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This Ridge interview with Johnson just three days before GE2019 looks problematical for the PM – pol

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  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,786
    kinabalu said:

    DavidL said:

    Very harsh on Hancock I think who's been on a real roll for months now after a dodgy start. Who are these people who still like Williamson?
    Tory members!
    RSPCA members.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,237
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    It makes me feel a bit sad for Scotland, TBH.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307

    DavidL said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Boris Johnson lying?

    Well I am

    S
    T
    U
    N
    N
    E
    D

    While true can you name a single politician that you believe tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

    I have long suspected that the PPE course contains a large module on "How to lie and not give way to grinning inanely because I can't believe people are buying my bullshit"
    I am sure that won't be its name though. I will ask my son periodically if he has covered lying to the media in a convincing way yet.
    At which point he'll smile winningly at you and say 'Of course not, dad, that's just an urban myth'...
    Excellent.
  • Options
    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited February 2021
    Pagan2 said:

    DavidL said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Boris Johnson lying?

    Well I am

    S
    T
    U
    N
    N
    E
    D

    While true can you name a single politician that you believe tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

    I have long suspected that the PPE course contains a large module on "How to lie and not give way to grinning inanely because I can't believe people are buying my bullshit"
    I am sure that won't be its name though. I will ask my son periodically if he has covered lying to the media in a convincing way yet.
    It will probably get some fancy name like "Dissemination of non binary information"

    Also similar to my son who did a masters in bio chemistry and got het up when I referred to it a bio warfare
    It's a little-known fact that the degree's real title is PPET: Philosophy, Politics, and Economy with the Truth.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,462
    The nub seems to me to be that they won't be able to be part of the committee's report. So the committee that is supposed to be finding out whether Sturgeon misled parliament (amongst other things) is not allowed to include in its report evidence alleging that she misled parliament.
  • Options
    GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,079

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Fewer eligible people.
    So we now have circa 9 million 2nd jabs to give in next 11 weeks in order to meet the 12th week promise.

    If we reach 1m jabs per week that would 9m 2nd jabs and only be 2m 1st jabs over 11 weeks ie circa 200k

    Capacity needs to go up still further and to double from here to keep the same number of first jabs

    Or am i missing something?
    You aren't, capacity needs to double, which is why the government is still building more vaccination sites so that in three or four weeks we have the capacity to do first and second jabs simultaneously.
    Thought so, ta.

    When people talk about building capacity not sure everybody has factored in the 2nd jabs required likely to be taking up well over 1m slots per week soon.

    My local hotel has opened for 1st jabs today but lots of people in Chessy are being offered slots at Sheffield Arena about 15 miles away.

    There was an article on Look North at the start of the week about Sheffield Arena. Said people as far away as 70 miles would be offered jabs there as the programme really takes off.
    I hope the vaccine roll-out really isn't dependent on Look North's viewing stats.

    Oh.
    Surely they get Midlands Today in Sheffield on account of it being in the Midlands?
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 24,981
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125

    The nub seems to me to be that they won't be able to be part of the committee's report. So the committee that is supposed to be finding out whether Sturgeon misled parliament (amongst other things) is not allowed to include in its report evidence alleging that she misled parliament.
    Scotland: giving banana republic justice a bad name.
  • Options
    20,634 new covid cases - 915 deaths
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    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202
    Pulpstar said:

    What IS the false positive rate from the tests ?
    False negative rate must be higher due to swabs "missing" the virus.

    If we were just seeing false positives, why is the number of cases falling, with a constant level of testing? Doesn't make sense. So no, the 18K odd cases a day are not false positives.
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,956
    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307

    The nub seems to me to be that they won't be able to be part of the committee's report. So the committee that is supposed to be finding out whether Sturgeon misled parliament (amongst other things) is not allowed to include in its report evidence alleging that she misled parliament.
    And so there will be no evidence. The effrontery is breathtaking.
  • Options
    SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,625
    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:
    To be fair who else would admit to being from Middlesbrough.

    I mean what is Middlesbrough famous for? Being smoggies.
    Surely it is notable for the Transporter Bridge? B ut no doubt you would simply reply that it was so people could get out more quickly and go to Hartlepool.

    I had believed that the great navigator actually came from Great Ayton which is well on the way to Whitby, but on checking he was born and lived much of his childhood in Marton which is a suburb of Middlesborough.
    He then spent his adult life getting as far away from Middlesbrough as is physically possible without leaving the planet.

    It has that affect on people.
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Fewer eligible people.
    So we now have circa 9 million 2nd jabs to give in next 11 weeks in order to meet the 12th week promise.

    If we reach 1m jabs per week that would 9m 2nd jabs and only be 2m 1st jabs over 11 weeks ie circa 200k

    Capacity needs to go up still further and to double from here to keep the same number of first jabs

    Or am i missing something?
    You aren't, capacity needs to double, which is why the government is still building more vaccination sites so that in three or four weeks we have the capacity to do first and second jabs simultaneously.
    Thought so, ta.

    When people talk about building capacity not sure everybody has factored in the 2nd jabs required likely to be taking up well over 1m slots per week soon.

    My local hotel has opened for 1st jabs today but lots of people in Chessy are being offered slots at Sheffield Arena about 15 miles away.

    There was an article on Look North at the start of the week about Sheffield Arena. Said people as far away as 70 miles would be offered jabs there as the programme really takes off.
    I hope the vaccine roll-out really isn't dependent on Look North's viewing stats.

    Oh.
    Surely they get Midlands Today in Sheffield on account of it being in the Midlands?
    And if that don't trigger TSE.....
  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,786
    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    You might be over-playing the incident.
  • Options
    Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,844
    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    Buy british? I remember that campaign from the 70's
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125

    20,634 new covid cases - 915 deaths

    A while since a mid-week number below 1,000?
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226

    kinabalu said:

    Yes that would appear to be a barefaced lie to the public on a very important matter by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But I'm afraid people don't care anymore. By telling so many porkies so nonchalantly he has ground us down. Even the best of us have grown tired of fighting it. The man feels entitled to do and say whatever he pleases and he's been proved right. "Boris" has won. ✖

    The lie itself doesn't matter. Unfortunate, but there we go.

    However, the reason for the lie does. The reason Boris told that particular lie was that he didn't want to admit that there was a need to choose between Border in the Irish Sea / Border between NI and RoI / Similar-to-identical rules in UK and RoI. Because each of those choices is unacceptable to a significant number of people.

    In speeches, newspaper articles (or comments on a top politics blog) it's possible to do jazz hands and claim that that choice isn't strictly necessary, and all we need is a bit of necessity to invent a new better solution. But at the moment that's where we are.

    The words of Boris's lie don't matter. The decisions Boris took because he managed to fool himself are.
    Yep. Integral part of the ghastly but oh so powerful brand. Anyway I'm glad I'm once more feeling very down about having this bloke as PM. I lost that for a while because of Trump immersion. To get depressed again about something that should depress anyone cheers me up immensely.
  • Options
    Reported deaths below 1,000:


  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,285
    edited February 2021
    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    So what you are saying is the company you ordered from sold you something they didn't actually have in stock. Very naughty of them.
  • Options
    Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,844
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Yes that would appear to be a barefaced lie to the public on a very important matter by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But I'm afraid people don't care anymore. By telling so many porkies so nonchalantly he has ground us down. Even the best of us have grown tired of fighting it. The man feels entitled to do and say whatever he pleases and he's been proved right. "Boris" has won. ✖

    The lie itself doesn't matter. Unfortunate, but there we go.

    However, the reason for the lie does. The reason Boris told that particular lie was that he didn't want to admit that there was a need to choose between Border in the Irish Sea / Border between NI and RoI / Similar-to-identical rules in UK and RoI. Because each of those choices is unacceptable to a significant number of people.

    In speeches, newspaper articles (or comments on a top politics blog) it's possible to do jazz hands and claim that that choice isn't strictly necessary, and all we need is a bit of necessity to invent a new better solution. But at the moment that's where we are.

    The words of Boris's lie don't matter. The decisions Boris took because he managed to fool himself are.
    Yep. Integral part of the ghastly but oh so powerful brand. Anyway I'm glad I'm once more feeling very down about having this bloke as PM. I lost that for a while because of Trump immersion. To get depressed again about something that should depress anyone cheers me up immensely.
    Are you Eeyore posting under a pseudonym?
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202

    20,634 new covid cases - 915 deaths

    A while since a mid-week number below 1,000?
    Best news is the admissions - 2,375. That's dropping like a stone now (good old lockdown, plus a bit of vaccine).
  • Options
    FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,990
    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    As a Scot with no strong feelings on the desirability of stone sex-toys, I don’t understand it either.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 24,981
    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    Their national dish is deep fried mars bars - how more unhealthy could it be?
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307
    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    I confess that I was bewildered by the Jury decision at the time and called it wrong. The noises off in the Faculty pointed towards a conviction too. But it does appear that the Jury got the impression that this was some sort of conspiracy and more than a bit contrived. Wonderful things juries, an essential protection from tyranny.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,237
    Didn't we send the British army in?
  • Options

    The nub seems to me to be that they won't be able to be part of the committee's report. So the committee that is supposed to be finding out whether Sturgeon misled parliament (amongst other things) is not allowed to include in its report evidence alleging that she misled parliament.
    Isn't it the committee that decides what will be part of its report? If not who does?
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,787
    edited February 2021
    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    What primary school lit with the SNP logo? If it is the one that came up a couple of days ago, I hadf a look at that tweet - no indication of any provenance other than it was being used in Scotland, which could mean maybe one teacher in one school which could have been under a Tory/Unionist council for all we know. No indication of class, subject, age, etc. No provision of the other material, which could have had all the info about the Labour Party (and LDs) in the introductory panel for instance.

    Edit: and crap graphics, made me think it was done as a one off by some teacher who was using that software to convert photos into cartoons. Of course Mr Dewar looked worse than Ms Sturgeon. He had a much mor elined face. Even the captions looked like someone trying to fit too much into set word counts.
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125

    Christ on a bike....no Trump....no viewers....

    https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1357345089257758720?s=20

    That loud "whump" you just heard was the cost of advertising on CNN smashing into the basement....
  • Options
    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1393462/brexit-news-cadbury-plant-germany-uk-bournville-dairy-milk-plant-uk-economy
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,787
    eek said:

    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    Their national dish is deep fried mars bars - how more unhealthy could it be?
    It's not. It's the national dish of English tyourists in Sxcotland. Not quite the same thing.
  • Options

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Fewer eligible people.
    So we now have circa 9 million 2nd jabs to give in next 11 weeks in order to meet the 12th week promise.

    If we reach 1m jabs per week that would 9m 2nd jabs and only be 2m 1st jabs over 11 weeks ie circa 200k

    Capacity needs to go up still further and to double from here to keep the same number of first jabs

    Or am i missing something?
    You aren't, capacity needs to double, which is why the government is still building more vaccination sites so that in three or four weeks we have the capacity to do first and second jabs simultaneously.
    Thought so, ta.

    When people talk about building capacity not sure everybody has factored in the 2nd jabs required likely to be taking up well over 1m slots per week soon.

    My local hotel has opened for 1st jabs today but lots of people in Chessy are being offered slots at Sheffield Arena about 15 miles away.

    There was an article on Look North at the start of the week about Sheffield Arena. Said people as far away as 70 miles would be offered jabs there as the programme really takes off.
    The principle of your post is correct, but I should point out the numbers are a bit misleading.

    We vaccinated 2.8m people last week. Therefore in the next 11 weeks we might expect to be able to supply ~30m vaccines. At the moment that would have to include ~9m second doses, but would allow headroom. This is a function of the fact that the number of does has increased about 30-40% each week so far.

    if that rate slows down, then 2nd does become a problem in terms of constraining delivery.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 24,981

    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1393462/brexit-news-cadbury-plant-germany-uk-bournville-dairy-milk-plant-uk-economy
    While the move will create no new jobs,
  • Options

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Fewer eligible people.
    So we now have circa 9 million 2nd jabs to give in next 11 weeks in order to meet the 12th week promise.

    If we reach 1m jabs per week that would 9m 2nd jabs and only be 2m 1st jabs over 11 weeks ie circa 200k

    Capacity needs to go up still further and to double from here to keep the same number of first jabs

    Or am i missing something?
    You aren't, capacity needs to double, which is why the government is still building more vaccination sites so that in three or four weeks we have the capacity to do first and second jabs simultaneously.
    Thought so, ta.

    When people talk about building capacity not sure everybody has factored in the 2nd jabs required likely to be taking up well over 1m slots per week soon.

    My local hotel has opened for 1st jabs today but lots of people in Chessy are being offered slots at Sheffield Arena about 15 miles away.

    There was an article on Look North at the start of the week about Sheffield Arena. Said people as far away as 70 miles would be offered jabs there as the programme really takes off.
    I hope the vaccine roll-out really isn't dependent on Look North's viewing stats.

    Oh.
    Surely they get Midlands Today in Sheffield on account of it being in the Midlands?
    And if that don't trigger TSE.....
    Gallowgate is to geography what Morris Dancer is to history.

    Second Punic War: A humiliation for Carthage.
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,898
    Pulpstar said:

    What IS the false positive rate from the tests ?
    False negative rate must be higher due to swabs "missing" the virus.

    It's tiny, but might have been statistically significant in the summer when 99.9% of the results of tests were negative. Mostly due to lab or sample contamination.

    A certain group of conspiracy theorists were using this as the infection rates went up in the autumn, to suggest that there wasn't really a virus problem, rather a false positive problem. Which worked for a few weeks, until the false positives started turning up in hospitals.
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    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307
    In Dundee a vaccination centre has been set up in the Caird Hall for mass vaccinations. We are hopefully getting there slightly belatedly.
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    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,661

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Brom said:
    Hmm. That's actually going to be slightly underwhelming I think.

    Will end up being pretty much bang on the required rate – I was hoping for a bumper couple of days, given the widespread snowy weather forecast for next week.
    ~460k for the day, it's ahead of the target rate but yes, agreed, it's underwhelming imo.
    A bit harsh to describe it as underwhelming.
    Quite. A brief glance at the (England) chart posted earlier reveals that:

    Last Friday was a record Friday
    Last Saturday was a record Saturday
    Last Sunday was a record Sunday
    This Monday was a record Monday
    This Tuesday was a record Tuesday
    This Wednesday was a record Wednesday

    We're doing OK. Just relax.
    I had thought we were going to reach the target a few days early, but that was when I thought it was 13.2 million not 15 million. We should reach the latter pretty much on the 15th.
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    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307

    Christ on a bike....no Trump....no viewers....

    https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1357345089257758720?s=20

    That loud "whump" you just heard was the cost of advertising on CNN smashing into the basement....
    Bring back Trump. At least he was newsworthy.
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    LeonLeon Posts: 47,237

    Reported deaths below 1,000:


    800,000 tests!

    If we can do 800,000 tests in a day we can do 800,000 jabs. C'mon Britain


    This whole pandemic reminds me a bit of World War 2. Britain started off the war in a total shambles, our army in France was ill-equipped and totally out-matched, and we nearly lost them all in Dunkirk. Then the mighty German war machine bombed the shit out of us, and we just cowered in our Nissen huts eating spam fritters.

    But then, slowly, remorselessly, we began to turn things around. Within a couple of years we were churning our airplanes every few seconds, and then we began bombing Germany, relentlessly, in a far harder way than anything they did to us.

    I wonder if wartime Brits looked at the daily bombing stats over Germany in 1944 with the same relish we view the daily vaccine stats.

    We just gotta hope the vaccine doesn't have a V2 ready to roll out of Peenemunde
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125

    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1393462/brexit-news-cadbury-plant-germany-uk-bournville-dairy-milk-plant-uk-economy
    We should get our scientists working on delivering the vaccine in a lump of Cadbury's Dairy Milk - to really trigger the Germans.....
  • Options
  • Options
    FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    Had a mobile repair man around to look at my wife's car

    Something about him seems off

    Google his name

    He's been done for fraud more than once

    Ask him if if he is this person

    He says yes

    "I think we are done here" says I

    The internet can be very useful - even beyond this site :smiley:
  • Options
    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1393462/brexit-news-cadbury-plant-germany-uk-bournville-dairy-milk-plant-uk-economy
    While the move will create no new jobs,
    I am interested how you can make 125 million more chocolate bars and not need a single extra employee.
  • Options
    FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,990

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Fewer eligible people.
    So we now have circa 9 million 2nd jabs to give in next 11 weeks in order to meet the 12th week promise.

    If we reach 1m jabs per week that would 9m 2nd jabs and only be 2m 1st jabs over 11 weeks ie circa 200k

    Capacity needs to go up still further and to double from here to keep the same number of first jabs

    Or am i missing something?
    You aren't, capacity needs to double, which is why the government is still building more vaccination sites so that in three or four weeks we have the capacity to do first and second jabs simultaneously.
    Thought so, ta.

    When people talk about building capacity not sure everybody has factored in the 2nd jabs required likely to be taking up well over 1m slots per week soon.

    My local hotel has opened for 1st jabs today but lots of people in Chessy are being offered slots at Sheffield Arena about 15 miles away.

    There was an article on Look North at the start of the week about Sheffield Arena. Said people as far away as 70 miles would be offered jabs there as the programme really takes off.
    I hope the vaccine roll-out really isn't dependent on Look North's viewing stats.

    Oh.
    Surely they get Midlands Today in Sheffield on account of it being in the Midlands?
    South Today, surely?
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,541
    A particular combination means that this may not be the problem Mike Smithson expects.

    Firstly Boris is more or less immune at the moment from the consequences of terminological inexactitude. Don't ask why. he just gets away with it with his supporters. Call it a very minor version of Trump syndrome.

    Secondly, most British voters don't follow Ireland politics except to roll their eyes in disbelief at the folly and wickedness of it; while assuming that inexactitudes told by British politicians around and about the politics of Ireland are an inevitable consequence of the long term folly of the politics of Ireland and the inadequates who people it since the voters in the north rejected anything like statesmanship.

    Maybe the only solution now is to grant NI independence under a UN mandate to keep the peace and see if they can find their way out of their own particular Gaza. They might think carefully if surrounded by Paraguayan, Bangladeshi and Malawi soldiers wearing blue helmets and without the sustaining assistance of GB.
  • Options
    Carnyx said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    Their national dish is deep fried mars bars - how more unhealthy could it be?
    It's not. It's the national dish of English tyourists in Sxcotland. Not quite the same thing.
    Old saying, come ye not betwixt a Scotche experte and his stereotypes.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    UK cases by specimen date

    image
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    Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,844
    Floater said:

    Had a mobile repair man around to look at my wife's car

    Something about him seems off

    Google his name

    He's been done for fraud more than once

    Ask him if if he is this person

    He says yes

    "I think we are done here" says I

    The internet can be very useful - even beyond this site :smiley:

    Till he goes and complains under the "right to be forgotten rules" that the eu brought in and we havent repealed unless I missed it
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    UK cases by specimen data and scaled to 100k population

    image
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    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,929

    Pulpstar said:

    What IS the false positive rate from the tests ?
    False negative rate must be higher due to swabs "missing" the virus.

    If we were just seeing false positives, why is the number of cases falling, with a constant level of testing? Doesn't make sense. So no, the 18K odd cases a day are not false positives.
    A good estimate of false positives can be made I feel by looking at high test, low prevalence nations.

    New Zealand's case to test % is 0.17%; Vietnam 0.14%; Australia 0.2%; false positives at 0.1% would represent an extraordinary portion of positive tests in those nations so I'd venture to guess it must be lower than 0.1% - likely substantially lower.
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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    UK Local R

    image
  • Options
    Floater said:

    Had a mobile repair man around to look at my wife's car

    Something about him seems off

    Google his name

    He's been done for fraud more than once

    Ask him if if he is this person

    He says yes

    "I think we are done here" says I

    The internet can be very useful - even beyond this site :smiley:

    Confessions of a door to door mobile repair man?
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,237
    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    What primary school lit with the SNP logo? If it is the one that came up a couple of days ago, I hadf a look at that tweet - no indication of any provenance other than it was being used in Scotland, which could mean maybe one teacher in one school which could have been under a Tory/Unionist council for all we know. No indication of class, subject, age, etc. No provision of the other material, which could have had all the info about the Labour Party (and LDs) in the introductory panel for instance.

    Edit: and crap graphics, made me think it was done as a one off by some teacher who was using that software to convert photos into cartoons. Of course Mr Dewar looked worse than Ms Sturgeon. He had a much mor elined face. Even the captions looked like someone trying to fit too much into set word counts.
    You're wrong

    https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/schools-family/1941916/school-lessons-featuring-snp-logo-and-independence-campaign-politically-biased/


    "We recognise that including the SNP logo in this resource and not including the political party of Donald Dewar was not consistent and so we have now amended this.”

    Helen Fulson, Twinkl Educational Publishing"
  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,786
    Scotland, NI. Wales and England.

    We're all doing well with regards to vaccinations. A decent thing for this club called the UK. Doubles all round!

  • Options
    felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    I think with London it's the nature of the beast. Much more transient. Large proportion of those for a variety of reason more sceptical. Probaly records less accurate , etc, etc.
  • Options
    Leon said:

    Reported deaths below 1,000:


    800,000 tests!

    If we can do 800,000 tests in a day we can do 800,000 jabs. C'mon Britain


    This whole pandemic reminds me a bit of World War 2. Britain started off the war in a total shambles, our army in France was ill-equipped and totally out-matched, and we nearly lost them all in Dunkirk. Then the mighty German war machine bombed the shit out of us, and we just cowered in our Nissen huts eating spam fritters.

    But then, slowly, remorselessly, we began to turn things around. Within a couple of years we were churning our airplanes every few seconds, and then we began bombing Germany, relentlessly, in a far harder way than anything they did to us.

    I wonder if wartime Brits looked at the daily bombing stats over Germany in 1944 with the same relish we view the daily vaccine stats.

    We just gotta hope the vaccine doesn't have a V2 ready to roll out of Peenemunde
    Its a shame you can't vaccinate people with COVID....just jab'em while you test them would be much easier.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    UK case summary

    image
    image
    image
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    UK hospitals

    image
    image
    image
    image
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    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125

    20,634 new covid cases - 915 deaths

    A while since a mid-week number below 1,000?
    Best news is the admissions - 2,375. That's dropping like a stone now (good old lockdown, plus a bit of vaccine).
    20k new cases a bit weird though - thought that was going to be on more of a downward trajectory, but if anything it is bouncing up.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    UK deaths

    image
    image
    image
  • Options
    Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,844

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1393462/brexit-news-cadbury-plant-germany-uk-bournville-dairy-milk-plant-uk-economy
    While the move will create no new jobs,
    I am interested how you can make 125 million more chocolate bars and not need a single extra employee.
    People are always saying we need to improve productivity well there it is
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    UK R

    from case data

    image
    image

    from hospitalisations

    image
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,780
    Carnyx said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    Their national dish is deep fried mars bars - how more unhealthy could it be?
    It's not. It's the national dish of English tyourists in Sxcotland. Not quite the same thing.
    What can I sneer at then? (Its the only reason I go anywhere)
  • Options
    SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,625
    Update from my jabbed-up neighbours: They got Ox-AZ at our local GP surgery.

    This bodes well, as I'd rather go there than a mass-vac centre in the middle of Bradford.

    And it might be the same nurse who gave me my flu shot...
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    Age related data

    image
    image
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    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,273
    What is the problem that negative rates is trying to solve?

    It has the whiff of economic collapse around it. If the intention is to get me to spend my savings by taking a cut of them away from me every month then I think it's misguided. My natural inclination would be to conclude that the economy is in so much trouble that I should save more, but keep it in cash in a safe, or abroad, or somewhere other than a bank deposit anyway.
  • Options
    FishingFishing Posts: 4,561
    Yorkcity said:

    Just read the the BoE has kept interest rates at 0.1%.but as warned negative rates are coming.
    What effect will negative rates have ?

    What SHOULD happen is that the economy should be restored to health through a construction boom, as their prices rise and people find it cheap to borrow to build them. That's what happened in the mid-1930s in the Midlands and southern England and it's why so much of our housing stock dates from those few years.

    But that doesn't happen these days, because it is so difficult to build houses anywhere people might actually want to live.

    So what happens instead is that people make money trading already existing houses and other assets (like cryptocurrencies and other shit) as their prices boom. Does nothing for bona fide economic activity, but makes speculators a fortune.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,787
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    What primary school lit with the SNP logo? If it is the one that came up a couple of days ago, I hadf a look at that tweet - no indication of any provenance other than it was being used in Scotland, which could mean maybe one teacher in one school which could have been under a Tory/Unionist council for all we know. No indication of class, subject, age, etc. No provision of the other material, which could have had all the info about the Labour Party (and LDs) in the introductory panel for instance.

    Edit: and crap graphics, made me think it was done as a one off by some teacher who was using that software to convert photos into cartoons. Of course Mr Dewar looked worse than Ms Sturgeon. He had a much mor elined face. Even the captions looked like someone trying to fit too much into set word counts.
    You're wrong

    https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/schools-family/1941916/school-lessons-featuring-snp-logo-and-independence-campaign-politically-biased/


    "We recognise that including the SNP logo in this resource and not including the political party of Donald Dewar was not consistent and so we have now amended this.”

    Helen Fulson, Twinkl Educational Publishing"
    Ah thanks - that wasn't up when I looked. In other words, just poorly done stuff. Silly to have put the badge in, I agree. No indication of actual political bias, unless being a female SNP First Minister is illegitimate in itself. And materials bought and used .by a Unionist council ("A coalition administration was formed at the statutory meeting of Angus Council on 16 May 2017, which currently co"mprises six Independents, eight Conservatives and Unionists, and one Lib Dem. Cllr David Fairweather is Leader of the Council.") ['Independent' usually means Tory pretending not to be Tory in Scottish rural-ish areas.)

    They do have masks of Boris Johnson as well, too, you do realise.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,237

    UK R

    from case data

    image
    image

    from hospitalisations

    image

    R is proving very stubborn?
  • Options
    FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195

    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    Is this precious item a new barrel because you scraped the bottom out of the old one?
    Oh Bravo sir!!!
  • Options
    maaarshmaaarsh Posts: 3,391

    20,634 new covid cases - 915 deaths

    A while since a mid-week number below 1,000?
    Best news is the admissions - 2,375. That's dropping like a stone now (good old lockdown, plus a bit of vaccine).
    20k new cases a bit weird though - thought that was going to be on more of a downward trajectory, but if anything it is bouncing up.
    It was 28k same day last week - Thursday & Friday seem to get the biggest day of week boost as they're processing the big lump of swabs taken Monday & Tuesday.

    This is actually the best week on week case reduction out of the last 3 days.
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,929

    Leon said:

    Reported deaths below 1,000:


    800,000 tests!

    If we can do 800,000 tests in a day we can do 800,000 jabs. C'mon Britain


    This whole pandemic reminds me a bit of World War 2. Britain started off the war in a total shambles, our army in France was ill-equipped and totally out-matched, and we nearly lost them all in Dunkirk. Then the mighty German war machine bombed the shit out of us, and we just cowered in our Nissen huts eating spam fritters.

    But then, slowly, remorselessly, we began to turn things around. Within a couple of years we were churning our airplanes every few seconds, and then we began bombing Germany, relentlessly, in a far harder way than anything they did to us.

    I wonder if wartime Brits looked at the daily bombing stats over Germany in 1944 with the same relish we view the daily vaccine stats.

    We just gotta hope the vaccine doesn't have a V2 ready to roll out of Peenemunde
    Its a shame you can't vaccinate people with COVID....just jab'em while you test them would be much easier.
    You'd quickly create excessive edemand on test centres :D
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    UK vaccinations

    image
    image
    image
    image
  • Options
    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    I ordered a thing from a UK company for UK delivery early last week. Just been told the item is sitting in customs as it was originally sourced from the EU.

    Brexit sucks

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1393462/brexit-news-cadbury-plant-germany-uk-bournville-dairy-milk-plant-uk-economy
    While the move will create no new jobs,
    I am interested how you can make 125 million more chocolate bars and not need a single extra employee.
    People are always saying we need to improve productivity well there it is
    I can certainly believe with huge increase in automation the extra numbers required aren't going to be the 1000s and 1000s back in the day you would need. But you still need bodies to shift all the raw materials in, the product out.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,787
    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    eek said:

    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    Their national dish is deep fried mars bars - how more unhealthy could it be?
    It's not. It's the national dish of English tyourists in Sxcotland. Not quite the same thing.
    What can I sneer at then? (Its the only reason I go anywhere)
    The Golden Jobbie.

    But I wouldn't encourage you to travel to Scotland yet. Miserable weather just now and you might catch something on the train.
  • Options
    GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,079
    edited February 2021
    Fishing said:

    Yorkcity said:

    Just read the the BoE has kept interest rates at 0.1%.but as warned negative rates are coming.
    What effect will negative rates have ?

    What SHOULD happen is that the economy should be restored to health through a construction boom, as their prices rise and people find it cheap to borrow to build them. That's what happened in the mid-1930s in the Midlands and southern England and it's why so much of our housing stock dates from those few years.

    But that doesn't happen these days, because it is so difficult to build houses anywhere people might actually want to live.

    So what happens instead is that people make money trading already existing houses and other assets (like cryptocurrencies and other shit) as their prices boom. Does nothing for bona fide economic activity, but makes speculators a fortune.
    A lot of people don't trust new houses. Although I did buy a new house I would be wary of doing it again. I think my current view is that I'm supportive of less planning controls if its combined with better consumer protection in regards to buying said new homes.

    The government has scrapped their proposed planning reforms haven't they?
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,427
    Leon said:

    UK R

    from case data

    image
    image

    from hospitalisations

    image

    R is proving very stubborn?
    I think this is the R you get with the current lockdown + current versions of the virus.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,237
    edited February 2021
    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    What primary school lit with the SNP logo? If it is the one that came up a couple of days ago, I hadf a look at that tweet - no indication of any provenance other than it was being used in Scotland, which could mean maybe one teacher in one school which could have been under a Tory/Unionist council for all we know. No indication of class, subject, age, etc. No provision of the other material, which could have had all the info about the Labour Party (and LDs) in the introductory panel for instance.

    Edit: and crap graphics, made me think it was done as a one off by some teacher who was using that software to convert photos into cartoons. Of course Mr Dewar looked worse than Ms Sturgeon. He had a much mor elined face. Even the captions looked like someone trying to fit too much into set word counts.
    You're wrong

    https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/schools-family/1941916/school-lessons-featuring-snp-logo-and-independence-campaign-politically-biased/


    "We recognise that including the SNP logo in this resource and not including the political party of Donald Dewar was not consistent and so we have now amended this.”

    Helen Fulson, Twinkl Educational Publishing"
    Ah thanks - that wasn't up when I looked. In other words, just poorly done stuff. Silly to have put the badge in, I agree. No indication of actual political bias, unless being a female SNP First Minister is illegitimate in itself. And materials bought and used .by a Unionist council ("A coalition administration was formed at the statutory meeting of Angus Council on 16 May 2017, which currently co"mprises six Independents, eight Conservatives and Unionists, and one Lib Dem. Cllr David Fairweather is Leader of the Council.") ['Independent' usually means Tory pretending not to be Tory in Scottish rural-ish areas.)

    They do have masks of Boris Johnson as well, too, you do realise.
    Yes yes yes, nothing to see here, just political indoctrination of kids, look, a fecking tartan squirrel
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,462
    DavidL said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    I confess that I was bewildered by the Jury decision at the time and called it wrong. The noises off in the Faculty pointed towards a conviction too. But it does appear that the Jury got the impression that this was some sort of conspiracy and more than a bit contrived. Wonderful things juries, an essential protection from tyranny.
    My view was that Salmond was a randy, handsy old lech, and this, whilst not criminal, became enough to be a crime when combined with the fact that the victims were subordinates, working for Salmond with so much to lose (as they felt) for Scottish independence. I thought an unfavourable jury could have convicted.

    Given that for some of the allegations, the person concerned was not even present, I now have more sympathy for the jury's decision. What seems abundantly clear is that, deserved or undeserved, Salmond was the victim of a campaign to destroy his reputation and put him in jail, by his former colleagues.
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,273

    20,634 new covid cases - 915 deaths

    A while since a mid-week number below 1,000?
    Best news is the admissions - 2,375. That's dropping like a stone now (good old lockdown, plus a bit of vaccine).
    20k new cases a bit weird though - thought that was going to be on more of a downward trajectory, but if anything it is bouncing up.
    If people have come forward for mass-testing in the postcodes people were worried about South Africa Covid in, then you would expect an increase in cases due to asymptomatic carriers being detected that were otherwise missed.

    Ireland is expecting a similar bump in cases because they've restarted testing contacts again.
  • Options
    FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,990

    20,634 new covid cases - 915 deaths

    A while since a mid-week number below 1,000?
    Best news is the admissions - 2,375. That's dropping like a stone now (good old lockdown, plus a bit of vaccine).
    20k new cases a bit weird though - thought that was going to be on more of a downward trajectory, but if anything it is bouncing up.
    Most new cases are in the age 25-64 range. Maybe new cases won’t fall as quickly as we think, but hospital admissions fall more quickly, as the oldies get vaccinated.
  • Options
    FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    Pagan2 said:

    Floater said:

    Had a mobile repair man around to look at my wife's car

    Something about him seems off

    Google his name

    He's been done for fraud more than once

    Ask him if if he is this person

    He says yes

    "I think we are done here" says I

    The internet can be very useful - even beyond this site :smiley:

    Till he goes and complains under the "right to be forgotten rules" that the eu brought in and we havent repealed unless I missed it
    In one instance he was actually out on bail..........
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,929

    Fishing said:

    Yorkcity said:

    Just read the the BoE has kept interest rates at 0.1%.but as warned negative rates are coming.
    What effect will negative rates have ?

    What SHOULD happen is that the economy should be restored to health through a construction boom, as their prices rise and people find it cheap to borrow to build them. That's what happened in the mid-1930s in the Midlands and southern England and it's why so much of our housing stock dates from those few years.

    But that doesn't happen these days, because it is so difficult to build houses anywhere people might actually want to live.

    So what happens instead is that people make money trading already existing houses and other assets (like cryptocurrencies and other shit) as their prices boom. Does nothing for bona fide economic activity, but makes speculators a fortune.
    A lot of people don't trust new houses. Although I did buy a new house I would be wary of doing it again. I think my current view is that I'm supportive of less planning controls if its combined with better consumer protection in regards to buying said new homes.

    The government has scrapped their proposed planning reforms haven't they?
    Every house is a new house at some point, but it's become a synonym for a Persimmon shitbox
  • Options
    pingping Posts: 3,731
    Does anyone have a solution to boris’s severe NornIron difficulty.

    Is there a solution that can please everyone?

    Just askin’
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202

    20,634 new covid cases - 915 deaths

    A while since a mid-week number below 1,000?
    Best news is the admissions - 2,375. That's dropping like a stone now (good old lockdown, plus a bit of vaccine).
    20k new cases a bit weird though - thought that was going to be on more of a downward trajectory, but if anything it is bouncing up.
    Stick to the average (7 days) - it helps to smooth out the daily fluctuations. And don't try to over- interpret, follow the trend.
  • Options
    SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,625
    Leon said:

    UK R

    from case data

    image
    image

    from hospitalisations

    image

    R is proving very stubborn?
    Indicated no real vaccination impact just yet.
  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,786
    edited February 2021

    What is the problem that negative rates is trying to solve?

    It has the whiff of economic collapse around it. If the intention is to get me to spend my savings by taking a cut of them away from me every month then I think it's misguided. My natural inclination would be to conclude that the economy is in so much trouble that I should save more, but keep it in cash in a safe, or abroad, or somewhere other than a bank deposit anyway.

    This is an excellent post.

    The problem is a stagnation in the economies of the west.

    It does (as you say) have a whiff of death.

    The real problem though is that economics as a science isn't broken, but rather it's never got started. Nobody has a clue. Admittedly there are some small-scale correlations which can be vaguely counted upon.

    Economics is roughly like alchemy currently.
  • Options
    GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,079
    Pulpstar said:

    Fishing said:

    Yorkcity said:

    Just read the the BoE has kept interest rates at 0.1%.but as warned negative rates are coming.
    What effect will negative rates have ?

    What SHOULD happen is that the economy should be restored to health through a construction boom, as their prices rise and people find it cheap to borrow to build them. That's what happened in the mid-1930s in the Midlands and southern England and it's why so much of our housing stock dates from those few years.

    But that doesn't happen these days, because it is so difficult to build houses anywhere people might actually want to live.

    So what happens instead is that people make money trading already existing houses and other assets (like cryptocurrencies and other shit) as their prices boom. Does nothing for bona fide economic activity, but makes speculators a fortune.
    A lot of people don't trust new houses. Although I did buy a new house I would be wary of doing it again. I think my current view is that I'm supportive of less planning controls if its combined with better consumer protection in regards to buying said new homes.

    The government has scrapped their proposed planning reforms haven't they?
    Every house is a new house at some point, but it's become a synonym for a Persimmon shitbox
    Ah. In fact my tiny piece of England is a Bellway shitbox. :)
  • Options
    ping said:

    Does anyone have a solution to boris’s severe NornIron difficulty.

    Is there a solution that can please everyone?

    Just askin’

    I have a solution, I shall be publishing it on Sunday.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,787
    edited February 2021
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I don't understand any of this. To me it just looks screamingly corrupt. Day after day this stuff gets murkier and murkier.

    And yet they get away with it. Or am I, as a non Scottish stone sex-toy craftsman, missing some crucial aspect which makes it all OK?

    No you're not. It is more and more like something from the eastern bloc before the wall came down.

    Complaints made under a procedure for Former Ministers which did not even exist when the complaint was made
    Politicians and party hacks asking the police what evidence they needed so it can be "provided"
    Pressure being applied to the police to charge
    Discussions between the Scottish government and Crown Office on the most efficacious way to get a conviction
    Meetings "forgotten" and off the record discussions
    The resistance of the judicial review in the hope that criminal proceedings would "supersede" it to the point that responsible counsel threatened to withdraw at a cost to the Scottish government of over £500k.

    Don't get me wrong, I am still of the view that Salmond was seriously fortunate to get the result that he did but if we go on like this we will have Putin taking notes.
    My viewpoint is that Salmond is as dodgy as f*** with incredibly wandering hands but sadly not blatant enough for a court to be able to deal with it.
    Whether Salmond is a sex pest or not (seems very likely he is, but perhaps not criminally so) is now a second order issue.

    The primary point is that the Scottish government apparently and illegally conspired to get him arrested, tried to make sure he was convicted, got rumbled when Salmond was acquitted. And yet now the same government is perverting the course of the inquiry set up to see if the government did anything wrong.


    As David says, it is the kind of thing you see in one party states.

    Add that to the primary school literature with the SNP logo?

    Scotland is in a very unhealthy place.
    What primary school lit with the SNP logo? If it is the one that came up a couple of days ago, I hadf a look at that tweet - no indication of any provenance other than it was being used in Scotland, which could mean maybe one teacher in one school which could have been under a Tory/Unionist council for all we know. No indication of class, subject, age, etc. No provision of the other material, which could have had all the info about the Labour Party (and LDs) in the introductory panel for instance.

    Edit: and crap graphics, made me think it was done as a one off by some teacher who was using that software to convert photos into cartoons. Of course Mr Dewar looked worse than Ms Sturgeon. He had a much mor elined face. Even the captions looked like someone trying to fit too much into set word counts.
    You're wrong

    https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/schools-family/1941916/school-lessons-featuring-snp-logo-and-independence-campaign-politically-biased/


    "We recognise that including the SNP logo in this resource and not including the political party of Donald Dewar was not consistent and so we have now amended this.”

    Helen Fulson, Twinkl Educational Publishing"
    Ah thanks - that wasn't up when I looked. In other words, just poorly done stuff. Silly to have put the badge in, I agree. No indication of actual political bias, unless being a female SNP First Minister is illegitimate in itself. And materials bought and used .by a Unionist council ("A coalition administration was formed at the statutory meeting of Angus Council on 16 May 2017, which currently co"mprises six Independents, eight Conservatives and Unionists, and one Lib Dem. Cllr David Fairweather is Leader of the Council.") ['Independent' usually means Tory pretending not to be Tory in Scottish rural-ish areas.)

    They do have masks of Boris Johnson as well, too, you do realise.
    Yes yes yes, nothing to see here, just political indoctrination of kids, look, a fecking tartan squirrel
    What's actually surprising is nobody spotted those before till people like the former head of the Northumberland Party got you all aerated about it. Dozens of teachers and heads of department myst have used them without complaint, and that is a Unionist council.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,285
    edited February 2021
    After yesterday’s PMQs theatre, Labour reluctantly admitted Starmer had called for UK membership of the European Medicines Agency post-Brexit. Guido can reveal Starmer went further than merely talking the talk – he voted for an amendment in 2018 that would have seen the UK bound into EMA membership. The amendment in question was New Clause 17 to the 2018 Trade Bill, which read:

    “It shall be the objective of an appropriate authority to take all necessary steps to implement an international trade agreement, which enables the UK to fully participate after exit day in the European medicines regulatory network partnership between the European Union, European Economic Area and the European Medicines Agency.”

    During the epic May-era parliamentary battle, Starmer, along with 240 Labour MPs, two sitting Tories and others – voted for this, trying to ensure the UK made it a negotiating objective “to participate in the European medicines regulatory network partnership between the EU, EEA and the European Medicines Agency”. At the time proclaiming this would ensure patients continue “to have access to high-quality, effective and safe pharmaceutical and medical products, fully aligned with the member states of the EU and EEA.” Keir might be be hoping we have forgotten, Guido is not convinced his famously forensic legal brain would have really forgotten...

    https://order-order.com/2021/02/04/starmer-voted-to-keep-uk-in-the-ema/

    This story feels very much like a #10 sting and something they were extremely bad at all of last year.

    They have dug out a specific and topical example of where old Remainer Starmer was consistently doing everything possible to keep the UK in the EU....and then helpfully pointed a friendly gossip monger to where to go looking.
  • Options
    FishingFishing Posts: 4,561
    edited February 2021
    Pulpstar said:

    Fishing said:

    Yorkcity said:

    Just read the the BoE has kept interest rates at 0.1%.but as warned negative rates are coming.
    What effect will negative rates have ?

    What SHOULD happen is that the economy should be restored to health through a construction boom, as their prices rise and people find it cheap to borrow to build them. That's what happened in the mid-1930s in the Midlands and southern England and it's why so much of our housing stock dates from those few years.

    But that doesn't happen these days, because it is so difficult to build houses anywhere people might actually want to live.

    So what happens instead is that people make money trading already existing houses and other assets (like cryptocurrencies and other shit) as their prices boom. Does nothing for bona fide economic activity, but makes speculators a fortune.
    A lot of people don't trust new houses. Although I did buy a new house I would be wary of doing it again. I think my current view is that I'm supportive of less planning controls if its combined with better consumer protection in regards to buying said new homes.

    The government has scrapped their proposed planning reforms haven't they?
    Every house is a new house at some point, but it's become a synonym for a Persimmon shitbox
    Yes, and that's yet another unintended consequence of the planning regulations.

    Big builders are the only ones with the money and time to negotiate the planning system and lobby politicians to release land, so the public have to put up with whatever they are given. While in continental Europe, most new houses (60% in France and Germany, 80% in Austria) are self-built, so people can build high-quality properties for themselves. Really, the difference in quality if you look around when you can travel there is absolutely striking.

    The one part of the UK with European levels of self-build - Northern Ireland - is the one part without a huge housing crisis.
  • Options
This discussion has been closed.