On the previous topic, I am really not sure the Democrats should have pushed for impeachment and said so all the way on here. They should have let it go. Trump is, for now, yesterday's man and it's for the Republicans to deal with him.
I agree: Trump is and was over. He's now starved of the oxygen of publicity. Conviction was always a long shot: what do they (the Dems) have to gain? And how is the country brought together?
They should have held their fire and moved on.
(Of course, McConnell wanted the Dems to waste their time on impeachment. Smart man, Mitch.)
If bad, indeed, potentially criminal actions have no consequences for the bad actor, what is the point of law and order? Or any sort of justice system? Or, indeed, the oath of office?
All the arguments you make could just as easily be used by criminals of all types, large and small.
"Moving on" may be necessary, indeed, wise - but only when those involved in the wrongdoing accept that they have indeed done wrong. Trump has not. Nor have his ardent supporters. Nor, frankly, has the Republican Party which is choosing to overlook its own discreditable role in allowing such a man to gain power in its name and supporting him throughout. The tactical backtracking by a few of them at the end does not wipe this out.
The lie - that Trump won and had the election "stolen" from him - needs to be removed from public discourse. It (and all the other lies and actions leading up to this - voter suppression and gerrymandering) needs to be comprehensively and publicly accepted as a lie by the Republican Party and apologised for by them. Not simply forgotten but allowed to fester in the background.
Until the Republicans do this, all their talk of "healing" and "moving on" is so much cant, which has nothing to do with them wanting to unite the country and everything to do with them wanting not to face up to their own inexcusable actions and loss of moral compass these last 4 years.
Well said. Tactically I get the moving on argument, but you cannot actually move on or heal without dealing with what happened. Themselves.
Der Spiegel (pretty mainstream magazine though with a bias to being anti whoever is in power) reporting the "maybe only give AZ to younger people" speculation too now - I don't think there's much doubt that it's under consideration, though it'll be Friday (EMA decision) and Saturday (German discussion with states) that will decide it.
I may be wrong, but the clear impression that I'm getting from the partial leaks is that the issue is that the clinical trials showed generally good effectiveness for AZ but the sample size for over-65s was small enough to produce a large margin of error for that group - very much like our often-discussed Scottish subsamples, which occasionally produce very odd results. Possibly the 95% certainty range does extend down to 8% as reported at the extreme low end.
You can look at that data in two ways. Either you say "The pattern for the elderly seems similar to everyone else, maybe a bit lower but not dramatically, so let's push ahead, as otherwise we'll be short of vaccine to supply." That's the British position as I understand it - if we had an infinite supply of 95% effective Pfizer, tested extensively on the elderly, we'd only use that - but we don't. Or you say "The elderly are especially vulnerable to Covid so we need to get this right. Let's delay giving them the AZ vaccine until we have reliable AZ results for the elderly, even if that slows rollout." That seems to be what the Germans are considering (and it would also explain why they'rre being so hardline about Pfizer's supply, as it's the main available alternative).
I don't think either position is incomprehensible or stupid, or a reason to panic (or to slag off Handelsblatt for reporting what they're told). The vaccine probably works well for all age groups, and it's just a question of whether to be super-cautious because the elderly sample is still small.
The 95% confidence issue for the elderly existed with Pfizer too. There is no distinction between the two on this issue.
For Pfizer the sample of the elderly was so small the 95% confidence bound took it between negative efficacy to 100% efficacy.
Der Spiegel (pretty mainstream magazine though with a bias to being anti whoever is in power) reporting the "maybe only give AZ to younger people" speculation too now - I don't think there's much doubt that it's under consideration, though it'll be Friday (EMA decision) and Saturday (German discussion with states) that will decide it.
I may be wrong, but the clear impression that I'm getting from the partial leaks is that the issue is that the clinical trials showed generally good effectiveness for AZ but the sample size for over-65s was small enough to produce a large margin of error for that group - very much like our often-discussed Scottish subsamples, which occasionally produce very odd results. Possibly the 95% certainty range does extend down to 8% as reported at the extreme low end.
You can look at that data in two ways. Either you say "The pattern for the elderly seems similar to everyone else, maybe a bit lower but not dramatically, so let's push ahead, as otherwise we'll be short of vaccine to supply." That's the British position as I understand it - if we had an infinite supply of 95% effective Pfizer, tested extensively on the elderly, we'd only use that - but we don't. Or you say "The elderly are especially vulnerable to Covid so we need to get this right. Let's delay giving them the AZ vaccine until we have reliable AZ results for the elderly, even if that slows rollout." That seems to be what the Germans are considering (and it would also explain why they'rre being so hardline about Pfizer's supply, as it's the main available alternative).
I don't think either position is incomprehensible or stupid, or a reason to panic (or to slag off Handelsblatt for reporting what they're told). The vaccine probably works well for all age groups, and it's just a question of whether to be super-cautious because the elderly sample is still small.
Final thought before I start an epic video conference.
I did speak to a couple of pollsters who run focus groups on this, there's a few things the voters associate Boris Johnson and the pandemic with, something he cannot shake off.
1) Dominic Cummings (and he was a good parent because he broke quarantine, whilst everyone else who stayed at home were bad parents) but we've discussed that to tedium in the way we discuss AV and Scottish independence.
2) The outbreak in Number 10 right at the start of the pandemic, the government was telling us to do x to avoid Covid-19, it fitted this meme that the rules were for little people.
3) The sheer number of Covid-19 related contracts going to Tory donors and friends, the voters could live with that if they were qualified, but awarding them to egregious unqualified companies and people is something the voters do remember.
As I said 1-3 have been consistently raised in the polls and focus groups.
I find 2 very surprising. 1 and 3 I can understand but 2 really was a case of very bad luck.
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.
The only "influence" people like Sheridan should be having is as an example of what not to be in life.
Would you prefer it if she was picking fruit and veg?
I'd prefer her not to be a vacuous ninny. Being a gardener - learning to grow, pick and cook fruit and vegetables - is infinitely more useful than what she - and many like her - are doing.
It would be a lot easier if you could list those ok and not ok occupations.
No.
I have no respect for "celebrity culture". I am not going to pretend to respect something which is vacuous, deeply narcissistic, unmoored from any real or long-lasting achievement and a cruel deception for our young. No doubt you will accuse me of being a raging snob and/or old fogey and/or out of touch with today's society. But I don't care. There are things of value in this world and things which are not - poncing about in a hotel taking photos of yourself, sending them to your "followers" like some sort of consumerist Messiah is laughable nonsense. Whining about restrictions on this to protect lives/health is not of value, not now in the middle of a pandemic. It's deeply selfish and really very unappealing, to put it mildly, when one considers the hard work that doctors and nurses and many others are doing to help those put at risk and in harm's way by the selfish behaviour of others.
Celebrity culture is only a thing because people want to consume it.
The Chelsea Flower Show, Youtube influencers, the Sistine Chapel.
All because people like those things.
You are perfectly entitled to opine on any or all of them. Or respect none of them. But ascribing motivations and psychological states to their practitioners or fans is just, er, vacuous and deeply narcissistic.
Judging others is what adults do. Judgment is an essential quality of being an adult. Or ought to be. You are free to disagree with my judgments, of course. Disagreeing or commenting on others' judgments is pretty much the point of this forum But the idea that being judgmental is a bad thing and that being non-judgmental is a good thing (which seems to me to be a relatively recent development) is IMO a development for the worse.
Some judgements say more about the people making those judgements than those they are judging.
It's not about the international comparison or league tables for me. It's that we knew exactly how to avoid a second wave (tough border controls) and did nothing instead. The 60,000 people who died in the second wave did so because Boris didn't close the borders, it's on him. Now we're repeating the same mistake, how many more have to die for Boris to close the borders?
I'd have thought that the biggest error wasn't about closing the borders, but the dithering over tightening restrictions at the beginning of December, by which time it was completely obvious that things were about to get out of control - as anyone following @Malmesbury's excellent daily tables could see.
Much discussion here and elsewhere on the figure for Covid deaths in the UK, which is indeed horrendous.
However, I'd be a bit wary of premature international comparisons; our final ranking in the grim league table is not known yet. We can point to what were clearly, at least with hindsight, big errors by the government, but there were also lots of factors outside the control of the government, and none of this is easy.
To make one obvious point, the awful UK figures of the past few weeks are no doubt partly due to the 'British' variant being so infectious. That effect happens to have hit us first, but this virus doesn't respect borders and it may simply be a timing difference, with other countries lagging behind us on the increased fatalities caused by the variant.
I think the argument is that although the virus doesn't respect borders, the UK government should!
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I've just made the massive call to defect from Waitrose to Morrisons. 3 reasons - It's more spacious so you can keep right away from other shoppers. It has a big car park so you can really load up with essentials. No reason not to get multipacks of everything. Opened a packet of Waitrose chapattis last week and they were covered in green mould. This last being the "trigger" event.
Much discussion here and elsewhere on the figure for Covid deaths in the UK, which is indeed horrendous.
However, I'd be a bit wary of premature international comparisons; our final ranking in the grim league table is not known yet. We can point to what were clearly, at least with hindsight, big errors by the government, but there were also lots of factors outside the control of the government, and none of this is easy.
To make one obvious point, the awful UK figures of the past few weeks are no doubt partly due to the 'British' variant being so infectious. That effect happens to have hit us first, but this virus doesn't respect borders and it may simply be a timing difference, with other countries lagging behind us on the increased fatalities caused by the variant.
It's not about the international comparison or league tables for me. It's that we knew exactly how to avoid a second wave (tough border controls) and did nothing instead. The 60,000 people who died in the second wave did so because Boris didn't close the borders, it's on him. Now we're repeating the same mistake, how many more have to die for Boris to close the borders?
For me I am more willing to forgive the second wave. I'm frustrated by it, but I understand that everyone across Europe had hoped this was behind us. Nobody in Europe closed the borders with a formal quarantine, nor did America.
What would be unforgivable to me is a third wave. I still don't see Macron or Merkel or anyone else introducing hotel quarantines, if that is done now on top of vaccine rollout then we have learnt lessons and can get on top of this and avoid a third wave. Get back to normality within this country while the rest of the world sorts itself out.
Der Spiegel (pretty mainstream magazine though with a bias to being anti whoever is in power) reporting the "maybe only give AZ to younger people" speculation too now - I don't think there's much doubt that it's under consideration, though it'll be Friday (EMA decision) and Saturday (German discussion with states) that will decide it.
I may be wrong, but the clear impression that I'm getting from the partial leaks is that the issue is that the clinical trials showed generally good effectiveness for AZ but the sample size for over-65s was small enough to produce a large margin of error for that group - very much like our often-discussed Scottish subsamples, which occasionally produce very odd results. Possibly the 95% certainty range does extend down to 8% as reported at the extreme low end.
You can look at that data in two ways. Either you say "The pattern for the elderly seems similar to everyone else, maybe a bit lower but not dramatically, so let's push ahead, as otherwise we'll be short of vaccine to supply." That's the British position as I understand it - if we had an infinite supply of 95% effective Pfizer, tested extensively on the elderly, we'd only use that - but we don't. Or you say "The elderly are especially vulnerable to Covid so we need to get this right. Let's delay giving them the AZ vaccine until we have reliable AZ results for the elderly, even if that slows rollout." That seems to be what the Germans are considering (and it would also explain why they'rre being so hardline about Pfizer's supply, as it's the main available alternative).
I don't think either position is incomprehensible or stupid, or a reason to panic (or to slag off Handelsblatt for reporting what they're told). The vaccine probably works well for all age groups, and it's just a question of whether to be super-cautious because the elderly sample is still small.
If the plan is to reduce hospital admissions (severe cases) and deaths surely vaccinating the people most likely to end up in hospital / die is the appropriate response.
One thing I'm not sure about (and this is critical) is the lack of details regarding the over 65 subsample because only 1 less vaccinated person caught it compared to unvaccinated people or because only 1-2 unvaccinated people over 65 caught Covid.
If it's the latter than the range is between 100% to 0% because there is little to nothing to go on.
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.
It may be a specifically Sainsbury's issue. When we went to the one in Leamington on Saturday the fresh fruit and veg shelves were noticeably empty. There were also shortages of many other things.
More generally, have lamb prices come down yet? They don't seem to have.
What is Sainsbury's for, exactly, now?
They seem a mid-range bleurgh type of shop.
De gustibus, etc. I have Sainsbury, Tesco and Waitrose locally. The first two offer a good choice at reasonable prices. Waitrose offers the same things for about 15% more, as well as a few things that the others don't. So in normal times I shop at Sainsbury for most things and Waitrose for the occasional exotica. I've tried Aldi and Lidl in the past and wouldn't consider them - just not enough predictable choice. Morrisons and Asda are OK.
Essentially this feels like the browser was that used to rage - Firefox vs Chrome etc. The key point was that they are all essentially the same.
Interesting comments, Nick.
On Sainsburys, how were they for tomatoes? I believe their Taste the Difference tomatoes all come from Thanet Earth, as will any current British Grown cucumbers for supermarkets. I don't think anyone else is harvesting cucumbers yet.
I have small Tesco and Coop within 5 minutes walk, with very different mask-adherence levels. Coop posh bread is delicious, but I bake at home now.
My shop has changed a little - mostly still Aldi (basics and things where they are better), or Morrisons (various bits they are good at, delicatessen, some fish - need to work out how to fillet a whole Tilapia from last time), Everyone except M&S and Waitrose are local. Bread is now all baked at home. Coffee bought as locally roasted beans. Fish from a Grimsby fish-man. Meat is Aldi or a local butcher. Salad veg Aldi, plus some from my own conservatory. Lots of last year's soft fruit from the freezer.
It's not about the international comparison or league tables for me. It's that we knew exactly how to avoid a second wave (tough border controls) and did nothing instead. The 60,000 people who died in the second wave did so because Boris didn't close the borders, it's on him. Now we're repeating the same mistake, how many more have to die for Boris to close the borders?
I'd have thought that the biggest error wasn't about closing the borders, but the dithering over tightening restrictions at the beginning of December, by which time it was completely obvious that things were about to get out of control - as anyone following @Malmesbury's excellent daily tables could see..
No, it was not closing the border in June and avoiding importing new seed cases from Spain. Our second wave was entirely imported from Spain in August and September, if we'd had prope border measures such as hotel quarantine and testing, fewer (no?) people would have travelled there in the first place and those that did would have 14 days to think about whether it was worth it.
Much discussion here and elsewhere on the figure for Covid deaths in the UK, which is indeed horrendous.
However, I'd be a bit wary of premature international comparisons; our final ranking in the grim league table is not known yet. We can point to what were clearly, at least with hindsight, big errors by the government, but there were also lots of factors outside the control of the government, and none of this is easy.
To make one obvious point, the awful UK figures of the past few weeks are no doubt partly due to the 'British' variant being so infectious. That effect happens to have hit us first, but this virus doesn't respect borders and it may simply be a timing difference, with other countries lagging behind us on the increased fatalities caused by the variant.
I expect that this pandemic will last several more years, by the time this is over the league table could look very different. It is entirely possible that there are worse waves to come, and also quite likely that we will need to revaccinate regularly.
I expect one of the reasons there's less 65+ data in the trials is due to i) If the vaccine goes wrong, well it's going to go more wrong with older people. ii) Trials like to recruit those who are in contact with the public. When you're retired you can broadly isolate from the virus far more easily than say police officers, prison staff, teachers and care home workers who make ideal control and test groups due to high public interaction. You shouldn't change behaviour to be more risky if you're on a trial.
Much discussion here and elsewhere on the figure for Covid deaths in the UK, which is indeed horrendous.
However, I'd be a bit wary of premature international comparisons; our final ranking in the grim league table is not known yet. We can point to what were clearly, at least with hindsight, big errors by the government, but there were also lots of factors outside the control of the government, and none of this is easy.
To make one obvious point, the awful UK figures of the past few weeks are no doubt partly due to the 'British' variant being so infectious. That effect happens to have hit us first, but this virus doesn't respect borders and it may simply be a timing difference, with other countries lagging behind us on the increased fatalities caused by the variant.
I think the argument is that although the virus doesn't respect borders, the UK government should!
The virus very clearly does respect borders, or at least succumbs to border controls.
Much discussion here and elsewhere on the figure for Covid deaths in the UK, which is indeed horrendous.
However, I'd be a bit wary of premature international comparisons; our final ranking in the grim league table is not known yet. We can point to what were clearly, at least with hindsight, big errors by the government, but there were also lots of factors outside the control of the government, and none of this is easy.
To make one obvious point, the awful UK figures of the past few weeks are no doubt partly due to the 'British' variant being so infectious. That effect happens to have hit us first, but this virus doesn't respect borders and it may simply be a timing difference, with other countries lagging behind us on the increased fatalities caused by the variant.
I expect that this pandemic will last several more years, by the time this is over the league table could look very different. It is entirely possible that there are worse waves to come, and also quite likely that we will need to revaccinate regularly.
With a vaccine rollout and hotel quarantines then this could and should be the final wave for the UK, even if the rest of the world has future waves. And we can get back to work, close our budget deficit and use our aid budget to help the rest of the world catch up with us.
Were that to happen then the initial league tables would be irrelevant by the end of the day.
Much discussion here and elsewhere on the figure for Covid deaths in the UK, which is indeed horrendous.
However, I'd be a bit wary of premature international comparisons; our final ranking in the grim league table is not known yet. We can point to what were clearly, at least with hindsight, big errors by the government, but there were also lots of factors outside the control of the government, and none of this is easy.
To make one obvious point, the awful UK figures of the past few weeks are no doubt partly due to the 'British' variant being so infectious. That effect happens to have hit us first, but this virus doesn't respect borders and it may simply be a timing difference, with other countries lagging behind us on the increased fatalities caused by the variant.
I expect that this pandemic will last several more years, by the time this is over the league table could look very different. It is entirely possible that there are worse waves to come, and also quite likely that we will need to revaccinate regularly.
With a vaccine rollout and hotel quarantines then this could and should be the final wave for the UK, even if the rest of the world has future waves. And we can get back to work, close our budget deficit and use our aid budget to help the rest of the world catch up with us.
Were that to happen then the initial league tables would be irrelevant by the end of the day.
News this morning that Denmark was diverting some of its vaccine supplies to somewhere else - Africa perhaps - right now.
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I expect one of the reasons there's less 65+ data in the trials is due to i) If it goes wrong with older people, well it's going to go more wrong. ii) Trials like to recruit those who are in contact with the public. When you're retired you can broadly isolate from the virus far more easily than say police officers, prison staff, teachers and care home workers who make ideal control and test groups due to high public interaction.
Q So, you can assure that this vaccine is efficient for the elderly? A “The issue with the elderly data is not so much whether it works or not. It´s that we have today a limited amount of data in the older population. You have to think that the program we have today was run by Oxford, it was the Oxford program. And Oxford is an academy group. They´re very ethical, and very academic. So they didn´t want to vaccinate older people until they had accumulated a lot of safety data in the 18 to 55 group. They said it was not ethical to vaccinate old people until they had enough safety data in younger people. Other companies took this risk, went ahead and vaccinated older people faster or earlier. If you start earlier, you have more data. Essentially, because Oxford started vaccinating older people later, we don´t have a huge number of older people who have been vaccinated. So that's what the debate is. But we have strong data showing very strong antibody production against the virus in the elderly, similar to what we see in younger people. It's possible that some countries, out of caution, will use our vaccine for the younger group. But honestly, it is fine...."
The only "influence" people like Sheridan should be having is as an example of what not to be in life.
She's getting paid to enjoy herself. Good for her, she's a great example of what to be in life.
I don't blame her, but it is a profoundly depressing comment on the superficiality of the influencer lifestyle. Not least is the lack of transparency of how her adverts are disguised as social media posts for the gullible.
I suppose there will always be feckless youths, and it is just my inner Puritan showing.
I know what you mean. The I shop therefore I am stuff. Was recently chatting to the daughter of a friend of mine. At the time she was at a boarding school which often uses a bothy or whatever it is called in Wales, way out in the hills. The question of a weekend there for her year group came up. Wonderful - but the first question was: What's the shopping like? Once it wasd realised that the local scope was pretty much sheep shite, sphagnum moss, and damn all else, that was the end of the proposal.
Having our weekly delivery from Sainsbury's later on today, only have a few substitutions (Cod fillets instead of cod loins, different type of yoghurt from what was ordered,)
The issue is not being able to order things in the first place, no courgettes, avocado, and aubergines, that sort of thing.
Prices have gone up quite a few things.
You need to shop at a more competent supermarket, avocados are in plentiful supply at Waitrose and I am sure courgettes and aubergines were on the shelves. The avocado I'm having for lunch comes from Colombia so presumably unaffected by Brexit
We ordered a supplementary shop from Waitrose a fortnight ago, no courgettes, aubergines, or avocados arrived.
I've never been that fortunate. One person in our house enjoys all three of these. It isn't me!
As a pb "influencer" I'd be happy to take a flight out to the Cayman Islands, and then write a thread header for OGH on the 2021 elections. Essential work, which might necessitate essential local refreshment.
I couldn't promise you a revealing mankini, however.
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
Gorgeous George still has the capacity to cut through doesn't he? Martin Amis described him as "a political entrepreneur" which strikes me as a pretty good description.
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.
Final thought before I start an epic video conference.
I did speak to a couple of pollsters who run focus groups on this, there's a few things the voters associate Boris Johnson and the pandemic with, something he cannot shake off.
1) Dominic Cummings (and he was a good parent because he broke quarantine, whilst everyone else who stayed at home were bad parents) but we've discussed that to tedium in the way we discuss AV and Scottish independence.
2) The outbreak in Number 10 right at the start of the pandemic, the government was telling us to do x to avoid Covid-19, it fitted this meme that the rules were for little people.
3) The sheer number of Covid-19 related contracts going to Tory donors and friends, the voters could live with that if they were qualified, but awarding them to egregious unqualified companies and people is something the voters do remember.
As I said 1-3 have been consistently raised in the polls and focus groups.
I find 2 very surprising. 1 and 3 I can understand but 2 really was a case of very bad luck.
I think 2) is explained by Boris Johnson bragging back in March he was shaking the hands of Covid-19 patients.
The voters remember.
Boris Johnson boasted of shaking hands on day Sage warned not to
Advisers recommended issuing public warning on day PM said he shook hands ‘with everybody’ at hospital
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.
I haven't been into a shop since this lockdown began so can't comment on shelves (either had deliveries or our local supermarket does click & collect now) - but we've had no substitutions of fresh food since lockdown began. Only the usual sort of substitutions you often see with online ordering.
This morning I replicated an order from earlier this month as my next online order, and what was £88 is now £92.
If you replicated an order that's entirely to be expected.
It is how supermarkets in the past used to all "guarantee" your basket of goods is cheaper there than other supermarkets. When you build your original basket you're naturally and subconsciously drawn to offers and discounted products which apply in your original basket price.
When you replicate an order it doesn't flag up the promotional items whose promotion has expired - nor the alternative goods that are now on promotion you might have bought instead if building the basket from scratch this time.
Similarly with the old "guarantee" on your basket of goods - your basket of goods that you bought will be cheaper as it will include promotions that others may not have. While shoppers elsewhere get a cheaper basket as they've included promotions that you aren't seeing and haven't picked up.
"Replication" of orders is fantastic news for supermarkets as you now pay full price for your basket.
Possibly, I didnt check the actual items where the price is higher.
Since you need to book the slot more than two weeks ahead, I simply reserve it using a replicated order. Don't worry, I will change it to order what I actually need shortly before the deadline!
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
Gorgeous George still has the capacity to cut through doesn't he? Martin Amis described him as "a political entrepreneur" which strikes me as a pretty good description.
I don't know about 'cut through' but I hadn't heard the Amis description, so thanks! But what on earth brought it on in the first place?
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.
It may be a specifically Sainsbury's issue. When we went to the one in Leamington on Saturday the fresh fruit and veg shelves were noticeably empty. There were also shortages of many other things.
More generally, have lamb prices come down yet? They don't seem to have.
What is Sainsbury's for, exactly, now?
They seem a mid-range bleurgh type of shop.
De gustibus, etc. I have Sainsbury, Tesco and Waitrose locally. The first two offer a good choice at reasonable prices. Waitrose offers the same things for about 15% more, as well as a few things that the others don't. So in normal times I shop at Sainsbury for most things and Waitrose for the occasional exotica. I've tried Aldi and Lidl in the past and wouldn't consider them - just not enough predictable choice. Morrisons and Asda are OK.
Essentially this feels like the browser was that used to rage - Firefox vs Chrome etc. The key point was that they are all essentially the same.
Yes, instead of wasting energy arguing about which identikit supermarket is “best”, people could divert their efforts into supporting their local shops. Far better range - and local options - in my local butchers than in any of the multiples. Ditto the bottle shop vs the dull, never-changing options in Sainsbury’s.
Not a supermarket, but Riverford had to cut back on their product offering this week due to high levels of Covid-related absence among their packing staff.
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I love Sainsbury's. You must be posher than me.
Morrisons is down market to Sainsburys (just about nowadays).
Morrisons however is far more integrated which means it has far better quality control over it's own brand products than other supermarkets.
Plus Morrisons flowers are about as good as you can get and will last daya longer than anyone elses.
The only "influence" people like Sheridan should be having is as an example of what not to be in life.
She's getting paid to enjoy herself. Good for her, she's a great example of what to be in life.
I don't blame her, but it is a profoundly depressing comment on the superficiality of the influencer lifestyle. Not least is the lack of transparency of how her adverts are disguised as social media posts for the gullible.
I suppose there will always be feckless youths, and it is just my inner Puritan showing.
I know what you mean. The I shop therefore I am stuff. Was recently chatting to the daughter of a friend of mine. At the time she was at a boarding school which often uses a bothy or whatever it is called in Wales, way out in the hills. The question of a weekend there for her year group came up. Wonderful - but the first question was: What's the shopping like? Once it wasd realised that the local scope was pretty much sheep shite, sphagnum moss, and damn all else, that was the end of the proposal.
PS My friend's daughter, in fairness to her, was not one of the shopping enthusiasts - and not impressed.
The only "influence" people like Sheridan should be having is as an example of what not to be in life.
She's getting paid to enjoy herself. Good for her, she's a great example of what to be in life.
I don't blame her, but it is a profoundly depressing comment on the superficiality of the influencer lifestyle. Not least is the lack of transparency of how her adverts are disguised as social media posts for the gullible.
I suppose there will always be feckless youths, and it is just my inner Puritan showing.
I know what you mean. The I shop therefore I am stuff. Was recently chatting to the daughter of a friend of mine. At the time she was at a boarding school which often uses a bothy or whatever it is called in Wales, way out in the hills. The question of a weekend there for her year group came up. Wonderful - but the first question was: What's the shopping like? Once it wasd realised that the local scope was pretty much sheep shite, sphagnum moss, and damn all else, that was the end of the proposal.
I see influencing as something to be done for a quick buck for a few years and exotic travel whilst you can, which may be regretted, rationalised or become a long term living.
Different but sometimes overlapping versions for men and women. There were analogous things back in the day.
Perhaps it only becomes a problem if you believe your own marketing.
As a pb "influencer" I'd be happy to take a flight out to the Cayman Islands, and then write a thread header for OGH on the 2021 elections. Essential work, which might necessitate essential local refreshment.
I couldn't promise you a revealing mankini, however.
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
I think Galloway was the first person to block me on Twitter so I only see his tweets when other folk quote them and thus I only have a passing oversight of his ‘journey’. I get the impression that the foetid little pool that he’s paddling in has made him even more mental.
Nevertheless I’m predicting that Unionism will get so desperate that they’ll end up recruiting him in some capacity or other.
The Government appears to be redressing the balance by saving lives with the vaccination programme. I am not a Conservative but have sympathy for the PM, he is trapped due to the Brexit issue, it brought him to power on a right wing agenda, because the party has moved to the right with more and more right wing MPs, as well as the Express, Mail and Telegraph. When history is written it might be all the fault of the Lib Dems, creating the election scenario for Dec 2019 and then going into it with a nonsense approach on the EU, instead ops sticking to what worked, i e calling for a Referendum..
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I've just made the massive call to defect from Waitrose to Morrisons. 3 reasons - It's more spacious so you can keep right away from other shoppers. It has a big car park so you can really load up with essentials. No reason not to get multipacks of everything. Opened a packet of Waitrose chapattis last week and they were covered in green mould.....
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.
The only "influence" people like Sheridan should be having is as an example of what not to be in life.
She's getting paid to enjoy herself. Good for her, she's a great example of what to be in life.
I don't blame her, but it is a profoundly depressing comment on the superficiality of the influencer lifestyle. Not least is the lack of transparency of how her adverts are disguised as social media posts for the gullible.
I suppose there will always be feckless youths, and it is just my inner Puritan showing.
There are policies guiding most of it - you need to flag up paid posts etc. I am a little surprised that she's doing it all on 11,500 follow era though, that's really tiny.
I'm also a bit surprised that these people aren't seeing more negative response to their posts when it's clear they're flouting the rules. Surely even generation brain-dead aren't just 'liking' everything when it's clear someone is taking the piss out of them.
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
I think Galloway was the first person to block me on Twitter so I only see his tweets when other folk quote them and thus I only have a passing oversight of his ‘journey’. I get the impression that the foetid little pool that he’s paddling in has made him even more mental.
Nevertheless I’m predicting that Unionism will get so desperate that they’ll end up recruiting him in some capacity or other.
I made the mistake of googling for him + 'strapon' ... so am none the wiser as to his reason for talking dirty, even if it makes a change from 'meow'.
This reminds me, the recent headers and posting discussions on PB re indyref2 (the usual tanky/colonialist stuff aside) have been interesting and innovative and yet nobody is addressing who is fronting Better Together 2. Something to bear in mind.
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
Gorgeous George still has the capacity to cut through doesn't he? Martin Amis described him as "a political entrepreneur" which strikes me as a pretty good description.
I don't know about 'cut through' but I hadn't heard the Amis description, so thanks! But what on earth brought it on in the first place?
The Amis quote? Galloway had a long-running feud with the late Christopher Hitchens, a close friend of Amis. As you may recall Hitchens was extremely down on "Islamo-fascism" and became a supporter of W's approach to Iraq. Galloway took a rather different view. Amis rather regretted the ferocity of The Hitch's attacks on GG although otherwise sympathetic.
(I often wonder what Hitchens would have made of Trump vs Hillary and the subsequent Trump Administration. He loathed the Clintons but goodness knows what he would have made of the Donald. His early death was a very sad loss. He was quite unique.)
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.
It may be a specifically Sainsbury's issue. When we went to the one in Leamington on Saturday the fresh fruit and veg shelves were noticeably empty. There were also shortages of many other things.
More generally, have lamb prices come down yet? They don't seem to have.
What is Sainsbury's for, exactly, now?
They seem a mid-range bleurgh type of shop.
De gustibus, etc. I have Sainsbury, Tesco and Waitrose locally. The first two offer a good choice at reasonable prices. Waitrose offers the same things for about 15% more, as well as a few things that the others don't. So in normal times I shop at Sainsbury for most things and Waitrose for the occasional exotica. I've tried Aldi and Lidl in the past and wouldn't consider them - just not enough predictable choice. Morrisons and Asda are OK.
Essentially this feels like the browser was that used to rage - Firefox vs Chrome etc. The key point was that they are all essentially the same.
Yes, instead of wasting energy arguing about which identikit supermarket is “best”, people could divert their efforts into supporting their local shops. Far better range - and local options - in my local butchers than in any of the multiples. Ditto the bottle shop vs the dull, never-changing options in Sainsbury’s.
We found a local butcher on Instagram and after a few emails we've started buying all of our meat from him. The quality improvement is just out of this world compared to Waitrose, Sainsbury's or Morrisons. It's not even more expensive, I think it's cheaper than Waitrose for chicken and lamb.
We're trialling a fish mongers next week, he's agreed to a click and collect service for us with no contact due to our extended bubble with my parents. It's a bit more expensive than prepackaged but I'm really looking forwards to trying it.
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.
Isn’t it her job to be an influencer? i.e. that’s how she makes a living.
That a bunch of middle-aged, slightly overweight white blokes on PB think it’s not a valid calling is erm... unsurprising.
It depends how you define "job".
Has she made money from the Dubai trip, or has she paid for it? If she's paid for it then its a holiday not a "job".
The truth is for most of these so-called "influencers" that they don't make money from it, its bankrolled by the bank of mum and dad. Spoilt rich kids showing off on Instagram doesn't suddenly make it a job, jobs make you money they don't take it from you.
If its a job then I hope she's up to date with reporting to HMRC etc
NickP's assessment sounds reasonable. It very much is a case of looking at subsamples and statistical power, akin to polling and Scottish subsamples etc.
But if equipoise is now the Pfizer vaccine, with good evidence in older cohorts, then the bar might have been raised for the Oxford vaccine in the EMA's eyes.
The particular sub-group of older patients is very important, so I'm surprised the Oxford trials weren't powered with that in mind in the first place.
The EMA might be awaiting further data from additional studies before approving for the whole population.
Why is anyone surprised? You need anal swabs to test members of the Chinese government, because they’re all complete arseholes.
Reminiscent of the old and perhaps not PC joke: he put his left hand on my shoulder and swabbed with his right; no, hold on, it was the other way round, he put his right hand on my shoulder and swabbed with his left. Actually no, come to think of it he had both hands on my shoulders...
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
I think Galloway was the first person to block me on Twitter so I only see his tweets when other folk quote them and thus I only have a passing oversight of his ‘journey’. I get the impression that the foetid little pool that he’s paddling in has made him even more mental.
Nevertheless I’m predicting that Unionism will get so desperate that they’ll end up recruiting him in some capacity or other.
I made the mistake of googling for him + 'strapon' ... so am none the wiser as to his reason for talking dirty, even if it makes a change from 'meow'.
This reminds me, the recent headers and posting discussions on PB re indyref2 (the usual tanky/colonialist stuff aside) have been interesting and innovative and yet nobody is addressing who is fronting Better Together 2. Something to bear in mind.
Dream team Gordon and Gover I’m assuming? Don’t call me Baroness Ruth as handmaiden if she can tear herself away from reforming the HoL by becoming a member of it.
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I love Sainsbury's. You must be posher than me.
Morrisons is down market to Sainsburys (just about nowadays).
Morrisons however is far more integrated which means it has far better quality control over it's own brand products than other supermarkets.
Plus Morrisons flowers are about as good as you can get and will last daya longer than anyone elses.
Yawn. Nobody in their right mind buys flowers at a supermarket. Support your local florist.
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
Gorgeous George still has the capacity to cut through doesn't he? Martin Amis described him as "a political entrepreneur" which strikes me as a pretty good description.
I don't know about 'cut through' but I hadn't heard the Amis description, so thanks! But what on earth brought it on in the first place?
The Amis quote? Galloway had a long-running feud with the late Christopher Hitchens, a close friend of Amis. As you may recall Hitchens was extremely down on "Islamo-fascism" and became a supporter of W's approach to Iraq. Galloway took a rather different view. Amis rather regretted the ferocity of The Hitch's attacks on GG although otherwise sympathetic.
(I often wonder what Hitchens would have made of Trump vs Hillary and the subsequent Trump Administration. He loathed the Clintons but goodness knows what he would have made of the Donald. His early death was a very sad loss. He was quite unique.)
I was actually thinking of the recent kilt vs strapon comment - but this is great to have as well, so thanks!
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I love Sainsbury's. You must be posher than me.
I think I am correct that Morrisons still have a distinctive of vertical integration. eg they own their own abbatoirs / meat processing plants, and afaik they are the only one who have kept staffed 'fresh' counters open.
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.
It may be a specifically Sainsbury's issue. When we went to the one in Leamington on Saturday the fresh fruit and veg shelves were noticeably empty. There were also shortages of many other things.
More generally, have lamb prices come down yet? They don't seem to have.
What is Sainsbury's for, exactly, now?
They seem a mid-range bleurgh type of shop.
De gustibus, etc. I have Sainsbury, Tesco and Waitrose locally. The first two offer a good choice at reasonable prices. Waitrose offers the same things for about 15% more, as well as a few things that the others don't. So in normal times I shop at Sainsbury for most things and Waitrose for the occasional exotica. I've tried Aldi and Lidl in the past and wouldn't consider them - just not enough predictable choice. Morrisons and Asda are OK.
Essentially this feels like the browser was that used to rage - Firefox vs Chrome etc. The key point was that they are all essentially the same.
Yes, instead of wasting energy arguing about which identikit supermarket is “best”, people could divert their efforts into supporting their local shops. Far better range - and local options - in my local butchers than in any of the multiples. Ditto the bottle shop vs the dull, never-changing options in Sainsbury’s.
We found a local butcher on Instagram and after a few emails we've started buying all of our meat from him. The quality improvement is just out of this world compared to Waitrose, Sainsbury's or Morrisons. It's not even more expensive, I think it's cheaper than Waitrose for chicken and lamb.
We're trialling a fish mongers next week, he's agreed to a click and collect service for us with no contact due to our extended bubble with my parents. It's a bit more expensive than prepackaged but I'm really looking forwards to trying it.
Yes, there are some great fish delivery services out there. Enjoy!
NickP's assessment sounds reasonable. It very much is a case of looking at subsamples and statistical power, akin to polling and Scottish subsamples etc.
But if equipoise is now the Pfizer vaccine, with good evidence in older cohorts, then the bar might have been raised for the Oxford vaccine in the EMA's eyes.
The particular sub-group of older patients is very important, so I'm surprised the Oxford trials weren't powered with that in mind in the first place.
The EMA might be awaiting further data from additional studies before approving for the whole population.
Its a false dichotomy, Pfizer had the exact same issue in their subsample as Oxford did.
Why object to a small elderly subsample with AZN with a wide confidence range but turn a blind eye to that in Pfizer?
Trials aren't designed with confidence ranges for subsamples to be extremely narrow.
She seems to think that Kent Covid was predictable.
I think that, even without Kent Covid, our response was inadequate. What would have been different without the more transmissible strain?
Lockdown 2 would have reduced numbers by a greater extent, but they would still have been at a high level at the start of December. Since we wouldn't have had as rapid growth in cases in London and the South-East before Christmas, we would have gone ahead with the Christmas relaxation as planned - which would likely have put us into the situation experienced by Ireland.
The details and timing would be different, but fundamentally the outcomes would have been the same. Thousands dead in January.
Ireland's situation was at least partly caused by Kent Covid though
At the time their number of cases reached a daily peak Kent Covid was still a small minority of overall cases. What it did was to make the decrease after the peak slower (but still faster than the UK, and they're back below our infection rate).
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
I think Galloway was the first person to block me on Twitter so I only see his tweets when other folk quote them and thus I only have a passing oversight of his ‘journey’. I get the impression that the foetid little pool that he’s paddling in has made him even more mental.
Nevertheless I’m predicting that Unionism will get so desperate that they’ll end up recruiting him in some capacity or other.
I made the mistake of googling for him + 'strapon' ... so am none the wiser as to his reason for talking dirty, even if it makes a change from 'meow'.
This reminds me, the recent headers and posting discussions on PB re indyref2 (the usual tanky/colonialist stuff aside) have been interesting and innovative and yet nobody is addressing who is fronting Better Together 2. Something to bear in mind.
Dream team Gordon and Gover I’m assuming? Don’t call me Baroness Ruth as handmaiden if she can tear herself away from reforming the HoL by becoming a member of it.
Mphm. (Scepticism not aimed at you, but at that combination. I'm just wondering whose credibility would drop quickest as a result of appearing in that threesome, but also who has most to lose, not least in terms of 'my heritage/reputation'.)
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I love Sainsbury's. You must be posher than me.
Morrisons is down market to Sainsburys (just about nowadays).
Morrisons however is far more integrated which means it has far better quality control over it's own brand products than other supermarkets.
Plus Morrisons flowers are about as good as you can get and will last daya longer than anyone elses.
Yawn. Nobody in their right mind buys flowers at a supermarket. Support your local florist.
If I'm buying flowers I buy them at Morrisons while I'm shopping there.
I don't know any local florist and I see no reason to support a local florist any more than a local greengrocer, local butcher and local everything else.
I'd be more likely to support a local butcher in fact.
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.
Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Now, I may be talking my own book (in that I'd like to come and visit my parents), but I yelled and screamed for travel restrictions in the spring and summer. Now, their effect is likely limited.
I mean, you can do it. And there's probably little harm (given tourism and things are shutdown anyway). But...
The way I look at this is simple.
We're vaccinating 3 million people a week. It's going to be 5 million when J&J, Moderna and others are approved. In Israel all the data is that this has an extraordinary effect on hospitalisations and deaths.
The people dying now, then were infected in December.
In just three weeks time, 10 million more people will have been vaccinated. It's entirely possibly 20 million people will have been jabbed by the end of February.
Look at Israel. While cases continue to be high, hospitalisations are down more than 60%.
If we keep up current vaccination trends, and I suspect we'll do better than that, then we're going to have fewer people being hospitalised in just six or seven weeks time than at the trough last summer.
Now, against that, the vaccine may be less effective against new strains (which is a good reason to be cautious). But I can't help fear this is a case of us choosing to do something that should have been done last summer, at a time when it will have little benefit. Frankly, if cases are collapsing, the vulnerable are protected, and the number of people the virus could spread to are shrinking, then... it's a lot of hassle for little benefit.
The biggest risk is the new variants, which is why the approach of quarantining people from high risk countries makes sense.
(For those people who say "can't they just pop over the border", yes they can. This is only going to be an issue with interconnecting flights where people transfer. We can reduce that risk via tracking passport movements - would catch anything outside of EU - and but requiring airlines to provide data of people with interconnecting flights. For people who are utterly focused on breaking the law there's not much you can do but how many people will make the first leg of the journey without a pre-booked second leg?
NickP's assessment sounds reasonable. It very much is a case of looking at subsamples and statistical power, akin to polling and Scottish subsamples etc.
But if equipoise is now the Pfizer vaccine, with good evidence in older cohorts, then the bar might have been raised for the Oxford vaccine in the EMA's eyes.
The particular sub-group of older patients is very important, so I'm surprised the Oxford trials weren't powered with that in mind in the first place.
The EMA might be awaiting further data from additional studies before approving for the whole population.
Its a false dichotomy, Pfizer had the exact same issue in their subsample as Oxford did.
Why object to a small elderly subsample with AZN with a wide confidence range but turn a blind eye to that in Pfizer?
Trials aren't designed with confidence ranges for subsamples to be extremely narrow.
The proportion was the same but the Pfizer trial was much bigger which means they saw many more infections in the placebo arm. The Pfizer trial was a lot better than the AZ trial, there's really no doubt about it. However, even with Pfizer the basic judgement was the same, that the differential between older and younger cohorts for antibody response was marginal so it could approved for use in all age groups based on that as well as the limited data they had in the P3 trial.
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.
Isn’t it her job to be an influencer? i.e. that’s how she makes a living.
That a bunch of middle-aged, slightly overweight white blokes on PB think it’s not a valid calling is erm... unsurprising.
It depends how you define "job".
Has she made money from the Dubai trip, or has she paid for it? If she's paid for it then its a holiday not a "job".
The truth is for most of these so-called "influencers" that they don't make money from it, its bankrolled by the bank of mum and dad. Spoilt rich kids showing off on Instagram doesn't suddenly make it a job, jobs make you money they don't take it from you.
If its a job then I hope she's up to date with reporting to HMRC etc
Their income aiui comes mainly from advertising on their Instagram, Youtube or whatever channels, so even if she paid for the trip, it is (arguably) still part of her job if it is designed to increase the number of eyeballs on adverts.
NickP's assessment sounds reasonable. It very much is a case of looking at subsamples and statistical power, akin to polling and Scottish subsamples etc.
But if equipoise is now the Pfizer vaccine, with good evidence in older cohorts, then the bar might have been raised for the Oxford vaccine in the EMA's eyes.
The particular sub-group of older patients is very important, so I'm surprised the Oxford trials weren't powered with that in mind in the first place.
The EMA might be awaiting further data from additional studies before approving for the whole population.
Its a false dichotomy, Pfizer had the exact same issue in their subsample as Oxford did.
Why object to a small elderly subsample with AZN with a wide confidence range but turn a blind eye to that in Pfizer?
Trials aren't designed with confidence ranges for subsamples to be extremely narrow.
Am I correct in assuming that you have no real knowledge of how trials are designed and run apart from what you have been browsing on the internet for the last few weeks/months?
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.
Isn’t it her job to be an influencer? i.e. that’s how she makes a living.
That a bunch of middle-aged, slightly overweight white blokes on PB think it’s not a valid calling is erm... unsurprising.
It depends how you define "job".
Has she made money from the Dubai trip, or has she paid for it? If she's paid for it then its a holiday not a "job".
The truth is for most of these so-called "influencers" that they don't make money from it, its bankrolled by the bank of mum and dad. Spoilt rich kids showing off on Instagram doesn't suddenly make it a job, jobs make you money they don't take it from you.
If its a job then I hope she's up to date with reporting to HMRC etc
Their income aiui comes mainly from advertising on their Instagram, Youtube or whatever channels, so even if she paid for the trip, it is (arguably) still part of her job if it is designed to increase the number of eyeballs on adverts.
That's the idea and YouTubers with millions of subscribers etc absolutely can make money from this.
Spoilt rich kids with 10k Instagram followers? Nah, pull the other one. Its an excuse to call a holiday a "job". Not a chance on earth someone with 10k followers is making money from a trip to Dubai.
Berlaymonster is turning out to be the most interesting blogger on EU matters that I've seen. But I can't see whether it actually has anything to do with Martin Selmayr.
Not a supermarket, but Riverford had to cut back on their product offering this week due to high levels of Covid-related absence among their packing staff.
No a-la-carte fruit and veg. So no celery for us.
A friend's son works for Riverford but thankfully has been working from home for many weeks, so he is safe. But yes, a nasty outbreak I'm told.
Having our weekly delivery from Sainsbury's later on today, only have a few substitutions (Cod fillets instead of cod loins, different type of yoghurt from what was ordered,)
The issue is not being able to order things in the first place, no courgettes, avocado, and aubergines, that sort of thing.
Prices have gone up quite a few things.
You need to shop at a more competent supermarket, avocados are in plentiful supply at Waitrose and I am sure courgettes and aubergines were on the shelves. The avocado I'm having for lunch comes from Colombia so presumably unaffected by Brexit
We ordered a supplementary shop from Waitrose a fortnight ago, no courgettes, aubergines, or avocados arrived.
I've never been that fortunate. One person in our house enjoys all three of these. It isn't me!
Didn't James Bond once eat an avocado pear as a dessert because Ian Fleming had only heard about these exotic fruit second hand?
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
I think Galloway was the first person to block me on Twitter so I only see his tweets when other folk quote them and thus I only have a passing oversight of his ‘journey’. I get the impression that the foetid little pool that he’s paddling in has made him even more mental.
Nevertheless I’m predicting that Unionism will get so desperate that they’ll end up recruiting him in some capacity or other.
I made the mistake of googling for him + 'strapon' ... so am none the wiser as to his reason for talking dirty, even if it makes a change from 'meow'.
This reminds me, the recent headers and posting discussions on PB re indyref2 (the usual tanky/colonialist stuff aside) have been interesting and innovative and yet nobody is addressing who is fronting Better Together 2. Something to bear in mind.
Dream team Gordon and Gover I’m assuming? Don’t call me Baroness Ruth as handmaiden if she can tear herself away from reforming the HoL by becoming a member of it.
Mphm. (Scepticism not aimed at you, but at that combination. I'm just wondering whose credibility would drop quickest as a result of appearing in that threesome, but also who has most to lose, not least in terms of 'my heritage/reputation'.)
I think that's probably right, but I'm sure Gove wouldn't be in the front-line....
As it happens, I think the Broon, would be pretty persuasive on the economics of independence and is probably trusted by the sort of voters who the No team would need to win over. Not to be under-estimated as he still appears to be pretty fired up. Probably sees saving the UK as a legacy issue reputationally.
There would need to be a Tory in the team and Ruth Davidson polls pretty well so far as I am aware. And as a very strong Remainer is well-placed to flag the parallels between Brexit and Sindy.
Compared to the somewhat less than charismatic Lord Darling they would not be such a bad team for the Union.
Final thought before I start an epic video conference.
I did speak to a couple of pollsters who run focus groups on this, there's a few things the voters associate Boris Johnson and the pandemic with, something he cannot shake off.
1) Dominic Cummings (and he was a good parent because he broke quarantine, whilst everyone else who stayed at home were bad parents) but we've discussed that to tedium in the way we discuss AV and Scottish independence.
2) The outbreak in Number 10 right at the start of the pandemic, the government was telling us to do x to avoid Covid-19, it fitted this meme that the rules were for little people.
3) The sheer number of Covid-19 related contracts going to Tory donors and friends, the voters could live with that if they were qualified, but awarding them to egregious unqualified companies and people is something the voters do remember.
As I said 1-3 have been consistently raised in the polls and focus groups.
Pussycatgearman is upset. Nothing new, but what got him talking like Leon?
I think Galloway was the first person to block me on Twitter so I only see his tweets when other folk quote them and thus I only have a passing oversight of his ‘journey’. I get the impression that the foetid little pool that he’s paddling in has made him even more mental.
Nevertheless I’m predicting that Unionism will get so desperate that they’ll end up recruiting him in some capacity or other.
It's sad what's happened to him. There always was a planetary ego there but at least in his pomp there was some great oratory and innovative arguments from a left perspective. But now the ego is all that's left. It's Brand Galloway and nothing else. One wouldn't be dropdead amazed to find him embracing Qanon and anti-vax. And his once striking rhetoric has become purest shtick. It's end-of-the-pier and obvious and repetitive. Still, we'll always have that US committee appearance a few years ago when he unleashed the fabulous insult "popinjay" on a bemused and cowed group of neoliberals.
Having our weekly delivery from Sainsbury's later on today, only have a few substitutions (Cod fillets instead of cod loins, different type of yoghurt from what was ordered,)
The issue is not being able to order things in the first place, no courgettes, avocado, and aubergines, that sort of thing.
Prices have gone up quite a few things.
You need to shop at a more competent supermarket, avocados are in plentiful supply at Waitrose and I am sure courgettes and aubergines were on the shelves. The avocado I'm having for lunch comes from Colombia so presumably unaffected by Brexit
We ordered a supplementary shop from Waitrose a fortnight ago, no courgettes, aubergines, or avocados arrived.
I've never been that fortunate. One person in our house enjoys all three of these. It isn't me!
Didn't James Bond once eat an avocado pear as a dessert because Ian Fleming had only heard about these exotic fruit second hand?
He had been living partly in Jamaica for 7 years before writing the first novel, so it seems incredibly unlikely.
Der Spiegel (pretty mainstream magazine though with a bias to being anti whoever is in power) reporting the "maybe only give AZ to younger people" speculation too now - I don't think there's much doubt that it's under consideration, though it'll be Friday (EMA decision) and Saturday (German discussion with states) that will decide it.
I may be wrong, but the clear impression that I'm getting from the partial leaks is that the issue is that the clinical trials showed generally good effectiveness for AZ but the sample size for over-65s was small enough to produce a large margin of error for that group - very much like our often-discussed Scottish subsamples, which occasionally produce very odd results. Possibly the 95% certainty range does extend down to 8% as reported at the extreme low end.
You can look at that data in two ways. Either you say "The pattern for the elderly seems similar to everyone else, maybe a bit lower but not dramatically, so let's push ahead, as otherwise we'll be short of vaccine to supply." That's the British position as I understand it - if we had an infinite supply of 95% effective Pfizer, tested extensively on the elderly, we'd only use that - but we don't. Or you say "The elderly are especially vulnerable to Covid so we need to get this right. Let's delay giving them the AZ vaccine until we have reliable AZ results for the elderly, even if that slows rollout." That seems to be what the Germans are considering (and it would also explain why they'rre being so hardline about Pfizer's supply, as it's the main available alternative).
I don't think either position is incomprehensible or stupid, or a reason to panic (or to slag off Handelsblatt for reporting what they're told). The vaccine probably works well for all age groups, and it's just a question of whether to be super-cautious because the elderly sample is still small.
Do you work for Handelsblatt or something?
How can you defend their "reporting what they're told" when it's clearly dangerous nonsense? Would you have defended the FT if they'd reported that the Pfizer vaccine made over 75s 12% more likely to catch covid?
I think it's fair to include supermarket workers as well then, they do a public service the same as everyone else taking a risk going out there at the moment.
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I've just made the massive call to defect from Waitrose to Morrisons. 3 reasons - It's more spacious so you can keep right away from other shoppers. It has a big car park so you can really load up with essentials. No reason not to get multipacks of everything. Opened a packet of Waitrose chapattis last week and they were covered in green mould.....
Isn't that just the new pineapple on pizza ?
In that league for sure. But the good news is my wife did one of her snippy letters - which she has a calling for - and we will be getting a gift voucher worth multiple times what the chapattis cost (£1.15). Could be enough for a 20 bag of quilted tt. Result.
It was a very good interview. The commission has got nothing to go on, they were late and slow to order.
Yes, a really excellent and informative interview.
The interview was a very good piece of presentation - calm, full of detailed information, setting out the company's position, answering the question about the press reports without avoiding blaming anyone.
A very good example of calming things down with a positive response, I think.
Having our weekly delivery from Sainsbury's later on today, only have a few substitutions (Cod fillets instead of cod loins, different type of yoghurt from what was ordered,)
The issue is not being able to order things in the first place, no courgettes, avocado, and aubergines, that sort of thing.
Prices have gone up quite a few things.
My local Waitrose seems to have plenty of avocado.
Berlaymonster is turning out to be the most interesting blogger on EU matters that I've seen. But I can't see whether it actually has anything to do with Martin Selmayr.
No I don't think so. It's a parody of him I think. The Twitter account says parody
Sainsbury's has gone downhill in the last 20 years. It used to be an affordable M&S sort of standard, or just beneath it, but it's gone from middle middle-class to lower middle-class as it has ASDA'ed and ARGOS'ed itself.
I think it's barely above Tesco now and Morrisons is better.
I've just made the massive call to defect from Waitrose to Morrisons. 3 reasons - It's more spacious so you can keep right away from other shoppers. It has a big car park so you can really load up with essentials. No reason not to get multipacks of everything. Opened a packet of Waitrose chapattis last week and they were covered in green mould.....
Isn't that just the new pineapple on pizza ?
In that league for sure...
I'm waiting for the PBers who insist that is the only way they will eat chapatis.
I cannot believe Boris achieved that "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" look in the Mail photograph without hours of practise and coaching. This is all orchestrated to take a hit, get it out of the way, preempt an attack from Sir Abstainalot at pmq and clear the decks for a sunlit uplands narrative as the vaccine kicks in.
Fingers crossed we break through 500k jabs today. Onwards and upwards.
I think it will be a struggle to see much of an increase in daily vaccination numbers (maybe we will even see reductions) over the next couple of weeks, as there have been reduction in deliveries due to supply issues.
Much discussion here and elsewhere on the figure for Covid deaths in the UK, which is indeed horrendous.
However, I'd be a bit wary of premature international comparisons; our final ranking in the grim league table is not known yet. We can point to what were clearly, at least with hindsight, big errors by the government, but there were also lots of factors outside the control of the government, and none of this is easy.
To make one obvious point, the awful UK figures of the past few weeks are no doubt partly due to the 'British' variant being so infectious. That effect happens to have hit us first, but this virus doesn't respect borders and it may simply be a timing difference, with other countries lagging behind us on the increased fatalities caused by the variant.
I expect that this pandemic will last several more years, by the time this is over the league table could look very different. It is entirely possible that there are worse waves to come, and also quite likely that we will need to revaccinate regularly.
With a vaccine rollout and hotel quarantines then this could and should be the final wave for the UK, even if the rest of the world has future waves. And we can get back to work, close our budget deficit and use our aid budget to help the rest of the world catch up with us.
Were that to happen then the initial league tables would be irrelevant by the end of the day.
News this morning that Denmark was diverting some of its vaccine supplies to somewhere else - Africa perhaps - right now.
ahahaha, I doubt that if Mette F wants to keep her job - we got a total of 73,000 doses this week and 38,000 last week - that's not daily delivery that's for the whole week - despite a typically excellent programme for managing the jabs the doses aren't coming - then we get this sort of thing in my daily paper
"Eksperter i både Danmark og udlandet stiller seriøse spørgsmål ved vaccinens virkning" for the few people on this board who don't read Danish - "Experts in both Denmark and other countries are seriously questioning the vaccines effectiveness"
It's all about the government here not wanting to blame the EU because we decided not to follow the original plan and organise our own. So now AZ for some reason becomes the whipping boy and no criticism of the EU is coming from government.
I think it's fair to include supermarket workers as well then, they do a public service the same as everyone else taking a risk going out there at the moment.
Considering the amount I know who have caught it working in supermarkets I would agree
Trying Tesco's click and collect this weekend. Wanted a delivery but there was no availability for the next 4 weeks or something. Will be interesting to see how it works!
Comments
For Pfizer the sample of the elderly was so small the 95% confidence bound took it between negative efficacy to 100% efficacy.
It's more spacious so you can keep right away from other shoppers.
It has a big car park so you can really load up with essentials. No reason not to get multipacks of everything.
Opened a packet of Waitrose chapattis last week and they were covered in green mould.
This last being the "trigger" event.
What would be unforgivable to me is a third wave. I still don't see Macron or Merkel or anyone else introducing hotel quarantines, if that is done now on top of vaccine rollout then we have learnt lessons and can get on top of this and avoid a third wave. Get back to normality within this country while the rest of the world sorts itself out.
One thing I'm not sure about (and this is critical) is the lack of details regarding the over 65 subsample because only 1 less vaccinated person caught it compared to unvaccinated people or because only 1-2 unvaccinated people over 65 caught Covid.
If it's the latter than the range is between 100% to 0% because there is little to nothing to go on.
On Sainsburys, how were they for tomatoes? I believe their Taste the Difference tomatoes all come from Thanet Earth, as will any current British Grown cucumbers for supermarkets. I don't think anyone else is harvesting cucumbers yet.
I have small Tesco and Coop within 5 minutes walk, with very different mask-adherence levels. Coop posh bread is delicious, but I bake at home now.
My shop has changed a little - mostly still Aldi (basics and things where they are better), or Morrisons (various bits they are good at, delicatessen, some fish - need to work out how to fillet a whole Tilapia from last time), Everyone except M&S and Waitrose are local. Bread is now all baked at home. Coffee bought as locally roasted beans. Fish from a Grimsby fish-man. Meat is Aldi or a local butcher. Salad veg Aldi, plus some from my own conservatory. Lots of last year's soft fruit from the freezer.
i) If the vaccine goes wrong, well it's going to go more wrong with older people.
ii) Trials like to recruit those who are in contact with the public. When you're retired you can broadly isolate from the virus far more easily than say police officers, prison staff, teachers and care home workers who make ideal control and test groups due to high public interaction. You shouldn't change behaviour to be more risky if you're on a trial.
Probably far more ii than i thinking about it.
https://twitter.com/laurnorman/status/1354363637994029058
https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1354371666374225927
Were that to happen then the initial league tables would be irrelevant by the end of the day.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55820178
Q So, you can assure that this vaccine is efficient for the elderly?
A “The issue with the elderly data is not so much whether it works or not. It´s that we have today a limited amount of data in the older population. You have to think that the program we have today was run by Oxford, it was the Oxford program. And Oxford is an academy group. They´re very ethical, and very academic. So they didn´t want to vaccinate older people until they had accumulated a lot of safety data in the 18 to 55 group. They said it was not ethical to vaccinate old people until they had enough safety data in younger people. Other companies took this risk, went ahead and vaccinated older people faster or earlier. If you start earlier, you have more data. Essentially, because Oxford started vaccinating older people later, we don´t have a huge number of older people who have been vaccinated. So that's what the debate is. But we have strong data showing very strong antibody production against the virus in the elderly, similar to what we see in younger people. It's possible that some countries, out of caution, will use our vaccine for the younger group. But honestly, it is fine...."
My bold
https://twitter.com/cstross/status/1354370738187284480
But is anyone surprised that "Boris doing his Best" has resulted in a Grade A clusterf***
The voters remember.
Boris Johnson boasted of shaking hands on day Sage warned not to
Advisers recommended issuing public warning on day PM said he shook hands ‘with everybody’ at hospital
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/05/boris-johnson-boasted-of-shaking-hands-on-day-sage-warned-not-to
Since you need to book the slot more than two weeks ahead, I simply reserve it using a replicated order. Don't worry, I will change it to order what I actually need shortly before the deadline!
No a-la-carte fruit and veg. So no celery for us.
Morrisons however is far more integrated which means it has far better quality control over it's own brand products than other supermarkets.
Plus Morrisons flowers are about as good as you can get and will last daya longer than anyone elses.
Different but sometimes overlapping versions for men and women. There were analogous things back in the day.
Perhaps it only becomes a problem if you believe your own marketing.
Nevertheless I’m predicting that Unionism will get so desperate that they’ll end up recruiting him in some capacity or other.
I am not a Conservative but have sympathy for the PM, he is trapped due to the Brexit issue, it brought him to power on a right wing agenda, because the party has moved to the right with more and more right wing MPs, as well as the Express, Mail and Telegraph. When history is written it might be all the fault of the Lib Dems, creating the election scenario for Dec 2019 and then going into it with a nonsense approach on the EU, instead ops sticking to what worked, i e calling for a Referendum..
That a bunch of middle-aged, slightly overweight white blokes on PB think it’s not a valid calling is erm... unsurprising.
I'm also a bit surprised that these people aren't seeing more negative response to their posts when it's clear they're flouting the rules. Surely even generation brain-dead aren't just 'liking' everything when it's clear someone is taking the piss out of them.
And today's meeting has been cancelled by AZN, not the Commission too.
https://twitter.com/laurnorman/status/1354375970174758913
Good for them for standing up to attempted bullying and scapegoating by the Commission.
This reminds me, the recent headers and posting discussions on PB re indyref2 (the usual tanky/colonialist stuff aside) have been interesting and innovative and yet nobody is addressing who is fronting Better Together 2. Something to bear in mind.
(I often wonder what Hitchens would have made of Trump vs Hillary and the subsequent Trump Administration. He loathed the Clintons but goodness knows what he would have made of the Donald. His early death was a very sad loss. He was quite unique.)
We're trialling a fish mongers next week, he's agreed to a click and collect service for us with no contact due to our extended bubble with my parents. It's a bit more expensive than prepackaged but I'm really looking forwards to trying it.
Has she made money from the Dubai trip, or has she paid for it? If she's paid for it then its a holiday not a "job".
The truth is for most of these so-called "influencers" that they don't make money from it, its bankrolled by the bank of mum and dad. Spoilt rich kids showing off on Instagram doesn't suddenly make it a job, jobs make you money they don't take it from you.
If its a job then I hope she's up to date with reporting to HMRC etc
But if equipoise is now the Pfizer vaccine, with good evidence in older cohorts, then the bar might have been raised for the Oxford vaccine in the EMA's eyes.
The particular sub-group of older patients is very important, so I'm surprised the Oxford trials weren't powered with that in mind in the first place.
The EMA might be awaiting further data from additional studies before approving for the whole population.
Why object to a small elderly subsample with AZN with a wide confidence range but turn a blind eye to that in Pfizer?
Trials aren't designed with confidence ranges for subsamples to be extremely narrow.
I don't know any local florist and I see no reason to support a local florist any more than a local greengrocer, local butcher and local everything else.
I'd be more likely to support a local butcher in fact.
(For those people who say "can't they just pop over the border", yes they can. This is only going to be an issue with interconnecting flights where people transfer. We can reduce that risk via tracking passport movements - would catch anything outside of EU - and but requiring airlines to provide data of people with interconnecting flights. For people who are utterly focused on breaking the law there's not much you can do but how many people will make the first leg of the journey without a pre-booked second leg?
Spoilt rich kids with 10k Instagram followers? Nah, pull the other one. Its an excuse to call a holiday a "job". Not a chance on earth someone with 10k followers is making money from a trip to Dubai.
As it happens, I think the Broon, would be pretty persuasive on the economics of independence and is probably trusted by the sort of voters who the No team would need to win over. Not to be under-estimated as he still appears to be pretty fired up. Probably sees saving the UK as a legacy issue reputationally.
There would need to be a Tory in the team and Ruth Davidson polls pretty well so far as I am aware. And as a very strong Remainer is well-placed to flag the parallels between Brexit and Sindy.
Compared to the somewhat less than charismatic Lord Darling they would not be such a bad team for the Union.
I
https://twitter.com/ByDonkeys/status/1354175393327153152
What intrigues me is those who defend Johnson's tardy responses while also condemning China's initial slow reactions back in December 2019.
https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1354382200465215488
How can you defend their "reporting what they're told" when it's clearly dangerous nonsense? Would you have defended the FT if they'd reported that the Pfizer vaccine made over 75s 12% more likely to catch covid?
A very good example of calming things down with a positive response, I think.
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1353814148166033414?s=19
https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1354276645272576002
https://twitter.com/katelamble/status/1354335981202251776?s=20
The Cobra story is about perverse incentives & £500 for COVID stay at homes....
"Eksperter i både Danmark og udlandet stiller seriøse spørgsmål ved vaccinens virkning" for the few people on this board who don't read Danish - "Experts in both Denmark and other countries are seriously questioning the vaccines effectiveness"
It's all about the government here not wanting to blame the EU because we decided not to follow the original plan and organise our own. So now AZ for some reason becomes the whipping boy and no criticism of the EU is coming from government.