wrt UG students, while I get all the points about students being customers, one of my biggest frustrations this year has been planning a certain amount of on-campus time, integrated into the planned course, only to find students not attending any sessions we couldn't call compulsory.
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.
Ha. Yes. I just said same. And you're right, it was Eadric not Eldrick. God preserve us from a return.
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.
Of course a country can leave the EU if they want. It's the expectation that they can still partake of all the perks of membership which is the problem.
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.
Not sure the French will be so keen on it after the helpful comments of their President.
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...
It's completely idiotic. They want pharma companies to take a loss on their doses, effectively asking for the UK and US overspend to subsidise them.
Honestly, it's completely infuriating that not a single commentator is picking up on this and asking the right questions about it.
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
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.
We should buy up all remaining output from Novavax in Billingham now.
Any we don't need can then be donated to the third world.
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.
So, you are saying the Swiss rejected the EU's proposal to join Erasmus on the grounds of cost .. and then devised a much more expensive scheme.
I am calling bullshit on that.
If you are not in the EU, the fee for a country to join Erasmus is based on a country's GDP. That is why it is very expensive for Switzerland or the UK to join.
That is why it is much more expensive for Switzerland to join Erasmus than to run its own scheme.
So you are wrong.
But, I think we can trust the Swiss, no? ..... The Swiss are certainly very good with money, they will have worked out what is best for Switzerland.
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 can only assume that this is THE place to go if you want to have people truly giving a shit about exotic locations, beautiful women, Michelin-starred meals, the finest of wines....
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...
It's completely idiotic. They want pharma companies to take a loss on their doses, effectively asking for the UK and US overspend to subsidise them.
Honestly, it's completely infuriating that not a single commentator is picking up on this and asking the right questions about it.
Your expecting the same media who can't even get their heads around basic covid stats to understand more complex funding arrangements and pharmaceutical contracts.....
Let’s just let the Scots have their vote. I wish them well.
All in all - I hope it improves democratic accountability, particularly against the SNP. That is no bad thing. It’ll be interesting to see how things fare.
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
If Labour intend to fight the next election waving shrouds they will lose, and deservedly so.
Why would you want to stay in that bling shithole?
It is giant ego trip, admittedly created by some of the finest artisans of the age, but the continuous me, me, me theme would make your average HipHop artist cringe.
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.
The exchange is thus far a touch weightier than PB average. You therefore have high standards, Rob. Hats off to you.
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Its also remiss that governments have let people die of flu in the tens of thousands every year.
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 can only assume that this is THE place to go if you want to have people truly giving a shit about exotic locations, beautiful women, Michelin-starred meals, the finest of wines....
Or perhaps Mondays and Thursdays were the sugadaddy.com nights and weekends were reserved for her fit 22 year old Italian lover. Alas, we shall never know.
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.
Yes, of course as a general principle leaving is an option. However questions still arise.
How often can you hold a contest on the matter without causing disruption and dislocation?
Who has the right to decide that and allied questions?
When two or more countries become, for purposes of international law and relations, one country, who has the right to be asked over changes? Since X leaving country XY entails Y leaving country XY and forming a new unit, whether they like it or not, why should only the people of former X have a say?
One of the downsides with the single dose J&J regime is that the immune response doesn't seem strong enough to fight it off completely as the Pfizer, Moderna and AZ 12 week regime does. I think that's why they have started a two dose efficacy trial.
What that means is that it may end up being a great booster type vaccine for Q4 like a flu jab, but maybe not great for bringing infection rates down very quickly as we expect Pfizer and Moderna to do.
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.
That suits me - and, I imagine, most people - just fine. I've long thought that a Boris who took his job seriously would be close to unbeatable.
Why would you want to stay in that bling shithole?
It is giant ego trip, admittedly created by some of the finest artisans of the age, but the continuous me, me, me theme would make your average HipHop artist cringe.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions...
Thanks for the question Robert...next question please.
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.
Of course Lincoln's main aim in fighting the US civil war was to stop the Confederate southern states seceding from the Union, though he supported emancipation of the slaves personally that was not his main reason for fighting the war
There'll be an awful lot more of this sort of thing if, as I suspect, foreign holidays are cancelled again this year but everyone can get about within our own borders.
The tourism industry has had an absolutely torrid time and, with a market that's both desperate for a getaway and literally captive, price gouging is inevitable. Accommodation in Southwold or St Ives may be almost as pricey as the Ritz come August. The middle classes might struggle to afford a static caravan in Mablethorpe.
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.
Our phd students get a lot more in the way of centrally provided courses in things like how to survey 5he literature and how to plan a thesis etc. Way more than I ever got (I’d argue I didn’t need it). It also helps them meet other students with is good for broadening horizons. Within that though, the actual phd is research, not taught.
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.
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Its also remiss that governments have let people die of flu in the tens of thousands every year.
Or for that matter not abolished death entirely.
Justin seems to have forgotten Labours big 2 plans
Close zoos
Vaccinate fit young teachers at the expense of the vulnerable thus leading to up to 190 extra deaths a day
Why would you want to stay in that bling shithole?
It is giant ego trip, admittedly created by some of the finest artisans of the age, but the continuous me, me, me theme would make your average HipHop artist cringe.
Gift of a grateful nation...
(Memo to self: beware of nations bearing gifts.)
Go round the house and you begin to understand why Sarah grated on Queen Annes nerves, at times.
The grounds are magnificent on the other hand, and free to enter.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions.....
A staycation (a portmanteau of "stay" and "vacation"), or holistay (a portmanteau of "holiday" and "stay"), is a period in which an individual or family stays home and participates in leisure activities within day trip distance of their home and does not require overnight accommodation.
The meaning of staycation has been perverted by the travel industry for their own ends.
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.
Exactly , always their chums, just lucky this one did not make the usual total mess of it.
malcy, think the ice under your feet might be a tad thin when talking about politicians appointing their chums...!
LOL, down to using Carlotta's top man Agent Pish and the Daily Heil. Pull the other one it plays bells. Must try harder.
Malc, either they did employ their relatives or not - it's a matter of public record. Whether it appears in the DM is a bit irrelevant - you were perhaps expecting it to appear in The National?
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
If Labour intend to fight the next election waving shrouds they will lose, and deservedly so.
The next election will not be fought on either covid deaths or the vaccine roll-out, it will be all about what happens next and who is most trusted to deliver. The deaths and the roll-out will clearly have some impact on perceptions, but much more likely to be determinant is how things go once the economy starts to open up again.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions.....
Camping in Northern Scotland - dirt cheap, right to roam, lots of empty space so ideal for social distancing. And he can't be chastised for recommending to the little people what he w̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶u̶f̶f̶e̶r̶ really enjoyed himself.
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 associa
With some exceptions we won't have the cultu.
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
One of the problems with being a physicist is that since it’s the foundation of chemistry, which is the foundation of biology, which explains the processes that create all arts and humanities, we unfortunately have to understand all things. We can’t help it, and I think most people realise they need to bow down before us and listen to our wisdom.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions...
Thanks for the question Robert...next question please.
That £20k in the Cotswolds indicates prices across the board are going to be pretty high - from campsites upwards. I booked my three weeks in Cornwall before Christmas so am sitting here right now feeling pretty smug!
Why would you want to stay in that bling shithole?
It is giant ego trip, admittedly created by some of the finest artisans of the age, but the continuous me, me, me theme would make your average HipHop artist cringe.
Gift of a grateful nation...
(Memo to self: beware of nations bearing gifts.)
Go round the house and you begin to understand why Sarah grated on Queen Annes nerves, at times.
The grounds are magnificent on the other hand, and free to enter.
Jamie Blandford is a great loss to our legislature. Blair has much to answer for.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions.....
Camping in Northern Scotland - dirt cheap, right to roam, lots of empty space so ideal for social distancing. And he can't be chastised for recommending to the little people what he w̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶u̶f̶f̶e̶r̶ really enjoyed himself.
Not sure Mrs S will be too happy to have hoards of English plague carriers descending on her green and pleasant lands.
Malky G and his mates will be at the border, pitchforks in hand.
According to news that husband has just read and related to me, this year's flu season has failed to materialise: cases down by 90% relative to last year. This was predicted given the current focus on respiratory hygiene, but all the same it is dramatic.
One shudders to think how much worse this month would've been if the usual numbers of flu cases had occurred as well. The dreaded masks are still going to be with us this time next year, I'm sure of it.
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing this morning and discussions with NHS111, Husband is having a video assessment shortly, as his oxygen levels have been a bit concerning. Getting him to use the blasted oxymeter has been the biggest battle. He is an obstinate infuriating so-and-so, sometimes. But he's my obstinate infuriating so-and-so and I don't want to lose him.
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 associa
With some exceptions we won't have the cultu.
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
One of the problems with being a physicist is that since it’s the foundation of chemistry, which is the foundation of biology, which explains the processes that create all arts and humanities, we unfortunately have to understand all things. We can’t help it, and I think most people realise they need to bow down before us and listen to our wisdom.
Bollocks. I don't know much about physics but I know what I like.
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing this morning and discussions with NHS111, Husband is having a video assessment shortly, as his oxygen levels have been a bit concerning. Getting him to use the blasted oxymeter has been the biggest battle. He is an obstinate infuriating so-and-so, sometimes. But he's my obstinate infuriating so-and-so and I don't want to lose him.
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.
Yes, of course as a general principle leaving is an option. However questions still arise.
How often can you hold a contest on the matter without causing disruption and dislocation?
Who has the right to decide that and allied questions?
When two or more countries become, for purposes of international law and relations, one country, who has the right to be asked over changes? Since X leaving country XY entails Y leaving country XY and forming a new unit, whether they like it or not, why should only the people of former X have a say?
I can think of a union that puts no bar on how many times a member wishes to hold a referendum, demands no oversight of or involvement with said referendums and doesn't require that voters in any other member countries have votes. It's not the UK.
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing this morning and discussions with NHS111, Husband is having a video assessment shortly, as his oxygen levels have been a bit concerning. Getting him to use the blasted oxymeter has been the biggest battle. He is an obstinate infuriating so-and-so, sometimes. But he's my obstinate infuriating so-and-so and I don't want to lose him.
I am beside myself with worry. Fingers crossed.
All our fingers are crossed on your behalf. And his.
The oximeter was a godsend to a number of friends. Thank you, Foxy.
According to news that husband has just read and related to me, this year's flu season has failed to materialise: cases down by 90% relative to last year. This was predicted given the current focus on respiratory hygiene, but all the same it is dramatic.
One shudders to think how much worse this month would've been if the usual numbers of flu cases had occurred as well. The dreaded masks are still going to be with us this time next year, I'm sure of it.
If that keeps flu cases down by 90% next year too, seems a decent trade off.
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Its also remiss that governments have let people die of flu in the tens of thousands every year.
Or for that matter not abolished death entirely.
That would only be relevant to the extent that earlier governments were held responsible for such deaths related to clear policy mistakes.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions.....
A staycation (a portmanteau of "stay" and "vacation"), or holistay (a portmanteau of "holiday" and "stay"), is a period in which an individual or family stays home and participates in leisure activities within day trip distance of their home and does not require overnight accommodation.
The meaning of staycation has been perverted by the travel industry for their own ends.
You are not keen on the whole "travel" notion, I sense. No need for it.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions.....
Camping in Northern Scotland - dirt cheap, right to roam, lots of empty space so ideal for social distancing. And he can't be chastised for recommending to the little people what he w̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶u̶f̶f̶e̶r̶ really enjoyed himself.
Not sure Mrs S will be too happy to have hoards of English plague carriers descending on her green and pleasant lands.
Malky G and his mates will be at the border, pitchforks in hand.
I don't know, the Plague should be on a short lead come the Summer, but if she's not happy it'll give her something else to complain about so she won't mind.
Malc may have a penchant for inflammatory rhetoric but I gain the impression that he wouldn't go quite so far as to brutally murder passing tourists with an agricultural implement.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions.....
A staycation (a portmanteau of "stay" and "vacation"), or holistay (a portmanteau of "holiday" and "stay"), is a period in which an individual or family stays home and participates in leisure activities within day trip distance of their home and does not require overnight accommodation.
The meaning of staycation has been perverted by the travel industry for their own ends.
I had one for a week last October. The cumulative cost of train fares, meals out, beer in pubs and admission fees means I could have probably had a cheaper week abroad, even taking into account air fares and a hotel
Alternatively she could book a Travel Lodge in Swindon or Gloucester and take the short drive to the Cotswolds.
You can have my place just outside Cheltenham if you like, at the special knock-down rate of £15,000 per week on presentation of your PB membership card.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 539,691 10,252 549,943 East Of England 63,147 1,239 64,386 London 59,985 2,037 62,022 Midlands 104,993 1,604 106,597 North East And Yorkshire 84,371 1,324 85,695 North West 68,576 1,350 69,926 South East 87,835 1,632 89,467 South West 68,366 1,055 69,421
According to news that husband has just read and related to me, this year's flu season has failed to materialise: cases down by 90% relative to last year. This was predicted given the current focus on respiratory hygiene, but all the same it is dramatic.
One shudders to think how much worse this month would've been if the usual numbers of flu cases had occurred as well. The dreaded masks are still going to be with us this time next year, I'm sure of it.
Yet the ONS are still finding a lot of deaths to which flu/pneumonia is considered a contributory factor:
If you're right about masks, then there will be no return to office. As long as we're having to wear masks, presumably social distancing will be a thing and we won't be able to pile on to trains as we used to.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions.....
A staycation (a portmanteau of "stay" and "vacation"), or holistay (a portmanteau of "holiday" and "stay"), is a period in which an individual or family stays home and participates in leisure activities within day trip distance of their home and does not require overnight accommodation.
The meaning of staycation has been perverted by the travel industry for their own ends.
You are not keen on the whole "travel" notion, I sense. No need for it.
On topic. If 1945 is anything to go by, even the glow of winning the war doesn’t distract from all the mistakes made years before.
The bottom line is, none of us know what’s going to happen next.
Even despite how well it is going here, There’s still difficult decisions ahead.
1. Being ahead of the game, to what extent do we have to seal our borders, especially to the main business and holiday traffic, to keep out variants? 2. can there there be agreed definition within and beyond our borders what “more than we need” is in the phrase Blair used “we will share when we have more than we need.” 3. And will vaccine acquisition continue as a rat race, pressure to be on the best of the latest gear, and smartest new combinations every step of the way?
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Its also remiss that governments have let people die of flu in the tens of thousands every year.
Or for that matter not abolished death entirely.
Justin seems to have forgotten Labours big 2 plans
Close zoos
Vaccinate fit young teachers at the expense of the vulnerable thus leading to up to 190 extra deaths a day
They really can shut the fuck up
Neither the demerits of the Opposition nor a successful vaccination rollout should or do - or imo will - give the Government a free pass for presiding over one of the very worst Covid outcomes in the world.
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Its also remiss that governments have let people die of flu in the tens of thousands every year.
Or for that matter not abolished death entirely.
That would only be relevant to the extent that earlier governments were held responsible for such deaths related to clear policy mistakes.
The government's big policy error was allowing far too much international travel.
But Labour and the media have been uninterested in that open goal.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions...
Thanks for the question Robert...next question please.
That £20k in the Cotswolds indicates prices across the board are going to be pretty high - from campsites upwards. I booked my three weeks in Cornwall before Christmas so am sitting here right now feeling pretty smug!
A couple of weeks booked in Barra late summer - so long as they have cleansed the Bastard Bug off the island by then.
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.
So I take it you would agree that if the SNP made the fundamental change of taking Scotland into the EU (which I believe they plan to do without a referendum), that would demand another ref on UK membership?
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 539,691 10,252 549,943 East Of England 63,147 1,239 64,386 London 59,985 2,037 62,022 Midlands 104,993 1,604 106,597 North East And Yorkshire 84,371 1,324 85,695 North West 68,576 1,350 69,926 South East 87,835 1,632 89,467 South West 68,366 1,055 69,421
FU will be reaching infinity
Two thoughts:
London seems to do relatively badly when the numbers are highest.
A big increase in second doses - possible shift in policy with Pfizer supplies at risk ?
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Its also remiss that governments have let people die of flu in the tens of thousands every year.
Or for that matter not abolished death entirely.
Justin seems to have forgotten Labours big 2 plans
Close zoos
Vaccinate fit young teachers at the expense of the vulnerable thus leading to up to 190 extra deaths a day
They really can shut the fuck up
Neither the demerits of the Opposition nor a successful vaccination rollout should or do - or imo will - give the Government a free pass for presiding over one of the very worst Covid outcomes in the world.
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Its also remiss that governments have let people die of flu in the tens of thousands every year.
Or for that matter not abolished death entirely.
Justin seems to have forgotten Labours big 2 plans
Close zoos
Vaccinate fit young teachers at the expense of the vulnerable thus leading to up to 190 extra deaths a day
They really can shut the fuck up
Neither the demerits of the Opposition nor a successful vaccination rollout should or do - or imo will - give the Government a free pass for presiding over one of the very worst Covid outcomes in the world.
Will that outcome look particularly exceptional by the time this is all over? There's still a way to go. It only takes half-a-dozen Western European countries to have a death rate as bad or worse than ours for the PM to be able to say "Open society, high population density, lots of old and sick people, highly virulent disease - therefore, lots of deaths sadly inevitable, after all it happened in all these other places." They won't necessarily get away with all their mistakes, but not being an obvious outlier might help.
There'll be an awful lot more of this sort of thing if, as I suspect, foreign holidays are cancelled again this year but everyone can get about within our own borders.
The tourism industry has had an absolutely torrid time and, with a market that's both desperate for a getaway and literally captive, price gouging is inevitable. Accommodation in Southwold or St Ives may be almost as pricey as the Ritz come August. The middle classes might struggle to afford a static caravan in Mablethorpe.
Which is precisely why most people will leg it to Europe the first chance they get.
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
As someone who forecast, and successfully bet, on the US election, Brexit and the 2015 General Election I am convinced Boris Johnson will win a crushing victory next time.
As the vaccine rollout continues apace and we leave the virus behind, whilst others lag, Boris Johnson's star will continue to rise. He's had a very good year so far. I note that he has stopped his War on Whitehall, which is a very significant moment that has slipped under the radar (cf. the Frost appointment issue). It's the Carrie effect and the departure of that nasty piece of work Dominic Cummings.
Our vaccine strategy is world beating. The British Press haven't even begun their acclamation yet.
Sir Keir Starmer is worthy and dull. He was the right person for the last election not the next one.
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
As someone who forecast, and successfully bet, on the US election, Brexit and the 2015 General Election I am convinced Boris Johnson will win a crushing victory next time.
As the vaccine rollout continues apace and we leave the virus behind, whilst others lag, Boris Johnson's star will continue to rise. He's had a very good year so far. I note that he has stopped his War on Whitehall, which is a very significant moment that has slipped under the radar (cf. the Frost appointment issue). It's the Carrie effect and the departure of that nasty piece of work Dominic Cummings.
Our vaccine strategy is world beating. The British Press haven't even begun their acclamation yet.
Sir Keir Starmer is worthy and dull. He was the right person for the last election not the next one.
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
As someone who forecast, and successfully bet, on the US election, Brexit and the 2015 General Election I am convinced Boris Johnson will win a crushing victory next time.
As the vaccine rollout continues apace and we leave the virus behind, whilst others lag, Boris Johnson's star will continue to rise. He's had a very good year so far. I note that he has stopped his War on Whitehall, which is a very significant moment that has slipped under the radar (cf. the Frost appointment issue). It's the Carrie effect and the departure of that nasty piece of work Dominic Cummings.
Our vaccine strategy is world beating. The British Press haven't even begun their acclamation yet.
Sir Keir Starmer is worthy and dull. He was the right person for the last election not the next one.
Did you not predict with some confidence that Biden would win Florida - just a few days before the election?
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.
So I take it you would agree that if the SNP made the fundamental change of taking Scotland into the EU (which I believe they plan to do without a referendum), that would demand another ref on UK membership?
Not sure where you got the idea that the SNP plan to unilaterally take Scotland back into the EU (regardless of all the other hurdles that that may require) without a referendum? Got a link for that?
Of course if losing a third of their land territory gave rUK voters such an attack of the angsts that they elected a government committed to another ref on UK membership, that would be up to them, what with sovereignty and democracy and that.
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 associa
With some exceptions we won't have the cultu.
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
One of the problems with being a physicist is that since it’s the foundation of chemistry, which is the foundation of biology, which explains the processes that create all arts and humanities, we unfortunately have to understand all things. We can’t help it, and I think most people realise they need to bow down before us and listen to our wisdom.
There'll be an awful lot more of this sort of thing if, as I suspect, foreign holidays are cancelled again this year but everyone can get about within our own borders.
The tourism industry has had an absolutely torrid time and, with a market that's both desperate for a getaway and literally captive, price gouging is inevitable. Accommodation in Southwold or St Ives may be almost as pricey as the Ritz come August. The middle classes might struggle to afford a static caravan in Mablethorpe.
With 320 + sunny days each year we're content to stay home just looking out from the terrace...
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.
There'll be an awful lot more of this sort of thing if, as I suspect, foreign holidays are cancelled again this year but everyone can get about within our own borders.
The tourism industry has had an absolutely torrid time and, with a market that's both desperate for a getaway and literally captive, price gouging is inevitable. Accommodation in Southwold or St Ives may be almost as pricey as the Ritz come August. The middle classes might struggle to afford a static caravan in Mablethorpe.
With 320 + sunny days each year we're content to stay home just looking out from the terrace...
Mid term polling rarely looks good for governing parties and in many ways it has been a surprise how well the tories have held up. Still to be neck and neck with Labour after all that's happened should be deeply concerning ... for Labour. The Guardian carried a piece this week about that very thing: that Labour really are not cutting through: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/27/starmer-labour-failing-to-win-back-tory-voters-england-may-polls
My take on this is that we're at half-time. You don't write a team off at this point. You don't declare it all over. The vaccine rollout by Britain is, without hyperbole, the most successful policy decision by any British Government since the Second World War. Whether that filters through into polling time will tell. If the scientists are right then we're going to exit this pandemic a lot faster than most of the world and certainly our EU neighbours. Vaccines stop death. Relative death rates may look very different a year from now.
The Churchill comparison with World War Two is very interesting but almost certainly a dodgy one. WWII was a time which brought people together in a bond which broke through social and class divides. The seeds for Attlee's 1945 landslide were sewn in solidarity. I don't think this pandemic has entailed the same social cohesion. Rather than celebrating life together at every available opportunity we're isolated, distanced and lockdowned. True, the internet creates new bonds but people have struggled with this pandemic particularly because it has broken our social bonds.
I think a better analogy is the Falklands War. At the outset the idea of sailing off 8000 miles and fighting for a lump of rock no-one had ever heard of was deeply unpopular. But the nation, whipped up by the press, got right into it and by the end our troops returned as heroes and Margaret Thatcher was Boadicea who could do no wrong.
Boris Johnson is having a very good 2021. True, Keir Starmer is no Michael Foot but neither is he Clem Attlee or Tony Blair. Personally I think if he wishes to stay on Boris will win a crushing victory at the next General Election.
It looks quite likely that by mid- 2021 the number of Covid deaths will have reached circa 140,000 - which would be twice the level of civilian casualties suffered by the UK in the almost 6 years of World War 2. I find it surprising that you don't believe that the Opposition parties will not remind voters of this at the time of the next election. Some of Labour's party election broadcasts for 2024 have probably already been written - if kept in cold storage at the moment. Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000? As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Its also remiss that governments have let people die of flu in the tens of thousands every year.
Or for that matter not abolished death entirely.
Justin seems to have forgotten Labours big 2 plans
Close zoos
Vaccinate fit young teachers at the expense of the vulnerable thus leading to up to 190 extra deaths a day
They really can shut the fuck up
Neither the demerits of the Opposition nor a successful vaccination rollout should or do - or imo will - give the Government a free pass for presiding over one of the very worst Covid outcomes in the world.
CLOSE THE ZOOS ALREADY
This comment is not befitting of a PhD supervisor.
There'll be an awful lot more of this sort of thing if, as I suspect, foreign holidays are cancelled again this year but everyone can get about within our own borders.
The tourism industry has had an absolutely torrid time and, with a market that's both desperate for a getaway and literally captive, price gouging is inevitable. Accommodation in Southwold or St Ives may be almost as pricey as the Ritz come August. The middle classes might struggle to afford a static caravan in Mablethorpe.
With 320 + sunny days each year we're content to stay home just looking out from the terrace...
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
As someone who forecast, and successfully bet, on the US election, Brexit and the 2015 General Election I am convinced Boris Johnson will win a crushing victory next time.
As the vaccine rollout continues apace and we leave the virus behind, whilst others lag, Boris Johnson's star will continue to rise. He's had a very good year so far. I note that he has stopped his War on Whitehall, which is a very significant moment that has slipped under the radar (cf. the Frost appointment issue). It's the Carrie effect and the departure of that nasty piece of work Dominic Cummings.
Our vaccine strategy is world beating. The British Press haven't even begun their acclamation yet.
Sir Keir Starmer is worthy and dull. He was the right person for the last election not the next one.
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
As someone who forecast, and successfully bet, on the US election, Brexit and the 2015 General Election I am convinced Boris Johnson will win a crushing victory next time.
As the vaccine rollout continues apace and we leave the virus behind, whilst others lag, Boris Johnson's star will continue to rise. He's had a very good year so far. I note that he has stopped his War on Whitehall, which is a very significant moment that has slipped under the radar (cf. the Frost appointment issue). It's the Carrie effect and the departure of that nasty piece of work Dominic Cummings.
Our vaccine strategy is world beating. The British Press haven't even begun their acclamation yet.
Sir Keir Starmer is worthy and dull. He was the right person for the last election not the next one.
Just wait till the dust settles. This narcissist who adores dressing up with more costume changes than Danny La Rue will be out on his arse. Just the tiniest bit of reflection by the voters after the immediate dangers have passed and he'll be lucky if he isn't exiled let alone be permitted to remain PM
Are you talking about Johnson?
He'll face the electorate in 2024 and probably win a very tight race and do another 3/4 of a term is my guess at this point.
Are you talking about Johnson?
Yes. The very same. Happily I seem to have found someone who's ability to predict the political future is even worse than mine..
As someone who forecast, and successfully bet, on the US election, Brexit and the 2015 General Election I am convinced Boris Johnson will win a crushing victory next time.
As the vaccine rollout continues apace and we leave the virus behind, whilst others lag, Boris Johnson's star will continue to rise. He's had a very good year so far. I note that he has stopped his War on Whitehall, which is a very significant moment that has slipped under the radar (cf. the Frost appointment issue). It's the Carrie effect and the departure of that nasty piece of work Dominic Cummings.
Our vaccine strategy is world beating. The British Press haven't even begun their acclamation yet.
Sir Keir Starmer is worthy and dull. He was the right person for the last election not the next one.
Did you not predict with some confidence that Biden would win Florida - just a few days before the election?
Rose was calling a Trump landslide for most of 2020.
There is always going to be a lag between the delivery of the vaccine to Scotland and putting it in someone's arms. How long that lag is depends upon the efficiency of the logistics. But something is just not working here. We are managing to use about 50% of the vaccine provided. England is doing much, much better. Even if you allow a larger lag for the fact that Scotland's population is more dispirit that lag should not continue to grow.
Nicola needs to think out the box a bit, the box in this case being Health Board bureaucracies very much used to doing things in their own time without external intervention or meaningful supervision. I really hope she does. For us to end up wasting vaccine because of this inefficiency would be unconscionable in a world still desperately short of it.
The story about the St Austell practice that @MarqueeMark linked to downthread is a good example of what can be done.
Perhaps the Scottish people are disparate, rather than dispirit?
Although....
Who would believe that lying turd in any case, those numbers will be faker than a three bob bit. Half them will be sitting in warehouses down south. We will see when Scottish Government publish the real numbers this week, what is the betting Union jack will be lying.
They -are- sitting in Warehouses down south - waiting to be ordered up by the agencies responsible for the Scottish rollout. The same as Wales and Northern Ireland.
I fully expect in the coming months for the PM to be asked by journalists that given no foreign travel is allowed, summer staycations are too expensive and inaccessible to most of the public and what will the government be doing about the price gouging.... cos its all so unfair....thinking of the little people here, not that my week vacation in the Cotswold will cost £20k. Shouldn't we open the borders and allow people at least a week away after all thess restrictions.....
A staycation (a portmanteau of "stay" and "vacation"), or holistay (a portmanteau of "holiday" and "stay"), is a period in which an individual or family stays home and participates in leisure activities within day trip distance of their home and does not require overnight accommodation.
The meaning of staycation has been perverted by the travel industry for their own ends.
Loads of normal people stay at home and go out for days. And there's always Premier Inn.
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.
If the deaths were within a week those who died were probably already infected when they were vaccinated. Worst case scenario is that they were infected by the person giving them the vaccine.
A successful LOTO needs charisma - the ability to spin bullshit convincingly and get floating voters to lap it up. Blair had that in abundance. Cameron (against Gordon Brown) had just about enough. Boris also has some. Starmer doesn't seem to have it. So, unless this government falls apart spectacularly, I doubt SKS will pull it off.
Comments
Labs, thankfully, are
Honestly, it's completely infuriating that not a single commentator is picking up on this and asking the right questions about it.
https://twitter.com/Lucyzilb/status/1355860182883065858?s=19
Would the Falklands have been seen as a great triumph, had we incurred 10,000 fatalities - never mind well in excess of 100,000?
As for the polling,we are NOT at mid-term - indeed we are still in the first quartile of this Parliament. As it is , Starmer is outperforming Gaitskell from early 1961 - and Kinnock from mid-1988 - the equivalent points of the 1959 and 1987 Parliaments respectively. We have seen quite a few Labour poll leads in recent months - fairly comparable to where Thatcher was for most of 1978. That sense is reinforced, when allowance is made for the fact that Labour's 2015 collapse in Scotland has effectively knocked 2% off its GB headline poll figures.
Any we don't need can then be donated to the third world.
I am calling bullshit on that.
If you are not in the EU, the fee for a country to join Erasmus is based on a country's GDP. That is why it is very expensive for Switzerland or the UK to join.
That is why it is much more expensive for Switzerland to join Erasmus than to run its own scheme.
So you are wrong.
But, I think we can trust the Swiss, no? ..... The Swiss are certainly very good with money, they will have worked out what is best for Switzerland.
All in all - I hope it improves democratic accountability, particularly against the SNP. That is no bad thing. It’ll be interesting to see how things fare.
It is giant ego trip, admittedly created by some of the finest artisans of the age, but the continuous me, me, me theme would make your average HipHop artist cringe.
Or for that matter not abolished death entirely.
How often can you hold a contest on the matter without causing disruption and dislocation?
Who has the right to decide that and allied questions?
When two or more countries become, for purposes of international law and relations, one country, who has the right to be asked over changes? Since X leaving country XY entails Y leaving country XY and forming a new unit, whether they like it or not, why should only the people of former X have a say?
What that means is that it may end up being a great booster type vaccine for Q4 like a flu jab, but maybe not great for bringing infection rates down very quickly as we expect Pfizer and Moderna to do.
(Memo to self: beware of nations bearing gifts.)
Thanks for the question Robert...next question please.
The tourism industry has had an absolutely torrid time and, with a market that's both desperate for a getaway and literally captive, price gouging is inevitable. Accommodation in Southwold or St Ives may be almost as pricey as the Ritz come August. The middle classes might struggle to afford a static caravan in Mablethorpe.
I see the "berk" in the middle, and her Pinterest Profile calls her "Tweeter of nonsense".
*innocent face*
https://twitter.com/suziedoore/status/1355861175335006208
https://twitter.com/Lucyzilb/status/1355861515614777348
It's the logical and necessary counter to No's "Indy is irreversible and you will have to live with it forever".
Otherwise you would have had Fencers weighing up "Massive & Irreversible" vs "No for now, maybe think again in a bit."
That drives votes to No.
Close zoos
Vaccinate fit young teachers at the expense of the vulnerable thus leading to up to 190 extra deaths a day
They really can shut the fuck up
The grounds are magnificent on the other hand, and free to enter.
The meaning of staycation has been perverted by the travel industry for their own ends.
https://twitter.com/BrookesTimes/status/1355484057845592067/photo/1
Malky G and his mates will be at the border, pitchforks in hand.
One shudders to think how much worse this month would've been if the usual numbers of flu cases had occurred as well. The dreaded masks are still going to be with us this time next year, I'm sure of it.
I am beside myself with worry. Fingers crossed.
It's not the UK.
The oximeter was a godsend to a number of friends. Thank you, Foxy.
Malc may have a penchant for inflammatory rhetoric but I gain the impression that he wouldn't go quite so far as to brutally murder passing tourists with an agricultural implement.
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1355879107184250882?s=20
If Scotland was vaccinating at the same rate as England, today's total would have been 53,343 - more than double what was accomplished
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date
Total 539,691 10,252 549,943
East Of England 63,147 1,239 64,386
London 59,985 2,037 62,022
Midlands 104,993 1,604 106,597
North East And Yorkshire 84,371 1,324 85,695
North West 68,576 1,350 69,926
South East 87,835 1,632 89,467
South West 68,366 1,055 69,421
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending15january2021
If you're right about masks, then there will be no return to office. As long as we're having to wear masks, presumably social distancing will be a thing and we won't be able to pile on to trains as we used to.
NEW THREAD
The bottom line is, none of us know what’s going to happen next.
Even despite how well it is going here, There’s still difficult decisions ahead.
1. Being ahead of the game, to what extent do we have to seal our borders, especially to the main business and holiday traffic, to keep out variants?
2. can there there be agreed definition within and beyond our borders what “more than we need” is in the phrase Blair used “we will share when we have more than we need.”
3. And will vaccine acquisition continue as a rat race, pressure to be on the best of the latest gear, and smartest new combinations every step of the way?
But Labour and the media have been uninterested in that open goal.
It'll be brilliant.
Two thoughts:
London seems to do relatively badly when the numbers are highest.
A big increase in second doses - possible shift in policy with Pfizer supplies at risk ?
Of course if losing a third of their land territory gave rUK voters such an attack of the angsts that they elected a government committed to another ref on UK membership, that would be up to them, what with sovereignty and democracy and that.