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.
Yes people here call it the Kent variant. Is that Kentophobia? And we talk about the Brazil strain, the South African mutation etc. This is to differentiate it from the regular flavour. It's not really comparable to calling it Wuhan or Chinese Coronavirus since the geographical indicator isn't being used in that case to differentiate what you're talking about but to apportion blame. I don't think Merkel is blaming us.
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?
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?
The government wanted to allow some business travel to continue...unfortunately loads of people have decided I can't possibly miss out on my winter sunshine holibob and thus I will claim it is all for business purposes....I am shooting material for my Instagram page.
Again the problem comes down to how do you actually regulate what would be allowable business reasons? The rules book would be huge and then we get the screeching of "TOOOOOO CONFUSING"....
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?
That's the oddest part, people coming back from 'visiting family' abroad and you're like wait what ?! Very close family funerals and employment/work purposes are more understandable.
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?
For some reason I remember that quote about a French holiday in 1915 - "Oh, my dear, the noise! and the people!"
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?
That's the oddest part, people coming back from 'visiting family' abroad and you're like wait what ?! Very close family funerals and employment/work purposes are more understandable.
There was a woman the other day very annoyed about all of this...she had gone to Brazil for Christmas to visit some family...like seriously, really, are you mental....
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?
The government wanted to allow business travel to continue...unfortunately loads of people have decided I can't possibly miss out on my winter sunshine holibob and thus I will claim it is for business purposes....I am shooting material for my Instagram page etc.
Also, airports and planes of course are completely exempt from the risks of airborne transmission that pubs and busses suffer from.
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.
Two questions:
(1) Does Guernsey also require a test 48 hours before travel? (2) The 7% found on day 13, did they travel on a plane with someone known to have been infected?
Because if you add those safeguards, you may reduce the 7% to 1 or 2%.
Now, it may be worth going "the whole hog" and cutting it to zero (although even Australia hasn't quite managed that), but it also might be that you can achieve 99% of the goal with less than half the effort.
Of course, these calculations are all also dependent on knowing how effective the vaccine is on new variants.
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?
Depends. If you get a test beforehand, go for a couple of months to somewhere with few infections, take precautions and isolate while you are there, you could argue that isn't especially irresponsible behaviour. I mean, I wouldn't do it, but it's not equivalent to breaking quarantine, for instance.
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?
The government wanted to allow business travel to continue...unfortunately loads of people have decided I can't possibly miss out on my winter sunshine holibob and thus I will claim it is for business purposes....I am shooting material for my Instagram page etc.
Also, airports and planes of course are completely exempt from the risks of airborne transmission that pubs and busses suffer from.
3-4hrs sitting inside with 1000s of other people, followed by sitting in a small metal tube with 100s of people for many more hours, would could possibly be risky about that.
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?
Depends. If you get a test beforehand, go for a couple of months to somewhere with few infections, take precautions and isolate while you are there, you could argue that isn't especially irresponsible behaviour. I mean, I wouldn't do it, but it's not equivalent to breaking quarantine, for instance.
It smacks of selfishness. What gives you the right to go somewhere and potentially spread the plague. Or for you to bring it back when you return (as happened in the summer)?
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.
I'm right because I'm comparing now to the equivalent point last time. As to the future, yes, we will see. But please remember that in assessing the state of the public finances there are 3 main elements to consider. (i) Deficit. (ii) Debt. (iii) Economic Outlook. There's no need to dumb it down to just (i) for people on here. They're all quite bright.
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?
Depends. If you get a test beforehand, go for a couple of months to somewhere with few infections, take precautions and isolate while you are there, you could argue that isn't especially irresponsible behaviour. I mean, I wouldn't do it, but it's not equivalent to breaking quarantine, for instance.
Leads to the picnic problem though. A couple stop for a picnic, next up a few 2.4 families decide to do the same, then a small group of friends have a chat with a bottle...
3-4hrs sitting inside with 1000s of other people, followed by sitting in a small metal tube with 100s of people for many more hours, would could possibly be risky about that.
We've paused business travel, too risky for staff. And if my bosses have paused it - well tbh almost noone should be going abroad.
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.
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.
What has disappeared, I think, is the argument that "nothing can be done/It is impossible". Clearly, almost nothing is impossible. Creating a vaccine in 9 months, paying a huge proportion of the population to stay at home, closing down whole sectors of the economy, housing the homeless virtually overnight. Amongst many others. Politicians are going to have to argue WHY something ought or ought not to be done. And, perhaps, admit these are choices. Rather than shrug that they aren't affordable. How that plays out remains to be seen.
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?
Depends. If you get a test beforehand, go for a couple of months to somewhere with few infections, take precautions and isolate while you are there, you could argue that isn't especially irresponsible behaviour. I mean, I wouldn't do it, but it's not equivalent to breaking quarantine, for instance.
It smacks of selfishness. What gives you the right to go somewhere and potentially spread the plague. Or for you to bring it back when you return (as happened in the summer)?
Like I say I wouldn't do it. I've barely left my house in months. But the country in question has actively encouraged visitors, and since they have few cases people are unlikely to bring it back. I think the indignation is a bit overdone, that's all.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have joined other European Union members in calling for the bloc’s drugs regulator to move quickly in approving AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine, Reuters reports.
This is going to ruin sports in France, pretty much means if an English club draws PSG in the CL, they will have to postpone their PL match in the run up.
Ditto for any clubs who draw French clubs in the Europa League.
Assumes that excuses won't keep being found to leave lockdown exactly as it is.
Which is just paranoid conspiracist ramblings assuming the governments wants restrictions even when not needed and that the public will be content with that, as the latter is why the government is able to be so harsh.
Someone will want restrictions forever. Government has no incentive to do that.
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....
Scotland has done very well with the care home residents and staff (95% is the figure that I've heard quoted,) but is a long way behind on over 80s in the general population (who are also a much larger cohort.) If the BBC have collated their numbers correctly then these figures, published yesterday, should indicate the approximate proportion of over 80s who have already received their first jab:
England: 56.3% (ranging from 48.1% in London to 64% in NE & Yorkshire) NI: 44.6% Wales: 23.9% Scotland: 13.1%
This is going to ruin sports in France, pretty much means if an English club draws PSG in the CL, they will have to postpone their PL match in the run up.
Ditto for any clubs who draw French clubs in the Europa League.
Pfizer face questions over EU vaccine deliveries The European commission will seek clarification from Pfizer over whether there will be fresh delays in delivering Covid vaccines to EU countries next week, a spokesman for the EU executive said.
“We will seek clarification from the company,” the spokesman told a news conference in reply to a question about a new slowdowns in deliveries reported by EU countries for next week.
Pfizer and the commission had earlier said that there would have been no further slowdown next week, after supplies slowed this week.
Government officials from a number of EU states told Reuters yesterday that the US-based drugmaker had halved the volume of Covid vaccines it was delivering this week.
Romania got only 50% of its planned volume for this week, the other half being allocated gradually by the end of March, with deliveries returning to normal starting next week, deputy health minister Andrei Baciu said. It was a similar situation in Poland, which on Monday received 176,000 doses, a drop of around 50% from what was expected, authorities said.
The Czech government was bracing for the disruption to last for weeks, slowing its vaccination campaign just as the second dose of vaccinations get under way. “We have to expect that there will be a reduction in the number of open vaccination appointments in the following three weeks,” health minister Jan Blatny told reporters on Thursday, with Pfizer deliveries falling by about 15% this week and as much as 30% for the following two weeks.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have declined to comment on the cuts beyond their statement last week, which announced cuts to deliveries as they ramp up manufacturing in Europe. On Wednesday, Italy threatened legal action against Pfizer.
This is going to ruin sports in France, pretty much means if an English club draws PSG in the CL, they will have to postpone their PL match in the run up.
Ditto for any clubs who draw French clubs in the Europa League.
Assumes that excuses won't keep being found to leave lockdown exactly as it is.
Which is just paranoid conspiracist ramblings assuming the governments wants restrictions even when not needed and that the public will be content with that, as the latter is why the government is able to be so harsh.
Someone will want restrictions forever. Government has no incentive to do that.
Indeed. Thus far the government has given the impression of finding excuses for why lockdown should end/Not be introduced.
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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
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.
360K in England only. Will be over 400K for the UK.
405k plus NI.
Better! 500k is just about in reach.
Decent numbers! That's actually ahead of the required rate. My concern is a weekend slump a la last weekend.
I think the Gov'ts target won't be met, but it was well worth putting in there otherwise we'd be content to sit at 200k a day or whatever. Well we wouldn't but PHE would. The target is driving the rate
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....
Scotland has done very well with the care home residents and staff (95% is the figure that I've heard quoted,) but is a long way behind on over 80s in the general population (who are also a much larger cohort.) If the BBC have collated their numbers correctly then these figures, published yesterday, should indicate the approximate proportion of over 80s who have already received their first jab:
England: 56.3% (ranging from 48.1% in London to 64% in NE & Yorkshire) NI: 44.6% Wales: 23.9% Scotland: 13.1%
I'm wondering how far the Scots haver taken interruptions in supply into account in their planning - and in particular how they will deal with the second doses.
Assumes that excuses won't keep being found to leave lockdown exactly as it is.
Have you seen ANY evidence that the government would do this? The only direction the government get criticism for is being too gung ho - not locking down soon, enough, opening too soon, don't have 'eat out to help out'. Why do you think this is going to be different? Johnson is a liberal in the true sense of the world. He didn't want Covid to define his time in office. He doesn't want to lockdown for ever.
360K in England only. Will be over 400K for the UK.
405k plus NI.
Better! 500k is just about in reach.
Decent numbers! That's actually ahead of the required rate. My concern is a weekend slump a la last weekend.
Bigger concern is that it is now fairly established fact that next week there will be a significant reduction in supply.
But - but - we've building the infrastucture and systems to get all the Johnson and Johnson (Hopefully with good p3 results shortly) into people's arms as quickly as possible when it arrives hopefully. There's a benefit to doing large daily numbers early doors even if you know they're unsustainable for a few weeks due to 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
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
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.
So, what do you think the word "work" means?
It's rather like saying "hmm my amplifier has a nasty hum when I'm playing music".
Assumes that excuses won't keep being found to leave lockdown exactly as it is.
Which is just paranoid conspiracist ramblings assuming the governments wants restrictions even when not needed and that the public will be content with that, as the latter is why the government is able to be so harsh.
Someone will want restrictions forever. Government has no incentive to do that.
If nothing else the Treasury will eventually impose its weight fully and totally behind a 'time to open up' policy rather than let lockdown just continue indefinitely. Lockdown is a ticket to national bankrupt if it goes on and on.
Scandalous, but it does confirm my suspicion that they are keeping a record on who is being vaccinated based on NHS numbers.
Foreign NHS workers could be denied Covid vaccine in England
Exclusive: Guidelines at one hospital say only those with NHS number can have jab, excluding those from abroad
Foreign NHS workers treating Covid patients are at risk of being denied vaccinations because of internal guidelines about who can receive the jab, the Guardian has learned.
Documents circulated among staff at one leading hospital show vaccinators have been told they must not immunise anyone without an NHS number.
A senior source at the NHS trust said the instruction was disproportionately likely to affect foreign nurses and people from a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background who had not registered with a GP. “We’re basically being told to turn away ethnic minorities and foreigners, who are fundamental to delivery of healthcare in this country,” the source said.
Assumes that excuses won't keep being found to leave lockdown exactly as it is.
Which is just paranoid conspiracist ramblings assuming the governments wants restrictions even when not needed and that the public will be content with that, as the latter is why the government is able to be so harsh.
Someone will want restrictions forever. Government has no incentive to do that.
It's not conspiracism, it's just pessimism - which is the product of feeling thoroughly depressed and fed up, allied to the tendency for things to keep going wrong.
We know perfectly well that there's zero chance of house arrest being relaxed once they get as far as jabbing the over 70s and the shielders. Quite why things should be radically different even when they've got as far as the over 50s I don't know. If it looks as if the Plague is finally under some tenuous form of control then the panic about swamping the hospitals with the young the second we let down our guard still won't go away, probably allied to a lot of dire warnings about more new variants emerging and a tsunami of Long Covid cases.
This is going to drag on until the entire adult population has been vaccinated, by which time Autumn will be upon us and then we'll be told that masks and social distancing will have to stay for another six months to suppress a combination of Winter Covid and Winter Flu. That takes us through to about April or May 2022, which is ample time both for fresh scare stories to gather pace and for some genuine catastrophe (e.g. imported Paraguayan Covid is resistant to vaccines, so we have to start all over again) to happen.
A lot of the mad scientists are either still agitating for a zero Covid policy, or stating that herd immunity cannot be reached and we must therefore tolerate restrictions forever. We'll be lucky if this is ever done with. I'm not at all sure that it will.
My parents 75 & 77 are booked in for their vaccine next Friday
Double checked with my son - he gets his jab tomorrow.
Another son in another part of Essex informs me that a 32 yo hairdresser is getting theirs shortly as they go into care homes to do hair for the residents.
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.
In which case let's have him back on all platforms chatting shit again.
His rantings would be less dangerous perhaps now even his followers know it's too late to keep him as President.
Yes maybe. Thing is, I want him gone (done) and forgotten (wip) but I don't want him becoming some romanticized Greta Garbo or JD Salinger character who you never hear or see at all, and who therefore grows in mystique and end up accruing rather than shedding power. One thinks of the Ayatollah Khomeini in exile in Paris. Look how that turned 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 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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
Droll, but there's a difference between a one-off debt cancellation event and just printing money indefinitely to support all ongoing expenditure. Just because you have an amnesty for illegal immigrants, that doesn't commit you to operating open borders forever. And the GFC, despite the name, didn't have the same kind of global impact and ability to touch everything everywhere the way the coronavirus does. A government proposing to write off GFC debt in 2010 wouldn't have found many like-minded friends; this time might be different.
And yes, of course there would be an enormous temptation for such a 'one-off' to be repeated in the future. But we can deal with that problem the next time a global crisis of similar magnitude occurs.
360K in England only. Will be over 400K for the UK.
405k plus NI.
Better! 500k is just about in reach.
Decent numbers! That's actually ahead of the required rate. My concern is a weekend slump a la last weekend.
I think the Gov'ts target won't be met, but it was well worth putting in there otherwise we'd be content to sit at 200k a day or whatever. Well we wouldn't but PHE would. The target is driving the rate
Indeed. What gets measured gets managed.
Think they should make the target though – what excuses from here?
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....
Scotland has done very well with the care home residents and staff (95% is the figure that I've heard quoted,) but is a long way behind on over 80s in the general population (who are also a much larger cohort.) If the BBC have collated their numbers correctly then these figures, published yesterday, should indicate the approximate proportion of over 80s who have already received their first jab:
England: 56.3% (ranging from 48.1% in London to 64% in NE & Yorkshire) NI: 44.6% Wales: 23.9% Scotland: 13.1%
I'm wondering how far the Scots haver taken interruptions in supply into account in their planning - and in particular how they will deal with the second doses.
One bonus is that we're no longer hearing that Scottish Tory donor and private care home owner being amplified on BBC Scotland every morning. Couldn't get away from him when the SCons thought looking after care home residents was a no.1 priority.
360K in England only. Will be over 400K for the UK.
405k plus NI.
Better! 500k is just about in reach.
Decent numbers! That's actually ahead of the required rate. My concern is a weekend slump a la last weekend.
I think the Gov'ts target won't be met, but it was well worth putting in there otherwise we'd be content to sit at 200k a day or whatever. Well we wouldn't but PHE would. The target is driving the rate
Indeed. What gets measured gets managed.
Think they should make the target though – what excuses from here?
Assumes that excuses won't keep being found to leave lockdown exactly as it is.
Which is just paranoid conspiracist ramblings assuming the governments wants restrictions even when not needed and that the public will be content with that, as the latter is why the government is able to be so harsh.
Someone will want restrictions forever. Government has no incentive to do that.
It's not conspiracism, it's just pessimism - which is the product of feeling thoroughly depressed and fed up, allied to the tendency for things to keep going wrong.
We know perfectly well that there's zero chance of house arrest being relaxed once they get as far as jabbing the over 70s and the shielders. Quite why things should be radically different even when they've got as far as the over 50s I don't know. If it looks as if the Plague is finally under some tenuous form of control then the panic about swamping the hospitals with the young the second we let down our guard still won't go away, probably allied to a lot of dire warnings about more new variants emerging and a tsunami of Long Covid cases.
This is going to drag on until the entire adult population has been vaccinated, by which time Autumn will be upon us and then we'll be told that masks and social distancing will have to stay for another six months to suppress a combination of Winter Covid and Winter Flu. That takes us through to about April or May 2022, which is ample time both for fresh scare stories to gather pace and for some genuine catastrophe (e.g. imported Paraguayan Covid is resistant to vaccines, so we have to start all over again) to happen.
A lot of the mad scientists are either still agitating for a zero Covid policy, or stating that herd immunity cannot be reached and we must therefore tolerate restrictions forever. We'll be lucky if this is ever done with. I'm not at all sure that it will.
The key pinch point is hospitalisations. Once the over 45's are done, the hospitals will empty. If we carry on at the rate we are, that should be around Easter. Combine the effect of the lockdown (checks data - yep still working), with gradually increasing immunity among younger cohorts (e.g. NHS staff, care home staff), with the better weather (hat tip to last year) and yes by April things will be looking better. Note, I am not suggesting that at Easter life will be back to normal. Far from it, but restrictions will be coming off.
Lastly - I understand your pessimism, and I don't know your medical history, but maybe talk to someone about the depression? This is a grim time for us all - if there is help available, ask for it.
Regimental and ceremonial attire often does look silly. I thought that was the point of it.
But he's not wearing it properly. Of course it looks silly.
The basic hat is an everyday woollen cap - your old Scots equivalent of a ferrets-in-the-trousers Yorkshireman's flat cap/.
To Americans ALL "British" (or "English", "Scottish", etc., etc.) hats look silly as hell. From derby to tam o'shanter to deerstalker (unless of course you are Sherlock Holmes).
NOT what you call "dress for success" unless you're a butler or a shepherd. About the only one I can think of that is more-or-less acceptable (for some reason) is the flat cap. Though few would choose to wear one on national TV.
This guy could have shown up with a tinfoil helmet and drawn the same reaction: he's got a few screws loose.
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....
Scotland has done very well with the care home residents and staff (95% is the figure that I've heard quoted,) but is a long way behind on over 80s in the general population (who are also a much larger cohort.) If the BBC have collated their numbers correctly then these figures, published yesterday, should indicate the approximate proportion of over 80s who have already received their first jab:
England: 56.3% (ranging from 48.1% in London to 64% in NE & Yorkshire) NI: 44.6% Wales: 23.9% Scotland: 13.1%
I'm wondering how far the Scots haver taken interruptions in supply into account in their planning - and in particular how they will deal with the second doses.
I think the emphasis on care homes in Scotland is a reaction to the care home fiasco during the First Wave which generated a fair amount of criticism. (Covid + patients being sent into care homes from hospitals). Suspect they may have over-corrected somewhat judging by these figures,
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?
No, I don't rink. Just surrounded by those who do.
Nothing wrong with pointing out that English wines are now taking on the French - and beating them. If Scotland were making the world's best whiskies, I'd expect you to be trumpeting that.
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
I know it is unkind, but when you look at Chris Whitty you can't help wondering whether those that believe in the lizard people might just be right
Scandalous, but it does confirm my suspicion that they are keeping a record on who is being vaccinated based on NHS numbers. ...
I don't think that's scandalous, how else can they keep a record? They also have to tell the GP of the vaccination.
It seems bizarre that any NHS worker wouldn't be registered with a GP. If there any such workers, then it's up to them to register ASAP.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that having an NHS number should never be a precondition for the coronavirus jab. This is understood to be echoed by NHS England.
The issue has arisen due to the national immunisation vaccination system (NIVS), which the NHS uses to record details of medical staff who have been immunised.
Assumes that excuses won't keep being found to leave lockdown exactly as it is.
Which is just paranoid conspiracist ramblings assuming the governments wants restrictions even when not needed and that the public will be content with that, as the latter is why the government is able to be so harsh.
Someone will want restrictions forever. Government has no incentive to do that.
It's not conspiracism, it's just pessimism - which is the product of feeling thoroughly depressed and fed up, allied to the tendency for things to keep going wrong.
We know perfectly well that there's zero chance of house arrest being relaxed once they get as far as jabbing the over 70s and the shielders. Quite why things should be radically different even when they've got as far as the over 50s I don't know. If it looks as if the Plague is finally under some tenuous form of control then the panic about swamping the hospitals with the young the second we let down our guard still won't go away, probably allied to a lot of dire warnings about more new variants emerging and a tsunami of Long Covid cases.
This is going to drag on until the entire adult population has been vaccinated, by which time Autumn will be upon us and then we'll be told that masks and social distancing will have to stay for another six months to suppress a combination of Winter Covid and Winter Flu. That takes us through to about April or May 2022, which is ample time both for fresh scare stories to gather pace and for some genuine catastrophe (e.g. imported Paraguayan Covid is resistant to vaccines, so we have to start all over again) to happen.
A lot of the mad scientists are either still agitating for a zero Covid policy, or stating that herd immunity cannot be reached and we must therefore tolerate restrictions forever. We'll be lucky if this is ever done with. I'm not at all sure that it will.
The key pinch point is hospitalisations. Once the over 45's are done, the hospitals will empty. If we carry on at the rate we are, that should be around Easter. Combine the effect of the lockdown (checks data - yep still working), with gradually increasing immunity among younger cohorts (e.g. NHS staff, care home staff), with the better weather (hat tip to last year) and yes by April things will be looking better. Note, I am not suggesting that at Easter life will be back to normal. Far from it, but restrictions will be coming off.
Lastly - I understand your pessimism, and I don't know your medical history, but maybe talk to someone about the depression? This is a grim time for us all - if there is help available, ask for it.
The cohort which has immunity conferred by infection is certainly significant – it runs into the several millions.
Interestingly, I read that Israel isn't even vaccinating recovered Covidians, saying that their natural immune response renders it largely pointless.
Scandalous, but it does confirm my suspicion that they are keeping a record on who is being vaccinated based on NHS numbers.
Foreign NHS workers could be denied Covid vaccine in England
Exclusive: Guidelines at one hospital say only those with NHS number can have jab, excluding those from abroad
Foreign NHS workers treating Covid patients are at risk of being denied vaccinations because of internal guidelines about who can receive the jab, the Guardian has learned.
Documents circulated among staff at one leading hospital show vaccinators have been told they must not immunise anyone without an NHS number.
A senior source at the NHS trust said the instruction was disproportionately likely to affect foreign nurses and people from a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background who had not registered with a GP. “We’re basically being told to turn away ethnic minorities and foreigners, who are fundamental to delivery of healthcare in this country,” the source said.
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?
No, I don't rink. Just surrounded by those who do.
Nothing wrong with pointing out that English wines are now taking on the French - and beating them. If Scotland were making the world's best whiskies, I'd expect you to be trumpeting that.
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....
Scotland has done very well with the care home residents and staff (95% is the figure that I've heard quoted,) but is a long way behind on over 80s in the general population (who are also a much larger cohort.) If the BBC have collated their numbers correctly then these figures, published yesterday, should indicate the approximate proportion of over 80s who have already received their first jab:
England: 56.3% (ranging from 48.1% in London to 64% in NE & Yorkshire) NI: 44.6% Wales: 23.9% Scotland: 13.1%
I'm wondering how far the Scots haver taken interruptions in supply into account in their planning - and in particular how they will deal with the second doses.
I think the emphasis on care homes in Scotland is a reaction to the care home fiasco during the First Wave which generated a fair amount of criticism. (Covid + patients being sent into care homes from hospitals). Suspect they may have over-corrected somewhat judging by these figures,
SCons have been boasting this week about all the u turns that they've forced the SNP government into. D'ye think they'll be including this one?
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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
Droll, but there's a difference between a one-off debt cancellation event and just printing money indefinitely to support all ongoing expenditure. Just because you have an amnesty for illegal immigrants, that doesn't commit you to operating open borders forever. And the GFC, despite the name, didn't have the same kind of global impact and ability to touch everything everywhere the way the coronavirus does. A government proposing to write off GFC debt in 2010 wouldn't have found many like-minded friends; this time might be different.
And yes, of course there would be an enormous temptation for such a 'one-off' to be repeated in the future. But we can deal with that problem the next time a global crisis of similar magnitude occurs.
Well, Climate Change is here now. So there would be the immediate need to make the difficult case that taking the steps required to deal with it should not be funded by this new financial alchemy. And a large proportion of the world's population live in conditions which even in 2021 mean the risk of catching Covid is not their biggest problem.
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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
I mean don't get me wrong - Lab will blow it again because, well, that's what Lab does but it will be difficult for the Cons to argue against a huge spending bill next time round
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
I know it is unkind, but when you look at Chris Whitty you can't help wondering whether those that believe in the lizard people might just be right
I must admit he has caused even me to question my lack of faith in Ickeian theory.
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?
No, I don't rink. Just surrounded by those who do.
Nothing wrong with pointing out that English wines are now taking on the French - and beating them. If Scotland were making the world's best whiskies, I'd expect you to be trumpeting that.
It is a bit rich when a poster that writes little else other than tedious nationalistic crap accuses someone else of having a nationalistic speck of dust in their eye. Nationalism is the creed of the hypocrite and the bonehead.
Assumes that excuses won't keep being found to leave lockdown exactly as it is.
Which is just paranoid conspiracist ramblings assuming the governments wants restrictions even when not needed and that the public will be content with that, as the latter is why the government is able to be so harsh.
Someone will want restrictions forever. Government has no incentive to do that.
It's not conspiracism, it's just pessimism - which is the product of feeling thoroughly depressed and fed up, allied to the tendency for things to keep going wrong.
We know perfectly well that there's zero chance of house arrest being relaxed once they get as far as jabbing the over 70s and the shielders. Quite why things should be radically different even when they've got as far as the over 50s I don't know. If it looks as if the Plague is finally under some tenuous form of control then the panic about swamping the hospitals with the young the second we let down our guard still won't go away, probably allied to a lot of dire warnings about more new variants emerging and a tsunami of Long Covid cases.
This is going to drag on until the entire adult population has been vaccinated, by which time Autumn will be upon us and then we'll be told that masks and social distancing will have to stay for another six months to suppress a combination of Winter Covid and Winter Flu. That takes us through to about April or May 2022, which is ample time both for fresh scare stories to gather pace and for some genuine catastrophe (e.g. imported Paraguayan Covid is resistant to vaccines, so we have to start all over again) to happen.
A lot of the mad scientists are either still agitating for a zero Covid policy, or stating that herd immunity cannot be reached and we must therefore tolerate restrictions forever. We'll be lucky if this is ever done with. I'm not at all sure that it will.
It is conspiracism because you referred to leaving lockdown as it is being via an 'excuse'.
As for some scientists or others advocating for restrictions well beyond what is reasonable in terms of the actual risk, they won't be making the decisions. As has been pointed out the government has, if anything, been accused of dragging its feet on these issues. Since advice allowed relaxation of restriction from lockdown before, it is not even slightly plausible that won't be permissable again, and even more so given vaccination.
So I find it hard to accept the view it is mere pessimism when it relies upon a conspiracy theory about government in order to be viable.
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
The sooner he and the rest of the unaccountable scientists fade out of public life the better.
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
The sooner he and the rest of the unaccountable scientists fade out of public life the better.
Not unaccountable. If advice he gave government faces criticism you can bet your life the government will throw the book at him.
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....
Scotland has done very well with the care home residents and staff (95% is the figure that I've heard quoted,) but is a long way behind on over 80s in the general population (who are also a much larger cohort.) If the BBC have collated their numbers correctly then these figures, published yesterday, should indicate the approximate proportion of over 80s who have already received their first jab:
England: 56.3% (ranging from 48.1% in London to 64% in NE & Yorkshire) NI: 44.6% Wales: 23.9% Scotland: 13.1%
I'm wondering how far the Scots haver taken interruptions in supply into account in their planning - and in particular how they will deal with the second doses.
I think the emphasis on care homes in Scotland is a reaction to the care home fiasco during the First Wave which generated a fair amount of criticism. (Covid + patients being sent into care homes from hospitals). Suspect they may have over-corrected somewhat judging by these figures,
I think it does make a sense as a strategy, because care home residents are both more vulnerable and more exposed than people still managing at home.
Not sure it works as an excuse for the slower rollout though. I guess we'll see whether the speed picks up after the care homes are done.
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
I know it is unkind, but when you look at Chris Whitty you can't help wondering whether those that believe in the lizard people might just be right
It feels weird being on the same side as you for the first time in probably 5 years, Nige.
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?
No, I don't rink. Just surrounded by those who do.
Nothing wrong with pointing out that English wines are now taking on the French - and beating them. If Scotland were making the world's best whiskies, I'd expect you to be trumpeting that.
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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
Droll, but there's a difference between a one-off debt cancellation event and just printing money indefinitely to support all ongoing expenditure. Just because you have an amnesty for illegal immigrants, that doesn't commit you to operating open borders forever. And the GFC, despite the name, didn't have the same kind of global impact and ability to touch everything everywhere the way the coronavirus does. A government proposing to write off GFC debt in 2010 wouldn't have found many like-minded friends; this time might be different.
And yes, of course there would be an enormous temptation for such a 'one-off' to be repeated in the future. But we can deal with that problem the next time a global crisis of similar magnitude occurs.
Snot the point.
If the pandemic is a life-threatening crisis, why isn't homelessness. Surely you aren't going to begrudge spending a fraction of the cost of the pandemic on preventing people dying on the streets. Or from being poor. Or from having to shop at a privately-owned Tescos.
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....
Scotland has done very well with the care home residents and staff (95% is the figure that I've heard quoted,) but is a long way behind on over 80s in the general population (who are also a much larger cohort.) If the BBC have collated their numbers correctly then these figures, published yesterday, should indicate the approximate proportion of over 80s who have already received their first jab:
England: 56.3% (ranging from 48.1% in London to 64% in NE & Yorkshire) NI: 44.6% Wales: 23.9% Scotland: 13.1%
I'm wondering how far the Scots haver taken interruptions in supply into account in their planning - and in particular how they will deal with the second doses.
I think the emphasis on care homes in Scotland is a reaction to the care home fiasco during the First Wave which generated a fair amount of criticism. (Covid + patients being sent into care homes from hospitals). Suspect they may have over-corrected somewhat judging by these figures,
I suppose there is something in it but it is in any case by comparison with the English Gmt (which had the same problem). The more methodical approach (also to the housebound elderly) does obviate moans about unfairness etc. And I'm wondering also if it is a response to the risk of vaccine supplies going poot - second jabs will be needed whatever happens, esp with the elderly (weaker immune systems).
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?
No, I don't rink. Just surrounded by those who do.
Nothing wrong with pointing out that English wines are now taking on the French - and beating them. If Scotland were making the world's best whiskies, I'd expect you to be trumpeting that.
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
The sooner he and the rest of the unaccountable scientists fade out of public life the better.
Not unaccountable. If advice he gave government faces criticism you can bet your life the government will throw the book at him.
Not at all, how do we, the public, vote to remove him after such an abject performance. He and his ilk persuaded the government that closing the borders in January was pointless and we've all paid the price since then. Whatever economic damage we would have incurred from closing the border back then would be less than 10% of GDP and £400bn borrowed.
Scandalous, but it does confirm my suspicion that they are keeping a record on who is being vaccinated based on NHS numbers. ...
I don't think that's scandalous, how else can they keep a record? They also have to tell the GP of the vaccination.
It seems bizarre that any NHS worker wouldn't be registered with a GP. If there any such workers, then it's up to them to register ASAP.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that having an NHS number should never be a precondition for the coronavirus jab. This is understood to be echoed by NHS England.
The issue has arisen due to the national immunisation vaccination system (NIVS), which the NHS uses to record details of medical staff who have been immunised.
Ah, I didn't know they had a separate system for tracking jabs for NHS staff. Sounds like local cock-up, in that case, since NIVS seems to be based on the NHS employee number:
Oh come on, Schumer, you speak publicly for a living and this moment was going to be widely circulated, you didn't need to add some stumblings to make it go viral.
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
The sooner he and the rest of the unaccountable scientists fade out of public life the better.
Not unaccountable. If advice he gave government faces criticism you can bet your life the government will throw the book at him.
There will be a skeleton. One time, one Thursday morning when the "scientists" said do X and the govt said actually taking into account a, b, and c we'll do Y. And the following week/month a spike happened and the govt will be shit-scared of throwing anything at them when this is all done because the scientists will point to that Thursday morning and say "Look. This is a government you can't trust".
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.
Going to look at houses they have no intention of buying - just to get out.
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.
Two questions:
(1) Does Guernsey also require a test 48 hours before travel? (2) The 7% found on day 13, did they travel on a plane with someone known to have been infected?
1) No - because pre-flight testing misses 100% of those infected en-route. Indeed on-arrival testing also misses 100% of those infected en-route. 2) No - because they would have been contact-trace identified from an infected passenger - they presented (probably) asymptomatic at Day 13.
Modelling had suggested they'd get about 10 infected passengers for every 1,000 arrivals - they've actually had 10.4 - so they're pretty happy with the model.
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.
Guaranteed.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
The sooner he and the rest of the unaccountable scientists fade out of public life the better.
Not unaccountable. If advice he gave government faces criticism you can bet your life the government will throw the book at him.
Not at all, how do we, the public, vote to remove him after such an abject performance. He and his ilk persuaded the government that closing the borders in January was pointless and we've all paid the price since then. Whatever economic damage we would have incurred from closing the border back then would be less than 10% of GDP and £400bn borrowed.
I think that's a pretty silly way of determining accountability. The public don't vote on most positions, and he is not a decision maker, are you seriously suggesting no one is accountable unless they are subject to a democratic vote at some point? That's insane.
He will be held to account in the way appropriate for his position. And even if that is found to be insufficient, even if he is unaccountable in some way, the idea he is unaccountable because we the public cannot vote to remove him is one of the barmiest things I've read for a long time. Is my postman unaccountable because I cannot vote him out if he does a bad job? Is my doctor unaccountable because they face consequences other than being voted out if he messes up?
Given how you've defined accountability for him, voting people out seems the only way you accept it.
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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
I mean don't get me wrong - Lab will blow it again because, well, that's what Lab does but it will be difficult for the Cons to argue against a huge spending bill next time round
Not so sure about that. Seeing as how here in USA, Republicans are currently doing 180 from "deficits don't matter" to "deficits are the devil" in (dare I say it?) warp speed.
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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
I mean don't get me wrong - Lab will blow it again because, well, that's what Lab does but it will be difficult for the Cons to argue against a huge spending bill next time round
Don't worry, we're only agreeing on what we're agreeing.
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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
I mean don't get me wrong - Lab will blow it again because, well, that's what Lab does but it will be difficult for the Cons to argue against a huge spending bill next time round
Not so sure about that. Seeing as how here in USA, Republicans are currently doing 180 from "deficits don't matter" to "deficits are the devil" in (dare I say it?) warp speed.
Scandalous, but it does confirm my suspicion that they are keeping a record on who is being vaccinated based on NHS numbers. ...
I don't think that's scandalous, how else can they keep a record? They also have to tell the GP of the vaccination.
It seems bizarre that any NHS worker wouldn't be registered with a GP. If there any such workers, then it's up to them to register ASAP.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that having an NHS number should never be a precondition for the coronavirus jab. This is understood to be echoed by NHS England.
The issue has arisen due to the national immunisation vaccination system (NIVS), which the NHS uses to record details of medical staff who have been immunised.
Ah, I didn't know they had a separate system for tracking jabs for NHS staff. Sounds like local cock-up, in that case, since NIVS seems to be based on the NHS employee number:
Someone with a read-only mind. The see "NHS number here" and their brain crashes on the null pointer exception when it turns out that someone doesn't have an NHS number. But a different number for the same purpose.
If you encounter people with the inability to learn, this video instruction manual may come in handy
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.
Absolutely. I'm trad and so I happen to think it was necessary to balance the books last time and that it's necessary now. But if it turns out we can just print money instead and avoid the fiscal pain, well then we could have done this before, couldn't we, and therefore all of that Tory austerity was exactly as described. It was TORY austerity. A political choice. Furthermore, that "unaffordable" Labour GE19 manifesto starts to look very attractive indeed. So, yes, spot on.
I mean don't get me wrong - Lab will blow it again because, well, that's what Lab does but it will be difficult for the Cons to argue against a huge spending bill next time round
Don't worry, we're only agreeing on what we're agreeing.
You're right and as ever, I appreciate your support.
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?
No, I don't rink. Just surrounded by those who do.
Nothing wrong with pointing out that English wines are now taking on the French - and beating them. If Scotland were making the world's best whiskies, I'd expect you to be trumpeting that.
See, it's typically nationalists who trumpet a drink that constitutes less than 1% of the UK market that seem to 'expect' other folk to be doing similar. If you can find a single post on here from me doing some needle dick boasting about whisky, I'll cancel your side of that bet we had on whether a bridge/tunnel will be built between Scotland and NI during the glorious reign of BJ, £50 wasn't it? Get searching and you might have a free bet!
Comments
Blackpool or Barcelona?
Again the problem comes down to how do you actually regulate what would be allowable business reasons? The rules book would be huge and then we get the screeching of "TOOOOOO CONFUSING"....
https://twitter.com/torqpenderloin/status/1352444359145369600?s=20
Very close family funerals and employment/work purposes are more understandable.
(1) Does Guernsey also require a test 48 hours before travel?
(2) The 7% found on day 13, did they travel on a plane with someone known to have been infected?
Because if you add those safeguards, you may reduce the 7% to 1 or 2%.
Now, it may be worth going "the whole hog" and cutting it to zero (although even Australia hasn't quite managed that), but it also might be that you can achieve 99% of the goal with less than half the effort.
Of course, these calculations are all also dependent on knowing how effective the vaccine is on new variants.
Clearly, almost nothing is impossible. Creating a vaccine in 9 months, paying a huge proportion of the population to stay at home, closing down whole sectors of the economy, housing the homeless virtually overnight. Amongst many others.
Politicians are going to have to argue WHY something ought or ought not to be done. And, perhaps, admit these are choices. Rather than shrug that they aren't affordable.
How that plays out remains to be seen.
Ditto for any clubs who draw French clubs in the Europa League.
https://twitter.com/AnnaK_4ever/status/1352586790327242752
Someone will want restrictions forever. Government has no incentive to do that.
England: 56.3% (ranging from 48.1% in London to 64% in NE & Yorkshire)
NI: 44.6%
Wales: 23.9%
Scotland: 13.1%
The basic hat is an everyday woollen cap - your old Scots equivalent of a ferrets-in-the-trousers Yorkshireman's flat cap/.
The European commission will seek clarification from Pfizer over whether there will be fresh delays in delivering Covid vaccines to EU countries next week, a spokesman for the EU executive said.
“We will seek clarification from the company,” the spokesman told a news conference in reply to a question about a new slowdowns in deliveries reported by EU countries for next week.
Pfizer and the commission had earlier said that there would have been no further slowdown next week, after supplies slowed this week.
Government officials from a number of EU states told Reuters yesterday that the US-based drugmaker had halved the volume of Covid vaccines it was delivering this week.
Romania got only 50% of its planned volume for this week, the other half being allocated gradually by the end of March, with deliveries returning to normal starting next week, deputy health minister Andrei Baciu said. It was a similar situation in Poland, which on Monday received 176,000 doses, a drop of around 50% from what was expected, authorities said.
The Czech government was bracing for the disruption to last for weeks, slowing its vaccination campaign just as the second dose of vaccinations get under way. “We have to expect that there will be a reduction in the number of open vaccination appointments in the following three weeks,” health minister Jan Blatny told reporters on Thursday, with Pfizer deliveries falling by about 15% this week and as much as 30% for the following two weeks.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have declined to comment on the cuts beyond their statement last week, which announced cuts to deliveries as they ramp up manufacturing in Europe. On Wednesday, Italy threatened legal action against Pfizer.
I find Whitty unbearable. It's like being lectured by a dead sheep.
I won't be buying his memoirs.
"So turn it off."
"Hey, that works!"
Foreign NHS workers could be denied Covid vaccine in England
Exclusive: Guidelines at one hospital say only those with NHS number can have jab, excluding those from abroad
Foreign NHS workers treating Covid patients are at risk of being denied vaccinations because of internal guidelines about who can receive the jab, the Guardian has learned.
Documents circulated among staff at one leading hospital show vaccinators have been told they must not immunise anyone without an NHS number.
A senior source at the NHS trust said the instruction was disproportionately likely to affect foreign nurses and people from a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background who had not registered with a GP. “We’re basically being told to turn away ethnic minorities and foreigners, who are fundamental to delivery of healthcare in this country,” the source said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/foreign-nhs-workers-risk-being-denied-covid-vaccine-england?CMP=share_btn_tw
We know perfectly well that there's zero chance of house arrest being relaxed once they get as far as jabbing the over 70s and the shielders. Quite why things should be radically different even when they've got as far as the over 50s I don't know. If it looks as if the Plague is finally under some tenuous form of control then the panic about swamping the hospitals with the young the second we let down our guard still won't go away, probably allied to a lot of dire warnings about more new variants emerging and a tsunami of Long Covid cases.
This is going to drag on until the entire adult population has been vaccinated, by which time Autumn will be upon us and then we'll be told that masks and social distancing will have to stay for another six months to suppress a combination of Winter Covid and Winter Flu. That takes us through to about April or May 2022, which is ample time both for fresh scare stories to gather pace and for some genuine catastrophe (e.g. imported Paraguayan Covid is resistant to vaccines, so we have to start all over again) to happen.
A lot of the mad scientists are either still agitating for a zero Covid policy, or stating that herd immunity cannot be reached and we must therefore tolerate restrictions forever. We'll be lucky if this is ever done with. I'm not at all sure that it will.
Another son in another part of Essex informs me that a 32 yo hairdresser is getting theirs shortly as they go into care homes to do hair for the residents.
And yes, of course there would be an enormous temptation for such a 'one-off' to be repeated in the future. But we can deal with that problem the next time a global crisis of similar magnitude occurs.
Surely what is happening to Liz Cheney in Wyoming and in the house suggests that the balance of power in the republican party is with Trump.
Think they should make the target though – what excuses from here?
Note, I am not suggesting that at Easter life will be back to normal. Far from it, but restrictions will be coming off.
Lastly - I understand your pessimism, and I don't know your medical history, but maybe talk to someone about the depression? This is a grim time for us all - if there is help available, ask for it.
NOT what you call "dress for success" unless you're a butler or a shepherd. About the only one I can think of that is more-or-less acceptable (for some reason) is the flat cap. Though few would choose to wear one on national TV.
This guy could have shown up with a tinfoil helmet and drawn the same reaction: he's got a few screws loose.
It seems bizarre that any NHS worker wouldn't be registered with a GP. If there any such workers, then it's up to them to register ASAP.
Nothing wrong with pointing out that English wines are now taking on the French - and beating them. If Scotland were making the world's best whiskies, I'd expect you to be trumpeting that.
Oh.
http://www.worldwhiskiesawards.com/winner/whisky/2020/worlds-best-blended-limited-release-world-whiskies-awards-2020
The issue has arisen due to the national immunisation vaccination system (NIVS), which the NHS uses to record details of medical staff who have been immunised.
Interestingly, I read that Israel isn't even vaccinating recovered Covidians, saying that their natural immune response renders it largely pointless.
Good write up
As for some scientists or others advocating for restrictions well beyond what is reasonable in terms of the actual risk, they won't be making the decisions. As has been pointed out the government has, if anything, been accused of dragging its feet on these issues. Since advice allowed relaxation of restriction from lockdown before, it is not even slightly plausible that won't be permissable again, and even more so given vaccination.
So I find it hard to accept the view it is mere pessimism when it relies upon a conspiracy theory about government in order to be viable.
Not sure it works as an excuse for the slower rollout though. I guess we'll see whether the speed picks up after the care homes are done.
If the pandemic is a life-threatening crisis, why isn't homelessness. Surely you aren't going to begrudge spending a fraction of the cost of the pandemic on preventing people dying on the streets. Or from being poor. Or from having to shop at a privately-owned Tescos.
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1352641061911470082
https://twitter.com/choeshow/status/1352452546892185603?s=20
https://www.england.nhs.uk/increasing-health-and-social-care-worker-flu-vaccinations/niv-faqs/#what-is-the-national-immunisation-vaccination-system-nivs
2) No - because they would have been contact-trace identified from an infected passenger - they presented (probably) asymptomatic at Day 13.
Modelling had suggested they'd get about 10 infected passengers for every 1,000 arrivals - they've actually had 10.4 - so they're pretty happy with the model.
He will be held to account in the way appropriate for his position. And even if that is found to be insufficient, even if he is unaccountable in some way, the idea he is unaccountable because we the public cannot vote to remove him is one of the barmiest things I've read for a long time. Is my postman unaccountable because I cannot vote him out if he does a bad job? Is my doctor unaccountable because they face consequences other than being voted out if he messes up?
Given how you've defined accountability for him, voting people out seems the only way you accept it.
If you encounter people with the inability to learn, this video instruction manual may come in handy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t_wrtyxFp8