post has an article this weekend saying that law enforcement are now finding it a bit more difficult to monitor because of the loss of a valuable source of info and people knowledge. What has happened is that more of these people have moved to less visible mediums.
True. But you are whittling it down to a hard-core difficult to find fanatical core. The easily influenced, radicalisable, less careful, more hot headed sympathisers won't bother. Just like ISIS and the Provos.
The next generation of systems will be upon us soon. They will be peer-to-peer and completely encrypted. That is, there will be no central servers to shut off. Instead each person who subscribes will host the data (or a part of it). Think Tor applied to social media...
How would that work with a mobile phone?
Pc not a problem - it was how edonkey and Co worked 25 years ago but mobiles have far greater restrictions on how they connect to the outside world
That sounds like the music piracy move from centralised Napster to distributed Gnutella.
I note that Gnutella is still in use 20 years after it started, pretty much as what it was.
Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not much to be proud of there, as things turned out.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
And had an interest in psychic research.
A strange man, in many ways, but there is no doubt he was very bright indeed.
My personal favourite story was when in 1923 the King asked for his advice when choosing between two candidates for PM. The choice lay between the bourgeois, boring, inexperienced Baldwin and the temperamental, able, very experienced but slightly crazy George, Lord Curzon, who married a rich American, Grace Duggan, to get her hands on her -assets. Balfour, who hated Curzon, advised the King it was necessary the PM should be in the Commons and therefore Curzon should not be chosen.
That evening he visited a friend of his who immediately asked, ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ ‘No, replied Balfour with what was described as ‘feline satisfaction,’ ‘dear George will not.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said his hostess. ‘He will be so disappointed.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Balfour. ‘He may have lost the hope of glory but he still possesses the means of Grace.’
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
Good morning everybody. While I have sympathy with Mr S's view that it would be highly desirable to let Trump fade into obscurity, there is, unfortunately for him, the matter of those whom he urged to take violent action. Why should they be jailed when the man who, from a position of power and influence encouraged them, retires to the beach and an endless supply of Big Macs?
I am sure there will be others coming for him once he is no longer in office, but in my mind it makes no sense to keep him in the headlines for months by continuing the impeachment, as well as directly contradicting Biden's stated mission of starting to bring the country back together.
I guess it's up to the new President and what he wants from his first hundred days - does he want it to be dominated by his appointments, policies and vision, or by the raw politics of trying to see his predecessor barred from further office?
Maybe a third way is for the Senate to postpone Trump's impeachment for a year - they might then choose to drop it *if* he behaves himself out of office, and doesn't let the start of Biden's term be overshadowed.
I wouldn't expect anything to be done about the case in the next x months, they could use the other arrests and cases as reason to wait if they need an excuse.
Indeed. There's also (on topic) the high probability that they don't - yet - have the numbers for conviction, and that Republicans could extensively filibuster impeachment to hold up the rest of the business of the Senate. Letting it lie and monitoring the situation is the obvious way forward.
If Biden wants to see America come back together, he needs to keep the likes of Pelosi, Schumer (and McConnell indirectly) off the TV screens as much as possible.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
Good morning everybody. While I have sympathy with Mr S's view that it would be highly desirable to let Trump fade into obscurity, there is, unfortunately for him, the matter of those whom he urged to take violent action. Why should they be jailed when the man who, from a position of power and influence encouraged them, retires to the beach and an endless supply of Big Macs?
I am sure there will be others coming for him once he is no longer in office, but in my mind it makes no sense to keep him in the headlines for months by continuing the impeachment, as well as directly contradicting Biden's stated mission of starting to bring the country back together.
I guess it's up to the new President and what he wants from his first hundred days - does he want it to be dominated by his appointments, policies and vision, or by the raw politics of trying to see his predecessor barred from further office?
Maybe a third way is for the Senate to postpone Trump's impeachment for a year - they might then choose to drop it *if* he behaves himself out of office, and doesn't let the start of Biden's term be overshadowed.
I wouldn't expect anything to be done about the case in the next x months, they could use the other arrests and cases as reason to wait if they need an excuse.
Indeed. There's also (on topic) the high probability that they don't - yet - have the numbers for conviction, and that Republicans could extensively filibuster impeachment to hold up the rest of the business of the Senate. Letting it lie and monitoring the situation is the obvious way forward.
If Biden wants to see America come back together, he needs to keep the likes of Pelosi, Schumer (and McConnell indirectly) off the TV screens as much as possible.
I wonder if the threat of voting to convict is being used behind the scenes by some Republicans to try to stop Trump doing anything too egregious (like pardoning all those involved on January the 6th).
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not much to be proud of there, as things turned out.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
And had an interest in psychic research.
A strange man, in many ways, but there is no doubt he was very bright indeed.
My personal favourite story was when in 1923 the King asked for his advice when choosing between two candidates for PM. The choice lay between the bourgeois, boring, inexperienced Baldwin and the temperamental, able, very experienced but slightly crazy George, Lord Curzon, who married a rich American, Grace Duggan, to get her hands on her -assets. Balfour, who hated Curzon, advised the King it was necessary the PM should be in the Commons and therefore Curzon should not be chosen.
That evening he visited a friend of his who immediately asked, ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ ‘No, replied Balfour with what was described as ‘feline satisfaction,’ ‘dear George will not.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said his hostess. ‘He will be so disappointed.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Balfour. ‘He may have lost the hope of glory but he still possesses the means of Grace.’
If NI was combined with Income Tax, most pensioners would presumably pay more than they do currently, unless there was an adjustment to the tax free allowance. It would certainly be fairer, but would the government dare to do it?
No, they won't be brave enough to do it. Sadly.
Of course, it's not just pensioners like myself who would pay more, those living on investment income and the self-employed would also pay more.
True but it would certainly be fairer and, with more and more people working after their retirement age and more and more self employed it strikes me it is inevitable. In the end I think it would be a good thing. And I speak as someone who is both self employed and will hopefully be retired in 10-15 years.
The tax system has to reflect society today and at the moment it doesn't.
A good tax system is simple, fair, consistent and hard to avoid.
A lot of tax avoidance schemes play on the fact that the 'self employed' don't have to pay national insurance thus evading the tax and putting ever more complicated schemes together to try and sort between the genuinely self-employed and the employed . . . rather than cleaning up the system to be simple, flat, fair and consistent.
Probably doesn't help that much of the media is 'self-employed' so benefit from the current system.
Philip, this is actually wrong a lot of companies will use "self-employment" as a means of avoiding their responsibilities to pay minimum wage either because of the way the work arrives (Deliveroo) or because they are doing badly (you see it a few times a year as people try to keep the pub / shop going).
Most current tax avoidance schemes will employ you, pay minimum wage and then "loan" you the rest of the money after taking a large cut. Now I could bore for hours on this so I won't but it's remarkable how stupid most of these schemes are and how bright you would think the people using them should be.
As for the furlough schemes - sadly HMRC needed 3rd party evidence to know what needed to be paid and for the self employed that was only available from very old tax returns. A lot of people have lost out but all of the people who did lose out are due to identified and unavoidable reasons.
There's a fair number of people who will have genuinely slipped through the cracks of the exceptional support schemes, such as those who recently went self-employed or started a company, or who were working a lot of hours on a casual basis.
It's certainly difficult to have much sympathy for those who paid themselves good money in dividends over the years, while officially earning little more than minimum wage.
This man called a mob to Washington. He urged them to attack the Capitol to "stop the steal" of an election he had comprehensively lost. He made sure that the National Guard were not on hand and seems to have inhibited other steps at intervention. He reportedly glorified in the mob's behaviour and when prevailed upon to ask them to stop he said how much he loved them. As a result of his actions both directly and indirectly 5 people are dead.
This man should be facing serious criminal charges and spending the rest of his life in jail. A rap across the fingernails by his political cohort really doesn't seem to cut it. He should be prosecuted in Federal court for sedition.
So cui bono from an impeachment trial? The only real gainer that I can see is the Republican party who have the potential to distance themselves from this traitor in ways they might otherwise find difficult. If they don't take that opportunity the Democrats might gain but at the moment the tarnish that the traitor brings on the GOP is the most that they can really hope for.
My guess is that this trial in the Senate does not proceed and Biden hands things over to the Federal Courts so it doesn't get in the way of his politics and his enemies don't get a chance to walk away from the crook they supported for so long.
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
Very interesting.
A couple of those names are known even to me, and I never did stuff more medical on diabetes than attend training days and gatecrash the occasional Diabetes UK medical conference.
Follows the expected profile of diabetes diagnosis - more occurrence amongst elderly and ethnic backgrounds. ie It adds a lot of extra stress to pre-existing vulnerabilities.
Worth noting the participlants:
"Participants 47,780 individuals (mean age 65 years, 55% male) in hospital with COVID-19 and discharged alive by 31 August 2020, matched to controls on demographic and clinical characteristics."
and that it is over a followup period of 140 days.
F1: had another £1 free bet and nothing else sprang to mind so I put it on Ferrari for the Constructors' at 13. As I ramble in my pre-season tosh (link below), I suspect Ferrari will be the team with the best season relative to 2021.
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
This is troubling because it suggests excess pressure on the NHS long after the initial crisis of dealing with newly infected patients has passed. Do we know if this risk is relatively short term? Presumably not yet. It also suggests a significant number of deaths that are not caught by the 28 day cut off, roughly 5k in that study.
It makes me even keener to avoid this virus until I have had my jab. The next few months are going to be tricky.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Trump would lose his pension, funding for travel, maybe even his Secret Service protection.
Following impeachment, he could be bared from holding office again, though that would a separate, additional vote.
Much rumblings about the planned revert to -£20 a week Universal Credit from red wall Tory MPs. An interesting juncture for the party where for the first time it is hearing from its own people the facts: Universal Credit is not enough to live on.
It seems that UC has been designed in a way to be as demeaning and as punitive as possible, so how the party handles its own people telling the truth will be interesting. Ordinarily they shove some patronising southern MP on to insist that poor people are to blame. Now that said poor people vote Tory what do they do?
Whilst a few people on here peed themselves with excitement and delight that the big social media platforms purged a lot of far right accounts, I mentioned that this was not such a good thing as those involved had terrible comms security.
The Washington Post has an article this weekend saying that law enforcement are now finding it a bit more difficult to monitor because of the loss of a valuable source of info and people knowledge. What has happened is that more of these people have moved to less visible mediums.
True. But you are whittling it down to a hard-core difficult to find fanatical core. The easily influenced, radicalisable, less careful, more hot headed sympathisers won't bother. Just like ISIS and the Provos.
The next generation of systems will be upon us soon. They will be peer-to-peer and completely encrypted. That is, there will be no central servers to shut off. Instead each person who subscribes will host the data (or a part of it). Think Tor applied to social media...
How would that work with a mobile phone?
Pc not a problem - it was how edonkey and Co worked 25 years ago but mobiles have far greater restrictions on how they connect to the outside world
That sounds like the music piracy move from centralised Napster to distributed Gnutella.
I note that Gnutella is still in use 20 years after it started, pretty much as what it was.
Mobile phones are now quite powerful computers, with large amounts of storage (by historical standards)
So having them as nodes in a network is not as silly as it would have seemed, even 5 years ago.
F1: had another £1 free bet and nothing else sprang to mind so I put it on Ferrari for the Constructors' at 13. As I ramble in my pre-season tosh (link below), I suspect Ferrari will be the team with the best season relative to 2021.
Is he going to do a Rosberg, is he still arguing about how many days he needs to spend with the sponsors, or was the deal done & dusted months ago and they're keeping us all waiting like a 24-hour news network when nothing's happening?
Thinking about laying him for the championship at this point.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Trump would lose his pension, funding for travel, maybe even his Secret Service protection.
Following impeachment, he could be bared from holding office again, though that would a separate, additional vote.
Don't the loss of pension and security only apply if he leaves office by way of conviction at an impeachment trial - as opposed to leaving office because his term ends, as it will on Wednesday?
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
This is troubling because it suggests excess pressure on the NHS long after the initial crisis of dealing with newly infected patients has passed. Do we know if this risk is relatively short term? Presumably not yet. It also suggests a significant number of deaths that are not caught by the 28 day cut off, roughly 5k in that study.
It makes me even keener to avoid this virus until I have had my jab. The next few months are going to be tricky.
Yes, the implications for ongoing NHS capacity, let alone catch up capacity to deal with waiting lists are quite serious.
Table 1 on the demography of the admissions may be of interest to the data wranglers on PB. I think it is of all covid admissions in the first wave in England.
What is going on with the BBC and their headline for Phil Spector, it keeps changing. Now back to simply "Jailed music producer Phil Spector dies".
More and more senior people are getting brought into the discussion about it and giving contradictory instructions perhaps.
Its definitely feels like that. It is they really don't want to just write convicted murderer in the headline.
But he was an artistically talented, violent sociopathic murder.
This whole issue could have been solved by not reporting his death other than in the equivalent of a tiny column section at the bottom of page 17.
The evening BBC Radio 4 news even decided to play about 30 seconds of music as part of their headlines. Not only was this not suitable as a headline, it definitely skirted the issue.
Specter's 'Wall of Sound' revolutionised popular music, his death would have been frontpage had he never committed the murder.
His death should still be frontpage but obviously with details of his crime added too
Interesting that Spector's music was never blacklisted from radio unlike Gary Glitter's. Perhaps being "merely" the producer gave enough plausible cover for stations to keep playing it.
Phil Spector produced the Beatles' Let it be album. If you blacklist his albums you blacklist the Beatles.
And the downside is?
Careful. You’ll be dissing Radiohead like it was Yesterday next.
Whilst a few people on here peed themselves with excitement and delight that the big social media platforms purged a lot of far right accounts, I mentioned that this was not such a good thing as those involved had terrible comms security.
The Washington Post has an article this weekend saying that law enforcement are now finding it a bit more difficult to monitor because of the loss of a valuable source of info and people knowledge. What has happened is that more of these people have moved to less visible mediums.
True. But you are whittling it down to a hard-core difficult to find fanatical core. The easily influenced, radicalisable, less careful, more hot headed sympathisers won't bother. Just like ISIS and the Provos.
The next generation of systems will be upon us soon. They will be peer-to-peer and completely encrypted. That is, there will be no central servers to shut off. Instead each person who subscribes will host the data (or a part of it). Think Tor applied to social media...
How would that work with a mobile phone?
Pc not a problem - it was how edonkey and Co worked 25 years ago but mobiles have far greater restrictions on how they connect to the outside world
That sounds like the music piracy move from centralised Napster to distributed Gnutella.
I note that Gnutella is still in use 20 years after it started, pretty much as what it was.
Mobile phones are now quite powerful computers, with large amounts of storage (by historical standards)
So having them as nodes in a network is not as silly as it would have seemed, even 5 years ago.
Which would be fine if they weren't battery powered. Anything that stops the battery lasting the day will get deleted from phones in very short order, and Apple in particular make it very difficult for apps running in the background to use too much power.
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
This is very alarming: "...the rate ratio of adverse events (contrasting COVID-19 cases and matched controls) was greater in individuals aged <70 years than ≥ 70 years for all event types (Figure 3), with the biggest differences in rate ratios being observed for death (14.1 [11.0 to 18.3] for <70 years versus 7.7 [7.1 to 8.3] for ≥ 70 years) and respiratory disease (10.5 [9.7 to 11.4] for <70 years versus 4.6 [4.3 to 4.8] for ≥ 70 years)."</i>
The younger ex-Covid patients had their chances of adverse effects worsened more with respect to those who had not had covid than the older ones did.
F1: had another £1 free bet and nothing else sprang to mind so I put it on Ferrari for the Constructors' at 13. As I ramble in my pre-season tosh (link below), I suspect Ferrari will be the team with the best season relative to 2021.
Is he going to do a Rosberg, is he still arguing about how many days he needs to spend with the sponsors, or was the deal done & dusted months ago and they're keeping us all waiting like a 24-hour news network when nothing's happening?
Thinking about laying him for the championship at this point.
Betting against Hamilton rarely goes well. I suspect that the argument may be about the length of his contract. I suspect Hamilton wants 1 more year/championship and out. I suspect Mercedes want a longer commitment to help with the evolution of their cars.
I suspect the Senate will vote to convict Trump but not by the 2/3 majority needed to remove him from office. However as he will already have left office and Biden will be President by then that is irrelevant anyway.
The Senate will also then vote to prevent Trump from running for public office again, which will by that stage be far more significant
I thought he couldn't be barred from public office unless convicted first?
Even if he could, and I doubt it, he shouldn't be unless convicted.
Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not much to be proud of there, as things turned out.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
And had an interest in psychic research.
A strange man, in many ways, but there is no doubt he was very bright indeed.
My personal favourite story was when in 1923 the King asked for his advice when choosing between two candidates for PM. The choice lay between the bourgeois, boring, inexperienced Baldwin and the temperamental, able, very experienced but slightly crazy George, Lord Curzon, who married a rich American, Grace Duggan, to get her hands on her -assets. Balfour, who hated Curzon, advised the King it was necessary the PM should be in the Commons and therefore Curzon should not be chosen.
That evening he visited a friend of his who immediately asked, ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ ‘No, replied Balfour with what was described as ‘feline satisfaction,’ ‘dear George will not.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said his hostess. ‘He will be so disappointed.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Balfour. ‘He may have lost the hope of glory but he still possesses the means of Grace.’
Rayleigh was interested in psychic matters too. Not unusual a century ago, of course.
This man called a mob to Washington. He urged them to attack the Capitol to "stop the steal" of an election he had comprehensively lost. He made sure that the National Guard were not on hand and seems to have inhibited other steps at intervention. He reportedly glorified in the mob's behaviour and when prevailed upon to ask them to stop he said how much he loved them. As a result of his actions both directly and indirectly 5 people are dead.
This man should be facing serious criminal charges and spending the rest of his life in jail. A rap across the fingernails by his political cohort really doesn't seem to cut it. He should be prosecuted in Federal court for sedition.
So cui bono from an impeachment trial? The only real gainer that I can see is the Republican party who have the potential to distance themselves from this traitor in ways they might otherwise find difficult. If they don't take that opportunity the Democrats might gain but at the moment the tarnish that the traitor brings on the GOP is the most that they can really hope for.
My guess is that this trial in the Senate does not proceed and Biden hands things over to the Federal Courts so it doesn't get in the way of his politics and his enemies don't get a chance to walk away from the crook they supported for so long.
It's not an either/or though, is it? The most important thing, it seems to me, is deterrence. Trump only needed to be about 20% cleverer to have won a second term. Future Trumps who think they can learn from his mistakes need discouraging.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
Good morning everybody. While I have sympathy with Mr S's view that it would be highly desirable to let Trump fade into obscurity, there is, unfortunately for him, the matter of those whom he urged to take violent action. Why should they be jailed when the man who, from a position of power and influence encouraged them, retires to the beach and an endless supply of Big Macs?
I am sure there will be others coming for him once he is no longer in office, but in my mind it makes no sense to keep him in the headlines for months by continuing the impeachment, as well as directly contradicting Biden's stated mission of starting to bring the country back together.
I guess it's up to the new President and what he wants from his first hundred days - does he want it to be dominated by his appointments, policies and vision, or by the raw politics of trying to see his predecessor barred from further office?
Maybe a third way is for the Senate to postpone Trump's impeachment for a year - they might then choose to drop it *if* he behaves himself out of office, and doesn't let the start of Biden's term be overshadowed.
I wouldn't expect anything to be done about the case in the next x months, they could use the other arrests and cases as reason to wait if they need an excuse.
Longer the wait the less likely they are to convict, already a low shot. Arrests and cases would tell them they dont need to act, even though the process is designed to be separate from that.
F1: had another £1 free bet and nothing else sprang to mind so I put it on Ferrari for the Constructors' at 13. As I ramble in my pre-season tosh (link below), I suspect Ferrari will be the team with the best season relative to 2021.
Is he going to do a Rosberg, is he still arguing about how many days he needs to spend with the sponsors, or was the deal done & dusted months ago and they're keeping us all waiting like a 24-hour news network when nothing's happening?
Thinking about laying him for the championship at this point.
I don't know what is going on. From the stories emanating from the paddock he isn't going to get any more money. He managed to get the team to relivery and push his social messages last year - hard to imagine what other demands he could realistically be pushing for. There isn't a better team he is playing footsie with where the threat of leaving is being held over Toto's head. So what is the hold-up in signing?
My take? There are other worlds for Sir Lewis to conquer. Just take a sabbatical year. Hamilton has been vocal about the challenges of having to live in a locked-down bubble last year, and its rapidly looking like the 2021 season will be very similar.
I wonder how much Williams need to release Russell from his contract...?
This man called a mob to Washington. He urged them to attack the Capitol to "stop the steal" of an election he had comprehensively lost. He made sure that the National Guard were not on hand and seems to have inhibited other steps at intervention. He reportedly glorified in the mob's behaviour and when prevailed upon to ask them to stop he said how much he loved them. As a result of his actions both directly and indirectly 5 people are dead.
This man should be facing serious criminal charges and spending the rest of his life in jail. A rap across the fingernails by his political cohort really doesn't seem to cut it. He should be prosecuted in Federal court for sedition.
So cui bono from an impeachment trial? The only real gainer that I can see is the Republican party who have the potential to distance themselves from this traitor in ways they might otherwise find difficult. If they don't take that opportunity the Democrats might gain but at the moment the tarnish that the traitor brings on the GOP is the most that they can really hope for.
My guess is that this trial in the Senate does not proceed and Biden hands things over to the Federal Courts so it doesn't get in the way of his politics and his enemies don't get a chance to walk away from the crook they supported for so long.
It's not an either/or though, is it? The most important thing, it seems to me, is deterrence. Trump only needed to be about 20% cleverer to have won a second term. Future Trumps who think they can learn from his mistakes need discouraging.
I am not sure and the matter has never been tested but I can certainly see complaints of double jeopardy if he were tried in the Senate and then tried in the Court for basically the same thing. The argument that it was no longer possible to get a fair trial if the Senate convicted would no doubt be run too.
Mr. Sandpit, you may've missed it yesterday but I said something similar.
I'd be more inclined to back Bottas and Russell rather than straight laying Hamilton.
The prices to back those are (or were, yesterday) 13 with Betfair and 17 with Ladbrokes, respectively, whilst Hamilton's lay value is about 1.45.
My other bets (Red Bull/Ferrari to win, Leclerc for the title each way) would also benefit from such a turn of events.
I do not think it'll happen. But the absence of Hamilton will make 2021's F1 season much more interesting if it does.
I did indeed miss it yesterday, thanks. Damn work interfering with PB for most of the day!
13 on Bottas seems good value, given he has the best car.
Another option might be Hulkenburg, who's out of a drive and did well as a sub last year. I assume he's 1000/1 at the moment without checking. Although it's possible that Russell goes to Mercedes, with a large cheque going in the other direction, and Hulk ends up at the back of the field.
I am not sure and the matter has never been tested but I can certainly see complaints of double jeopardy if he were tried in the Senate and then tried in the Court for basically the same thing. The argument that it was no longer possible to get a fair trial if the Senate convicted would no doubt be run too.
He would be tried in the Senate for sedition.
If he is tried in court it will be for other things
Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not much to be proud of there, as things turned out.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
And had an interest in psychic research.
A strange man, in many ways, but there is no doubt he was very bright indeed.
My personal favourite story was when in 1923 the King asked for his advice when choosing between two candidates for PM. The choice lay between the bourgeois, boring, inexperienced Baldwin and the temperamental, able, very experienced but slightly crazy George, Lord Curzon, who married a rich American, Grace Duggan, to get her hands on her -assets. Balfour, who hated Curzon, advised the King it was necessary the PM should be in the Commons and therefore Curzon should not be chosen.
That evening he visited a friend of his who immediately asked, ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ ‘No, replied Balfour with what was described as ‘feline satisfaction,’ ‘dear George will not.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said his hostess. ‘He will be so disappointed.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Balfour. ‘He may have lost the hope of glory but he still possesses the means of Grace.’
Rayleigh was interested in psychic matters too. Not unusual a century ago, of course.
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
This is troubling because it suggests excess pressure on the NHS long after the initial crisis of dealing with newly infected patients has passed. Do we know if this risk is relatively short term? Presumably not yet. It also suggests a significant number of deaths that are not caught by the 28 day cut off, roughly 5k in that study.
It makes me even keener to avoid this virus until I have had my jab. The next few months are going to be tricky.
This is precisely why you need to err on the side of caution with novel viruses.
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
This is very alarming: "...the rate ratio of adverse events (contrasting COVID-19 cases and matched controls) was greater in individuals aged <70 years than ≥ 70 years for all event types (Figure 3), with the biggest differences in rate ratios being observed for death (14.1 [11.0 to 18.3] for <70 years versus 7.7 [7.1 to 8.3] for ≥ 70 years) and respiratory disease (10.5 [9.7 to 11.4] for <70 years versus 4.6 [4.3 to 4.8] for ≥ 70 years)."</i>
The younger ex-Covid patients had their chances of adverse effects worsened more with respect to those who had not had covid than the older ones did.
And this table points to considerable stress on the NHS going forwards. (Imagine just how bad it would have been if we'd gone with the Great Barrington Declaration...)
I fully support the 0.48% property tax to replace council tax and stamp duty. I'm a young home owner in the Red Wall and would likely have to pay less than £400 a year! As a side effect I reckon it would compress house prices, making cheaper houses slightly more desirable and expensive ones less so.
I think you are a great example of how regressive Council tax is even in its current form, I guess you are paying over £1000 a year at the moment so your current Council tax is 1.2% of the house value - way more than the 0.2% it often is down south.
I know some people won't like it but there are always winners and loses and for a lot of people this Change would be a win.
The system seems sensible but the problem is that as you point out the rate proposed is far too low - probably by 25-30%. To match the amount I am paying in Council tax the rate would need to be at least 0.6%.
And there is the fundamental problem of regional house price differences. Why should someone living in a terrace in London pay 5 times (or more) more for their services than someone living in the same size house in Sunderland?
The only way this works is if the levels are decided on a regional basis - which then means councils are either short of money or charging way too much for the services they provide.
I am not sure and the matter has never been tested but I can certainly see complaints of double jeopardy if he were tried in the Senate and then tried in the Court for basically the same thing. The argument that it was no longer possible to get a fair trial if the Senate convicted would no doubt be run too.
He would be tried in the Senate for sedition.
If he is tried in court it will be for other things
Sedition is what he should be tried in the courts for. And the arguments will be run (with or without merit, they will run for years) even if they come up with something slightly different.
This man called a mob to Washington. He urged them to attack the Capitol to "stop the steal" of an election he had comprehensively lost. He made sure that the National Guard were not on hand and seems to have inhibited other steps at intervention. He reportedly glorified in the mob's behaviour and when prevailed upon to ask them to stop he said how much he loved them. As a result of his actions both directly and indirectly 5 people are dead.
This man should be facing serious criminal charges and spending the rest of his life in jail. A rap across the fingernails by his political cohort really doesn't seem to cut it. He should be prosecuted in Federal court for sedition.
So cui bono from an impeachment trial? The only real gainer that I can see is the Republican party who have the potential to distance themselves from this traitor in ways they might otherwise find difficult. If they don't take that opportunity the Democrats might gain but at the moment the tarnish that the traitor brings on the GOP is the most that they can really hope for.
My guess is that this trial in the Senate does not proceed and Biden hands things over to the Federal Courts so it doesn't get in the way of his politics and his enemies don't get a chance to walk away from the crook they supported for so long.
It's not an either/or though, is it? The most important thing, it seems to me, is deterrence. Trump only needed to be about 20% cleverer to have won a second term. Future Trumps who think they can learn from his mistakes need discouraging.
I am not sure and the matter has never been tested but I can certainly see complaints of double jeopardy if he were tried in the Senate and then tried in the Court for basically the same thing. The argument that it was no longer possible to get a fair trial if the Senate convicted would no doubt be run too.
One thing you can rely on, Trump will never acknowledge he can get a fair trial.
"Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me...."
Whilst a few people on here peed themselves with excitement and delight that the big social media platforms purged a lot of far right accounts, I mentioned that this was not such a good thing as those involved had terrible comms security.
The Washington Post has an article this weekend saying that law enforcement are now finding it a bit more difficult to monitor because of the loss of a valuable source of info and people knowledge. What has happened is that more of these people have moved to less visible mediums.
True. But you are whittling it down to a hard-core difficult to find fanatical core. The easily influenced, radicalisable, less careful, more hot headed sympathisers won't bother. Just like ISIS and the Provos.
The next generation of systems will be upon us soon. They will be peer-to-peer and completely encrypted. That is, there will be no central servers to shut off. Instead each person who subscribes will host the data (or a part of it). Think Tor applied to social media...
How would that work with a mobile phone?
Pc not a problem - it was how edonkey and Co worked 25 years ago but mobiles have far greater restrictions on how they connect to the outside world
That sounds like the music piracy move from centralised Napster to distributed Gnutella.
I note that Gnutella is still in use 20 years after it started, pretty much as what it was.
Mobile phones are now quite powerful computers, with large amounts of storage (by historical standards)
So having them as nodes in a network is not as silly as it would have seemed, even 5 years ago.
Which would be fine if they weren't battery powered. Anything that stops the battery lasting the day will get deleted from phones in very short order, and Apple in particular make it very difficult for apps running in the background to use too much power.
Such a network would rely on the eventually-uptodate model. You'd definitely benefit from having it running on permanently connected machines as well, especially at the early stages of low take-up, but it would be doable, I think.
I am not sure and the matter has never been tested but I can certainly see complaints of double jeopardy if he were tried in the Senate and then tried in the Court for basically the same thing. The argument that it was no longer possible to get a fair trial if the Senate convicted would no doubt be run too.
He would be tried in the Senate for sedition.
If he is tried in court it will be for other things
Sedition is what he should be tried in the courts for. And the arguments will be run (with or without merit, they will run for years) even if they come up with something slightly different.
The impeachment process was carefully structured to avoid it being used for actual punishment.
If you want to punish Trump, that needs to be done in a court.
This was a reaction to the use of Parliament and acts of attainder, in the UK, as a political weapon.
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
F1: had another £1 free bet and nothing else sprang to mind so I put it on Ferrari for the Constructors' at 13. As I ramble in my pre-season tosh (link below), I suspect Ferrari will be the team with the best season relative to 2021.
Is he going to do a Rosberg, is he still arguing about how many days he needs to spend with the sponsors, or was the deal done & dusted months ago and they're keeping us all waiting like a 24-hour news network when nothing's happening?
Thinking about laying him for the championship at this point.
I don't know what is going on. From the stories emanating from the paddock he isn't going to get any more money. He managed to get the team to relivery and push his social messages last year - hard to imagine what other demands he could realistically be pushing for. There isn't a better team he is playing footsie with where the threat of leaving is being held over Toto's head. So what is the hold-up in signing?
My take? There are other worlds for Sir Lewis to conquer. Just take a sabbatical year. Hamilton has been vocal about the challenges of having to live in a locked-down bubble last year, and its rapidly looking like the 2021 season will be very similar.
I wonder how much Williams need to release Russell from his contract...?
He did indeed live like a hermit for most of last year, in his big camper van with only his trainer for company - what her husband thought of that arrangement is anyone's guess!
He took one week off in the middle of the season, then relaxed a bit (and promptly got sick!) once the championship was done. Even for an incredibly well paid elite sportsman, I could understand why he wouldn't wish to repeat that this year.
Maybe he is arguing for a sabbatical year to take stock of everything, or maybe the team need to honour all the sponsor days to which they agreed to send a driver last year, this year.
Williams probably don't need too much in the grand scheme of things, the cost of buying Russell out would be an order of magnitude less than the cost of re-hiring Lewis.
I can imagine McConnell implicitly encouraging abstentions, i.e. no shows. (Trump is "guilty" if two thirds _of those present_ vote thus. Of course there'll be a good few Senators determined to support Trump. But a Senator might be unsure whether it helps their or their Party's electoral prospects for Trump to be got out of the way.
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
This is troubling because it suggests excess pressure on the NHS long after the initial crisis of dealing with newly infected patients has passed. Do we know if this risk is relatively short term? Presumably not yet. It also suggests a significant number of deaths that are not caught by the 28 day cut off, roughly 5k in that study.
It makes me even keener to avoid this virus until I have had my jab. The next few months are going to be tricky.
Yes, the implications for ongoing NHS capacity, let alone catch up capacity to deal with waiting lists are quite serious.
Table 1 on the demography of the admissions may be of interest to the data wranglers on PB. I think it is of all covid admissions in the first wave in England.
The other thing that occurred to me is that a significant percentage of the deaths will be myocardial infractions out with a hospital setting so the overall percentage with serious health issues is even higher than the 29.4%.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
Good morning everybody. While I have sympathy with Mr S's view that it would be highly desirable to let Trump fade into obscurity, there is, unfortunately for him, the matter of those whom he urged to take violent action. Why should they be jailed when the man who, from a position of power and influence encouraged them, retires to the beach and an endless supply of Big Macs?
I am sure there will be others coming for him once he is no longer in office, but in my mind it makes no sense to keep him in the headlines for months by continuing the impeachment, as well as directly contradicting Biden's stated mission of starting to bring the country back together.
I guess it's up to the new President and what he wants from his first hundred days - does he want it to be dominated by his appointments, policies and vision, or by the raw politics of trying to see his predecessor barred from further office?
Maybe a third way is for the Senate to postpone Trump's impeachment for a year - they might then choose to drop it *if* he behaves himself out of office, and doesn't let the start of Biden's term be overshadowed.
I wouldn't expect anything to be done about the case in the next x months, they could use the other arrests and cases as reason to wait if they need an excuse.
Longer the wait the less likely they are to convict, already a low shot. Arrests and cases would tell them they dont need to act, even though the process is designed to be separate from that.
The choice is more between acting immediately and holding back for a month or so to let Biden get his administration off to a clean start. I think the Dems will opt for the latter.
Up to now the feds will have been holding back a bit, keeping their cards close to their chest until Trump is out of office rather than forewarn him of the people in the Republican political establishment who he might feel the need to pardon if he could be sure who they would act against. As the feds get to work on the low life, more and more disturbing accounts of the background to the Capitol insurgency will come to light in the next month, with more details of the planning and links to Republicans in Congress likely to be revealed. The public reaction won't immediately mellow, rather it'll turn to a clamour for people to be held to account, including the man at the very top who instigated the whole thing.
I can imagine McConnell implicitly encouraging abstentions, i.e. no shows. (Trump is "guilty" if two thirds _of those present_ vote thus. Of course there'll be a good few Senators determined to support Trump. But a Senator might be unsure whether it helps their or their Party's electoral prospects for Trump to be got out of the way.
I just cannot see that. No one abstaining in this will get a pass from the MAGA crowd when it comes to seeking retribution (far from certain voting to a acquit would for some).
I fully support the 0.48% property tax to replace council tax and stamp duty. I'm a young home owner in the Red Wall and would likely have to pay less than £400 a year! As a side effect I reckon it would compress house prices, making cheaper houses slightly more desirable and expensive ones less so.
I think you are a great example of how regressive Council tax is even in its current form, I guess you are paying over £1000 a year at the moment so your current Council tax is 1.2% of the house value - way more than the 0.2% it often is down south.
I know some people won't like it but there are always winners and loses and for a lot of people this Change would be a win.
The system seems sensible but the problem is that as you point out the rate proposed is far too low - probably by 25-30%. To match the amount I am paying in Council tax the rate would need to be at least 0.6%.
And there is the fundamental problem of regional house price differences. Why should someone living in a terrace in London pay 5 times (or more) more for their services than someone living in the same size house in Sunderland?
The only way this works is if the levels are decided on a regional basis - which then means councils are either short of money or charging way too much for the services they provide.
The rates would have to be determined locally, otherwise everyone in the south of the country or a big city will be massive losers. It would go down about as well as the poll tax did in Scotland, and be the best news the Lib Dems have ever had!
Morning all. Why the media obsession with '24/7' vaccinations?
Vaccine supply is the limiting factor at the moment, not the number of hours in the day. And better to have two teams working a day shift than one of them working nights.
There is perhaps a corner case of hospital staff on a night shift, but for the vast majority an appointment between 8am and 8pm will be most suitable.
Let's hope we can get to 500k/day this week and keep it going.
This man called a mob to Washington. He urged them to attack the Capitol to "stop the steal" of an election he had comprehensively lost. He made sure that the National Guard were not on hand and seems to have inhibited other steps at intervention. He reportedly glorified in the mob's behaviour and when prevailed upon to ask them to stop he said how much he loved them. As a result of his actions both directly and indirectly 5 people are dead.
This man should be facing serious criminal charges and spending the rest of his life in jail. A rap across the fingernails by his political cohort really doesn't seem to cut it. He should be prosecuted in Federal court for sedition.
So cui bono from an impeachment trial? The only real gainer that I can see is the Republican party who have the potential to distance themselves from this traitor in ways they might otherwise find difficult. If they don't take that opportunity the Democrats might gain but at the moment the tarnish that the traitor brings on the GOP is the most that they can really hope for.
My guess is that this trial in the Senate does not proceed and Biden hands things over to the Federal Courts so it doesn't get in the way of his politics and his enemies don't get a chance to walk away from the crook they supported for so long.
It's not an either/or though, is it? The most important thing, it seems to me, is deterrence. Trump only needed to be about 20% cleverer to have won a second term. Future Trumps who think they can learn from his mistakes need discouraging.
I am not sure and the matter has never been tested but I can certainly see complaints of double jeopardy if he were tried in the Senate and then tried in the Court for basically the same thing. The argument that it was no longer possible to get a fair trial if the Senate convicted would no doubt be run too.
"Fair trial" is the bugger, isn't it? How do you find an unbiased jury given the percentage of the pop that thinks the election was stolen? It seems to me you either have to arrange for non-jury trials or concede that the system gives de facto immunity to people like Trump.
I fully support the 0.48% property tax to replace council tax and stamp duty. I'm a young home owner in the Red Wall and would likely have to pay less than £400 a year! As a side effect I reckon it would compress house prices, making cheaper houses slightly more desirable and expensive ones less so.
I think you are a great example of how regressive Council tax is even in its current form, I guess you are paying over £1000 a year at the moment so your current Council tax is 1.2% of the house value - way more than the 0.2% it often is down south.
I know some people won't like it but there are always winners and loses and for a lot of people this Change would be a win.
The system seems sensible but the problem is that as you point out the rate proposed is far too low - probably by 25-30%. To match the amount I am paying in Council tax the rate would need to be at least 0.6%.
And there is the fundamental problem of regional house price differences. Why should someone living in a terrace in London pay 5 times (or more) more for their services than someone living in the same size house in Sunderland?
The only way this works is if the levels are decided on a regional basis - which then means councils are either short of money or charging way too much for the services they provide.
The rates would have to be determined locally, otherwise everyone in the south of the country or a big city will be massive losers. It would go down about as well as the poll tax did in Scotland, and be the best news the Lib Dems have ever had!
It's a wealth tax by another name - and we need one of those.
Plus the Red Wall seats will do well out of it while the Lib Dems may gain votes but they won't win enough to win any seats.
Morning all. Why the media obsession with '24/7' vaccinations?
Vaccine supply is the limiting factor at the moment, not the number of hours in the day. And better to have two teams working a day shift than one of them working nights.
There is perhaps a corner case of hospital staff on a night shift, but for the vast majority an appointment between 8am and 8pm will be most suitable.
Let's hope we can get to 500k/day this week and keep it going.
Because the media love bashing the government, rather than cheering them on.
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
Welcome to the new world - it will get easier though as people discover how to fill the form in and then write instructions on how to do it.
Longer term I suspect better websites will have it all prepopulated as part of the returns process.
I couldn't resist having a pop at the odious Simon Clarke. He voted against feeding hungry kids, attacked his constituents who were upset by it, and then attacked the "instant outrage" of people tweeting their disgust at the Chartwells food parcel. People should "wait for the facts before jumping in" he bleated. The facts that this was a genuine food parcel and there were plenty of other examples.
So now he's attacking Cornwall Council who say they will feed hungry kids in half term as the government won't. "We ARE feeding them" with a grant he insists. Then has his arse handed to him on a plate by someone quoting the government's own FAQ for it.
Morning all. Why the media obsession with '24/7' vaccinations?
Vaccine supply is the limiting factor at the moment, not the number of hours in the day. And better to have two teams working a day shift than one of them working nights.
There is perhaps a corner case of hospital staff on a night shift, but for the vast majority an appointment between 8am and 8pm will be most suitable.
Let's hope we can get to 500k/day this week and keep it going.
Did you ever have a boss who thought shouting, and ra-ra stuff made things faster?
That thinking.
One boss got absolutely furious because I wasn't on the phone/doing something to Fix The Problem. The problem was in the server farm. The guys who had access were in the there, actually fixing it. Phoning them would have slowed them down. The idea that we had to wait until they had finished and phoned me was an anathema.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
Yes I agree. It's all rather pointless virtue signalling, and anti-democractic virtue signalling at that, since if the people want to vote for him in 2024, why shouldn't they be able to? It's not as if he's an unknown quantity.
I couldn't resist having a pop at the odious Simon Clarke. He voted against feeding hungry kids, attacked his constituents who were upset by it, and then attacked the "instant outrage" of people tweeting their disgust at the Chartwells food parcel. People should "wait for the facts before jumping in" he bleated. The facts that this was a genuine food parcel and there were plenty of other examples.
So now he's attacking Cornwall Council who say they will feed hungry kids in half term as the government won't. "We ARE feeding them" with a grant he insists. Then has his arse handed to him on a plate by someone quoting the government's own FAQ for it.
Morning all. Why the media obsession with '24/7' vaccinations?
Vaccine supply is the limiting factor at the moment, not the number of hours in the day. And better to have two teams working a day shift than one of them working nights.
There is perhaps a corner case of hospital staff on a night shift, but for the vast majority an appointment between 8am and 8pm will be most suitable.
Let's hope we can get to 500k/day this week and keep it going.
The supply bottlenecks seem to be largely ironed out now (that's why we're getting optimistic predictions of numbers) so the next bottleneck may be provision. Allegra Stratton gave a bit of a hostage to fortune by saying dismissively that she doubted there was much demand for late-night vaccinations, at which lots of us said hey, we want you to get on with whatever is fastest.
We'll see when the first 24/7 centre opens this week. If there's both supply and demand, why not? If there isn't, fine.
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
Is this brexit though? At the post office last week the notice said posting anywhere.
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
Is this brexit though? At the post office last week the notice said posting anywhere.
Obviously. Never had to do that before when returning anything to a EU country.
Morning all. Why the media obsession with '24/7' vaccinations?
Vaccine supply is the limiting factor at the moment, not the number of hours in the day. And better to have two teams working a day shift than one of them working nights.
There is perhaps a corner case of hospital staff on a night shift, but for the vast majority an appointment between 8am and 8pm will be most suitable.
Let's hope we can get to 500k/day this week and keep it going.
The supply bottlenecks seem to be largely ironed out now (that's why we're getting optimistic predictions of numbers) so the next bottleneck may be provision. Allegra Stratton gave a bit of a hostage to fortune by saying dismissively that she doubted there was much demand for late-night vaccinations, at which lots of us said hey, we want you to get on with whatever is fastest.
We'll see when the first 24/7 centre opens this week. If there's both supply and demand, why not? If there isn't, fine.
i would much rather they concentrate on getting more places that are nearer people open.
Did I hear correctly that Raaaaaab said yesterday that people may not get their Covid booster inside the 12 weeks? Its already been extended significantly out to 12 weeks, isn't there a risk that it loses effectiveness by going even longer?
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
Welcome to the new world - it will get easier though as people discover how to fill the form in and then write instructions on how to do it.
Longer term I suspect better websites will have it all prepopulated as part of the returns process.
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
Welcome to the new world - it will get easier though as people discover how to fill the form in and then write instructions on how to do it.
Longer term I suspect better websites will have it all prepopulated as part of the returns process.
Dummies Guide to EU customs declarations in the works?
It also suggests a significant number of deaths that are not caught by the 28 day cut off, roughly 5k in that study.
As I understand it, the 28 day cut-off was chosen so that the numbers in two groups would roughly cancel out:
Group A: Those who death is caused by Covid but not within 28 days of testing positive. Group B: Those who die within 28 days of testing positive, but who would have died anyway because their death was due to another cause not related to Covid.
So those 5k people (who form part of Group A) will have been counted in the figures, being "represented" by 5k people in Group B.
I don't know what calculations were done to arrive at the figure of 28 days, or whether the statistics are being monitored to check that the numbers in the two groups are roughly equal - maybe others can comment?
(None of this is to play down the seriousness of the implications for the NHS suggested by the report.)
Did I hear correctly that Raaaaaab said yesterday that people may not get their Covid booster inside the 12 weeks? Its already been extended significantly out to 12 weeks, isn't there a risk that it loses effectiveness by going even longer?
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
If that's it I can understand why some on his side see it as no more than show boating. I don't believe it's fully understood. I've been listening to interviews where people have been implying non impeachment was akin to letting a murderer walk away scot- free.
It's the presidential equivalent to a criminal court case. Would you stop a criminal case if the criminal retired?
But there are no consequences to being found guilty as far as I can tell other than humiliation which he is immune to. I'm surprised he's not encouraging it. Keeps him in the public gaze longer
He`s not been found guilty of anything. There will be a separate vote for that.
My understanding was that 2/3rds needed for the impeachment and 1/2 needed for a guilty verdict - but I`m confused because I don`t think the impeachment vote reached 2/3rds.
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
Is this brexit though? At the post office last week the notice said posting anywhere.
Yes, it's Brexit-related. The sign would previously have referred to posting to anywhere outside the EU customs union, but now the customs rules apply to anywhere outside GB.
Over time, the vendor will likely put a pre-filled return form in with the goods, as the details will be mostly the same as their own customs form for the import, generated electronically and stuck to the label.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
If that's it I can understand why some on his side see it as no more than show boating. I don't believe it's fully understood. I've been listening to interviews where people have been implying non impeachment was akin to letting a murderer walk away scot- free.
It's the presidential equivalent to a criminal court case. Would you stop a criminal case if the criminal retired?
But there are no consequences to being found guilty as far as I can tell other than humiliation which he is immune to. I'm surprised he's not encouraging it. Keeps him in the public gaze longer
He`s not been found guilty of anything. There will be a separate vote for that.
My understanding was that 2/3rds needed for the impeachment and 1/2 needed for a guilty verdict - but I`m confused because I don`t think the impeachment vote reached 2/3rds.
Can anyone clarify?
The decision to impeach in the House was a simple majority. The decision to convict requires 2/3 of the Senate. Once convicted a majority can determine the punishment.
Morning all. Why the media obsession with '24/7' vaccinations?
Vaccine supply is the limiting factor at the moment, not the number of hours in the day. And better to have two teams working a day shift than one of them working nights.
There is perhaps a corner case of hospital staff on a night shift, but for the vast majority an appointment between 8am and 8pm will be most suitable.
Let's hope we can get to 500k/day this week and keep it going.
The supply bottlenecks seem to be largely ironed out now (that's why we're getting optimistic predictions of numbers) so the next bottleneck may be provision. Allegra Stratton gave a bit of a hostage to fortune by saying dismissively that she doubted there was much demand for late-night vaccinations, at which lots of us said hey, we want you to get on with whatever is fastest.
We'll see when the first 24/7 centre opens this week. If there's both supply and demand, why not? If there isn't, fine.
The 24/7 stuff may have a use later in the vaccination campaign, when we are trying to get the take up rate as high as possible.
At the moment, there is no shortage of people to be vaccinated or people to vaccinate them.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
Yes I agree. It's all rather pointless virtue signalling, and anti-democractic virtue signalling at that, since if the people want to vote for him in 2024, why shouldn't they be able to? It's not as if he's an unknown quantity.
The Constitution thinks different, and democracy has its limits.
To add to the arguments in the header, the critical point in all this is that McConnell has very little to lose. This will be his last 6 year term in the Senate, taking him to the age of almost 85 by 2026. He clearly wants the Republican Party to break with Trump, as do many other senators even though they won't want to be seen to be instigating the process at this point.
So don't read too much into the "plan to listen to the evidence" spin from McConnell. It's the pragmatic option as it doesn't constrain him at all whilst guarding his back against a challenge for his Senate minority leadership, which might follow next week from Trump loyalists if he made a public declaration now in favour of impeachment. Meanwhile he can make his views known behind the scenes. It seems nailed on that he'll want to impeach if he thinks there is at least a chance of it happening.
In evaluating the bet, the real question is therefore this. When McConnell, a month or two down the line and still secure in his position as Senate minority leader, does eventually commit in favour of impeachment after the hearings have taken their course, how many Republican senators can he take with him? McConnell's action would give many others a lot of political cover to act.
At that point, I think the odds will be better than 27% in favour of impeachment, so at this point it would pay to take those odds on Betfair.
Did I hear correctly that Raaaaaab said yesterday that people may not get their Covid booster inside the 12 weeks? Its already been extended significantly out to 12 weeks, isn't there a risk that it loses effectiveness by going even longer?
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
Raab never said that in the interview I listened to (Ridge), but I do think that this is potentially a massive issue for the government if this does blow up.
Of course they cannot say that all people having had the first jab will get the second within 12 weeks because no doubt some will not respond, not attend appointments etc.
If the government doesn`t organise the supply so as to ensure that the second jabs are available for all within 12 weeks they will be crucified.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
If that's it I can understand why some on his side see it as no more than show boating. I don't believe it's fully understood. I've been listening to interviews where people have been implying non impeachment was akin to letting a murderer walk away scot- free.
It's the presidential equivalent to a criminal court case. Would you stop a criminal case if the criminal retired?
But there are no consequences to being found guilty as far as I can tell other than humiliation which he is immune to. I'm surprised he's not encouraging it. Keeps him in the public gaze longer
He`s not been found guilty of anything. There will be a separate vote for that.
My understanding was that 2/3rds needed for the impeachment and 1/2 needed for a guilty verdict - but I`m confused because I don`t think the impeachment vote reached 2/3rds.
Can anyone clarify?
The decision to impeach in the House was a simple majority. The decision to convict requires 2/3 of the Senate. Once convicted a majority can determine the punishment.
Ah - thanks. In that case conviction is unlikely to reach 2/3rds would you say?
Did I hear correctly that Raaaaaab said yesterday that people may not get their Covid booster inside the 12 weeks? Its already been extended significantly out to 12 weeks, isn't there a risk that it loses effectiveness by going even longer?
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
Raab never said that in the interview I listened to (Ridge), but I do think that this is potentially a massive issue for the government if this does blow up.
Of course they cannot say that all people having had the first jab will get the second within 12 weeks because no doubt some will not respond, not attend appointments etc.
If the government doesn`t organise the supply so as to ensure that the second jabs are available for all within 12 weeks they will be crucified.
I have no problem at all with people missing the 12 week deadline due to their own issues. Its if it becomes policy that it becomes a massive risk. If the efficacy of the 1st dose drops the longer you wait for the 2nd dose then is there any point racing to get first doses out over second?
Did I hear correctly that Raaaaaab said yesterday that people may not get their Covid booster inside the 12 weeks? Its already been extended significantly out to 12 weeks, isn't there a risk that it loses effectiveness by going even longer?
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
Mr Zahawi also insisted that second doses of vaccines will be given within 12 weeks of the first - after Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab refused to confirm yesterday that would be the case.
Some people might fall through the cracks but it looks like policy to have second dose after 12 weeks, thank fuck.
My guess is Raab didn't want to say something out of place, and by trying to not do that... he did.
Did I hear correctly that Raaaaaab said yesterday that people may not get their Covid booster inside the 12 weeks? Its already been extended significantly out to 12 weeks, isn't there a risk that it loses effectiveness by going even longer?
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
Raab never said that in the interview I listened to (Ridge), but I do think that this is potentially a massive issue for the government if this does blow up.
Of course they cannot say that all people having had the first jab will get the second within 12 weeks because no doubt some will not respond, not attend appointments etc.
If the government doesn`t organise the supply so as to ensure that the second jabs are available for all within 12 weeks they will be crucified.
Interestingly the US are doing things differently - prioritising 2nd doses over new first innoculations. See Fauci at around 16 minutes in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv9GY8l6fAo
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
Is this brexit though? At the post office last week the notice said posting anywhere.
Yes because previously they had to say when posting articles outside the EU. Now we aren't in the EU those forms are required to send anything abroad..
It also suggests a significant number of deaths that are not caught by the 28 day cut off, roughly 5k in that study.
As I understand it, the 28 day cut-off was chosen so that the numbers in two groups would roughly cancel out:
Group A: Those who death is caused by Covid but not within 28 days of testing positive. Group B: Those who die within 28 days of testing positive, but who would have died anyway because their death was due to another cause not related to Covid.
So those 5k people (who form part of Group A) will have been counted in the figures, being "represented" by 5k people in Group B.
I don't know what calculations were done to arrive at the figure of 28 days, or whether the statistics are being monitored to check that the numbers in the two groups are roughly equal - maybe others can comment?
(None of this is to play down the seriousness of the implications for the NHS suggested by the report.)
I suspect that group B is going to prove somewhat smaller than group A if there is this level of post hospital treatment morbidity. What I understood them to be "balancing" were those who succumbed on ventilators etc but after the 28 days from infection. This is additional and I suspect was not even contemplated.
But the methodology of who counts and who doesn't is sufficiently complex to make international comparisons suspect at best and useless at worst.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
If that's it I can understand why some on his side see it as no more than show boating. I don't believe it's fully understood. I've been listening to interviews where people have been implying non impeachment was akin to letting a murderer walk away scot- free.
It's the presidential equivalent to a criminal court case. Would you stop a criminal case if the criminal retired?
But there are no consequences to being found guilty as far as I can tell other than humiliation which he is immune to. I'm surprised he's not encouraging it. Keeps him in the public gaze longer
He`s not been found guilty of anything. There will be a separate vote for that.
My understanding was that 2/3rds needed for the impeachment and 1/2 needed for a guilty verdict - but I`m confused because I don`t think the impeachment vote reached 2/3rds.
Can anyone clarify?
The decision to impeach in the House was a simple majority. The decision to convict requires 2/3 of the Senate. Once convicted a majority can determine the punishment.
Ah - thanks. In that case conviction is unlikely to reach 2/3rds would you say?
Unless, as I was saying earlier, the GOP see this as their chance to run away from Trump and claim nothing to do with me guv.
I have to fill in a customs declaration to simply return some trousers that I bought online that happened to be shipped from Germany ffs. It's not a simple form at all.
Look on the bright side, this is the sort of thing that is going to generate a lot of work for the legal profession.
Did I hear correctly that Raaaaaab said yesterday that people may not get their Covid booster inside the 12 weeks? Its already been extended significantly out to 12 weeks, isn't there a risk that it loses effectiveness by going even longer?
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
Mr Zahawi also insisted that second doses of vaccines will be given within 12 weeks of the first - after Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab refused to confirm yesterday that would be the case.
Some people might fall through the cracks but it looks like policy to have second dose after 12 weeks, thank fuck.
My guess is Raab didn't want to say something out of place, and by trying to not do that... he did.
Did I hear correctly that Raaaaaab said yesterday that people may not get their Covid booster inside the 12 weeks? Its already been extended significantly out to 12 weeks, isn't there a risk that it loses effectiveness by going even longer?
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
I've was told last week to expect my second injection in 8 weeks.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
If that's it I can understand why some on his side see it as no more than show boating. I don't believe it's fully understood. I've been listening to interviews where people have been implying non impeachment was akin to letting a murderer walk away scot- free.
It's the presidential equivalent to a criminal court case. Would you stop a criminal case if the criminal retired?
But there are no consequences to being found guilty as far as I can tell other than humiliation which he is immune to. I'm surprised he's not encouraging it. Keeps him in the public gaze longer
He`s not been found guilty of anything. There will be a separate vote for that.
My understanding was that 2/3rds needed for the impeachment and 1/2 needed for a guilty verdict - but I`m confused because I don`t think the impeachment vote reached 2/3rds.
Can anyone clarify?
The decision to impeach in the House was a simple majority. The decision to convict requires 2/3 of the Senate. Once convicted a majority can determine the punishment.
I`ve still not quite got this.
According to HYUFD (below) "I suspect the Senate will vote to convict Trump but not by the 2/3 majority needed to remove him from office. "
So you are saying 2/3rds needed to convict but HYUFD is saying (I think) 50% to convict.
It also suggests a significant number of deaths that are not caught by the 28 day cut off, roughly 5k in that study.
As I understand it, the 28 day cut-off was chosen so that the numbers in two groups would roughly cancel out:
Group A: Those who death is caused by Covid but not within 28 days of testing positive. Group B: Those who die within 28 days of testing positive, but who would have died anyway because their death was due to another cause not related to Covid.
So those 5k people (who form part of Group A) will have been counted in the figures, being "represented" by 5k people in Group B.
I don't know what calculations were done to arrive at the figure of 28 days, or whether the statistics are being monitored to check that the numbers in the two groups are roughly equal - maybe others can comment?
(None of this is to play down the seriousness of the implications for the NHS suggested by the report.)
I suspect that group B is going to prove somewhat smaller than group A if there is this level of post hospital treatment morbidity. What I understood them to be "balancing" were those who succumbed on ventilators etc but after the 28 days from infection. This is additional and I suspect was not even contemplated.
But the methodology of who counts and who doesn't is sufficiently complex to make international comparisons suspect at best and useless at worst.
I'm not quite sure how we got to 28 days, specifically. 30 days is almost a standard for these kinds of things, i.e. post-surgery mortality is normally measured as deaths within 30 days; hospitals do not get paid for emergency readmissions within 30 days of an index admission...
The point is that you need to have a cut-off somewhere, otherwise everyone who ever tests positive from covid will eventually be in the covid death figures.
This is a remarkably stupid statement from Drakeford: ...We will be using all the Oxford vaccine that we get as we get it, the Pfizer vaccine has to last us until into the first week of February.
So we have to provide it on a week-by-week basis. What you can’t do is to try and stand up a system which uses all the vaccine you’ve got in week one and then have nothing to offer for the next four weeks...
You absolutely should be trying to use up all the vaccine you have as quickly as possible. Spreading it out makes no sense at all.
"Recent studies in England also illustrate this link between obesity and income. Of the 10 worst areas in terms of overweight or obese children, half are also in the worst 10 for child poverty. England’s most obese council, Brent, is also its ninth poorest, whereas England’s wealthiest council, Richmond, despite being a neighbouring council in London, is one of the sprightliest, with a relatively low rate of obesity. And England’s poorest council? Another London borough, Newham, is also the eighth most affected by childhood obesity."
This is a remarkably stupid statement from Drakeford: ...We will be using all the Oxford vaccine that we get as we get it, the Pfizer vaccine has to last us until into the first week of February.
So we have to provide it on a week-by-week basis. What you can’t do is to try and stand up a system which uses all the vaccine you’ve got in week one and then have nothing to offer for the next four weeks...
You absolutely should be trying to use up all the vaccine you have as quickly as possible. Spreading it out makes no sense at all.
It can do if you've got a plan such as Fauci was describing where you want to hold back vaccine to ensure second doses. But I doubt that was what Drakeford was describing
Anyhoo, the WSJ says enough GOP senators won't vote to convict to secure a successful conviction because of this argument advanced by Senator Tom Cotton.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an influential conservative and possible contender for the White House in 2024, says the Senate lacks constitutional authority to hold an impeachment trial for President Trump once he leaves office.
“The Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president. The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office — not an inquest against private citizens,” Cotton said in a statement Wednesday evening.
Cotton’s rationale for not voting to convict Trump once he leaves office will likely become political cover for other GOP senators to vote against a House-passed article of impeachment, even if they think Trump might have committed impeachable offenses.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced earlier Wednesday that Trump’s second impeachment trial will not begin until after the Senate returns from a recess scheduled to end on Jan. 19. That means the soonest the trial could begin would be 1 p.m. Jan. 20, the same day President-elect Joe Biden is sworn-in.
“Given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachment trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week. The Senate has held three presidential impeachment trials. They have lasted 83 days, 37 days, and 21 days respectively,” McConnell said.
This is a remarkably stupid statement from Drakeford: ...We will be using all the Oxford vaccine that we get as we get it, the Pfizer vaccine has to last us until into the first week of February.
So we have to provide it on a week-by-week basis. What you can’t do is to try and stand up a system which uses all the vaccine you’ve got in week one and then have nothing to offer for the next four weeks...
You absolutely should be trying to use up all the vaccine you have as quickly as possible. Spreading it out makes no sense at all.
It can do if you've got a plan such as Fauci was describing where you want to hold back vaccine to ensure second doses. But I doubt that was what Drakeford was describing
sounds reasonable if you believe in providing the promised second dose.
Would someone be able to explain 'impeachment'? As I understand it it's not a criminal trial so there are no consequences to being found guilty. There's no power to jail fine etc so what is the result beyond humiliation?
Usually, it would be to have him removed from office - doing it after his term has expired seems to be little more than virtue signalling.
They could, after conviction, vote to bar him from standing for office in the future, but the guy will be 78 at the time of the next election (although Biden is older and will be 81). He’s unlikely to stand again, although he may well support someone else’s campaign.
I’m still of the opinion that they should let him disappear to wherever he wants to go. More than anything else he wants to be the centre of attention, leading the news every night as he has done for the past half a decade. Everyone simply ignoring him once he leaves office would be his worst nightmare.
If that's it I can understand why some on his side see it as no more than show boating. I don't believe it's fully understood. I've been listening to interviews where people have been implying non impeachment was akin to letting a murderer walk away scot- free.
It's the presidential equivalent to a criminal court case. Would you stop a criminal case if the criminal retired?
But there are no consequences to being found guilty as far as I can tell other than humiliation which he is immune to. I'm surprised he's not encouraging it. Keeps him in the public gaze longer
He`s not been found guilty of anything. There will be a separate vote for that.
My understanding was that 2/3rds needed for the impeachment and 1/2 needed for a guilty verdict - but I`m confused because I don`t think the impeachment vote reached 2/3rds.
Can anyone clarify?
The decision to impeach in the House was a simple majority. The decision to convict requires 2/3 of the Senate. Once convicted a majority can determine the punishment.
I`ve still not quite got this.
According to HYUFD (below) "I suspect the Senate will vote to convict Trump but not by the 2/3 majority needed to remove him from office. "
So you are saying 2/3rds needed to convict but HYUFD is saying (I think) 50% to convict.
The latest polling suggests the GOP will hold the Georgia Senate seats in the run off and I agree.
Biden was not elected on the back of a Democratic landslide to sweep the US to the left, he was elected purely to beat Trump and Georgia swing voters having voted Biden to beat the incumbent President will now vote GOP to ensure the woke, far left does not get too much power and the Senate stays GOP.
Hence Biden will be the first incoming President not to take office with his party in control of both chambers of Congress since Bush Snr in 1989. That would be about right, US voters want him to compromise with the GOP and to reduce the polarisation
Of course Trump looks worse an worse? But mens rea? I doubt it.
If I were the "prosecution", I would be thinking about two things: 1. Concrete actions which Trump took which which he intended to, or was reckless as to whether they had the effect of, facilitating an attack on the Government (i.e. a higher standard of act, but a somewhat more easily proven intent); or 2. Statements, omissions, or wider actions of that nature which Trump took knowing and intending that they would facilitate an attack on the Government (vice versa).
With all this recent history of trying to cancel certain historic figures for their actions, regardless of the good they did. The bad they did is the only important characteristics.
Interesting emphasis from the Guardian on Spector...
Phil Spector brought joy to pop music – and misery to so many lives
Comments
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
Most current tax avoidance schemes will employ you, pay minimum wage and then "loan" you the rest of the money after taking a large cut. Now I could bore for hours on this so I won't but it's remarkable how stupid most of these schemes are and how bright you would think the people using them should be.
As for the furlough schemes - sadly HMRC needed 3rd party evidence to know what needed to be paid and for the self employed that was only available from very old tax returns. A lot of people have lost out but all of the people who did lose out are due to identified and unavoidable reasons.
I note that Gnutella is still in use 20 years after it started, pretty much as what it was.
A strange man, in many ways, but there is no doubt he was very bright indeed.
My personal favourite story was when in 1923 the King asked for his advice when choosing between two candidates for PM. The choice lay between the bourgeois, boring, inexperienced Baldwin and the temperamental, able, very experienced but slightly crazy George, Lord Curzon, who married a rich American, Grace Duggan, to get her hands on her -assets. Balfour, who hated Curzon, advised the King it was necessary the PM should be in the Commons and therefore Curzon should not be chosen.
That evening he visited a friend of his who immediately asked, ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ ‘No, replied Balfour with what was described as ‘feline satisfaction,’ ‘dear George will not.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said his hostess. ‘He will be so disappointed.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Balfour. ‘He may have lost the hope of glory but he still possesses the means of Grace.’
If Biden wants to see America come back together, he needs to keep the likes of Pelosi, Schumer (and McConnell indirectly) off the TV screens as much as possible.
https://twitter.com/kamleshkhunti/status/1350779893659930624?s=19
A 5% rate of new diabetes, but the major problem seemed to be cardiac events. Myocarditis is a fairly common Covid-19 feature. One of the references cites a similar study in the USA VA, with similar readmission and mortality. It would be interesting to see a similar study on non admitted patients.
It's certainly difficult to have much sympathy for those who paid themselves good money in dividends over the years, while officially earning little more than minimum wage.
This man should be facing serious criminal charges and spending the rest of his life in jail. A rap across the fingernails by his political cohort really doesn't seem to cut it. He should be prosecuted in Federal court for sedition.
So cui bono from an impeachment trial? The only real gainer that I can see is the Republican party who have the potential to distance themselves from this traitor in ways they might otherwise find difficult. If they don't take that opportunity the Democrats might gain but at the moment the tarnish that the traitor brings on the GOP is the most that they can really hope for.
My guess is that this trial in the Senate does not proceed and Biden hands things over to the Federal Courts so it doesn't get in the way of his politics and his enemies don't get a chance to walk away from the crook they supported for so long.
A couple of those names are known even to me, and I never did stuff more medical on diabetes than attend training days and gatecrash the occasional Diabetes UK medical conference.
Follows the expected profile of diabetes diagnosis - more occurrence amongst elderly and ethnic backgrounds. ie It adds a lot of extra stress to pre-existing vulnerabilities.
Worth noting the participlants:
"Participants 47,780 individuals (mean age 65 years, 55% male) in hospital with COVID-19 and discharged alive by 31 August 2020, matched to controls on demographic and clinical characteristics."
and that it is over a followup period of 140 days.
F1: had another £1 free bet and nothing else sprang to mind so I put it on Ferrari for the Constructors' at 13. As I ramble in my pre-season tosh (link below), I suspect Ferrari will be the team with the best season relative to 2021.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2021/01/2021-f1-season-preamble.html
It makes me even keener to avoid this virus until I have had my jab. The next few months are going to be tricky.
Following impeachment, he could be bared from holding office again, though that would a separate, additional vote.
It seems that UC has been designed in a way to be as demeaning and as punitive as possible, so how the party handles its own people telling the truth will be interesting. Ordinarily they shove some patronising southern MP on to insist that poor people are to blame. Now that said poor people vote Tory what do they do?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/18/boris-johnson-cannot-level-up-if-he-cuts-universal-credit-top-up-says-thinktank
https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/1350919278317469696
So having them as nodes in a network is not as silly as it would have seemed, even 5 years ago.
Is he going to do a Rosberg, is he still arguing about how many days he needs to spend with the sponsors, or was the deal done & dusted months ago and they're keeping us all waiting like a 24-hour news network when nothing's happening?
Thinking about laying him for the championship at this point.
Table 1 on the demography of the admissions may be of interest to the data wranglers on PB. I think it is of all covid admissions in the first wave in England.
Demo tape by Radiohead featuring unheard tracks up for auction
Handwritten notes and a label design by frontman Thom Yorke are included in the cassette, which is expected to fetch £2,000.
https://news.sky.com/story/demo-tape-by-radiohead-featuring-unheard-tracks-up-for-auction-12191185
"...the rate ratio of adverse events (contrasting COVID-19 cases and matched controls) was greater in individuals aged <70 years than ≥ 70 years for all event types (Figure 3), with the biggest differences in rate ratios being observed for death (14.1 [11.0 to 18.3] for <70 years versus 7.7 [7.1 to 8.3] for ≥ 70 years) and respiratory disease (10.5 [9.7 to 11.4] for <70 years versus 4.6 [4.3 to 4.8] for ≥ 70 years)."</i>
The younger ex-Covid patients had their chances of adverse effects worsened more with respect to those who had not had covid than the older ones did.
I'd be more inclined to back Bottas and Russell rather than straight laying Hamilton.
The prices to back those are (or were, yesterday) 13 with Betfair and 17 with Ladbrokes, respectively, whilst Hamilton's lay value is about 1.45.
My other bets (Red Bull/Ferrari to win, Leclerc for the title each way) would also benefit from such a turn of events.
I do not think it'll happen. But the absence of Hamilton will make 2021's F1 season much more interesting if it does.
My take? There are other worlds for Sir Lewis to conquer. Just take a sabbatical year. Hamilton has been vocal about the challenges of having to live in a locked-down bubble last year, and its rapidly looking like the 2021 season will be very similar.
I wonder how much Williams need to release Russell from his contract...?
13 on Bottas seems good value, given he has the best car.
Another option might be Hulkenburg, who's out of a drive and did well as a sub last year. I assume he's 1000/1 at the moment without checking. Although it's possible that Russell goes to Mercedes, with a large cheque going in the other direction, and Hulk ends up at the back of the field.
If he is tried in court it will be for other things
https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/06/16/arthur-conan-doyle-psychic/
(Imagine just how bad it would have been if we'd gone with the Great Barrington Declaration...)
And there is the fundamental problem of regional house price differences. Why should someone living in a terrace in London pay 5 times (or more) more for their services than someone living in the same size house in Sunderland?
The only way this works is if the levels are decided on a regional basis - which then means councils are either short of money or charging way too much for the services they provide.
"Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me...."
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/17/capitol-riot-video-the-new-yorker-newsroom-vpx.cnn
If you want to punish Trump, that needs to be done in a court.
This was a reaction to the use of Parliament and acts of attainder, in the UK, as a political weapon.
He took one week off in the middle of the season, then relaxed a bit (and promptly got sick!) once the championship was done. Even for an incredibly well paid elite sportsman, I could understand why he wouldn't wish to repeat that this year.
Maybe he is arguing for a sabbatical year to take stock of everything, or maybe the team need to honour all the sponsor days to which they agreed to send a driver last year, this year.
Williams probably don't need too much in the grand scheme of things, the cost of buying Russell out would be an order of magnitude less than the cost of re-hiring Lewis.
Up to now the feds will have been holding back a bit, keeping their cards close to their chest until Trump is out of office rather than forewarn him of the people in the Republican political establishment who he might feel the need to pardon if he could be sure who they would act against. As the feds get to work on the low life, more and more disturbing accounts of the background to the Capitol insurgency will come to light in the next month, with more details of the planning and links to Republicans in Congress likely to be revealed. The public reaction won't immediately mellow, rather it'll turn to a clamour for people to be held to account, including the man at the very top who instigated the whole thing.
Vaccine supply is the limiting factor at the moment, not the number of hours in the day. And better to have two teams working a day shift than one of them working nights.
There is perhaps a corner case of hospital staff on a night shift, but for the vast majority an appointment between 8am and 8pm will be most suitable.
Let's hope we can get to 500k/day this week and keep it going.
Plus the Red Wall seats will do well out of it while the Lib Dems may gain votes but they won't win enough to win any seats.
Longer term I suspect better websites will have it all prepopulated as part of the returns process.
So now he's attacking Cornwall Council who say they will feed hungry kids in half term as the government won't. "We ARE feeding them" with a grant he insists. Then has his arse handed to him on a plate by someone quoting the government's own FAQ for it.
https://twitter.com/ianinthornaby/status/1351091819757633536
That thinking.
One boss got absolutely furious because I wasn't on the phone/doing something to Fix The Problem. The problem was in the server farm. The guys who had access were in the there, actually fixing it. Phoning them would have slowed them down. The idea that we had to wait until they had finished and phoned me was an anathema.
We'll see when the first 24/7 centre opens this week. If there's both supply and demand, why not? If there isn't, fine.
Its genuinely brilliant that we are getting this many people vaccinated this quickly. Best not to reduce the effectiveness of this by delaying the 2nd jab to get more people the first jab. Surely...
Group A: Those who death is caused by Covid but not within 28 days of testing positive.
Group B: Those who die within 28 days of testing positive, but who would have died anyway because their death was due to another cause not related to Covid.
So those 5k people (who form part of Group A) will have been counted in the figures, being "represented" by 5k people in Group B.
I don't know what calculations were done to arrive at the figure of 28 days, or whether the statistics are being monitored to check that the numbers in the two groups are roughly equal - maybe others can comment?
(None of this is to play down the seriousness of the implications for the NHS suggested by the report.)
My understanding was that 2/3rds needed for the impeachment and 1/2 needed for a guilty verdict - but I`m confused because I don`t think the impeachment vote reached 2/3rds.
Can anyone clarify?
Over time, the vendor will likely put a pre-filled return form in with the goods, as the details will be mostly the same as their own customs form for the import, generated electronically and stuck to the label.
At the moment, there is no shortage of people to be vaccinated or people to vaccinate them.
So don't read too much into the "plan to listen to the evidence" spin from McConnell. It's the pragmatic option as it doesn't constrain him at all whilst guarding his back against a challenge for his Senate minority leadership, which might follow next week from Trump loyalists if he made a public declaration now in favour of impeachment. Meanwhile he can make his views known behind the scenes. It seems nailed on that he'll want to impeach if he thinks there is at least a chance of it happening.
In evaluating the bet, the real question is therefore this. When McConnell, a month or two down the line and still secure in his position as Senate minority leader, does eventually commit in favour of impeachment after the hearings have taken their course, how many Republican senators can he take with him? McConnell's action would give many others a lot of political cover to act.
At that point, I think the odds will be better than 27% in favour of impeachment, so at this point it would pay to take those odds on Betfair.
Of course they cannot say that all people having had the first jab will get the second within 12 weeks because no doubt some will not respond, not attend appointments etc.
If the government doesn`t organise the supply so as to ensure that the second jabs are available for all within 12 weeks they will be crucified.
Some people might fall through the cracks but it looks like policy to have second dose after 12 weeks, thank fuck.
My guess is Raab didn't want to say something out of place, and by trying to not do that... he did.
But the methodology of who counts and who doesn't is sufficiently complex to make international comparisons suspect at best and useless at worst.
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1350815417363795970
According to HYUFD (below) "I suspect the Senate will vote to convict Trump but not by the 2/3 majority needed to remove him from office. "
So you are saying 2/3rds needed to convict but HYUFD is saying (I think) 50% to convict.
The point is that you need to have a cut-off somewhere, otherwise everyone who ever tests positive from covid will eventually be in the covid death figures.
...We will be using all the Oxford vaccine that we get as we get it, the Pfizer vaccine has to last us until into the first week of February.
So we have to provide it on a week-by-week basis. What you can’t do is to try and stand up a system which uses all the vaccine you’ve got in week one and then have nothing to offer for the next four weeks...
You absolutely should be trying to use up all the vaccine you have as quickly as possible. Spreading it out makes no sense at all.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/poverty-individual-choice-driving-obesity-health-a8219831.html
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an influential conservative and possible contender for the White House in 2024, says the Senate lacks constitutional authority to hold an impeachment trial for President Trump once he leaves office.
“The Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president. The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office — not an inquest against private citizens,” Cotton said in a statement Wednesday evening.
Cotton’s rationale for not voting to convict Trump once he leaves office will likely become political cover for other GOP senators to vote against a House-passed article of impeachment, even if they think Trump might have committed impeachable offenses.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced earlier Wednesday that Trump’s second impeachment trial will not begin until after the Senate returns from a recess scheduled to end on Jan. 19. That means the soonest the trial could begin would be 1 p.m. Jan. 20, the same day President-elect Joe Biden is sworn-in.
“Given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachment trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week. The Senate has held three presidential impeachment trials. They have lasted 83 days, 37 days, and 21 days respectively,” McConnell said.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/534179-cotton-senate-lacks-authority-to-hold-impeachment-trial-once-trump-leaves
And I voted for him.
An example:
If I were the "prosecution", I would be thinking about two things:
1. Concrete actions which Trump took which which he intended to, or was reckless as to whether they had the effect of, facilitating an attack on the Government (i.e. a higher standard of act, but a somewhat more easily proven intent); or
2. Statements, omissions, or wider actions of that nature which Trump took knowing and intending that they would facilitate an attack on the Government (vice versa).
Interesting emphasis from the Guardian on Spector...
Phil Spector brought joy to pop music – and misery to so many lives