1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Alas, it ultimately does us no good if it continues until the end of time.
You live in a very dark world.
Yep. Born of experience. I'll be delighted to be proven wrong, but anyone who thinks the sociopaths on SAGE are going to let us out of house arrest when all the over 50s have finally been jabbed twice is liable to be bitterly disappointed.
Even if the wretched disease doesn't mutate into a vaccine resistant form, and we are therefore made to start from scratch all over again, new excuses will be found to prolong the misery.
Is one of the sad, often understated things dealing with dementia sufferers.
It is really hard for the families to have to endure. As my friend said, his grandfather may have lost his memories but he's not lost his stubborn streak.
As discussed here many months ago I had no idea what was involved until I had a parent go through it. The path from normal to what most of us who haven't experienced think of as dementia (old person sitting in a chair unaware of what is going on). That path includes a lot of anger as the person inflicted doesn't understand what is going on but still has their full normal mental capacity to try an analyse the nonsense they are seeing. It makes them very angry and confused.
One of the worse was getting mother screaming down the phone at me asking why I didn't tell her, her mother was a man (she was seeing my father as her mother). Also recovering her from a neighbour after she hit out at my father for having an affair (apparently with the women of another family who were also apparently living in their house)
The only consolation is there are some very genuine funny moments as well.
What happens when the U.K. shuts the border or demands daily testing for the unvaccinated French?
My opinion? This year will produce a vintage French whine.....
And the English varieties are also now very competitive. Sparkling? Not so much.
Well, apart from Best Sparkling Wine Producer at the International Wine and Spirit Competition 2020? I'm talking in the world - ahead of all the French champagne houses. Langham Wine Estate, Dorset. From vines only planted a decade ago.
A post mildly taking the pish out of tedious PB English wine nationalism....gets a tedious PB English wine nationalism post, superb stuff!
Do I misremember or do you not even drink?
Japanese whisky - the best is better than Scottish. Discuss.....
Dunno, it's something about which not much bothered about. My father was and most of my friends are serious whisky drinkers, nowadays I'm just an occasionally horrified observer.
I'm sure it's lovely with a bit of Stilton on an artisanal oatcake, as long as you're not lactose intolerant.
At that level anyway it is like asking if you prefer specific bottlings of Bunnahabhain or Old Pulteney. Certainly worth trying the Nipponese single malts with respect if theyt are anything like as good.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Over 400,000 today according to Eng + Wal + Sco figures.
Interesting comments from a country put in an awkward spot by the US / China confrontation.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2021/01/120_302890.html ...Last year, the Korean media was obsessed with how Korea will position itself between the U.S. ― Korea's most important security ally ― and China, which is Korea's biggest trading partner. But the often-asked question of how to make a choice is unrealistic for Korea as both countries are indispensable for its security and economy, according to other analysts.
"In fact, no other country in the world is making a choice over the other at the moment," Kim Heung-kyu, a professor of political science at Ajou University, told The Korea Times. "For us, both the U.S. and China are so important. Therefore, it is conducive to our national interest to continue to solidify the Korea-U.S. alliance and pay respect to the strategic cooperative partnership with China as much as possible as our strategic assets."
He also underscored the need for Korea to diversify its diplomacy and expand its global network to better prepare for the challenges of an era marked by intensifying superpower competition. Kim calls this a "solidifying alliance with the U.S. and developing a strategic partnership with China and plus strategy."
"We need a diplomacy that plays a stronger role in establishing a new order by utilizing our network in the third domain and work together with other countries that are concerned about the current chaotic situation," he said. "Therefore, a strategic alliance with Australia and Germany is important. Behind Germany, there is France. And Australia has a strategic alliance with ASEAN and is connected to Japan, Singapore and India. We should utilize these networks and play a vital role in forming a new order."...
What happens when the U.K. shuts the border or demands daily testing for the unvaccinated French?
My opinion? This year will produce a vintage French whine.....
And the English varieties are also now very competitive. Sparkling? Not so much.
Well, apart from Best Sparkling Wine Producer at the International Wine and Spirit Competition 2020? I'm talking in the world - ahead of all the French champagne houses. Langham Wine Estate, Dorset. From vines only planted a decade ago.
A post mildly taking the pish out of tedious PB English wine nationalism....gets a tedious PB English wine nationalism post, superb stuff!
Do I misremember or do you not even drink?
Japanese whisky - the best is better than Scottish. Discuss.....
Dunno, it's something about which not much bothered about. My father was and most of my friends are serious whisky drinkers, nowadays I'm just an occasionally horrified observer.
I'm sure it's lovely with a bit of Stilton on an artisanal oatcake, as long as you're not lactose intolerant.
At that level anyway it is like asking if you prefer specific bottlings of Bunnahabhain or Old Pulteney. Certainly worth trying the Nipponese single malts with respect if theyt are anything like as good.
I think that some of them are at the level where it is genuine personal preference as to which is better. Don't really know them, but have tried a few via friends.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Over 400,000 today according to Eng + Wal + Sco figures.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
London still giving out second doses. Most other places largely not.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
The structural deficit, if there was one, had sod all to do with the global financial crisis and has nothing to do with this one either.
It absolutely does because the damage of the recession gets added to the damage of the pre-existing deficit.
Recessions on average tend to add 6-7% to the deficit. That's not too bad if you've got a small surplus or rather neutral, the deficit swells to 6-7% and then a couple of years growth sees it come back down. It is an absolute disaster if the deficit was already 3% because then it goes to 10% - and suddenly you've got rapidly expanding exponential growth of your debt that you can't handle.
Have you still not figured out how exponential growth works, even after this past year? Once your problem becomes exponential it needs drastic action to fix it.
Recessions happen, they're a fact of life that can't be avoided. What happened before going into them, how they're handled - and the state of how you come out of them - all that matters.
We can never get into a debt trap like that while interest rates are so low. The Bank of England will simply print enough cash to buy up the extra government debt. Eventually the markets may conceivably panic, but the experience of Japan shows that we have a long way to go before we need to get worried.
That is one of the massive benefits - perhaps the biggest - we have because we stayed out of the euro. And to think some morons still want us to join it.
Last time it was crucial to bring the wrecked public finances under control but this time it isn't - even though they are more wrecked - because interest rates happen to be lower now? Sorry, don't buy it. I diagnose a combo of political bias and wishful thinking. The harsh truth is that either austerity will be required this time or it was not required - was pure political choice - last time. My view is that it was necessary then and will be necessary now. I'm a leftist but I don't believe in MMT.
No that's not the point. Last time it was not needed in 2008 because 2008 was during the recession. Who on Earth called for austerity DURING THE RECESSION in 2008?
What you lot seem to forget is that 2010-2018 when austerity finally closed the gap was not during the recession - it was years to a decade after the recession!
The priority right now is to get through the recession out to the other side. Once we're out the other side then difficult choices may be needed. If in 2022/23 we have a 10% deficit then some form of plan or drastic action will absolutely be needed to close it. Hopefully we won't have a 10% deficit this time, despite this recession being far worse, because we weren't so naked going into it.
I'm afraid something does not cease to be a point purely because you have no answer to it. We were screwed then and had to take some pain afterwards to balance the books. We are screwed now and will have to take some pain afterwards to balance the books. As to timing, you should read what I write instead of rushing to argue with it. I'm not suggesting austerity right this minute. That would be crazy. I'm talking about once we've clambered up off the floor. At that point difficult choices will (not may) be needed. Emphasis on tax rises rather than spending cuts this time, I hope, and with those tax rises targeted at the better off.
I'm going to continue to push my theory that at some point there will be a co-ordinated global write-off of Covid debt. However unprecedented it might be, once world leaders contemplate the consequences of the conventional alternative of a decade of spending cuts and tax rises, they'll go for the option that doesn't result in them being booted out of power and replaced by the kind of demagogues who'll make Donald Trump look like Eisenhower.
Would be wonderful but I doubt it. If that trick could be pulled off on this scale without mishap it would turn the world of government spending and macroeconomics on its head. If "print and write off" avoids paying the bills for a global pandemic, why should countries not act in concert (maybe via a new Global Bank) and do the same without a pandemic? There is so much we would love to spend money on in this world. Utopia beckons.
You've put your finger on the key objection, and not being an economist I don't have a real answer to it. Except to say that this has been a year of events previously thought unprecedented, impractical, or impossible. Several serious experts told us when this all kicked of in the West that there was no way a safe and effective vaccine could be deployed within a year; we now have at least three, plus Sinovac, plus Sputnik, plus the Double Boris on its way. The laws of economics are at least in part conventions and human constructs rather than absolutes, so in theory we should have much more control over them than we do over the behaviour of viruses.
You can see the effect of the new variant though, in the first March lockdown which is what this is closest to we reached an R of 0.5-0.6 modelled on deaths/hospital admissions. We're now barely under 1 despite schools being closed, office almost all closed and public transportation levels close to March/April.
You can see the effect of the new variant though, in the first March lockdown which is what this is closest to we reached an R of 0.5-0.6 modelled on deaths/hospital admissions. We're now barely under 1 despite schools being closed, office almost all closed and public transportation levels close to March/April.
Plus there's much more immunity now, both naturally achieved and via vaccinations.
In March next-to-nobody had antibodies, by December it was 10% of the population - and now nearly 10% have been vaccinated too.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
Much much better figure for Wales today. Very encouraging.
"Ireland will be in and out of lockdown until 2022 unless we adopt a zero Covid policy, top microbiologist James McInerney has said.
The Head of School of Life Science in the University of Nottingham said Ireland almost had zero Covid cases in July, but the only way to get back to this is to adopt the same policy as New Zealand.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said: “Moving from one place to another is the major cause of spread of this infection.
"I don’t wish to point out the obvious but Ireland is an island and it can be sealed. For lots of people who are coming into Ireland, the screening isn’t working.
"It seems obvious for me what to do, it seems obvious for me to take the New Zealand strategy or else you’re going to be in and out of lockdown for the rest of the year and into 2022.
"There is a way out and it is to seal up your borders and within the country to drive the number down to zero, and you almost had that done by last July.”
Sounds about right to me, both in the original and if you read "Great Britain" for "Ireland."
Is one of the major benefits of Brexit that we can now seal up the borders because it will make no difference whatsoever to the economy once that effect has been taken into account?
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
London still giving out second doses. Most other places largely not.
Healthcare workers, London's roll out is being done primarily in hospitals and aiui there's much more of the Pfizer vaccine being done because of that which means having healthcare workers on hot standby to avoid wastage. It's also why London is struggling to get to immobile older people.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
We're in worse shape now. If you don't believe me call up Sunak and offer him the swap. He'll bite your hand off.
I think you're mistaken on this.
The economy will roar back once the virus is gone. After the financial crisis that wasn't the case at all.
It might. I certainly hope it does. But I'm talking about the public finances. Debt and deficit. Sunak would trade the position now for what it was at the equivalent time then.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
We're in worse shape now. If you don't believe me call up Sunak and offer him the swap. He'll bite your hand off.
I think you're mistaken on this.
The economy will roar back once the virus is gone. After the financial crisis that wasn't the case at all.
It might. I certainly hope it does. But I'm talking about the public finances. Debt and deficit. Sunak would trade the position now for what it was at the equivalent time then.
We will see. I'm hopeful that you're wrong.
If in 2022/23 the UK deficit is over 10% then you're right, if its under 10% then you're wrong. The deficit then is what matters and what would be comparable to 2010/11.
The deficit 2020/21 is being paid for by QE like the deficit in 2008/09. It is what happens two years later onwards that will need fixing.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
The structural deficit, if there was one, had sod all to do with the global financial crisis and has nothing to do with this one either.
It absolutely does because the damage of the recession gets added to the damage of the pre-existing deficit.
Recessions on average tend to add 6-7% to the deficit. That's not too bad if you've got a small surplus or rather neutral, the deficit swells to 6-7% and then a couple of years growth sees it come back down. It is an absolute disaster if the deficit was already 3% because then it goes to 10% - and suddenly you've got rapidly expanding exponential growth of your debt that you can't handle.
Have you still not figured out how exponential growth works, even after this past year? Once your problem becomes exponential it needs drastic action to fix it.
Recessions happen, they're a fact of life that can't be avoided. What happened before going into them, how they're handled - and the state of how you come out of them - all that matters.
We can never get into a debt trap like that while interest rates are so low. The Bank of England will simply print enough cash to buy up the extra government debt. Eventually the markets may conceivably panic, but the experience of Japan shows that we have a long way to go before we need to get worried.
That is one of the massive benefits - perhaps the biggest - we have because we stayed out of the euro. And to think some morons still want us to join it.
Last time it was crucial to bring the wrecked public finances under control but this time it isn't - even though they are more wrecked - because interest rates happen to be lower now? Sorry, don't buy it. I diagnose a combo of political bias and wishful thinking. The harsh truth is that either austerity will be required this time or it was not required - was pure political choice - last time. My view is it was necessary then and will be necessary now. I'm a leftist but I don't believe in MMT.
If Sunak is stupid enough to go for austerity in a few months time, or next year or whatever, then we will be able to handily compare and contrast as Biden turns on the taps in the US. Big infrastructure spending coming.
It will indeed be interesting. But if other developed nations decide to try to spend their way out of the hole I'm sure we will follow suit.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
We know you love him really - I've even borrowed your 'Double Boris' tag for the J&J vaccine because I liked it so much!
Very good to do care homes first but why not do more than that in parallel if there's delays getting into homes?
Speeding up soon would be good.
Don't think there have been delays that I have seen - just takes time to get to the homes and then the next ones on the lists. It will however be more efficient than doing the housebound elderly - who are also being done - so there is some sense in giving the homes priority.
But I do hope we see some speeding up, I entirely agree.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
Much much better figure for Wales today. Very encouraging.
...but only after a raid on Drakeford's domestic freezer to free up supply.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
London still giving out second doses. Most other places largely not.
I thought second doses were only being given after 12 weeks (my Mum's isn't due till mid-April).
Very good to do care homes first but why not do more than that in parallel if there's delays getting into homes?
Speeding up soon would be good.
Don't think there have been delays that I have seen - just takes time to get to the homes and then the next ones on the lists. It will however be more efficient than doing the housebound elderly - who are also being done - so there is some sense in giving the homes priority.
But I do hope we see some speeding up, I entirely agree.
It's a rubbish strategy, hopefully it it won't be repeated when moving from over 70s to over 60s.
Interesting stat from the Guernsey arrival COVID screening - 56% of positive tests have been found on arrival, 37% have been identified from arrival to day 12 - and 7% have been identified on the day 13 test (mandatory, unless you want to spend 21 days in self-isolation). Which rather calls into question this (mooted/agreed?) UK plan of "release from quarantine on negative Day 5 test." Also under discussion starting to charge arrivals for testing (£25/go, two required) for the selfish sods travellers, TBC.
The whole way through HMGs approach has been to "negotiate" with the virus, which has resulted in half-measures, which will clearly work a bit, but not sufficiently to keep the situation under control.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
We know you love him really - I've even borrowed your 'Double Boris' tag for the J&J vaccine because I liked it so much!
I really don't.
A very good vaccine start is not a free pass from much of what has gone before during the crisis. My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has choked, and will continue to choke on.
Very good to do care homes first but why not do more than that in parallel if there's delays getting into homes?
Speeding up soon would be good.
Don't think there have been delays that I have seen - just takes time to get to the homes and then the next ones on the lists. It will however be more efficient than doing the housebound elderly - who are also being done - so there is some sense in giving the homes priority.
But I do hope we see some speeding up, I entirely agree.
It's a rubbish strategy, hopefully it it won't be repeated when moving from over 70s to over 60s.
I'd have thought there'd be very few 60 - 70s in care homes & you'd hope the occasional one or two are just done at the same as the other residents rather than having a planned return during that phase of the rollout....
You can see the effect of the new variant though, in the first March lockdown which is what this is closest to we reached an R of 0.5-0.6 modelled on deaths/hospital admissions. We're now barely under 1 despite schools being closed, office almost all closed and public transportation levels close to March/April.
Yep, the 70% more transmissible estimate still holds up on those numbers.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Or a century or two of gradually allowing it to erode through moderate levels of inflation, related to sustainable levels of growth. Austerity has been fairly conclusively demonstrated to be counter-productive, so why not just build from where we are? We've still got relatively favourable borrowing rates, we're still a fiat currency. We are in "the danger is deflation" phase of the historical cycle, and we can shift into a "the danger is inflation" phase if necessary, in the short term.
People seem to think we need to address these things in the order of a parliament, or a decade, or a generation, but it doesn't really seem like we do. This isn't a minor correction for an over-egged pudding. It's part of a multi-generational shift.
Treat it like rebuilding post WW2? Take the super long-term helicopter view? Ok, maybe that's the route. And from my point of view there's a political benefit there too. It would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Cameron/Osborne austerity years were a political choice not a fiscal necessity. Labour should be able to do something with that.
My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has, and will continue to choke on.
Hold up, surely he never said that and it's one of those made up quotes that fits ?!
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
London still giving out second doses. Most other places largely not.
I thought second doses were only being given after 12 weeks (my Mum's isn't due till mid-April).
When the are using up "spare" doses - to prevent wastage - to NHS staff etc, some of them have had the first jab more that 21 days ago. So they get a second one.
There are a million things to criticise Trump over, but the media outrage over him talking about the Chinese virus or virus from China was ridiculous, especially given China hid it.
Calling it the English / British variant seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
Very good to do care homes first but why not do more than that in parallel if there's delays getting into homes?
Speeding up soon would be good.
Don't think there have been delays that I have seen - just takes time to get to the homes and then the next ones on the lists. It will however be more efficient than doing the housebound elderly - who are also being done - so there is some sense in giving the homes priority.
But I do hope we see some speeding up, I entirely agree.
It's a rubbish strategy, hopefully it it won't be repeated when moving from over 70s to over 60s.
I'd have thought there'd be very few 60 - 70s in care homes & you'd hope the occasional one or two are just done at the same as the other residents rather than having a planned return during that phase of the rollout....
I would eat one of George Galloway's many, many hats if all of a care home residents weren't being jagged in a oner, unless some if them are anti vaxxers.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
I choose not to have any fun or relief ergo no one else is allowed to have any fun or relief.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
Its against the rules.....and has been against the government guidance for months. And now these people are having a massive moan about how unfair it all is.
"Ireland will be in and out of lockdown until 2022 unless we adopt a zero Covid policy, top microbiologist James McInerney has said.
The Head of School of Life Science in the University of Nottingham said Ireland almost had zero Covid cases in July, but the only way to get back to this is to adopt the same policy as New Zealand.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said: “Moving from one place to another is the major cause of spread of this infection.
"I don’t wish to point out the obvious but Ireland is an island and it can be sealed. For lots of people who are coming into Ireland, the screening isn’t working.
"It seems obvious for me what to do, it seems obvious for me to take the New Zealand strategy or else you’re going to be in and out of lockdown for the rest of the year and into 2022.
"There is a way out and it is to seal up your borders and within the country to drive the number down to zero, and you almost had that done by last July.”
Sounds about right to me, both in the original and if you read "Great Britain" for "Ireland."
Is one of the major benefits of Brexit that we can now seal up the borders because it will make no difference whatsoever to the economy once that effect has been taken into account?
The entire problem with attempting to apply the New Zealand strategy to Britain is that we can't seal the borders (the best we can hope for is that, if this ever ends, Government might just decide that it's a good idea to build more unaccompanied freight capacity and disincentivize the use of road hauliers so that we have the option of pulling up the drawbridge if we need to, but they're completely useless so that's not going to happen.)
Though, for what it's worth (and if we really must have yet another Brexit borefest on here) then, if the UK's decision to reject the EU central vaccine procurement drive means that we extricate ourselves from the mire so much as a month before the rest of the continent, then that should be enough to compensate for all the costs imposed by these non-tariff barriers many times over. The scale of the misery and destruction wrought by Covid makes practically everything else pale in comparison.
Well the vaccine minster has said categorically it isn't true.... everybody is getting less next week due to supply issues. The media reports were based on they were told a reduction was coming and then wrote a story it is because our region has done so well. Unless the minster is lying on record, they have put 2 and 2 together and got 5.
The government for the past 2 weeks have consistently said supply remains a huge issue of this whole process.
The joy of that exchange is that the YP editor is clear that ministers HAVE lied on record and thus can be treated accordingly when assessing reliable sources.
If the policy is to divert resources where best needed then just say so.
Personally, much as I love cats, I don't think they should be a priority - even the vulnerable ones.
Very good to do care homes first but why not do more than that in parallel if there's delays getting into homes?
Speeding up soon would be good.
Don't think there have been delays that I have seen - just takes time to get to the homes and then the next ones on the lists. It will however be more efficient than doing the housebound elderly - who are also being done - so there is some sense in giving the homes priority.
But I do hope we see some speeding up, I entirely agree.
It's a rubbish strategy, hopefully it it won't be repeated when moving from over 70s to over 60s.
I'd have thought there'd be very few 60 - 70s in care homes & you'd hope the occasional one or two are just done at the same as the other residents rather than having a planned return during that phase of the rollout....
I've done a lot of thinking about this, I think the government should have set aside ~150k doses per day for the top two groups from January with a proper rollout strategy and appointments with phonecalls, home visits etc... and everything over that should be made available on a first come first serve basis for everyone else over the age of 60 and the 1.5m people who got the letter in April. It would have taken a month or so to get the top two groups done and we could have kept all of them on the two dose strategy as well with only a one week delay rather than 9.
It would have allowed the 60-79 year olds to book appointments, queue up or turn up for jabs at their local centre, pharmacy ensuring that all daily capacity is used up and we don't have doses sitting in fridges or worse being chucked.
My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has, and will continue to choke on.
Hold up, surely he never said that and it's one of those made up quotes that fits ?!
From the Grauniad 23rd June; "... while the prime minister said it was people’s “patriotic duty” to return to pubs, which are to reopen on 4 July".
Very good to do care homes first but why not do more than that in parallel if there's delays getting into homes?
Speeding up soon would be good.
Don't think there have been delays that I have seen - just takes time to get to the homes and then the next ones on the lists. It will however be more efficient than doing the housebound elderly - who are also being done - so there is some sense in giving the homes priority.
But I do hope we see some speeding up, I entirely agree.
It's a rubbish strategy, hopefully it it won't be repeated when moving from over 70s to over 60s.
I'd have thought there'd be very few 60 - 70s in care homes & you'd hope the occasional one or two are just done at the same as the other residents rather than having a planned return during that phase of the rollout....
I've done a lot of thinking about this, I think the government should have set aside ~150k doses per day for the top two groups from January with a proper rollout strategy and appointments with phonecalls, home visits etc... and everything over that should be made available on a first come first serve basis for everyone else over the age of 60 and the 1.5m people who got the letter in April. It would have taken a month or so to get the top two groups done and we could have kept all of them on the two dose strategy as well with only a one week delay rather than 9.
It would have allowed the 60-79 year olds to book appointments, queue up or turn up for jabs at their local centre, pharmacy ensuring that all daily capacity is used up and we don't have doses sitting in fridges or worse being chucked.
The Israel approach is a bit like this. Aim to do x amount of people per day, but if you want to queue up from a certain time in the evening, you will be given a jab if there is any left.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
I have no problem with them going there, but they need to be prepared to pay for 10 days in a hotel and tests when they return.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
We know you love him really - I've even borrowed your 'Double Boris' tag for the J&J vaccine because I liked it so much!
I really don't.
A very good vaccine start is not a free pass from much of what has gone before during the crisis. My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has choked, and will continue to choke on.
Literally no one will care by this time this fabled public inquiry rolls around ... because they'll all be in the pub.
My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has, and will continue to choke on.
Hold up, surely he never said that and it's one of those made up quotes that fits ?!
From the Grauniad 23rd June "... while the prime minister said it was people’s “patriotic duty” to return to pubs, which are to reopen on 4 July".
When the history of the pandemic comes to be written. Below the title will be the quote:
"We are introducing a Five Tier system and we are on Tier Three and a Half."
Edit: with added graphic to show the pointer at 3.5.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
We know you love him really - I've even borrowed your 'Double Boris' tag for the J&J vaccine because I liked it so much!
I really don't.
A very good vaccine start is not a free pass from much of what has gone before during the crisis. My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has choked, and will continue to choke on.
Literally no one will care by this time this fabled public inquiry rolls around ... because they'll all be in the pub.
Well the vaccine minster has said categorically it isn't true.... everybody is getting less next week due to supply issues. The media reports were based on they were told a reduction was coming and then wrote a story it is because our region has done so well. Unless the minster is lying on record, they have put 2 and 2 together and got 5.
The government for the past 2 weeks have consistently said supply remains a huge issue of this whole process.
The joy of that exchange is that the YP editor is clear that ministers HAVE lied on record and thus can be treated accordingly when assessing reliable sources.
If the policy is to divert resources where best needed then just say so.
My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has, and will continue to choke on.
Hold up, surely he never said that and it's one of those made up quotes that fits ?!
From the Grauniad 23rd June "... while the prime minister said it was people’s “patriotic duty” to return to pubs, which are to reopen on 4 July".
When the history of the pandemic comes to be written. Below the title will be the quote:
"We are introducing a Five Tier system and we are on Tier Three and a Half."
Edit: with added graphic to show the pointer at 3.5.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
We know you love him really - I've even borrowed your 'Double Boris' tag for the J&J vaccine because I liked it so much!
I really don't.
A very good vaccine start is not a free pass from much of what has gone before during the crisis. My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has choked, and will continue to choke on.
Literally no one will care by this time this fabled public inquiry rolls around ... because they'll all be in the pub.
I thought that Merkel comment was a mistranslation?
It was, she basically said the variant that started in England. I don't see the issue with English variant, variant from England, or any other combination, that is exactly what it is.
I thought that Merkel comment was a mistranslation?
It doesn't matter because the fox is already in the henhouse. Spain, Portugal and Ireland are all reporting huge rates of the B.1.1.7 variant and it's been seen in detectable quantities in most of the rest of Europe as well. France, Germany and Italy are all managing to keep it contained with severe lockdown measures, they haven't managed to keep it out.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
The structural deficit, if there was one, had sod all to do with the global financial crisis and has nothing to do with this one either.
It absolutely does because the damage of the recession gets added to the damage of the pre-existing deficit.
Recessions on average tend to add 6-7% to the deficit. That's not too bad if you've got a small surplus or rather neutral, the deficit swells to 6-7% and then a couple of years growth sees it come back down. It is an absolute disaster if the deficit was already 3% because then it goes to 10% - and suddenly you've got rapidly expanding exponential growth of your debt that you can't handle.
Have you still not figured out how exponential growth works, even after this past year? Once your problem becomes exponential it needs drastic action to fix it.
Recessions happen, they're a fact of life that can't be avoided. What happened before going into them, how they're handled - and the state of how you come out of them - all that matters.
We can never get into a debt trap like that while interest rates are so low. The Bank of England will simply print enough cash to buy up the extra government debt. Eventually the markets may conceivably panic, but the experience of Japan shows that we have a long way to go before we need to get worried.
That is one of the massive benefits - perhaps the biggest - we have because we stayed out of the euro. And to think some morons still want us to join it.
Last time it was crucial to bring the wrecked public finances under control but this time it isn't - even though they are more wrecked - because interest rates happen to be lower now? Sorry, don't buy it. I diagnose a combo of political bias and wishful thinking. The harsh truth is that either austerity will be required this time or it was not required - was pure political choice - last time. My view is that it was necessary then and will be necessary now. I'm a leftist but I don't believe in MMT.
No that's not the point. Last time it was not needed in 2008 because 2008 was during the recession. Who on Earth called for austerity DURING THE RECESSION in 2008?
What you lot seem to forget is that 2010-2018 when austerity finally closed the gap was not during the recession - it was years to a decade after the recession!
The priority right now is to get through the recession out to the other side. Once we're out the other side then difficult choices may be needed. If in 2022/23 we have a 10% deficit then some form of plan or drastic action will absolutely be needed to close it. Hopefully we won't have a 10% deficit this time, despite this recession being far worse, because we weren't so naked going into it.
I'm afraid something does not cease to be a point purely because you have no answer to it. We were screwed then and had to take some pain afterwards to balance the books. We are screwed now and will have to take some pain afterwards to balance the books. As to timing, you should read what I write instead of rushing to argue with it. I'm not suggesting austerity right this minute. That would be crazy. I'm talking about once we've clambered up off the floor. At that point difficult choices will (not may) be needed. Emphasis on tax rises rather than spending cuts this time, I hope, and with those tax rises targeted at the better off.
I'm not ruling out austerity (or other tough choices) being needed in the future.
I explicitly said that if in 2022/23 we still have a 10%+ deficit then yes tough choices like austerity would be needed.
If on the other hand the deficit is just ~7% and falling, with growth of 2.5%+ then that would be much more manageable. A deficit of 7% and 10% are world's apart.
As I said historically the country's deficit has typically oscillated from between breakeven during good times to about 7% immediately post recession, which averages about 3%. The disaster of Brown was taking us to 3% pre-recession blowing it out then to 10% with dramatic compound growth then as a result post-recession.
Since we went into this with just a 1% deficit, quite close to historical norms, that gives much better room for maneuver when we come out.
I think it's important to think of the deficit as relative to the growth in nominal GDP. (Nominal GDP is growth of the economy in money terms, not real terms. So it can be thought of as inflation plus GDP growth.)
So, if we see (through the cycle) GDP growth of 2.5% and inflation of 2.5%, then nominal GDP is growing at 5%. If deficits (again, through the cycle) were to average 5%, then debt-to-GDP would be stable through the cycle.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
I choose not to have any fun or relief ergo no one else is allowed to have any fun or relief.
1K+ people are dying a day. It is very unfair that the government might make my holiday more expensive or inconvenient.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
I have no problem with them going there, but they need to be prepared to pay for 10 days in a hotel and tests when they return.
and not spray out hundreds of tweets about how onerous the tyranny of lockdown is.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Don't be so silly. The vaccination programme has been awesome across the UK (even Wales is not terrible). It is not the NHS, the mobilised troops helping to manage provision or Government's fault if there are supply difficulties.
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
We know you love him really - I've even borrowed your 'Double Boris' tag for the J&J vaccine because I liked it so much!
I really don't.
A very good vaccine start is not a free pass from much of what has gone before during the crisis. My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has choked, and will continue to choke on.
Literally no one will care by this time this fabled public inquiry rolls around ... because they'll all be in the pub.
True. We'll all be in the pub but I think excess deaths will be the thing that the opposition (and of course the nation) focuses on if it is bad. If excess deaths aren't bad then I agree, people will be much better disposed to not give a damn/it was a global pandemic/followed the science/etc.
And on that last point, I am looking forward to the memoirs of Chris Whitty et al and wonder if they will look, to put it crudely for which apols, to claim credit for the successes and blame the government for the failures.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Over 400,000 today according to Eng + Wal + Sco figures.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
The structural deficit, if there was one, had sod all to do with the global financial crisis and has nothing to do with this one either.
It absolutely does because the damage of the recession gets added to the damage of the pre-existing deficit.
Recessions on average tend to add 6-7% to the deficit. That's not too bad if you've got a small surplus or rather neutral, the deficit swells to 6-7% and then a couple of years growth sees it come back down. It is an absolute disaster if the deficit was already 3% because then it goes to 10% - and suddenly you've got rapidly expanding exponential growth of your debt that you can't handle.
Have you still not figured out how exponential growth works, even after this past year? Once your problem becomes exponential it needs drastic action to fix it.
Recessions happen, they're a fact of life that can't be avoided. What happened before going into them, how they're handled - and the state of how you come out of them - all that matters.
We can never get into a debt trap like that while interest rates are so low. The Bank of England will simply print enough cash to buy up the extra government debt. Eventually the markets may conceivably panic, but the experience of Japan shows that we have a long way to go before we need to get worried.
That is one of the massive benefits - perhaps the biggest - we have because we stayed out of the euro. And to think some morons still want us to join it.
Last time it was crucial to bring the wrecked public finances under control but this time it isn't - even though they are more wrecked - because interest rates happen to be lower now? Sorry, don't buy it. I diagnose a combo of political bias and wishful thinking. The harsh truth is that either austerity will be required this time or it was not required - was pure political choice - last time. My view is it was necessary then and will be necessary now. I'm a leftist but I don't believe in MMT.
If Sunak is stupid enough to go for austerity in a few months time, or next year or whatever, then we will be able to handily compare and contrast as Biden turns on the taps in the US. Big infrastructure spending coming.
We're not going to have austerity measures. I actually think the US and UK will begin to silently scrub QE debt to some off the books ledger and then be forgotten about forever.
Given the BoE owns the QE debt what need is there to scrub it?
After the bailout of RBS debt was reported excluding liabilities related to that, quite reasonably - why not just put the BoE debt in the same category?
Whether in the UK, the US, Japan or the Eurozone, Quantitive Easing debt will never be repaid. I suspect it will continue to exist as an accounting fiction, simply because that's the path of least resistance.
But, there won't be interest paid on it, and it will be rolled over into perpetuity, so it may as well not exist.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
I choose not to have any fun or relief ergo no one else is allowed to have any fun or relief.
1K+ people are dying a day. It is very unfair that the government might make my holiday more expensive or inconvenient.
Yes they are tossers for complaining about it without a doubt.
Plus, as @FrancisUrquhart has noted, we have been instructed not to go on holiday. (Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.) But if all is allowed but there are conditions - tests, isolation, quarantine, whatever, then what's the problem.
1st dose 2nd dose Total Total 357,563 2,334 359,897 East Of England 54,940 91 55,031 London 39,008 1,118 40,126 Midlands 64,343 230 64,573 North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593 North West 55,918 439 56,357 South East 56,877 251 57,128 South West 29,922 111 30,033
DISASSSSTTTERRRRRRRRR.....might hit 400k UK wide if lucky.
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Over 400,000 today according to Eng + Wal + Sco figures.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
The structural deficit, if there was one, had sod all to do with the global financial crisis and has nothing to do with this one either.
It absolutely does because the damage of the recession gets added to the damage of the pre-existing deficit.
Recessions on average tend to add 6-7% to the deficit. That's not too bad if you've got a small surplus or rather neutral, the deficit swells to 6-7% and then a couple of years growth sees it come back down. It is an absolute disaster if the deficit was already 3% because then it goes to 10% - and suddenly you've got rapidly expanding exponential growth of your debt that you can't handle.
Have you still not figured out how exponential growth works, even after this past year? Once your problem becomes exponential it needs drastic action to fix it.
Recessions happen, they're a fact of life that can't be avoided. What happened before going into them, how they're handled - and the state of how you come out of them - all that matters.
We can never get into a debt trap like that while interest rates are so low. The Bank of England will simply print enough cash to buy up the extra government debt. Eventually the markets may conceivably panic, but the experience of Japan shows that we have a long way to go before we need to get worried.
That is one of the massive benefits - perhaps the biggest - we have because we stayed out of the euro. And to think some morons still want us to join it.
Last time it was crucial to bring the wrecked public finances under control but this time it isn't - even though they are more wrecked - because interest rates happen to be lower now? Sorry, don't buy it. I diagnose a combo of political bias and wishful thinking. The harsh truth is that either austerity will be required this time or it was not required - was pure political choice - last time. My view is that it was necessary then and will be necessary now. I'm a leftist but I don't believe in MMT.
No that's not the point. Last time it was not needed in 2008 because 2008 was during the recession. Who on Earth called for austerity DURING THE RECESSION in 2008?
What you lot seem to forget is that 2010-2018 when austerity finally closed the gap was not during the recession - it was years to a decade after the recession!
The priority right now is to get through the recession out to the other side. Once we're out the other side then difficult choices may be needed. If in 2022/23 we have a 10% deficit then some form of plan or drastic action will absolutely be needed to close it. Hopefully we won't have a 10% deficit this time, despite this recession being far worse, because we weren't so naked going into it.
I'm afraid something does not cease to be a point purely because you have no answer to it. We were screwed then and had to take some pain afterwards to balance the books. We are screwed now and will have to take some pain afterwards to balance the books. As to timing, you should read what I write instead of rushing to argue with it. I'm not suggesting austerity right this minute. That would be crazy. I'm talking about once we've clambered up off the floor. At that point difficult choices will (not may) be needed. Emphasis on tax rises rather than spending cuts this time, I hope, and with those tax rises targeted at the better off.
I'm going to continue to push my theory that at some point there will be a co-ordinated global write-off of Covid debt. However unprecedented it might be, once world leaders contemplate the consequences of the conventional alternative of a decade of spending cuts and tax rises, they'll go for the option that doesn't result in them being booted out of power and replaced by the kind of demagogues who'll make Donald Trump look like Eisenhower.
Would be wonderful but I doubt it. If that trick could be pulled off on this scale without mishap it would turn the world of government spending and macroeconomics on its head. If "print and write off" avoids paying the bills for a global pandemic, why should countries not act in concert (maybe via a new Global Bank) and do the same without a pandemic? There is so much we would love to spend money on in this world. Utopia beckons.
You've put your finger on the key objection, and not being an economist I don't have a real answer to it. Except to say that this has been a year of events previously thought unprecedented, impractical, or impossible. Several serious experts told us when this all kicked of in the West that there was no way a safe and effective vaccine could be deployed within a year; we now have at least three, plus Sinovac, plus Sputnik, plus the Double Boris on its way. The laws of economics are at least in part conventions and human constructs rather than absolutes, so in theory we should have much more control over them than we do over the behaviour of viruses.
I would be skeptical of arguments from economists seeking to show there IS a magic money tree. For me, this is closer to physics. Something like Newton's "for every action". By which I mean it's about the nitty gritty. To grow a marrow you must plant a marrow. But, look, I don't wish to be a gloomball. If there's a way to dodge the pain I hope they find it. What's a great shame is that we don't have a subject matter colossus like Gordon Brown at the helm to co-ordinate a global economic & fiscal response. Still, you never know. Sunak appears no fool.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
Its against the rules.....and has been against the government guidance for months. And now these people are having a massive moan about how unfair it all is.
To be honest as I haven't even contemplated going abroad I have no idea what the rules are on it right now. If they've broken the rules then that's different. Just wanted to point out that there's nothing especially risky or irresponsible in the behaviour per se. But we should all be following the rules.
Watching the M6 again today, once again there is appears to be at least twice the traffic as there was in April last year, all three lane with vehicles, that was certainly not the case last year. Witnessed an ambulance with lights and siren on getting frustrated because it could not get through on the fast lane! Where are all these private cars going mid morning?
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
Its against the rules.....and has been against the government guidance for months. And now these people are having a massive moan about how unfair it all is.
To be honest as I haven't even contemplated going abroad I have no idea what the rules are on it right now. If they've broken the rules then that's different. Just wanted to point out that there's nothing especially risky or irresponsible in the behaviour per se. But we should all be following the rules.
Nothing irresponsible about going on foreign jollies in the middle of a global pandemic?
Once the dust settles it will be interesting to see which approach worked best.
The Guernsey vax strategy is pretty much the same as Scotland's isn't it?
Guernsey has followed the JCVI prioritisation - by the 17th had administered 7.1 doses/100 population and starts its mass vaccination program on Monday.
Scotland's "focus on Care homes first" does not appear in the December announcement:
Vaccinations will continue to the first priority groups as set by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) – residents in a care home for older adults and their carers, people over the age of 80 and frontline health and social care workers. The programme will then be rolled out to the rest of the population sequentially based on the JCVI’s priority list....
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
The structural deficit, if there was one, had sod all to do with the global financial crisis and has nothing to do with this one either.
It absolutely does because the damage of the recession gets added to the damage of the pre-existing deficit.
Recessions on average tend to add 6-7% to the deficit. That's not too bad if you've got a small surplus or rather neutral, the deficit swells to 6-7% and then a couple of years growth sees it come back down. It is an absolute disaster if the deficit was already 3% because then it goes to 10% - and suddenly you've got rapidly expanding exponential growth of your debt that you can't handle.
Have you still not figured out how exponential growth works, even after this past year? Once your problem becomes exponential it needs drastic action to fix it.
Recessions happen, they're a fact of life that can't be avoided. What happened before going into them, how they're handled - and the state of how you come out of them - all that matters.
We can never get into a debt trap like that while interest rates are so low. The Bank of England will simply print enough cash to buy up the extra government debt. Eventually the markets may conceivably panic, but the experience of Japan shows that we have a long way to go before we need to get worried.
That is one of the massive benefits - perhaps the biggest - we have because we stayed out of the euro. And to think some morons still want us to join it.
Last time it was crucial to bring the wrecked public finances under control but this time it isn't - even though they are more wrecked - because interest rates happen to be lower now? Sorry, don't buy it. I diagnose a combo of political bias and wishful thinking. The harsh truth is that either austerity will be required this time or it was not required - was pure political choice - last time. My view is it was necessary then and will be necessary now. I'm a leftist but I don't believe in MMT.
If Sunak is stupid enough to go for austerity in a few months time, or next year or whatever, then we will be able to handily compare and contrast as Biden turns on the taps in the US. Big infrastructure spending coming.
We're not going to have austerity measures. I actually think the US and UK will begin to silently scrub QE debt to some off the books ledger and then be forgotten about forever.
Given the BoE owns the QE debt what need is there to scrub it?
After the bailout of RBS debt was reported excluding liabilities related to that, quite reasonably - why not just put the BoE debt in the same category?
Whether in the UK, the US, Japan or the Eurozone, Quantitive Easing debt will never be repaid. I suspect it will continue to exist as an accounting fiction, simply because that's the path of least resistance.
But, there won't be interest paid on it, and it will be rolled over into perpetuity, so it may as well not exist.
Agreed. I think in the next 10 years governments will quietly parcel up QE debt and hide it with some off balance sheet mechanism or move to a new measure of "interest bearing debt" to reset the clock. The UK is going to have 60% of its sovereign debt held by the central bank by the time this is all over.
Lockdowns don't 'work' in any normal sense of the word, as they destroy human lives.
Obviously R will fall if you lock people in their homes, prevent them seeing any friends or relations, close all pubs, theatres and anything vaguely fun and fine people for drinking tea with their mates in open spaces.
Lockdowns are a necessary evil at the moment.
What we need to do is calculate is what part of this effect is down to early vaccination effect coming into the data.
Watching the M6 again today, once again there is appears to be at least twice the traffic as there was in April last year, all three lane with vehicles, that was certainly not the case last year. Witnessed an ambulance with lights and siren on getting frustrated because it could not get through on the fast lane! Where are all these private cars going mid morning?
I have a feeling people are finding reasons to go out on journeys e.g. buying something that requires click and collect.
Completely and utterly dire economic figures today.
and that was before lock down.
Closer to half a trillion deficit than GBP400bn when all is said and done....???
Letting inflation rip must be the plan. Nothing else makes sense.
What about a century of austerity?
Shouldn't be necessary, thankfully there wasn't the structural deficit going into this recession that there was going into the last one so we're in much better shape ultimately to deal with this despite it being a far, far, far greater shock to the system. The last recession was peanuts compared to this but we went into it naked and exposed.
The structural deficit, if there was one, had sod all to do with the global financial crisis and has nothing to do with this one either.
It absolutely does because the damage of the recession gets added to the damage of the pre-existing deficit.
Recessions on average tend to add 6-7% to the deficit. That's not too bad if you've got a small surplus or rather neutral, the deficit swells to 6-7% and then a couple of years growth sees it come back down. It is an absolute disaster if the deficit was already 3% because then it goes to 10% - and suddenly you've got rapidly expanding exponential growth of your debt that you can't handle.
Have you still not figured out how exponential growth works, even after this past year? Once your problem becomes exponential it needs drastic action to fix it.
Recessions happen, they're a fact of life that can't be avoided. What happened before going into them, how they're handled - and the state of how you come out of them - all that matters.
We can never get into a debt trap like that while interest rates are so low. The Bank of England will simply print enough cash to buy up the extra government debt. Eventually the markets may conceivably panic, but the experience of Japan shows that we have a long way to go before we need to get worried.
That is one of the massive benefits - perhaps the biggest - we have because we stayed out of the euro. And to think some morons still want us to join it.
Last time it was crucial to bring the wrecked public finances under control but this time it isn't - even though they are more wrecked - because interest rates happen to be lower now? Sorry, don't buy it. I diagnose a combo of political bias and wishful thinking. The harsh truth is that either austerity will be required this time or it was not required - was pure political choice - last time. My view is that it was necessary then and will be necessary now. I'm a leftist but I don't believe in MMT.
No that's not the point. Last time it was not needed in 2008 because 2008 was during the recession. Who on Earth called for austerity DURING THE RECESSION in 2008?
What you lot seem to forget is that 2010-2018 when austerity finally closed the gap was not during the recession - it was years to a decade after the recession!
The priority right now is to get through the recession out to the other side. Once we're out the other side then difficult choices may be needed. If in 2022/23 we have a 10% deficit then some form of plan or drastic action will absolutely be needed to close it. Hopefully we won't have a 10% deficit this time, despite this recession being far worse, because we weren't so naked going into it.
I'm afraid something does not cease to be a point purely because you have no answer to it. We were screwed then and had to take some pain afterwards to balance the books. We are screwed now and will have to take some pain afterwards to balance the books. As to timing, you should read what I write instead of rushing to argue with it. I'm not suggesting austerity right this minute. That would be crazy. I'm talking about once we've clambered up off the floor. At that point difficult choices will (not may) be needed. Emphasis on tax rises rather than spending cuts this time, I hope, and with those tax rises targeted at the better off.
I'm going to continue to push my theory that at some point there will be a co-ordinated global write-off of Covid debt. However unprecedented it might be, once world leaders contemplate the consequences of the conventional alternative of a decade of spending cuts and tax rises, they'll go for the option that doesn't result in them being booted out of power and replaced by the kind of demagogues who'll make Donald Trump look like Eisenhower.
Would be wonderful but I doubt it. If that trick could be pulled off on this scale without mishap it would turn the world of government spending and macroeconomics on its head. If "print and write off" avoids paying the bills for a global pandemic, why should countries not act in concert (maybe via a new Global Bank) and do the same without a pandemic? There is so much we would love to spend money on in this world. Utopia beckons.
You've put your finger on the key objection, and not being an economist I don't have a real answer to it. Except to say that this has been a year of events previously thought unprecedented, impractical, or impossible. Several serious experts told us when this all kicked of in the West that there was no way a safe and effective vaccine could be deployed within a year; we now have at least three, plus Sinovac, plus Sputnik, plus the Double Boris on its way. The laws of economics are at least in part conventions and human constructs rather than absolutes, so in theory we should have much more control over them than we do over the behaviour of viruses.
I would be skeptical of arguments from economists seeking to show there IS a magic money tree. For me, this is closer to physics. Something like Newton's "for every action". By which I mean it's about the nitty gritty. To grow a marrow you must plant a marrow. But, look, I'm an optimist too. So if there's a way to dodge the pain I hope they find it. What's a great shame is that we don't have a subject matter colossus like Gordon Brown at the helm to co-ordinate a global economic & fiscal response. Still, you never know. Sunak appears no fool.
He is no fool and I'm betting (this is PB, right?) is very nervous right now. He knows that this can't continue for too much longer without huge long term if not permanent implications.
Politically, the overton window on spending has been moved. The pandemic is obviously the pandemic. But wait for Lab to name homelessness, poverty, the NHS, and the private ownership of Tescos as equally life-threatening crises. And who would blame them.
Troy (pictured left with his travel companion Olivia), from Essex, hit out the plans which could be announced as early as next week. Leanne and Paul Martin (right), returning from Barbados, said having to stay at an airport hotel for up to 10 days would be hugely inconvenient
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Not sure it's so terrible to go to Barbados. The Barbadian government has been encouraging people to come and work remotely with special visas, to make up for the collapse in tourism revenues. The rate of Covid infections per capita is about a tenth of that in the UK so they're unlikely to pick it up while they're over there and bring it home again. Not sure I really get the blanket hostility to anyone who goes abroad - going to a Covid hot-spot and partying like hell is one thing but going somewhere quiet where you can be outdoors much of the time, staying at a villa out of the way, doesn't strike me as massively irresponsible especially if the country in question is actively welcoming visitors and has a good public health infrastructure in place.
I choose not to have any fun or relief ergo no one else is allowed to have any fun or relief.
1K+ people are dying a day. It is very unfair that the government might make my holiday more expensive or inconvenient.
Where did this way of thinking come from where foreign travel should be given more leeway than people visiting a lake in their local area?
On topic, the question that McConnell and co have is do they feel they need to purge Trump?
And my guess is that the less we hear from Trump (and he has no voice right now), the less they feel the urge to purge.
Yes, he might be saved from conviction by twitter.
Cruel ironies.
It's not an issue that has exercised me greatly and I won't be betting on it but it seems to me the delay is double-edged.
If it all goes quiet and Trump is a good boy the will to convict will diminish but there's another possibility that in the time before the trial increasingly damning evidence emerges. If so, he will go down, and not in a happy way.
We just can't tell yet how this thing is likely to end.
Comments
first dose only - 357,563
total 359,897
1st dose 2nd dose Total
Total 357,563 2,334 359,897
East Of England 54,940 91 55,031
London 39,008 1,118 40,126
Midlands 64,343 230 64,573
North East And Yorkshire 54,502 91 54,593
North West 55,918 439 56,357
South East 56,877 251 57,128
South West 29,922 111 30,033
However, still isn't going to hit the 500k this week and doesn't sound like next week is going to be good on the supply side.
Even if the wretched disease doesn't mutate into a vaccine resistant form, and we are therefore made to start from scratch all over again, new excuses will be found to prolong the misery.
360K in England only. Will be over 400K for the UK.
One of the worse was getting mother screaming down the phone at me asking why I didn't tell her, her mother was a man (she was seeing my father as her mother). Also recovering her from a neighbour after she hit out at my father for having an affair (apparently with the women of another family who were also apparently living in their house)
The only consolation is there are some very genuine funny moments as well.
Why are Scotland and Wales so low?
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1352616833237590019
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2021/01/120_302890.html
...Last year, the Korean media was obsessed with how Korea will position itself between the U.S. ― Korea's most important security ally ― and China, which is Korea's biggest trading partner. But the often-asked question of how to make a choice is unrealistic for Korea as both countries are indispensable for its security and economy, according to other analysts.
"In fact, no other country in the world is making a choice over the other at the moment," Kim Heung-kyu, a professor of political science at Ajou University, told The Korea Times. "For us, both the U.S. and China are so important. Therefore, it is conducive to our national interest to continue to solidify the Korea-U.S. alliance and pay respect to the strategic cooperative partnership with China as much as possible as our strategic assets."
He also underscored the need for Korea to diversify its diplomacy and expand its global network to better prepare for the challenges of an era marked by intensifying superpower competition. Kim calls this a "solidifying alliance with the U.S. and developing a strategic partnership with China and plus strategy."
"We need a diplomacy that plays a stronger role in establishing a new order by utilizing our network in the third domain and work together with other countries that are concerned about the current chaotic situation," he said. "Therefore, a strategic alliance with Australia and Germany is important. Behind Germany, there is France. And Australia has a strategic alliance with ASEAN and is connected to Japan, Singapore and India. We should utilize these networks and play a vital role in forming a new order."...
I presume Mr "Haimes of the vaccination" stats will be redefining his timelines to fit his agenda.
Better! 500k is just about in reach.
Scotland's different. 8% of the UK population, I think, and looking on the low side.
In March next-to-nobody had antibodies, by December it was 10% of the population - and now nearly 10% have been vaccinated too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-55675796
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-12-20..latest&country=DEU~GBR~FRA~ITA~ESP®ion=World&vaccinationsMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=total_vaccinations_per_hundred&pickerSort=desc
I detest Johnson, but he staked the house on a vaccine, and won. This time his ambition was right, he has aimed for the stars, and if he at least hits the chimney pots, good on him. There is now a way out of this Covid fiasco, and Government doing its best in this instance, really is good enough.
I dare not be too positive - but really am amazed at the vaccine progress. If continues to go well surely Zahawi in line for greater things..
(I acknowledge the NHS rollout is well geared up for this type of rollout..)
But both British residents and visitors say the scheme would be too costly and would put them off from going overseas.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9175969/Heathrow-travellers-blast-plans-force-UK-arrivals-quarantine-hotels-10-days.html
F##king good !!!!! What absolutely crucial business did you need to do in Barbados in early January I wonder! People are just taking the piss.
Speeding up soon would be good.
Anyway, let's hope everywhere can up the numbers rapidly.
Does anyone have any idea what proportion are Pfizer as opposed to AZ?
If in 2022/23 the UK deficit is over 10% then you're right, if its under 10% then you're wrong. The deficit then is what matters and what would be comparable to 2010/11.
The deficit 2020/21 is being paid for by QE like the deficit in 2008/09. It is what happens two years later onwards that will need fixing.
Once the dust settles it will be interesting to see which approach worked best.
But I do hope we see some speeding up, I entirely agree.
I rather hope not, having a few small bets on various contingencies that will plunge if he's absent from the grid.
A very good vaccine start is not a free pass from much of what has gone before during the crisis. My favourite Johnsonian Covid- pandemic statement, which has, and during the public enquiry will be seen as utmost folly, is the line, "it is your patriotic duty to go to the pub". A comic line he has choked, and will continue to choke on.
The Guernsey vax strategy is pretty much the same as Scotland's isn't it?
Calling it the English / British variant seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Though, for what it's worth (and if we really must have yet another Brexit borefest on here) then, if the UK's decision to reject the EU central vaccine procurement drive means that we extricate ourselves from the mire so much as a month before the rest of the continent, then that should be enough to compensate for all the costs imposed by these non-tariff barriers many times over. The scale of the misery and destruction wrought by Covid makes practically everything else pale in comparison.
It would have allowed the 60-79 year olds to book appointments, queue up or turn up for jabs at their local centre, pharmacy ensuring that all daily capacity is used up and we don't have doses sitting in fridges or worse being chucked.
"We are introducing a Five Tier system and we are on Tier Three and a Half."
Edit: with added graphic to show the pointer at 3.5.
The NHS boss of Primary Care is quite a source...
And my guess is that the less we hear from Trump (and he has no voice right now), the less they feel the urge to purge.
Cruel ironies.
So, if we see (through the cycle) GDP growth of 2.5% and inflation of 2.5%, then nominal GDP is growing at 5%. If deficits (again, through the cycle) were to average 5%, then debt-to-GDP would be stable through the cycle.
And on that last point, I am looking forward to the memoirs of Chris Whitty et al and wonder if they will look, to put it crudely for which apols, to claim credit for the successes and blame the government for the failures.
Is Scotland measuring it differently?
But, there won't be interest paid on it, and it will be rolled over into perpetuity, so it may as well not exist.
Plus, as @FrancisUrquhart has noted, we have been instructed not to go on holiday. (Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.) But if all is allowed but there are conditions - tests, isolation, quarantine, whatever, then what's the problem.
Where are all these private cars going mid morning?
Scotland's "focus on Care homes first" does not appear in the December announcement:
Vaccinations will continue to the first priority groups as set by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) – residents in a care home for older adults and their carers, people over the age of 80 and frontline health and social care workers. The programme will then be rolled out to the rest of the population sequentially based on the JCVI’s priority list....
https://www.gov.scot/news/approval-for-new-covid-19-vaccine/
Care home and health workers appear to have done well, the over 80s less so
Politically, the overton window on spending has been moved. The pandemic is obviously the pandemic. But wait for Lab to name homelessness, poverty, the NHS, and the private ownership of Tescos as equally life-threatening crises. And who would blame them.
If it all goes quiet and Trump is a good boy the will to convict will diminish but there's another possibility that in the time before the trial increasingly damning evidence emerges. If so, he will go down, and not in a happy way.
We just can't tell yet how this thing is likely to end.