They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
Didn't seem likely they were massively different. It can be turned around.
To give this a sense of proportion
The bundle of trajectories is quite close. The "gap" is about 5-7 days, to reach an equivalent % of the population vaccinated. Which in the context of these things is minimal.
They gap is increasing though. If you look at when Scotland hits each line on the chart, then when England hit the same line, the tip gap is going up not down.
0.10 was about 5.5 days earlier. 0.08 was about 4.5 days earlier. 0.06 was about 3.8 days earlier.
The gaps is stretching not shrinking. On current trends 0.14 will be over 6 days gap and so on.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
Oh, we were well aware of the disparity when I was at Uni, and grateful for it.
Sounds familiar. My 1st year physics degree had 32hrs of lectures practicals and tutorials a week in the 70s at Aberdeen University. That included travel time between loads of sites.
My undergraduate engineering degree had circa 35 hrs of contact time per week on top of independent study. Still found time to party though.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
Carry on deriding my posts and you'll get so many 'likes' from felix you'll be able to start a new career as an influencer
Well, I've worked in Big Telecoms, Big Oil, Finance... was thinking about strategic armaments for my fourth career... but....
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
Remember HYUFD.
It has been decided that your intemperate posts on Scotland will now likely prevent you from seeking the nomination for the Parliamentary constituency of Much Crowing in Essex.
They will come to light and cause disquiet & consternation in any election.
However, a position in the House of Lords is still possible. @williamglenn has a possible title in hand.
And all parties don't look too closely under the bonnet for nominations to peerages. All the rough & raucous riff-raff of the country is in the House of Lords, claiming the daily moolah for the "work".
But, a couple more slavering outbursts about Scotland, and even that may be impossible.
Far from it, my posts supporting respecing the 2014 independence referendum to stay in the UK are fully in line with UK government policy as confirmed by the Secretary of State for Scotland Alistair Jack today.
Now had I been posting to refuse to implement Brexit in line with Boris' wishes a la Gauke, Grieve, Stewart, Soames etc before the last General Election that may well have proved fatal.
However, I would of course accept a peerage instead in the unlikely event one was offered, then you don't need to stand for re election anyway
So far this week we’ve had a Tory mp stating that once in a generation was in the Edinburgh Agreement, now this. I wonder what’s making them feel that they have to lie?
The Union is a reserved matter to the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998, Jack is right
Would the UK government want to challenge the Scottish government in court? Wouldn't any Scottish citizen have sufficient standing to launch an action? Possibly an activist QC? Westminster in general, and Boris in particular, would remain above the fray.
No such thing as a Scottish citizen (yet). Just those UK subjects of HMtQ who live in Scotland and are on the register there. Don't think that Mr Gove would qualify, unless he was upset at the prospect of being offered a Scots passport in due course courtesy of his paternity.
But it's an interesting point - though AIUI often it is important that at least part of the argument in such things comes from the government(s) in question themselves.
I'm fairly sure you'd admit to being (a) Scottish and (b) a citizen.
In the broader sense, yes of course, but there is nothing like a Scottish passport to define it. I'm just thinking whom the court might think have standing. Would HYUFD for instance be accepted on the grounds that even having an indyref was damaging to his self-respect as a patriotic UK subject, inconvenience in terms of moving the Trident boats, etc.?
The risk is that if Mr J leaves it to the hoi polloi you might end up with some very odd arguments and a lot of time wasted and miss those which the UKG would want to see aired.
Time will tell. You may be right. But don't expect the UK government to arrive mob-handed, in spite of incitement from Epping and a stirring precedent from Madrid. They're cleverer than that.
You think? Admittedly Costa's tenure as a minor functionary of this government was short but he's by no means the stupidest of the current lot. I mean actual SoSfS (fitting!) at one point stated that if the SNP got a majority in May they had the right to hold a referendum now thinks he has the authority to say any referendums initiated by the SNP are illegal. Now that is fcuking stupid.
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster. Morality is somewhat open to interpretation and in any case only 1 factor influencing Westminster and the UK government who legally get the final say.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
You’re attacking this the wrong way. By all means try and beat the SNP on the arguments and deny them a majority, but seeing them get a majority and then saying “sorry, no referendum” is just an insult to the voters. You’re acting like Scotland is an intransigent colony. It isn’t. It’s part of the U.K., and every vote there matters as much as mine does. If I wanted my region to leave the U.K., and I commanded a majority locally, I’d expect a referendum. If I didn’t get one, I’d want a UDI.
The Catalans tried UDI in 2017, 4 years later they are still part of Spain.
I think the Tories think they might all settle in London - saving the London property market and significantly improving their electoral prospects.
Still won’t be enough for Shaun Bailey to get anywhere near the mayoralty.
Wasn't thinking about the Mayoralty.
Guess not, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity of getting a dig in at the present candidate: a man so lightweight that ordinary bathroom scales couldn’t possibly register a reading.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
Indeed. Of course the Cion really should be thinking ahead to the implications of what happens after you’ve brought big pharma, social media, and financial services* to heel and made them feel you’re a risky jurisdiction. The disappointing bit is that the Cion used to be sensible on this stuff, and would moderate bonkers ideas from member states.
*The Financial Transactions Tax and a de facto concentration rule have to be odds on without the U.K.
If the answer is Brian Rose, somebody needs to work out the question.
He is very active on social media but there's more than a sniff of authoritarianism about his "plans" and to be honest and this is possibly a cultural issue with me, every time I see a politician in a pin-stripe suit the alarm bells start ringing.
His latest nonsense is the Police (under instruction from Sadiq Khan who Rose seems to loathe with a healthy passion) have stopped him filming a promotional video in Southwark High Street and fined him and six of his staff £200 each for breaching Covid regulations. Naturally, he went off to Breitbart whingeing about that.
The "new thing" in the race is Farah London (I kid you not). Her ideas seem fairly ordinary but one which struck me was exempting tenants under 25 from Council Tax. It's a thought - if you are paying £900 a month for your one-bed flat in Newham saving £120 by exempting from Council Tax would help - but I can't help but feel such a scheme would be open to huge abuse.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
That's how PhDs (and DPhils) work in English universities. What you get over and above the card depends on how skilfully you select your supervisor.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
Carry on deriding my posts and you'll get so many 'likes' from felix you'll be able to start a new career as an influencer
You've only really arrived on PB when you get your first stalker.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
She has no scientific qualifications whatsoever beyond a bachelor's degree.
Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have undermined the vaccination campaign by making a cretinous statement about not wanting to vaccinate the whole population because the side effects of the vaccines would be so serious.
"She has no scientific qualifications whatsoever beyond" the four years she spent at Oxford studying biochemistry.
Being successful in this doesn't necessarily require anything beyond that either. I have a rudimentary understanding of everything going to because of my years spent doing a chemistry degree. It gives her the same ability to sit in on a meeting and not being completely confused by what is being said by the scientists wrt to mechanisms, immunological differences and she will have the ability to absorb new information very quickly because of that baseline understanding.
The success has come from having an understanding of how the business of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals work coupled with her baseline understanding of the science behind it.
Having a professor of immunology do it would have meant no real understanding of the realities of commercial pharmaceutical development, having a non-scientific pharma exec do it would have meant no real understanding of the science involved with each of these different approaches.
As I said previously, attempts to smear and discredit her are extremely out of place. It's the one appointment the government got absolutely right.
Compare and contrast the EU approach of putting political bureaucrats in charge and we can see the result.
I accept that BBC-bashing is like shooting fish in a barrel, but am I alone in believing that licence-payers' money is ill-used pumping the oxygen of publicity into ungrateful bastards like this:
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
That's how PhDs (and DPhils) work in English universities. What you get over and above the card depends on how skilfully you select your supervisor.
Yes - but I also think that the Universities haven't quite grasped that the students now think of themselves as paying customers. Not drunks on a three/four year freebie....
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
It is a pretty good library to be fair. And it does seem to suggest some misunderstanding of what a PhD entails if you’re expecting to be taught.
DPhil to be pedantic. But in fairness the Americans do their PhDs with a heavy component of taught course IIRC - so one can see how the chap got it wrong. Someone should still have told him.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
Widespread civil unrest in lots of countries is a given. Now with social media everybody can easily find out how other countries are doing, which will quickly lead to anger when people find out x similar country has loads of vaccines and they haven't any.... unless you are French, then its a good thing, because they can sit back and wait for everybody else to try it and see if it works (i am not making up that quote, is in the video linked below, before going back to throwing rocks about some law about the poice being filmed).
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
Carry on deriding my posts and you'll get so many 'likes' from felix you'll be able to start a new career as an influencer
You've only really arrived on PB when you get your first stalker.
Roger’s had quite a few. I’ve been here long enough to remember ‘Pot and Kettle’.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
Carry on deriding my posts and you'll get so many 'likes' from felix you'll be able to start a new career as an influencer
You've only really arrived on PB when you get your first stalker.
Didn't seem likely they were massively different. It can be turned around.
To give this a sense of proportion
The bundle of trajectories is quite close. The "gap" is about 5-7 days, to reach an equivalent % of the population vaccinated. Which in the context of these things is minimal.
They gap is increasing though. If you look at when Scotland hits each line on the chart, then when England hit the same line, the tip gap is going up not down.
0.10 was about 5.5 days earlier. 0.08 was about 4.5 days earlier. 0.06 was about 3.8 days earlier.
The gaps is stretching not shrinking. On current trends 0.14 will be over 6 days gap and so on.
There is not enough data, over enough time to make such a judgement. Yet. The vaccination scheme is still very much in the ramp up mode. Consider the change in the Welsh trajectory.....
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
It didn’t even mention the possibility. Hence this seemingly endless argument on PB.
Please, just stop. There’s no moral justification for stopping a majority SNP Government (it’ll be different if they don’t win) having a referendum. Same would be true if Mebyon Kernow swept all before it on the Cornish council on an independent ticket. It’s the moral authority that matters, not the law or the particular powers of the assembly in question.
There is no such thing as morality under our constitution, only the supremacy of Westminster. Morality is somewhat open to interpretation and in any case only 1 factor influencing Westminster and the UK government who legally get the final say.
See also Spain which has correctly refused Catalonia even 1 independence referendum under the Spanish constitution despite the majority of the Catalan Parliament being Catalan nationalists
You’re attacking this the wrong way. By all means try and beat the SNP on the arguments and deny them a majority, but seeing them get a majority and then saying “sorry, no referendum” is just an insult to the voters. You’re acting like Scotland is an intransigent colony. It isn’t. It’s part of the U.K., and every vote there matters as much as mine does. If I wanted my region to leave the U.K., and I commanded a majority locally, I’d expect a referendum. If I didn’t get one, I’d want a UDI.
The Catalans tried UDI in 2017, 4 years later they are still part of Spain.
But unhappy and feeling repressed. Who wants that?
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
Carry on deriding my posts and you'll get so many 'likes' from felix you'll be able to start a new career as an influencer
You've only really arrived on PB when you get your first stalker.
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
Well the Act of Union didn't really provide for such a situation, I believe.
Of course those of us who aren't fascists believe the Scottish people have the right of self determination rather than hiding behind the "oNce iN a GeNeraTIon" line
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
Widespread civil unrest in lots of countries is a given. Now with social media everybody can easily find out how other countries are doing, which will quickly lead to anger when people find out x similar country has loads of vaccines and they haven't any.... unless you are French, then its a good thing, because they can sit back and wait for everybody else to try it and see if it works (i am not making up thst quote, is in the video linked below).
At the same time we have the Telegraph predicting that vaccines will have little effect, we will see a major, possibly worse third wave, and we’ll need quasi-lockdown until the end of this year, at least
At that point, I think society and civil order collapses, worldwide
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
Carry on deriding my posts and you'll get so many 'likes' from felix you'll be able to start a new career as an influencer
You've only really arrived on PB when you get your first stalker.
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
Well the Act of Union didn't really provide for such a situation, I believe.
Of course those of us who aren't fascists believe the Scottish people have the right of self determination rather than hiding behind the "oNce iN a GeNeraTIon" line
To be fair, when the Act of Union was drafted the assumption was that if you weren’t a part of the U.K. you’d be part of the Empire sooner or later....
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
It is a pretty good library to be fair. And it does seem to suggest some misunderstanding of what a PhD entails if you’re expecting to be taught.
DPhil to be pedantic. But in fairness the Americans do their PhDs with a heavy component of taught course IIRC - so one can see how the chap got it wrong. Someone should still have told him.
I always thought that is a flaw in the UK system. Most PhD students, well at least I did, wasted my first year pissing about trying to work out what I might need to learn about, where I was going with it etc. It would have been extremely helpful to have had some structured learning, ability to take some higher level maths classes, and found a group of similar minded people from across departments who I could have talked things through with, asked about bits of papers I didn't understand etc.
Instead I got thrown in a small office with a couple of guys much further ahead who weren't particularly helpful and it was sink or swim.
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
MexicanPete's nightmare has a decent chance of coming true, and anyone writing off Boris' chances at this stage is being far too hasty. If this last week is proof of anything, it's that Boris is a lucky general...
He's quite rightly bookies favourite. The biggest thing he had to counter was the sheer sense of absurdity that such a ridiculous character could be PM. I felt that very strongly when he got the job - as I know millions more did - but the sense is dissipating.
I have gotten - and am continuing to getten - used to him. I respect him no more than I did. I like him no more than I did. But I'm no longer in a state of contemptuous disbelief about it. I was for a period but not anymore. I'm afraid it's worn off. My overton window on who can be PM has moved to accommodate "Boris". He's wormed his way into my brain and moved it in the direction of black satire.
I say "afraid" because this is an unwelcome development which does not speak well of me or my millions of ilk. Either our standards are slipping or - and this is the theory I self servingly prefer - it's down to Donald Trump. Four years of him as POTUS has made our alternative reality of a complete charlatan who is not entirely malign seem almost wholesome. Everything is relative in this world after all.
Anyway, that's my take on this. Johnson is likely to lead the Cons into GE24 and he's likely to win it. The most 'smug city' bet in my current portfolio is 4 digits on him still to be PM on 1st July 2022. I did and tipped that 2 months ago at 1.9 and I hope some people followed suit (or even did it before me). It's 1.4 now. And still a buy imo, so no close out yet for me.
'Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! I've grown accustomed to [his] face'
Interesting. Yes, the Trumpster fire has helped most world leaders look twice as presidential as they really are, and everyone from Boris to Biden has been the beneficiary to some extent. It also seems that though pure MAGA/QAnon-type populism has run into a wall (at least for now!), there's still plenty of public appetite for a lighter version of that populist spirit on this side of the Atlantic.
As far your GE24 position goes, if I'm not mistaken you've become a bit more bullish on BJ than you were before, officially more so than me at this point - I'd tentatively give Boris about a 40% combined chance to both fight and win the next GE, mainly because there are going to be some predictable bumps in the road between now and then and the Tories will have been in for 14 years, so that 'likely' is quite strong.
No, we're about the same assessment. To be PM beyond 24, i.e. join the Thatcher Blairs as a Really Big One, he has to both fight GE24 and win it. They are both likely but together only quite likely, which I define as between a 25% and 50% chance. So you are slap bang in there with your 40%.
But my bet I'm very confident on. It pays if he is still PM on 1st July 2022. Barring accidents he will be. He might step down or be deposed in 23 but not before. You can tell as you watch him that he has no plans in the foreseeable future other than continuing this latest phase of the Boris Johnson Project - being the Prime Minister.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
Widespread civil unrest in lots of countries is a given. Now with social media everybody can easily find out how other countries are doing, which will quickly lead to anger when people find out x similar country has loads of vaccines and they haven't any.... unless you are French, then its a good thing, because they can sit back and wait for everybody else to try it and see if it works (i am not making up thst quote, is in the video linked below).
At the same time we have the Telegraph predicting that vaccines will have little effect, we will see a major, possibly worse third wave, and we’ll need quasi-lockdown until the end of this year, at least
At that point, I think society and civil order collapses, worldwide
You missed the extensive discussion on that story last night. And I think that your reading of the piece as suggesting vaccines will have “little effect” is a little...extreme.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
My biggest concern is that this is what they actually believe. There are repeated statements that they believe that
- Production was diverted covertly - That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory - If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
Thank god he’s left the site. His constant bragging about his penis-size, sexual virility, artistic accomplishment and success with beautiful younger women was both obnoxious and misogynistic. Even if it was completely justified and verifiably true. Good riddance.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
A further point is that the foreign student will get funding to go onto Erasmus if their country and university are part of the scheme, which includes all of Europe. They won't be interested in Turing in that case unless either the UK or foreign government finances participation. Turing fails if there isn't broadly the same interest going into the UK as there is out of it.
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
I recall similar predictions when the UK decided to stay out of the EU vax scheme. How did that go I wonder.............
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
Widespread civil unrest in lots of countries is a given. Now with social media everybody can easily find out how other countries are doing, which will quickly lead to anger when people find out x similar country has loads of vaccines and they haven't any.... unless you are French, then its a good thing, because they can sit back and wait for everybody else to try it and see if it works (i am not making up thst quote, is in the video linked below).
At the same time we have the Telegraph predicting that vaccines will have little effect, we will see a major, possibly worse third wave, and we’ll need quasi-lockdown until the end of this year, at least
At that point, I think society and civil order collapses, worldwide
They are the same chaps who said a 2 week firebreak could save upto 100k lives in the proceeding 3 months or it could be as few as 700 or somewhere in between....just saying like.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
Widespread civil unrest in lots of countries is a given. Now with social media everybody can easily find out how other countries are doing, which will quickly lead to anger when people find out x similar country has loads of vaccines and they haven't any.... unless you are French, then its a good thing, because they can sit back and wait for everybody else to try it and see if it works (i am not making up thst quote, is in the video linked below).
At the same time we have the Telegraph predicting that vaccines will have little effect, we will see a major, possibly worse third wave, and we’ll need quasi-lockdown until the end of this year, at least
At that point, I think society and civil order collapses, worldwide
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
It is a cost/benefit analysis.
For the Erasmus scheme, how much would the UK have to have paid to join. What would the cost per UK exchange student have been?
I think Switzerland went through this, and similarly concluded -- like the UK -- that the EU offered a very expensive deal for Switzerland to join Erasmus. I believe Switzerland created its own scheme (Swiss Programme for Erasmus+)
"Since 2014, Switzerland has no longer been a programme country of Erasmus+, but a partner country. To enable Swiss institutions to continue taking part in cooperation and mobility activities with the Erasmus+ programme countries, the Federal Council adopted an interim solution financed with Swiss funds. This Swiss programme for Erasmus+ funds the participation of people and institutions from Switzerland (outgoing). In order to offer reciprocity, financial support is also provided for people and institutions from Europe to spend a period of time in Switzerland (incoming)."
I am all in favour of university exchanges (though it is a middle-class perk, unfortunately). I am happy to wait for details of the Turing scheme because no-on is exchanging anywhere at the moment.
But, if the Swiss can do it, I honestly don't see what the problem is in running our own scheme.
Of course, if the cost per student is lower and less is spent on administration, more students can benefit from the scheme.
I highlighted the key point in your comment. It kind of doubles the cost compared with Erasmus*. The Swiss got thrown out of Erasmus, I believe, so it wasn't by choice. Of course that in itself may be an issue in terms of UK participation in the scheme. The point I am making is that Erasmus is by far the better scheme because it's a functioning exchange based on reciprocity. Whether the UK wants to be part of it is another matter.
* Edit I understand from the costing of the Turing scheme, the UK government doesn't intend to fund incoming students. Unless you get a two way flow, Turing will fail.
I actually wanted you to answer the first two questions about money, which you predictably enough did not.
The Swiss were thrown out. The problems were resolved. The Swiss applied to rejoin Erasmus. The EU quoted them an a price. The Swiss rejected the offer to rejoin because it was too pricey. (So I believe the UK Government on this one -- that the EU tried to price-gouge them). Then, the Swiss created their own scheme.
I do not believe that the Swiss scheme is double the cost of what the Swiss were offered to join ERASMUS. Prove it.
(A little personal history: I was mildly in favour of the EU. I became involved (in a small way) in the administration, not of Erasmus, but of a somewhat similar scheme, called the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. It was very profitable for me, but the waste of money in the administration was truly enormous. I became mildly against the EU).
I addressed your cost issue by pointing out the Swiss scheme has very significant extra costs that don't exist in Erasmus. Don't much appreciate your "predictably enough" snideness. Especially as you are wrong in your assertion there.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
My biggest concern is that this is what they actually believe. There are repeated statements that they believe that
- Production was diverted covertly - That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory - If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
I maintain a major problem is that this is an issue which cannot be solved by Member states saying how unified they are, or by kicking the can down the road.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
It is a pretty good library to be fair. And it does seem to suggest some misunderstanding of what a PhD entails if you’re expecting to be taught.
DPhil to be pedantic. But in fairness the Americans do their PhDs with a heavy component of taught course IIRC - so one can see how the chap got it wrong. Someone should still have told him.
I always thought that is a flaw in the UK system. Most PhD students, well at least I did, wasted my first year pissing about trying to work out what I might need to learn about, where I was going with it etc. It would have been extremely helpful to have had some structured learning, ability to take some higher level maths classes, and found a group of similar minded people from across departments who I could have talked things through with, asked about bits of papers I didn't understand etc.
Instead I got thrown in a small office with a couple of guys much further ahead who weren't particularly helpful and it was sink or swim.
No, he didn't misunderstand what he was paying for. He did the PhD. Just a wry comment on cost vs what he got. Which was paid for by a loan which he is still paying back, IIRC.
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
I'm not sure, but apparently if 28 countries join a union then none of them are allowed to leave either.
I think the Tories think they might all settle in London - saving the London property market and significantly improving their electoral prospects.
Still won’t be enough for Shaun Bailey to get anywhere near the mayoralty.
No way. Joke candidate really. 44 on betfair and not tempted. I am tempted to lay Khan at 1.09 though. Is there not a chance a big name will enter and transform the market? Or is it too late now for that?
Unless Rory changes his mind? Can’t see it myself, though.
Wait until this young lady gets the publicity she deserves.
It will take time for vaccine success to filter through into polling. Around 12 months I reckon. But it will. He also did the right thing about the 100,000 deaths. He said sorry, even though it's not all his fault, and looked and sounded contrite.
The Sunday papers, even the Observer, are supportive. And now Tony Blair has criticised the EU. What with that and the application to join the CPTTP, there's no doubt that the PM is on a roll.
I wonder if it was the departure of Dominic Cummings that was the making of Boris Johnson.
Good morning everybody. Let's hope it's a better day, weatherise here, anyway, than yesterday. Rained all day, quite hard some the time, but at least it didn't snow.
We haven't lost a family member, or a 'close' friend to Covid-19, but we do know quite a few people who have had it, and we do know of people who have died. They tended to have 'something else' as well, though; went into hospital with a heart problem and Covid developed there, for example.
Yes, the vaccine roll-out has been a success. And why? Because the Govt. stood back and let the professionals do it, without bringing their 'friends' in. And, AIUI, the vaccine manufacturers got together right at the start, without being prompted, and developed the vaccines.
Pretty sure that vaccine procurement was did face accusations of "crony appointments" though?
She is married to a Tory MP.
It doesn't follow from a cronyist process that every single appointee will turn out to be useless.
That’s your prejudice showing through.
You say “Kate Bingham is married to a Tory MP and just happens to have done a great job”
I say “Kate has spent 30 years working in the biotechnology sector assessing and building emerging companies. She has all of the qualifications needed. Her husband is a Tory MP”
And it was the final sentence that was the deciding factor in her appointment.
Really? She still beat the vaccine teams of almost every other country - or superstate for that matter - in the world. Perhaps more of them should have married Tory MPs!
Yep but there are a strange group of people who believe that results don't matter as much as much as accusations of cronyism. They would much rather have a someone in charge who only did as well as, say, the EU in vaccinations but who wasn't the wife of a Tory MP.
Meritocracy is worth fighting for.
Indeed and in this case that is what we have. Clearly the best person for the job irrespective of her connections.
I said this yesterday, I think the UK government communication needs to focus much more on this for all the vaccines. Try to get the public less focused on the % efficacy on stopping you getting COVID, rather the very high % across all of them from preventing hospitalisation, because that's the scary outcome, ending up in hospital with COVID for many means serious long term damage.
Instead you can come and get this jab and if you follow the protocol, chances are even if you are unlucky and get it, you are going to have flu type illness for a couple of weeks.
That's what I've been saying to family and friends. Don't worry about which jab you get as they all seem to do very well on preventing serious disease. It is by far the most important effect of the vaccines at the moment, we can worry about infections and transmission more when we get this wave under some control.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
My biggest concern is that this is what they actually believe. There are repeated statements that they believe that
- Production was diverted covertly - That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory - If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
What the EU really wants is a fight with “Britain” not the Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca - especially given they signed up with the Swedish company, not the U.K. one.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
It is a pretty good library to be fair. And it does seem to suggest some misunderstanding of what a PhD entails if you’re expecting to be taught.
DPhil to be pedantic. But in fairness the Americans do their PhDs with a heavy component of taught course IIRC - so one can see how the chap got it wrong. Someone should still have told him.
I always thought that is a flaw in the UK system. Most PhD students, well at least I did, wasted my first year pissing about trying to work out what I might need to learn about, where I was going with it etc. It would have been extremely helpful to have had some structured learning, ability to take some higher level maths classes, and found a group of similar minded people from across departments who I could have talked things through with, asked about bits of papers I didn't understand etc.
Instead I got thrown in a small office with a couple of guys much further ahead who weren't particularly helpful and it was sink or swim.
No, he didn't misunderstand what he was paying for. He did the PhD. Just a wry comment on cost vs what he got. Which was paid for by a loan which he is still paying back, IIRC.
He paid for his own PhD... people do that, when they aren't the son of a well known dictator?
I accept that BBC-bashing is like shooting fish in a barrel, but am I alone in believing that licence-payers' money is ill-used pumping the oxygen of publicity into ungrateful bastards like this:
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
Thank god he’s left the site. His constant bragging about his penis-size, sexual virility, artistic accomplishment and success with beautiful younger women was both obnoxious and misogynistic. Even if it was completely justified and verifiably true. Good riddance.
What is curious to me is how given all those magnificent qualities and lifestyle he used to spend most Saturday nights drunkenly posting to randoms on the internet......
I think the Tories think they might all settle in London - saving the London property market and significantly improving their electoral prospects.
Still won’t be enough for Shaun Bailey to get anywhere near the mayoralty.
No way. Joke candidate really. 44 on betfair and not tempted. I am tempted to lay Khan at 1.09 though. Is there not a chance a big name will enter and transform the market? Or is it too late now for that?
Cometh the hour, cometh... Brian Rose?
This is kind of what I mean. What if a Brian Rose type enters who has the compelling USP of not being Brian Rose?
Whole new ballgame. And smug city if you've laid Khan at 1.09.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
Even if AZ did send some supplies to the UK in the early days of the UK rollout, it can't have been of any serious volumes. To the extent that it would be fairly simply for AZ to make good the difference.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
A reply which rather conveniently misses the point being made which is they would love to get 16 hours contact time. Instead they are getting 4 or 5.
Besides, physicists always were a bit thicker than the average student so needed more time with the lecturer looking over their shoulder
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
Thank god he’s left the site. His constant bragging about his penis-size, sexual virility, artistic accomplishment and success with beautiful younger women was both obnoxious and misogynistic. Even if it was completely justified and verifiably true. Good riddance.
What is curious to me is how given all those magnificent qualities and lifestyle he used to spend most Saturday nights drunkenly posting to randoms on the internet......
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
Depends on the Union, I don't think any state, bar Texas, can lawfully secede from the United States of America.
As for the Act of the Union, there was a referendum in 2014 so it clearly doesn't forbid it.
I think what is interesting is that Salmond said, where he appeared to create an estoppel by convention just before the vote in 2014.
SNP leader Alex Salmond has said the Scottish referendum is a "once in a generation opportunity".
Speaking to Andrew Marr he said that a simple majority, however close, would be accepted by both sides in the campaign and there would be a "generational" gap before another independence referendum.
It would be illegal well have no legal standing and the Unionists would boycott it and 'once in a generation' was written in invisible ink in the Edinburgh agreement and the SNP would only have a claim if they won a thumping majority but it still wouldn't be allowed and the latest indy poll has a MOE drop in support for Yes and English voters voted not to have one and Quebec and Catalunya, but the real killer argument is THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MORALITY UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION!
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
It is a cost/benefit analysis.
For the Erasmus scheme, how much would the UK have to have paid to join. What would the cost per UK exchange student have been?
I think Switzerland went through this, and similarly concluded -- like the UK -- that the EU offered a very expensive deal for Switzerland to join Erasmus. I believe Switzerland created its own scheme (Swiss Programme for Erasmus+)
"Since 2014, Switzerland has no longer been a programme country of Erasmus+, but a partner country. To enable Swiss institutions to continue taking part in cooperation and mobility activities with the Erasmus+ programme countries, the Federal Council adopted an interim solution financed with Swiss funds. This Swiss programme for Erasmus+ funds the participation of people and institutions from Switzerland (outgoing). In order to offer reciprocity, financial support is also provided for people and institutions from Europe to spend a period of time in Switzerland (incoming)."
I am all in favour of university exchanges (though it is a middle-class perk, unfortunately). I am happy to wait for details of the Turing scheme because no-on is exchanging anywhere at the moment.
But, if the Swiss can do it, I honestly don't see what the problem is in running our own scheme.
Of course, if the cost per student is lower and less is spent on administration, more students can benefit from the scheme.
I highlighted the key point in your comment. It kind of doubles the cost compared with Erasmus*. The Swiss got thrown out of Erasmus, I believe, so it wasn't by choice. Of course that in itself may be an issue in terms of UK participation in the scheme. The point I am making is that Erasmus is by far the better scheme because it's a functioning exchange based on reciprocity. Whether the UK wants to be part of it is another matter.
* Edit I understand from the costing of the Turing scheme, the UK government doesn't intend to fund incoming students. Unless you get a two way flow, Turing will fail.
I actually wanted you to answer the first two questions about money, which you predictably enough did not.
The Swiss were thrown out. The problems were resolved. The Swiss applied to rejoin Erasmus. The EU quoted them an a price. The Swiss rejected the offer to rejoin because it was too pricey. (So I believe the UK Government on this one -- that the EU tried to price-gouge them). Then, the Swiss created their own scheme.
I do not believe that the Swiss scheme is double the cost of what the Swiss were offered to join ERASMUS. Prove it.
(A little personal history: I was mildly in favour of the EU. I became involved (in a small way) in the administration, not of Erasmus, but of a somewhat similar scheme, called the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. It was very profitable for me, but the waste of money in the administration was truly enormous. I became mildly against the EU).
I addressed your cost issue by pointing out the Swiss scheme has very significant extra costs that don't exist in Erasmus. Don't much appreciate your "predictably enough" snideness. Especially as you are wrong in your assertion there.
There has been a lot of assertions made in this discussion, and little evidence presented.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
Thank god he’s left the site. His constant bragging about his penis-size, sexual virility, artistic accomplishment and success with beautiful younger women was both obnoxious and misogynistic. Even if it was completely justified and verifiably true. Good riddance.
What is curious to me is how given all those magnificent qualities and lifestyle he used to spend most Saturday nights drunkenly posting to randoms on the internet......
He did once post on PB from Antarctica, which was undeniably impressive. Also Easter Island. I stalked him for a while until I found his intense wit and intellectual insight too daunting.
Just taking a look at the J&J data as it's probably most applicable for our single jab AZ policy and replicates it as both as adenovirus vectors and single doses (for now in relation to AZ).
The 100% efficacy against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death from day 47 onwards is absolutely amazing for us and hopefully shows that the immune response continues to get better over time rather than dropping off as we currently are afriad of.
If the AZ vaccine has the same effect then our 12 week policy will be seen as a masterstroke.
The Imperial study today showing that combining the two vectors gives just as good or a better immune response is very good news in case our Pfizer supply is disrupted those patients can receive AZ doses and get the same effect.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
A further point is that the foreign student will get funding to go onto Erasmus if their country and university are part of the scheme, which includes all of Europe. They won't be interested in Turing in that case unless either the UK or foreign government finances participation. Turing fails if there isn't broadly the same interest going into the UK as there is out of it.
The foreign government will almost certainly choose Erasmus over Turing if they are interested in this kind of scheme. There is scope for Turing with countries where there is no support for student travel or if the UK has set up some kind of bilateral arrangement with other countries. But it is very limiting compared with Erasmus, which is a well established exchange.
I recall similar predictions when the UK decided to stay out of the EU vax scheme. How did that go I wonder.............
Added to which more EU students used it to come to Britain than vice versa and more British students went abroad under alternative schemes than Erasmus. Given that, substantially increasing the cost to Britain by the EU does not seem a smart move...
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
My biggest concern is that this is what they actually believe. There are repeated statements that they believe that
- Production was diverted covertly - That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory - If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
I maintain a major problem is that this is an issue which cannot be solved by Member states saying how unified they are, or by kicking the can down the road.
That removes two major weapons in the arsenal.
Certainly no one is always rational.
Yes. The problem here, I fear, that politicians are being pushed into a decision making process where the rational options look worse than the easy, stupid ones.
JFK said that "The Guns of August" was the book that may, just, have saved the world. Having read it, I tend to agree.
It would be illegal well have no legal standing and the Unionists would boycott it and 'once in a generation' was written in invisible ink in the Edinburgh agreement and the SNP would only have a claim if they won a thumping majority but it still wouldn't be allowed and the latest indy poll has a MOE drop in support for Yes and English voters voted not to have one and Quebec and Catalunya, but the real killer argument is THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MORALITY UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION!
That about cover it?
Yoiu fxorgot including the DKs and forgetting about the Scottish Greens. And Modplod somewhere.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
My biggest concern is that this is what they actually believe. There are repeated statements that they believe that
- Production was diverted covertly - That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory - If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
What the EU really wants is a fight with “Britain” not the Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca - especially given they signed up with the Swedish company, not the U.K. one.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
Widespread civil unrest in lots of countries is a given. Now with social media everybody can easily find out how other countries are doing, which will quickly lead to anger when people find out x similar country has loads of vaccines and they haven't any.... unless you are French, then its a good thing, because they can sit back and wait for everybody else to try it and see if it works (i am not making up thst quote, is in the video linked below).
At the same time we have the Telegraph predicting that vaccines will have little effect, we will see a major, possibly worse third wave, and we’ll need quasi-lockdown until the end of this year, at least
At that point, I think society and civil order collapses, worldwide
The model was discussed in the previous thread. We know that modelling has varied from pretty decent to wildly inaccurate during the pandemic, and it has been suggested from some quarters that the assumptions contained within the model on which the Torygraph piece is based are excessively pessimistic and, indeed, implausible.
Personally I suspect that we won't be entirely rid of masks and social distancing until next Spring, but if the Government is wise and takes its time lifting this lockdown then it ought also to be the last one. The warm weather as well as vaccines for the vulnerable will eventually ride to the rescue and, even given that some idiots won't take the vaccine and it won't be 100% effective in preventing symptomatic disease in everybody else, I don't think it likely that the country will grind to a halt with a massive wave of Covid hospitalisations again next WInter.
That much said, if I'm wrong and we're brought to our knees by unvaccinated individuals clogging the hospitals come November time, I expect the public demand for compulsory jabs will quickly become overwhelming.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
It is a cost/benefit analysis.
For the Erasmus scheme, how much would the UK have to have paid to join. What would the cost per UK exchange student have been?
I think Switzerland went through this, and similarly concluded -- like the UK -- that the EU offered a very expensive deal for Switzerland to join Erasmus. I believe Switzerland created its own scheme (Swiss Programme for Erasmus+)
"Since 2014, Switzerland has no longer been a programme country of Erasmus+, but a partner country. To enable Swiss institutions to continue taking part in cooperation and mobility activities with the Erasmus+ programme countries, the Federal Council adopted an interim solution financed with Swiss funds. This Swiss programme for Erasmus+ funds the participation of people and institutions from Switzerland (outgoing). In order to offer reciprocity, financial support is also provided for people and institutions from Europe to spend a period of time in Switzerland (incoming)."
I am all in favour of university exchanges (though it is a middle-class perk, unfortunately). I am happy to wait for details of the Turing scheme because no-on is exchanging anywhere at the moment.
But, if the Swiss can do it, I honestly don't see what the problem is in running our own scheme.
Of course, if the cost per student is lower and less is spent on administration, more students can benefit from the scheme.
I highlighted the key point in your comment. It kind of doubles the cost compared with Erasmus*. The Swiss got thrown out of Erasmus, I believe, so it wasn't by choice. Of course that in itself may be an issue in terms of UK participation in the scheme. The point I am making is that Erasmus is by far the better scheme because it's a functioning exchange based on reciprocity. Whether the UK wants to be part of it is another matter.
* Edit I understand from the costing of the Turing scheme, the UK government doesn't intend to fund incoming students. Unless you get a two way flow, Turing will fail.
I actually wanted you to answer the first two questions about money, which you predictably enough did not.
The Swiss were thrown out. The problems were resolved. The Swiss applied to rejoin Erasmus. The EU quoted them an a price. The Swiss rejected the offer to rejoin because it was too pricey. (So I believe the UK Government on this one -- that the EU tried to price-gouge them). Then, the Swiss created their own scheme.
I do not believe that the Swiss scheme is double the cost of what the Swiss were offered to join ERASMUS. Prove it.
(A little personal history: I was mildly in favour of the EU. I became involved (in a small way) in the administration, not of Erasmus, but of a somewhat similar scheme, called the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. It was very profitable for me, but the waste of money in the administration was truly enormous. I became mildly against the EU).
I addressed your cost issue by pointing out the Swiss scheme has very significant extra costs that don't exist in Erasmus. Don't much appreciate your "predictably enough" snideness. Especially as you are wrong in your assertion there.
There has been a lot of assertions made in this discussion, and little evidence presented.
Why let lack of evidence get in the way of a good argument?
Didn't seem likely they were massively different. It can be turned around.
To give this a sense of proportion
The bundle of trajectories is quite close. The "gap" is about 5-7 days, to reach an equivalent % of the population vaccinated. Which in the context of these things is minimal.
They gap is increasing though. If you look at when Scotland hits each line on the chart, then when England hit the same line, the tip gap is going up not down.
0.10 was about 5.5 days earlier. 0.08 was about 4.5 days earlier. 0.06 was about 3.8 days earlier.
The gaps is stretching not shrinking. On current trends 0.14 will be over 6 days gap and so on.
There is not enough data, over enough time to make such a judgement. Yet. The vaccination scheme is still very much in the ramp up mode. Consider the change in the Welsh trajectory.....
There's enough data to show what has happened in prior weeks and make an early extrapolation on current trends.
The Welsh acted to change the trends, after their FM got embarrassed about what was happening. I hope the Scots do too - but so far their FM seems to be in denial there's an issue to fix.
I think the Tories think they might all settle in London - saving the London property market and significantly improving their electoral prospects.
Still won’t be enough for Shaun Bailey to get anywhere near the mayoralty.
No way. Joke candidate really. 44 on betfair and not tempted. I am tempted to lay Khan at 1.09 though. Is there not a chance a big name will enter and transform the market? Or is it too late now for that?
Unless Rory changes his mind? Can’t see it myself, though.
Wait until this young lady gets the publicity she deserves.
Admittedly, she’s better than Benita (distinctly low bar, of course), but I don’t really see the star quality that she’d need to have to breakthrough. What am I missing?
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
Well the Act of Union didn't really provide for such a situation, I believe.
Of course those of us who aren't fascists believe the Scottish people have the right of self determination rather than hiding behind the "oNce iN a GeNeraTIon" line
Oh goodness, we aren't arguing about Scotland again are we?
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
Thank god he’s left the site. His constant bragging about his penis-size, sexual virility, artistic accomplishment and success with beautiful younger women was both obnoxious and misogynistic. Even if it was completely justified and verifiably true. Good riddance.
What is curious to me is how given all those magnificent qualities and lifestyle he used to spend most Saturday nights drunkenly posting to randoms on the internet......
He did once post on PB from Antarctica, which was undeniably impressive. Also Easter Island. I stalked him for a while until I found his intense wit and intellectual insight too daunting.
He was okay. It was that prick Eadric who we are all glad to see the back of. Does anyone remember when we had to set up a private bulletin board to continue the discussion without him? That was a nightmare.
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
Depends on the Union, I don't think any state, bar Texas, can lawfully secede from the United States of America.
As for the Act of the Union, there was a referendum in 2014 so it clearly doesn't forbid it.
I think what is interesting is that Salmond said, where he appeared to create an estoppel by convention just before the vote in 2014.
SNP leader Alex Salmond has said the Scottish referendum is a "once in a generation opportunity".
Speaking to Andrew Marr he said that a simple majority, however close, would be accepted by both sides in the campaign and there would be a "generational" gap before another independence referendum.
Just taking a look at the J&J data as it's probably most applicable for our single jab AZ policy and replicates it as both as adenovirus vectors and single doses (for now in relation to AZ).
The 100% efficacy against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death from day 47 onwards is absolutely amazing for us and hopefully shows that the immune response continues to get better over time rather than dropping off as we currently are afriad of.
If the AZ vaccine has the same effect then our 12 week policy will be seen as a masterstroke.
The Imperial study today showing that combining the two vectors gives just as good or a better immune response is very good news in case our Pfizer supply is disrupted those patients can receive AZ doses and get the same effect.
The EU has 400 million doses of the J&J vaccine on order. Hopefully, it will get approval quickly and start to roll-out. That may calm things down.
I accept that BBC-bashing is like shooting fish in a barrel, but am I alone in believing that licence-payers' money is ill-used pumping the oxygen of publicity into ungrateful bastards like this:
I do wonder why we go to so much effort to repatriate people who have chosen to live abroad. After all, they have chosen to live abroad.
Admittedly there have been a lot of bizarre decisions, but the decision to evacuate these people, quarantine them, and then not ban international travel is right at the top of the list.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
My biggest concern is that this is what they actually believe. There are repeated statements that they believe that
- Production was diverted covertly - That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory - If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
What the EU really wants is a fight with “Britain” not the Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca
That was rather given away by the Justice Commissioner's quite frankly bizarre ramping of a vaccine war, which he then attempted to blame on the UK's lack of solidarity...despite the issue being a contractual dispute between AZ and the EU.
They did learn some things from the UK Brexit negotiations, unfortunately it seems not to have learned about their own strengths, but about stupid diversionary tactics to attempt.
To be fair I think that all the vaccines are pretty similar in this respect. Which is why the comments of Macron were so cretinously stupid. Having said that there is a report today of 11/12 deaths in a spanish care home within 1 week of all 12 receiving the Pfizer vaccine. I've read nothing similar from any where else where much larger numbers of vaccines have been given. Hoping that this is the result of lax restrictions, etc. Would be interested to know if other instances have been recorded elsewhere.
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
MexicanPete's nightmare has a decent chance of coming true, and anyone writing off Boris' chances at this stage is being far too hasty. If this last week is proof of anything, it's that Boris is a lucky general...
He's quite rightly bookies favourite. The biggest thing he had to counter was the sheer sense of absurdity that such a ridiculous character could be PM. I felt that very strongly when he got the job - as I know millions more did - but the sense is dissipating.
I have gotten - and am continuing to getten - used to him. I respect him no more than I did. I like him no more than I did. But I'm no longer in a state of contemptuous disbelief about it. I was for a period but not anymore. I'm afraid it's worn off. My overton window on who can be PM has moved to accommodate "Boris". He's wormed his way into my brain and moved it in the direction of black satire.
I say "afraid" because this is an unwelcome development which does not speak well of me or my millions of ilk. Either our standards are slipping or - and this is the theory I self servingly prefer - it's down to Donald Trump. Four years of him as POTUS has made our alternative reality of a complete charlatan who is not entirely malign seem almost wholesome. Everything is relative in this world after all.
Anyway, that's my take on this. Johnson is likely to lead the Cons into GE24 and he's likely to win it. The most 'smug city' bet in my current portfolio is 4 digits on him still to be PM on 1st July 2022. I did and tipped that 2 months ago at 1.9 and I hope some people followed suit (or even did it before me). It's 1.4 now. And still a buy imo, so no close out yet for me.
'Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! I've grown accustomed to [his] face'
Interesting. Yes, the Trumpster fire has helped most world leaders look twice as presidential as they really are, and everyone from Boris to Biden has been the beneficiary to some extent. It also seems that though pure MAGA/QAnon-type populism has run into a wall (at least for now!), there's still plenty of public appetite for a lighter version of that populist spirit on this side of the Atlantic.
As far your GE24 position goes, if I'm not mistaken you've become a bit more bullish on BJ than you were before, officially more so than me at this point - I'd tentatively give Boris about a 40% combined chance to both fight and win the next GE, mainly because there are going to be some predictable bumps in the road between now and then and the Tories will have been in for 14 years, so that 'likely' is quite strong.
No, we're about the same assessment. To be PM beyond 24, i.e. join the Thatcher Blairs as a Really Big One, he has to both fight GE24 and win it. They are both likely but together only quite likely, which I define as between a 25% and 50% chance. So you are slap bang in there with your 40%.
But my bet I'm very confident on. It pays if he is still PM on 1st July 2022. Barring accidents he will be. He might step down or be deposed in 23 but not before. You can tell as you watch him that he has no plans in the foreseeable future other than continuing this latest phase of the Boris Johnson Project - being the Prime Minister.
Ah, now I get your point. I certainly don't see him going in the short-term for anything other than some major and out-of-the-blue event. The Tories won't depose him, his personal issues seem to be on the back burner, he's got his mojo back and - despite the, er, well-meaning concern from some quarters - appears to be back to normal health.
One thing I noticed in the Dr John Campbell videos, the EMA shut down and went on holiday for 2 weeks over Christmas...and then the EU have the front tp be complaining about slowness of AZN....
They were all off enjoying themselves when the UK authorities announced our approval for AZN after working over that period.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
Thank god he’s left the site. His constant bragging about his penis-size, sexual virility, artistic accomplishment and success with beautiful younger women was both obnoxious and misogynistic. Even if it was completely justified and verifiably true. Good riddance.
To think i had you down as the latest incarnation...
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
Widespread civil unrest in lots of countries is a given. Now with social media everybody can easily find out how other countries are doing, which will quickly lead to anger when people find out x similar country has loads of vaccines and they haven't any.... unless you are French, then its a good thing, because they can sit back and wait for everybody else to try it and see if it works (i am not making up thst quote, is in the video linked below).
At the same time we have the Telegraph predicting that vaccines will have little effect, we will see a major, possibly worse third wave, and we’ll need quasi-lockdown until the end of this year, at least
At that point, I think society and civil order collapses, worldwide
The model was discussed in the previous thread. We know that modelling has varied from pretty decent to wildly inaccurate during the pandemic, and it has been suggested from some quarters that the assumptions contained within the model on which the Torygraph piece is based are excessively pessimistic and, indeed, implausible.
Personally I suspect that we won't be entirely rid of masks and social distancing until next Spring, but if the Government is wise and takes its time lifting this lockdown then it ought also to be the last one. The warm weather as well as vaccines for the vulnerable will eventually ride to the rescue and, even given that some idiots won't take the vaccine and it won't be 100% effective in preventing symptomatic disease in everybody else, I don't think it likely that the country will grind to a halt with a massive wave of Covid hospitalisations again next WInter.
That much said, if I'm wrong and we're brought to our knees by unvaccinated individuals clogging the hospitals come November time, I expect the public demand for compulsory jabs will quickly become overwhelming.
Agreed. I believe it is excessively pessimistic. For instance, we have the evidence from India, where cases are collapsing just because.... what? The virus seems to be fizzling out amidst herd immunity. As viruses tend to do
The one thing that really scares me is a horrible new variant. South Africa on steroids.
There’s suddenly a lot of interest in Tory circles in the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and behaviouralist. They are attracted to the professor’s thesis about how people recall difficult periods in their lives: they disproportionately remember, and therefore place the greatest weight, on how a harrowing episode came to an end. The contention is that even a deeply grim crisis can be thought of positively if the conclusion to it is an uplifting one.
Tory strategists are calculating that this is a trait of human nature that can be exploited to their party’s benefit. They reckon that a successful vaccination programme will induce voters to forget the government’s contribution to all the distress and death that came before it. The challenge for the Tories’ opponents will be stopping Boris Johnson from getting away with this.
Even if the theory floats, I still can't see the Tories avoiding being holed below the waterline, once Sunak runs out of cheques to write.
That is easy, and has betting implications. A snap election before 2024. The Tories' sweet spot is after Covid is beaten but before the economy fails. Boris retiring would add a new leader's bounce, and Boris himself would go down in history as an electoral colossus who delivered Brexit and conquered Covid.
Ironically the country might do better with Boris in place. We do not need another austerity hawk to close down what is left of the economy.
An interesting idea.
When do the new boundaries come in? The Tories would probably want those in place.
Final report is due by July 2023.
So, the Tories have a year to play with?
I think @DecrepitJohnL may be right that -- it could be attractive for the Tories to go early. Autumn 2023 ?
Can Sunak continue to hose money over a grateful electorate until Autumn 2023?
I have Autumn 2023 pencilled in as the date the Tories hit their very lowest thirties polling before picking up some points before GE May 2024.
About the money, I really don't know. I am 100 per cent sure Boris will not take tough, unpopular decisions, though. He'll leave that for his successor.
There is also the public inquiry into Covid -- Boris will want to boot the publication of the report until after the next election. Fortunately, Labour have shown him the blueprint in how to do this. The Iraq War inquiry was announced in 2009 by Gordon Brown and published 7 years later in 2016.
So, let me see .... MexicanPete's nightmare is ... the Shagster puts off announcing any COVID inquiry until 2022, so it won't report till way into the future; he gets his extra seats from the boundaries in 2023; he continues to spaff the electorate with his sticky honey till 2023; he goes to the country and is returned with another majority.
He will have "won London twice, triumphed in the referendum, done Brexit, thrashed COVID & clobbered Labour twice in the Generals".
He can retire a hero. We are finally rid of him.
HYUFD will be in the House of Lords.
And the country will be in ruins.
MexicanPete's nightmare has a decent chance of coming true, and anyone writing off Boris' chances at this stage is being far too hasty. If this last week is proof of anything, it's that Boris is a lucky general...
He's quite rightly bookies favourite. The biggest thing he had to counter was the sheer sense of absurdity that such a ridiculous character could be PM. I felt that very strongly when he got the job - as I know millions more did - but the sense is dissipating.
I have gotten - and am continuing to getten - used to him. I respect him no more than I did. I like him no more than I did. But I'm no longer in a state of contemptuous disbelief about it. I was for a period but not anymore. I'm afraid it's worn off. My overton window on who can be PM has moved to accommodate "Boris". He's wormed his way into my brain and moved it in the direction of black satire.
I say "afraid" because this is an unwelcome development which does not speak well of me or my millions of ilk. Either our standards are slipping or - and this is the theory I self servingly prefer - it's down to Donald Trump. Four years of him as POTUS has made our alternative reality of a complete charlatan who is not entirely malign seem almost wholesome. Everything is relative in this world after all.
Anyway, that's my take on this. Johnson is likely to lead the Cons into GE24 and he's likely to win it. The most 'smug city' bet in my current portfolio is 4 digits on him still to be PM on 1st July 2022. I did and tipped that 2 months ago at 1.9 and I hope some people followed suit (or even did it before me). It's 1.4 now. And still a buy imo, so no close out yet for me.
'Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! I've grown accustomed to [his] face'
Interesting. Yes, the Trumpster fire has helped most world leaders look twice as presidential as they really are, and everyone from Boris to Biden has been the beneficiary to some extent. It also seems that though pure MAGA/QAnon-type populism has run into a wall (at least for now!), there's still plenty of public appetite for a lighter version of that populist spirit on this side of the Atlantic.
As far your GE24 position goes, if I'm not mistaken you've become a bit more bullish on BJ than you were before, officially more so than me at this point - I'd tentatively give Boris about a 40% combined chance to both fight and win the next GE, mainly because there are going to be some predictable bumps in the road between now and then and the Tories will have been in for 14 years, so that 'likely' is quite strong.
No, we're about the same assessment. To be PM beyond 24, i.e. join the Thatcher Blairs as a Really Big One, he has to both fight GE24 and win it. They are both likely but together only quite likely, which I define as between a 25% and 50% chance. So you are slap bang in there with your 40%.
But my bet I'm very confident on. It pays if he is still PM on 1st July 2022. Barring accidents he will be. He might step down or be deposed in 23 but not before. You can tell as you watch him that he has no plans in the foreseeable future other than continuing this latest phase of the Boris Johnson Project - being the Prime Minister.
Ah, now I get your point. I certainly don't see him going in the short-term for anything other than some major and out-of-the-blue event. The Tories won't depose him, his personal issues seem to be on the back burner, he's got his mojo back and - despite the, er, well-meaning concern from some quarters - appears to be back to normal health.
The longer term impact of his illness appears to be that he’s taking the job more seriously.
Just taking a look at the J&J data as it's probably most applicable for our single jab AZ policy and replicates it as both as adenovirus vectors and single doses (for now in relation to AZ).
The 100% efficacy against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death from day 47 onwards is absolutely amazing for us and hopefully shows that the immune response continues to get better over time rather than dropping off as we currently are afriad of.
If the AZ vaccine has the same effect then our 12 week policy will be seen as a masterstroke.
The Imperial study today showing that combining the two vectors gives just as good or a better immune response is very good news in case our Pfizer supply is disrupted those patients can receive AZ doses and get the same effect.
The EU has 400 million doses of the J&J vaccine on order. Hopefully, it will get approval quickly and start to roll-out. That may calm things down.
That big order, even if I imagine it will take some time for them to all arrive, will really save the bacon of the EU Commission - given it takes half the time to deploy (albeit I think they are testing two shots for it), slow rollout initially will not be as impactful as it would otherwise have been.
That would be the vaccine which President Macron comprehensively rubbished the other day, in a country known to be sceptical about vaccination. Mind you, according to Roger, they're a nation of philosophers so there'll be tons of hot air to aid the virus in its progress.
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
Well the Act of Union didn't really provide for such a situation, I believe.
Of course those of us who aren't fascists believe the Scottish people have the right of self determination rather than hiding behind the "oNce iN a GeNeraTIon" line
Yes I agree. I also think that leaving the EU against Scotland wishes, made another referendum more likely, due to such a fundamental change , to the 2014 referendum.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
Thank god he’s left the site. His constant bragging about his penis-size, sexual virility, artistic accomplishment and success with beautiful younger women was both obnoxious and misogynistic. Even if it was completely justified and verifiably true. Good riddance.
What is curious to me is how given all those magnificent qualities and lifestyle he used to spend most Saturday nights drunkenly posting to randoms on the internet......
He did once post on PB from Antarctica, which was undeniably impressive. Also Easter Island. I stalked him for a while until I found his intense wit and intellectual insight too daunting.
He was okay. It was that prick Eadric who we are all glad to see the back of. Does anyone remember when we had to set up a private bulletin board to continue the discussion without him? That was a nightmare.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
My biggest concern is that this is what they actually believe. There are repeated statements that they believe that
- Production was diverted covertly - That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory - If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
I maintain a major problem is that this is an issue which cannot be solved by Member states saying how unified they are, or by kicking the can down the road.
That removes two major weapons in the arsenal.
Certainly no one is always rational.
Yes. The problem here, I fear, that politicians are being pushed into a decision making process where the rational options look worse than the easy, stupid ones.
JFK said that "The Guns of August" was the book that may, just, have saved the world. Having read it, I tend to agree.
The problem is that they want an impossible solution NOW. When they should be putting all their efforts into a deliverable solution in a few months. But if they focus on the former, then they will miss the latter.
It might. On the other hand, it might not. It looks implausible; physical distance, time zones and (for many of the Pacific countries) language issues are reasonable reasons to think that focusing on nearer neighbours is a more fruitful strategy.
We don't know for sure without trying, though. But if it is an experiment, what's the exit strategy?
I endorse joining any free trading association that is just that and does not have the baggage the EU has
Furthermore, once the US joins it will be the largest economic trading block in the world and I do not see why we need an exit strategy
With some exceptions we won't have the cultural ties. One of the reasons I object to leaving the EU is the ease of association and such things as the Erasmus project, Leaving that was just petty.
I do not agree
The EU was asking too high a price and we now have the wider Turing replacement which offers a worldwide programme
Has anyone seen anything about the Turing project apart from an announcement? I was involved with student exchange projects at several times in my working life and, generally speaking, ease of travel and being reasonably nearby was an advantage
I think that many of tomorrow's students having the opportunity to study in the US will be very grateful for the Turing scheme which takes Erasmus and applies it worldwide
The irony is the EU got a better deal out of the old Erasmus system than the UK did - they sent substantially more students to the UK than the UK sent to the EU. Their demand to substantially increase the price to the UK of them sending students to us was classic imperial over-reach.
Leaving aside the politics, Erasmus works better than Turing will, because it's a functioning exchange. The parties participate on a reciprocal basis - feed students in, get students out.
A bit more on why Erasmus is a proper exchange and Turing isn't and why that is critical to the success of the scheme.
The UK university is looking for two things from a Student travel scheme: 1) The benefit of a year abroad that they can sell to prospective students; 2) and most important, hang onto the fee while the student is abroad.
With Erasmus, the home university keeps their student's fee. It has some extra costs to look after their own students abroad and foreign students in its university, which can be put down to a marketing expense. Apart from that the scheme is broadly cost and revenue neutral, even if the university ends up taking a few more students than it puts in.
The university has no interest in Turing if it means losing the fee it would otherwise get, the foreign university won't take additional students without a fee and the student doesn't want to pay twice. To make Turing work, University A in the UK will need to do a bilateral arrangement with University B someplace else, where each university holds onto their respective fees. This massively limits the choice to those other universities that your university has done a deal with, whereas with Erasmus in principle you can go to any university in the scheme. It also requires universities to make their own arrangements, whereas Erasmus will do that for them.
I am afraid UK universities are rightly heading for a reckoning anyway. Many of them are offering only a third of last year's teaching/contact time and still expecting students to cough up £9,250 a year for the pleasure. In the first year at my daughter's university she had 16 hours of contact time a week - and that continued after everything moved online. This year she has been offered 6 hours. And she is actually doing quite well out of it. For others it has dropped to 4 or 5 hours.
16 hours?! Some of us read physics. 9-5 every day (except Wednesday, obviously) plus lots of work in the evenings or weekends. Arts and humanities students don’t know they’ve been born.
I am reminded of an American friend, who got accepted to do a PhD in the humanities at Oxford.
He referred to it as the most expensive library card in the world.
It is a pretty good library to be fair. And it does seem to suggest some misunderstanding of what a PhD entails if you’re expecting to be taught.
DPhil to be pedantic. But in fairness the Americans do their PhDs with a heavy component of taught course IIRC - so one can see how the chap got it wrong. Someone should still have told him.
I always thought that is a flaw in the UK system. Most PhD students, well at least I did, wasted my first year pissing about trying to work out what I might need to learn about, where I was going with it etc. It would have been extremely helpful to have had some structured learning, ability to take some higher level maths classes, and found a group of similar minded people from across departments who I could have talked things through with, asked about bits of papers I didn't understand etc.
Instead I got thrown in a small office with a couple of guys much further ahead who weren't particularly helpful and it was sink or swim.
IMO, and speaking as a PhD supervisor, that's the supervisor's job to help guide you through what you might need to use and to help get you access.
Just taking a look at the J&J data as it's probably most applicable for our single jab AZ policy and replicates it as both as adenovirus vectors and single doses (for now in relation to AZ).
The 100% efficacy against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death from day 47 onwards is absolutely amazing for us and hopefully shows that the immune response continues to get better over time rather than dropping off as we currently are afriad of.
If the AZ vaccine has the same effect then our 12 week policy will be seen as a masterstroke.
The Imperial study today showing that combining the two vectors gives just as good or a better immune response is very good news in case our Pfizer supply is disrupted those patients can receive AZ doses and get the same effect.
The EU has 400 million doses of the J&J vaccine on order. Hopefully, it will get approval quickly and start to roll-out. That may calm things down.
That big order, even if I imagine it will take some time for them to all arrive, will really save the bacon of the EU Commission - given it takes half the time to deploy (albeit I think they are testing two shots for it), slow rollout initially will not be as impactful as it would otherwise have been.
If there is a way to bugger it up, the Commission will find it!
Could someone explain. If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ? Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
Depends on the Union, I don't think any state, bar Texas, can lawfully secede from the United States of America.
The SCOTUS case that established that unilateral secession is prohibited was Texas v. White (1869), so no, Texas has no special privilege in this regard.
A quote from another contributor, some time in the past.....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
Carry on deriding my posts and you'll get so many 'likes' from felix you'll be able to start a new career as an influencer
You've only really arrived on PB when you get your first stalker.
I'm a big fan of felix.
Normally I'd love to return the compliment. Fortunately I've never been normal.
What's semi military, and is it different from para military?
English might not be the Tweeter's first language.
The Russian state seems to have access to recent veterans and/or currently serving military "on leave". Think about some of the combatants in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. So basically deniable "actual military". Paramilitary can include civilians who like to dress up in silly uniforms, or police forces under military style command and control.
A few years ago the Russian government reorganised the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) by shifting the Internal Troops to a new National Guard of Russia directly controlled by the Kremlin. The chain of command is Putin - Security Council of Russia (Kremlin) - Boris and his AK-74. It was speculated at the time that this was to ensure that the Kremlin had a loyal paramilitary force that was outside of the control of the Russian Military or other government ministries who might potentially be allied with opponents of the Kremlin.
Just taking a look at the J&J data as it's probably most applicable for our single jab AZ policy and replicates it as both as adenovirus vectors and single doses (for now in relation to AZ).
The 100% efficacy against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death from day 47 onwards is absolutely amazing for us and hopefully shows that the immune response continues to get better over time rather than dropping off as we currently are afriad of.
If the AZ vaccine has the same effect then our 12 week policy will be seen as a masterstroke.
The Imperial study today showing that combining the two vectors gives just as good or a better immune response is very good news in case our Pfizer supply is disrupted those patients can receive AZ doses and get the same effect.
The EU has 400 million doses of the J&J vaccine on order. Hopefully, it will get approval quickly and start to roll-out. That may calm things down.
200m doses of J&J for the EU, but it's still a good number. The issue is that they're only just starting manufacturing of it now because it's not part of our advanced manufacturing agreement (due to the small purchase agreement) and the EU scheme didn't incentivise manufacturing starting prior to results proving clinical viability.
The next big flashpoint is going to be over the Novavax schedule, it is set for volume deliveries to the UK and US in April and we have paid for domestic manufacturing exclusivity up to 60m doses just as we did with AZ (at a cost of £450m) while the EU still hasn't signed a deal and is haggling over prices. We will have the same bloody arguments when Novavax are delivering millions of doses per week to the UK and US but almost nothing to the EU.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
Widespread civil unrest in lots of countries is a given. Now with social media everybody can easily find out how other countries are doing, which will quickly lead to anger when people find out x similar country has loads of vaccines and they haven't any.... unless you are French, then its a good thing, because they can sit back and wait for everybody else to try it and see if it works (i am not making up thst quote, is in the video linked below).
At the same time we have the Telegraph predicting that vaccines will have little effect, we will see a major, possibly worse third wave, and we’ll need quasi-lockdown until the end of this year, at least
At that point, I think society and civil order collapses, worldwide
The model was discussed in the previous thread. We know that modelling has varied from pretty decent to wildly inaccurate during the pandemic, and it has been suggested from some quarters that the assumptions contained within the model on which the Torygraph piece is based are excessively pessimistic and, indeed, implausible.
Personally I suspect that we won't be entirely rid of masks and social distancing until next Spring, but if the Government is wise and takes its time lifting this lockdown then it ought also to be the last one. The warm weather as well as vaccines for the vulnerable will eventually ride to the rescue and, even given that some idiots won't take the vaccine and it won't be 100% effective in preventing symptomatic disease in everybody else, I don't think it likely that the country will grind to a halt with a massive wave of Covid hospitalisations again next WInter.
That much said, if I'm wrong and we're brought to our knees by unvaccinated individuals clogging the hospitals come November time, I expect the public demand for compulsory jabs will quickly become overwhelming.
The demand will be for those who have refused vaccination to be refused treatment or at most sent to secure covid centres to live or die without affecting NHS treatment for the rest of the population.
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
My biggest concern is that this is what they actually believe. There are repeated statements that they believe that
- Production was diverted covertly - That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory - If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
I maintain a major problem is that this is an issue which cannot be solved by Member states saying how unified they are, or by kicking the can down the road.
That removes two major weapons in the arsenal.
Certainly no one is always rational.
Yes. The problem here, I fear, that politicians are being pushed into a decision making process where the rational options look worse than the easy, stupid ones.
JFK said that "The Guns of August" was the book that may, just, have saved the world. Having read it, I tend to agree.
The problem is that they want an impossible solution NOW. When they should be putting all their efforts into a deliverable solution in a few months. But if they focus on the former, then they will miss the latter.
Just taking a look at the J&J data as it's probably most applicable for our single jab AZ policy and replicates it as both as adenovirus vectors and single doses (for now in relation to AZ).
The 100% efficacy against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death from day 47 onwards is absolutely amazing for us and hopefully shows that the immune response continues to get better over time rather than dropping off as we currently are afriad of.
If the AZ vaccine has the same effect then our 12 week policy will be seen as a masterstroke.
The Imperial study today showing that combining the two vectors gives just as good or a better immune response is very good news in case our Pfizer supply is disrupted those patients can receive AZ doses and get the same effect.
The EU has 400 million doses of the J&J vaccine on order. Hopefully, it will get approval quickly and start to roll-out. That may calm things down.
That big order, even if I imagine it will take some time for them to all arrive, will really save the bacon of the EU Commission - given it takes half the time to deploy (albeit I think they are testing two shots for it), slow rollout initially will not be as impactful as it would otherwise have been.
If there is a way to bugger it up, the Commission will find it!
They keep mentioning their 'concern' about diversion of supplies. They really need to evidence why they have that as a reasonable concern. Not just say 'IF' it has happened AZ will be in trouble.
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
I predicted vaccine nationalism about 6 months ago. I now believe there is a non trivial risk it will lead to outright war.
Not likely. But possible.
....and to think they used to call SeanT a 'drama queen'
Thank god he’s left the site. His constant bragging about his penis-size, sexual virility, artistic accomplishment and success with beautiful younger women was both obnoxious and misogynistic. Even if it was completely justified and verifiably true. Good riddance.
Before my time so no comment. But on the subject of posters it was great to see the back of, my nomination is that one who seemed to live in the alt-right digisphere and just periodically pop onto here to give us all a taste of it. Eldric, I think, was it? Something like that. Ghastly anyway.
Have you been at the shit memes that don’t stick generator again?
I'm confused. Are these not the exact figures that Sturgeon got called a traitor for wanting to publish?
No. These are vaccines on the ground in the U.K. ready for overnight despatch.
Sturgeon did not want these numbers published because it wouldn’t take long for people to work out the gap between vaccines available and vaccines injected.
The numbers 40 a day published then redacted were “projected deliveries to end-March” - which of course is hugely sensitive wrt the EU.
Just taking a look at the J&J data as it's probably most applicable for our single jab AZ policy and replicates it as both as adenovirus vectors and single doses (for now in relation to AZ).
The 100% efficacy against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death from day 47 onwards is absolutely amazing for us and hopefully shows that the immune response continues to get better over time rather than dropping off as we currently are afriad of.
If the AZ vaccine has the same effect then our 12 week policy will be seen as a masterstroke.
The Imperial study today showing that combining the two vectors gives just as good or a better immune response is very good news in case our Pfizer supply is disrupted those patients can receive AZ doses and get the same effect.
The EU has 400 million doses of the J&J vaccine on order. Hopefully, it will get approval quickly and start to roll-out. That may calm things down.
200m doses of J&J for the EU, but it's still a good number. The issue is that they're only just starting manufacturing of it now because it's not part of our advanced manufacturing agreement (due to the small purchase agreement) and the EU scheme didn't incentivise manufacturing starting prior to results proving clinical viability.
The next big flashpoint is going to be over the Novavax schedule, it is set for volume deliveries to the UK and US in April and we have paid for domestic manufacturing exclusivity up to 60m doses just as we did with AZ (at a cost of £450m) while the EU still hasn't signed a deal and is haggling over prices. We will have the same bloody arguments when Novavax are delivering millions of doses per week to the UK and US but almost nothing to the EU.
Yep, haggling over prices, demanding at close to cost, and setting "cost" to exclude all the upfront costs of development...
Comments
They know what they are doing. It's straight out of the Trump playbook - talk a lot about electoral fraud and claim the unfortunate event (election loss/lack of supply) just doesn't make sense, and even if no evidence does emerge, they will have fixed the idea in peoples' minds.
Even if no evidence emerges this time next year millions of people in Europe will confidently state AZ diverted supplies.
0.10 was about 5.5 days earlier.
0.08 was about 4.5 days earlier.
0.06 was about 3.8 days earlier.
The gaps is stretching not shrinking. On current trends 0.14 will be over 6 days gap and so on.
Question for all - which does more evil?
- Heavy arms industry
- Social influencers
Now had I been posting to refuse to implement Brexit in line with Boris' wishes a la Gauke, Grieve, Stewart, Soames etc before the last General Election that may well have proved fatal.
However, I would of course accept a peerage instead in the unlikely event one was offered, then you don't need to stand for re election anyway
https://twitter.com/Innealadair/status/1354921367049744393?s=20
Not likely. But possible.
*The Financial Transactions Tax and a de facto concentration rule have to be odds on without the U.K.
He is very active on social media but there's more than a sniff of authoritarianism about his "plans" and to be honest and this is possibly a cultural issue with me, every time I see a politician in a pin-stripe suit the alarm bells start ringing.
His latest nonsense is the Police (under instruction from Sadiq Khan who Rose seems to loathe with a healthy passion) have stopped him filming a promotional video in Southwark High Street and fined him and six of his staff £200 each for breaching Covid regulations. Naturally, he went off to Breitbart whingeing about that.
The "new thing" in the race is Farah London (I kid you not). Her ideas seem fairly ordinary but one which struck me was exempting tenants under 25 from Council Tax. It's a thought - if you are paying £900 a month for your one-bed flat in Newham saving £120 by exempting from Council Tax would help - but I can't help but feel such a scheme would be open to huge abuse.
The success has come from having an understanding of how the business of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals work coupled with her baseline understanding of the science behind it.
Having a professor of immunology do it would have meant no real understanding of the realities of commercial pharmaceutical development, having a non-scientific pharma exec do it would have meant no real understanding of the science involved with each of these different approaches.
As I said previously, attempts to smear and discredit her are extremely out of place. It's the one appointment the government got absolutely right.
Compare and contrast the EU approach of putting political bureaucrats in charge and we can see the result.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-55830497
If two countries join a union , why can one not leave that union if they want to ?
Did the original Act of union forbid such a situation.
Of course those of us who aren't fascists believe the Scottish people have the right of self determination rather than hiding behind the "oNce iN a GeNeraTIon" line
At that point, I think society and civil order collapses, worldwide
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/30/exclusive-social-distancing-may-have-remain-place-year/
Instead I got thrown in a small office with a couple of guys much further ahead who weren't particularly helpful and it was sink or swim.
But my bet I'm very confident on. It pays if he is still PM on 1st July 2022. Barring accidents he will be. He might step down or be deposed in 23 but not before. You can tell as you watch him that he has no plans in the foreseeable future other than continuing this latest phase of the Boris Johnson Project - being the Prime Minister.
- Production was diverted covertly
- That UK production of vaccines has been absolutely fine.
We know for a fact, that the later is untrue. The former has no evidence.
The problem comes, I think, in why conspiracy theories are popular.
- If the conspiracy of Evil British & Their Evil Company is responsible for the problems, then defeat them and the problem goes away. You, the politicians were not at fault, and you will bask in glory
- If the alternative is true - that the production does not exist, yet - then you have a long, painful road to improve things. And it is, at least partly, your fault.
The problem in international relations, as much as other areas, is that the decision makers are not philosopher kings. Expecting what *you think* is a rational response doesn't work. Especially in a crisis.
There is some very good stuff in Herman Kahn and Barbara Tuchman on the subject.
I remember some people on here were predicting there would be 231 million deaths from Covid-19 by September 2020.
https://twitter.com/SolankeSanjay/status/1221807294926614528
That removes two major weapons in the arsenal.
Certainly no one is always rational.
https://www.facebook.com/451423422020678/videos/1396350270699697
Whole new ballgame. And smug city if you've laid Khan at 1.09.
Besides, physicists always were a bit thicker than the average student so needed more time with the lecturer looking over their shoulder
As for the Act of the Union, there was a referendum in 2014 so it clearly doesn't forbid it.
I think what is interesting is that Salmond said, where he appeared to create an estoppel by convention just before the vote in 2014.
SNP leader Alex Salmond has said the Scottish referendum is a "once in a generation opportunity".
Speaking to Andrew Marr he said that a simple majority, however close, would be accepted by both sides in the campaign and there would be a "generational" gap before another independence referendum.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-29196661
It would be illegal well have no legal standing and the Unionists would boycott it and 'once in a generation' was written in invisible ink in the Edinburgh agreement and the SNP would only have a claim if they won a thumping majority but it still wouldn't be allowed and the latest indy poll has a MOE drop in support for Yes and English voters voted not to have one and Quebec and Catalunya, but the real killer argument is THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MORALITY UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION!
That about cover it?
The 100% efficacy against severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death from day 47 onwards is absolutely amazing for us and hopefully shows that the immune response continues to get better over time rather than dropping off as we currently are afriad of.
If the AZ vaccine has the same effect then our 12 week policy will be seen as a masterstroke.
The Imperial study today showing that combining the two vectors gives just as good or a better immune response is very good news in case our Pfizer supply is disrupted those patients can receive AZ doses and get the same effect.
JFK said that "The Guns of August" was the book that may, just, have saved the world. Having read it, I tend to agree.
Personally I suspect that we won't be entirely rid of masks and social distancing until next Spring, but if the Government is wise and takes its time lifting this lockdown then it ought also to be the last one. The warm weather as well as vaccines for the vulnerable will eventually ride to the rescue and, even given that some idiots won't take the vaccine and it won't be 100% effective in preventing symptomatic disease in everybody else, I don't think it likely that the country will grind to a halt with a massive wave of Covid hospitalisations again next WInter.
That much said, if I'm wrong and we're brought to our knees by unvaccinated individuals clogging the hospitals come November time, I expect the public demand for compulsory jabs will quickly become overwhelming.
The Welsh acted to change the trends, after their FM got embarrassed about what was happening. I hope the Scots do too - but so far their FM seems to be in denial there's an issue to fix.
They did learn some things from the UK Brexit negotiations, unfortunately it seems not to have learned about their own strengths, but about stupid diversionary tactics to attempt.
Having said that there is a report today of 11/12 deaths in a spanish care home within 1 week of all 12 receiving the Pfizer vaccine. I've read nothing similar from any where else where much larger numbers of vaccines have been given. Hoping that this is the result of lax restrictions, etc. Would be interested to know if other instances have been recorded elsewhere.
They were all off enjoying themselves when the UK authorities announced our approval for AZN after working over that period.
The one thing that really scares me is a horrible new variant. South Africa on steroids.
I also think that leaving the EU against Scotland wishes, made another referendum more likely, due to such a fundamental change , to the 2014 referendum.
https://politicalbetting.blogspot.com/
The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman. Why WWI kicked off and the early stages.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0241968216/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_HBEPXN0RYXCHZ70W8N0F
Dreadnought - Robert Massie. While centred on the famous battleship, it is brilliant portrait of the personalities and issues that launched WWI.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0099524023/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_C2RN3VB3HV8N1ZQHZ8NK
The Rules of the Game - Andrew Gordon. While centred on the Battle of Jutland, it is a brilliant disection of how large organisation ossify, attempts the break the ossification, and issues command.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/014198032X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_2769S02HW2MKQVXJGN41
On Thermonuclear War - Herman Kahn. Centred on the issue of WWIII, but written before the Cuban Missile crisis, it nevertheless predicts the consequences of rigid thinking in crises. And asks the un-askable questions.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/141280664X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_C1VZBVJCJ5RS2Z6QSJQR
Any others?
The next big flashpoint is going to be over the Novavax schedule, it is set for volume deliveries to the UK and US in April and we have paid for domestic manufacturing exclusivity up to 60m doses just as we did with AZ (at a cost of £450m) while the EU still hasn't signed a deal and is haggling over prices. We will have the same bloody arguments when Novavax are delivering millions of doses per week to the UK and US but almost nothing to the EU.
Sturgeon did not want these numbers published because it wouldn’t take long for people to work out the gap between vaccines available and vaccines injected.
The numbers 40 a day published then redacted were “projected deliveries to end-March” - which of course is hugely sensitive wrt the EU.