Apol’s for quoting Marina Hyde yet again, but she does make me laugh...
‘We do get the occasional glimpse of the prime minister, who was wheeled out this week for a visit to Derby, where we were given yet another opportunity to see Boris Johnson dressed up in a white coat. I think he’s supposed to appear medical and scientific, but only ever succeeds in looking like he’s got a lovely bit of pork cheek he can do you for £3.50.’
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
0.3% refusal wasn't my biggest worry. A lot of residents (way more than 1 in 300) will have illnesses (such as pneumonia) which should exclude them from getting vaccinated.
So what happened to them?
They're excluded from the 30,000 it seems.
It's patently bullshit. There isn't a slightest chance on earth that fewer than 0.3% are medically excluded from being vaccinated yet, let alone counting refusals.
And indeed absences of informed consent, given the prevalence of dementia.
"Britain could be trapped in lockdown cycles for years in fight with Covid variants - but tougher measures for longer now will prevent new vaccine-resistant strains, SAGE scientists warn
Prof Sir Ian Boyd said UK could be stuck in 'control and release for long time' Threw support behind longer lockdown to stop more variants from spawning Several other SAGE scientists came out in favour of extending current curbs"
These sorts of nightmare scenarios might be fringe extremist doom-mongering, but then again they may not. We don't know what nasty tricks this wretched virus has left to pull - that's why so many of us now are so desperate for the clowns who run the country to finally stop dicking about and properly shutter the borders.
The fewer people we have coming in and the more tightly they're controlled, the less the likelihood of a disaster being imported from abroad. This leaves us to vaccinate our way out of trouble at home: once domestic cases are ground down to very low levels then the threat of mutant Covid ruining everything is very much reduced, and our hitherto pitiful test, trace and isolate system might just have some chance of stopping it even if it breaks out.
As it is, the UK is playing Russian roulette with every arrival coming into the country. We're a sitting duck.
Not clear about the rules for Next PM after Johnson. Would that include a Starmer-led Labour Party winning the next GE? If so odds should be much better than 20%.
Not if Boris quits before the election
Indeed so. What I was unsure of is how the bet pays out assuming Johnson and Starmer are both still in place at the next election. If Starmer wins then he's next PM according to the rules? If Johnson wins, what happens? Is the bet still live?
My base case is that both Johnson and Starmer do lead at the next election and that Johnson, as of now, is a bit more likely to win.
Yes, your bet would still be live. This market is unaffected by elections, and is simply who’s the next PM.
A bet placed in late 1979 or 1997 would have been live for a decade, which is worth bearing in mind in this market.
Although interestingly I reckon that Brown would still have been favourite in late '97.
That’s indeed quite probable. Brown and Hague would have been about the only conceivable options at that point.
A long time to leave a short-odds bet running though.
Apol’s for quoting Marina Hyde yet again, but she does make me laugh...
‘We do get the occasional glimpse of the prime minister, who was wheeled out this week for a visit to Derby, where we were given yet another opportunity to see Boris Johnson dressed up in a white coat. I think he’s supposed to appear medical and scientific, but only ever succeeds in looking like he’s got a lovely bit of pork cheek he can do you for £3.50.’
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
0.3% refusal wasn't my biggest worry. A lot of residents (way more than 1 in 300) will have illnesses (such as pneumonia) which should exclude them from getting vaccinated.
So what happened to them?
They're excluded from the 30,000 it seems.
It's patently bullshit. There isn't a slightest chance on earth that fewer than 0.3% are medically excluded from being vaccinated yet, let alone counting refusals.
Is it really bullshit? When I was a manager I was trained to set targets that were SMART - of which the last three are 'achievable, relevant and targeted'. There is no point in including people who aren't vaccinable as a target in the current programme. The correct thing to do is to note them for another time - but right now they cannot be jabbed and don't count.
Oh absolutely it would be SMART to vaccinate those you can but that's not the claim being made. If the claim is 99.7% of eligible residents excluding those who can't be vaccinated or have refused then that would be reasonable. But the claim is being made that it's 99.7% of residents, no exclusions.
That's just not believable. It is not credible and it's not SMART since it's not achievable to target 99.7% of all residents with no exclusions within six weeks.
Is that just what ius in the media sans qualifications, or the press releases, or the primary document? Haven't been looking into it in detail ...
What I think happened is this.
Numbers of nursing homes are relatively invariant. But the number of residents is. Arriving, leaving, dying..... Not to mention temporary residents...
Someone asked - "How many people in nursing homes" Someone replied - "About 30k"
Fifteen copy and pastas later - 30K is the number.
When the result of the vaccination drive came in to just under 30K, someone divided the 2 numbers and thought - "brilliant success". And passed it on to their boss....
And given the fluidity it's an ever changing number. Are you measuring the total number of vaccinations that have been given in a nursing home setting (which will then include those that have since left the nursing home for hospital or the cemetery); or the total number of people currently in a nursing home who have been vaccinated (in which case you need to include Bob who got the Vaccine in hospital last Tuesday and is now a nursing home resident); or any one of a number of slightly different variants... It's pointless trying to compare these sorts of things with an accuracy much greater than 'everyone was offered, the vast majority have accepted'
Not clear about the rules for Next PM after Johnson. Would that include a Starmer-led Labour Party winning the next GE? If so odds should be much better than 20%.
Not if Boris quits before the election
Indeed so. What I was unsure of is how the bet pays out assuming Johnson and Starmer are both still in place at the next election. If Starmer wins then he's next PM according to the rules? If Johnson wins, what happens? Is the bet still live?
My base case is that both Johnson and Starmer do lead at the next election and that Johnson, as of now, is a bit more likely to win.
Yes, your bet would still be live. This market is unaffected by elections, and is simply who’s the next PM.
A bet placed in late 1979 or 1997 would have been live for a decade, which is worth bearing in mind in this market.
Although interestingly I reckon that Brown would still have been favourite in late '97.
That’s indeed quite probable. Brown and Hague would have been about the only conceivable options at that point.
A long time to leave a short-odds bet running though.
Yeah, it's probably a nice example of a short-odds bet where the favourite remains favourite throughout and wins - but the (unknown at the start) length of the bet makes it a loser in terms of time-value of money.
It would appear that Rishi Sunak still reigns supreme as the nation's favourite politician, if you think there's any real meaning to these kinds of polls. Starmer also earns a net positive rating, and Hancock has almost reached the stratospheric heights of zero. The latter is probably a product of the hugely positive attitudes displayed toward the vaccine rollout.
Dems opening argument is that if you can't impeach a retired president, they would be free to commit an impeachable offence in their last few months, which cannot be right or constitutional.
Not clear about the rules for Next PM after Johnson. Would that include a Starmer-led Labour Party winning the next GE? If so odds should be much better than 20%.
Not if Boris quits before the election
Indeed so. What I was unsure of is how the bet pays out assuming Johnson and Starmer are both still in place at the next election. If Starmer wins then he's next PM according to the rules? If Johnson wins, what happens? Is the bet still live?
My base case is that both Johnson and Starmer do lead at the next election and that Johnson, as of now, is a bit more likely to win.
Yes, your bet would still be live. This market is unaffected by elections, and is simply who’s the next PM.
A bet placed in late 1979 or 1997 would have been live for a decade, which is worth bearing in mind in this market.
Although interestingly I reckon that Brown would still have been favourite in late '97.
That’s indeed quite probable. Brown and Hague would have been about the only conceivable options at that point.
A long time to leave a short-odds bet running though.
Yeah, it's probably a nice example of a short-odds bet where the favourite remains favourite throughout and wins - but the (unknown at the start) length of the bet makes it a loser in terms of time-value of money.
Yes, a great example. He’d likely have been odds-on favourite for most of that decade, and won eventually, but it would be a poor bet purely because of the time element.
As of now I expect the EU to reject Data Adequacy for the UK. The UK had a reputation of gilding the lily on EU regulations as a member. That wasn't the case with data protection, where the UK was barely compliant. As an outsider the UK will be held to a higher standard than as a member.
This will be a big, big problem for UK businesses. The UK recently published a Data Strategy that waffled somewhat on "Brexit opportunities" but didn't have any Plan B to an EU Data Adequacy decision.
"Britain could be trapped in lockdown cycles for years in fight with Covid variants - but tougher measures for longer now will prevent new vaccine-resistant strains, SAGE scientists warn
Prof Sir Ian Boyd said UK could be stuck in 'control and release for long time' Threw support behind longer lockdown to stop more variants from spawning Several other SAGE scientists came out in favour of extending current curbs"
These sorts of nightmare scenarios might be fringe extremist doom-mongering, but then again they may not. We don't know what nasty tricks this wretched virus has left to pull - that's why so many of us now are so desperate for the clowns who run the country to finally stop dicking about and properly shutter the borders.
The fewer people we have coming in and the more tightly they're controlled, the less the likelihood of a disaster being imported from abroad. This leaves us to vaccinate our way out of trouble at home: once domestic cases are ground down to very low levels then the threat of mutant Covid ruining everything is very much reduced, and our hitherto pitiful test, trace and isolate system might just have some chance of stopping it even if it breaks out.
As it is, the UK is playing Russian roulette with every arrival coming into the country. We're a sitting duck.
It's already here. And it's already rampant in central Europe. The SA Bug is a Reality.
I think we're moderately fucked. For the rest of the year at least. Lockdown or quasi lockdown until late Autumn, meanwhile praying that no more variants come along. We should still escape this year - but this is edgy, now.
Extreme Worst Case Scenario: new variants keep coming along, too fast for us to stall, and we are stuck in this tail-chasing cycle for years, and human society is irretrievably diminished for decades: easy travel never returns, borders go up everywhere, globalisation goes into sharp reverse, a few minor wars break out. Might be good for the planet tho. Gaia has her revenge.
Mega Extreme worst case scenario just for the lolz: it evolves into something like Avian flu, with 60% fatality and huge infectivity. A new Black Death.
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
That number really is suspicious. 29908/0.997 = 29,998. Almost exactly the 30,000 population estimate given in the document on the Scottish government website.
Hopefully today or tomorrow was/will be our last day ever with more than 1,000 Covid deaths in a 24hr period
Positive tests in the past seven days were at just 2.6% of the total tests undertaken. Getting harder to find....
Our test capability is very good, only Denmark in the EU is ahead of us on that aspect. Denmark probably wishes it had gone with its own vaccine procurement scheme tbh.
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
I'd agree with your conclusions. I'm astonished that you describe Brown as a heavyweight - unless you mean useless great lump. I suspect he revises tying his shoelaces.
For Starmer to become next PM he needs to survive 3 more years, he needs Boris to do so too, and then he needs to win an election. There are of course other routes, but 20% chance is at best right and probably too big.
I actually disagree with OGH here. Moreover, I'm a layer of Starmer as next PM at current prices.
Labour's problems go far deeper than Corbyn, and being "Not Corbyn" is an insufficient answer to them for the reasons I explored on Sunday.
Corbyn was a symptom as well as a cause; a denial of the reasons Labour won office, and then lost it, in the first place. The bigger problem is the deeply-tarnished Labour brand, what it stands for, what it's learnt, and what it will do in office. Corbyn just made it much worse, and added some fantastical delusions into the mix as well.
Starmer is personally likeable and has drawn-level with Johnson as "Best PM" in the past; the trouble is that he's been shrinking in those leads and there's a huge pool of undecideds on him, now, that are starting to firm up.
He won't be Corbyn Mark II, but he could easily become Miliband Mark II.
Personally I don't care all that much about the origins of the virus. But what the **** were the WHO doing giving the press conference in China?
I don't either, but the reasons given for ruling out lab escape are so insultingly thin and stupid that the whole thing is obviously just a Don't let's be beastly to the Chinese exercise. So might as well go the whole hog and say so on their territory.
Dems now quoting English history - that former government officials could brought to trial, citing case of Warren Hastings, former governor general of Benghal - as precedent : the case cited "as a model for us" by one of the authors of the US constitution
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
Dems now quoting English history - that former government officials could brought to trial, citing case of Warren Hastings, former governor general of Benghal - as precedent
Didn't that take years and he was acquitted? Not the most favourable precedent.
But the idea you can get away with impeachable actions in your last period in office is really odd, if you accept impeachment as a proccess at all.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
Well fill your boots. Personally I think that Labour under SKS has leaped ahead of the Monster Raving Loony Party, probably stepped over the dead body of the odd Lib Dem and stands as a just about ready to take over in the event of a total Tory meltdown. That's not impossible but I think 20% is not that exciting even if you ignore the high risk that Boris may have been replaced by then (making the bet a loser), especially in a melt down scenario.
What we really have to hope for is these pre-infect / early post-infection sprays work and a much more effective treatment is found to work from those things currently being trialled.
AFAIK, these approaches have nothing to do with targeting the spike protein, so are unaffected by the current mutations.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
I'd agree with your conclusions. I'm astonished that you describe Brown as a heavyweight - unless you mean useless great lump. I suspect he revises tying his shoelaces.
For Starmer to become next PM he needs to survive 3 more years, he needs Boris to do so too, and then he needs to win an election. There are of course other routes, but 20% chance is at best right and probably too big.
I am not a fan of Brown but in opposition with the prawn cocktail offensive in the City he was a formidable operator and sounded like he knew what he was talking about, even if he was just reading out Ed Balls' scripts. Annaliese Dodds? Just won't do.
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
Actually it could be given the high churn in care homes. It could even be higher.
One factor many don't realise is that many nursing homes operate as a halfway house between the NHS and the Community. Patients are routinely discharged from the NHS into a home for a fortnight, then discharged back home. If each of these residents are counted over the six week period it's entirely possible that over time the quantity of residents is HIGHER than the residents on any individual day.
The same bed could have been occupied three times during a six week period.
The Starmer next PM bet is all about whether you think Johnson goes before the election. If like me you think - you virtually know - he doesn't then Starmer at 20% is great value. It just is.
Dems now quoting English history - that former government officials could brought to trial, citing case of Warren Hastings, former governor general of Benghal - as precedent
Didn't that take years and he was acquitted? Not the most favourable precedent.
But the idea you can get away with impeachable actions in your last period in office is really odd, if you accept impeachment as a proccess at all.
The argument they are establishing today is limited to the question as to whether you can, under the constitution, impeach a former official. Hence the Hastings case, together with the comments about it by the founders, has relevance.
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
Well fill your boots. Personally I think that Labour under SKS has leaped ahead of the Monster Raving Loony Party, probably stepped over the dead body of the odd Lib Dem and stands as a just about ready to take over in the event of a total Tory meltdown. That's not impossible but I think 20% is not that exciting even if you ignore the high risk that Boris may have been replaced by then (making the bet a loser), especially in a melt down scenario.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
The lack of heavyweight support is striking, while the presence of pretty brutal opposition from his own party's left is a force to be reckoned with. No-one will switch to vote Labour by watching Richard Burgon, but a few might switch from Labour.
When your big talkers are the left, and the heavyweights are all on the back benches - and not many of those, it will get noticed.
And Angela Rayner, while she has qualities, is not going to win votes from Tories.
Needless to say Tory voters won't switch to a party with members who regard them as 'Scum' and 'Vermin' and pretends not to understand why rational centrists might vote for them.
he can't win without lots and lots of Tory switchers.
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
My daughters saw her at T in the park some years ago now. All the big bands were there including Coldplay but it was Deborah Harry they kept talking about. Just blew them away.
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
I still have tickets for 5-6 gigs I was supposed to be going to in 2020, which have been rescheduled once or twice already.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
Well fill your boots. Personally I think that Labour under SKS has leaped ahead of the Monster Raving Loony Party, probably stepped over the dead body of the odd Lib Dem and stands as a just about ready to take over in the event of a total Tory meltdown. That's not impossible but I think 20% is not that exciting even if you ignore the high risk that Boris may have been replaced by then (making the bet a loser), especially in a melt down scenario.
P.S. Monster Raving Loony Party? Is that a party run by a man with wild comedic hair, wearing an ill-fitting suit, who salutes like Benny Hill's Fred Scuttle character?
I actually disagree with OGH here. Moreover, I'm a layer of Starmer as next PM at current prices.
Labour's problems go far deeper than Corbyn, and being "Not Corbyn" is an insufficient answer to them for the reasons I explored on Sunday.
Corbyn was a symptom as well as a cause; a denial of the reasons Labour won office, and then lost it, in the first place. The bigger problem is the deeply-tarnished Labour brand, what it stands for, what it's learnt, and what it will do in office. Corbyn just made it much worse, and added some fantastical delusions into the mix as well.
Starmer is personally likeable and has drawn-level with Johnson as "Best PM" in the past; the trouble is that he's been shrinking in those leads and there's a huge pool of undecideds on him, now, that are starting to firm up.
He won't be Corbyn Mark II, but he could easily become Miliband Mark II.
Starmer's mountain is far too high to climb in one go. We're talking overturning an 80 seat majority with a majority of his own. He has a battle on multiple fronts to win back the red-wall whilst also winning the Swindon Norths and Nuneaton's (now with huge Con majorites) whilst simultaneously hanging on to his metropolitan seats. He's no Blair. That is evident - a little too stained with Corbyn dog-dirt, with little or no young pizazz that Blair effortlessly showed.
A hung parliament with SNP support is his worst nightmare for a myriad of reasons, and one which would lead to another election very quickly.
Labour would be best aiming at two pushes. And by the second Labour may have worked out who will need to lead them.
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
Actually it could be given the high churn in care homes. It could even be higher.
One factor many don't realise is that many nursing homes operate as a halfway house between the NHS and the Community. Patients are routinely discharged from the NHS into a home for a fortnight, then discharged back home. If each of these residents are counted over the six week period it's entirely possible that over time the quantity of residents is HIGHER than the residents on any individual day.
The same bed could have been occupied three times during a six week period.
Plus a fairly stunning percentage of residents die within a couple of years of getting there in normal times. Unless they have made an executive decision to vaccinate everyone without asking or getting the written consent of the holders of welfare attorneys for the mentally disabled there is simply no way that they reached such a high percentage of residents vaccinated.
The Starmer next PM bet is all about whether you think Johnson goes before the election. If like me you think - you virtually know - he doesn't then Starmer at 20% is great value. It just is.
He is only value if the voters will look at him and say 'Yes, he is PM material'. They won't. On current information Rishi or Boris would beat him. And if it's Rishi, the bet is lost anyway.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
I disagree he needs to use the best new talent like the shadow home Secretary Nick Thomas Symonds. He does not need to make it Milliband mark 2 which did not win. The public in the main do not care and can hardly name a cabinet member or shadow cabinet member in normal times . As in all GE the main focus is the leader ,he is doing fine especially in a pandemic when the government is able to speak to the public everyday which drowns out any other issues. So it would be a waste of time to announce them. The magic money tree has finally been broken apart as the conservatives have broken this. Which will mean they can not easily make this attack work again. )
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
I still have tickets for 5-6 gigs I was supposed to be going to in 2020, which have been rescheduled once or twice already.
Same. Really am looking forward to seeing New Order.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
I'd agree with your conclusions. I'm astonished that you describe Brown as a heavyweight - unless you mean useless great lump. I suspect he revises tying his shoelaces.
For Starmer to become next PM he needs to survive 3 more years, he needs Boris to do so too, and then he needs to win an election. There are of course other routes, but 20% chance is at best right and probably too big.
I think you're forgetting just how revered Gordon was in his day. In fact there were many, even on the Right, who regarded Tone as merely a kind of warmup act, a brief interlude of slickness before the austere majesty of the Brown epoch could begin. Were his admirers simply deluded or did Brown start to unravel himself? I don't know!
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
My daughters saw her at T in the park some years ago now. All the big bands were there including Coldplay but it was Deborah Harry they kept talking about. Just blew them away.
She can sing.
I'm coming to Glasgow to see her and Shirley Manson.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
Well fill your boots. Personally I think that Labour under SKS has leaped ahead of the Monster Raving Loony Party, probably stepped over the dead body of the odd Lib Dem and stands as a just about ready to take over in the event of a total Tory meltdown. That's not impossible but I think 20% is not that exciting even if you ignore the high risk that Boris may have been replaced by then (making the bet a loser), especially in a melt down scenario.
P.S. Monster Raving Loony Party? Is that a party run by a man with wild comedic hair, wearing an ill-fitting suit, who salutes like Benny Hill's Fred Scuttle character?
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
0.3% refusal wasn't my biggest worry. A lot of residents (way more than 1 in 300) will have illnesses (such as pneumonia) which should exclude them from getting vaccinated.
So what happened to them?
They're excluded from the 30,000 it seems.
It's patently bullshit. There isn't a slightest chance on earth that fewer than 0.3% are medically excluded from being vaccinated yet, let alone counting refusals.
Is it really bullshit? When I was a manager I was trained to set targets that were SMART - of which the last three are 'achievable, relevant and targeted'. There is no point in including people who aren't vaccinable as a target in the current programme. The correct thing to do is to note them for another time - but right now they cannot be jabbed and don't count.
Point of order. Isn't the T timed?
Doi you know, I can't remember. Surely 'timed' came under the specific and measurable bit? But it's much the same thing anyway - a tagret has to be temporal in part.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
Well fill your boots. Personally I think that Labour under SKS has leaped ahead of the Monster Raving Loony Party, probably stepped over the dead body of the odd Lib Dem and stands as a just about ready to take over in the event of a total Tory meltdown. That's not impossible but I think 20% is not that exciting even if you ignore the high risk that Boris may have been replaced by then (making the bet a loser), especially in a melt down scenario.
Excuse me! The Lib Dems are merely resting.
wouldn't voom if you put four million volts through them??
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
My daughters saw her at T in the park some years ago now. All the big bands were there including Coldplay but it was Deborah Harry they kept talking about. Just blew them away.
A big classic pop act is often the surprising hit at these festivals. Glastonbury have seen the likes of Dolly Parton and Kylie Minogue as recent headliners.
You’d never have thought of the crowds as being pop music fans, but everyone knows all the songs and the artists make a huge effort with the stage show.
I reckon 20% on Starmer being next PM is very generous. I'd put it at around 50%, with the proviso that Covid is over as a health issue, though not an economic one.
Corbyn has gone. Brexit is done - the outcome will still be an issue, but not Brexit itself. The far, far left are either leaving Labour or being marginalised. Because of Covid, neither Starmer nor his team have had a decent hearing yet on anything other than the crisis. Starmer is no fool: policy development is well under way. The Tories' support is flattered by the pandemic and boosted by vaccination; it's not that deep, and once the health crisis is over the nation will be less inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Tories have been in power a long time. And if the Shadow Cabinet has weaknesses, these are no greater, and I would suggest less, than those in the actual Cabinet. Oh, and people like JRM wittering on about 'happy fish' will lose the Tories votes. Oh, and Boris's appeal will wear a bit thin by 2024.
I'm almost persuading myself that Starmer has a better than evens chance of next PM.
It sounds like you are pricing Starmers chance of being PM after the next GE, or even his chance of being PM after the next GE vs B Johnson. This is a huge error as the market is next PM.
If Starmer does spectacularly well, Johnson will likely be replaced by another Tory, well before the election and the bet loses. If Starmer does moderately well, he will struggle with FPTP.
To win the bet you have either Starmer hits the sweet spot where Johnson can hang on and Starmer can just deny the Tories a majority, or that he does really well only in the campaign itself, once it is too late for the Tories to switch leaders.
20% is about right, if anything a lay for the above reasons.
The Tories will go into the next election with the leader best placed to win. Simple as that.
Hard to say at this stage whether that will still be Boris, or if he has had enough/is shown the door by the Men in Grey Suits, to be replaced by Rishi, Hancock or Liz Truss.
I actually disagree with OGH here. Moreover, I'm a layer of Starmer as next PM at current prices.
Labour's problems go far deeper than Corbyn, and being "Not Corbyn" is an insufficient answer to them for the reasons I explored on Sunday.
Corbyn was a symptom as well as a cause; a denial of the reasons Labour won office, and then lost it, in the first place. The bigger problem is the deeply-tarnished Labour brand, what it stands for, what it's learnt, and what it will do in office. Corbyn just made it much worse, and added some fantastical delusions into the mix as well.
Starmer is personally likeable and has drawn-level with Johnson as "Best PM" in the past; the trouble is that he's been shrinking in those leads and there's a huge pool of undecideds on him, now, that are starting to firm up.
He won't be Corbyn Mark II, but he could easily become Miliband Mark II.
Starmer's mountain is far too high to climb in one go. We're talking overturning an 80 seat majority with a majority of his own. He has a battle on multiple fronts to win back the red-wall whilst also winning the Swindon Norths and Nuneaton's (now with huge Con majorites) whilst simultaneously hanging on to his metropolitan seats. He's no Blair. That is evident - a little too stained with Corbyn dog-dirt, with little or no young pizazz that Blair effortlessly showed.
A hung parliament with SNP support is his worst nightmare for a myriad of reasons, and one which would lead to another election very quickly.
Labour would be best aiming at two pushes. And by the second Labour may have worked out who will need to lead them.
I'm really not sure about this. The electorate is both divided and very volatile these days and it doesn't really work on a bite and hold approach. If it goes for Labour it will go in a big way and I think he could get there (or a good hundred gains) in one go.
If it doesn't, he will just get 30-40 gains max, and more or less stay there as Labour have since 2010. The risk is that a nutjob takes over from Starmer, and they then go backwards again.
What I don't think will happen is something in between in a two-stage approach. Labour either breaks out, or it doesn't.
I actually disagree with OGH here. Moreover, I'm a layer of Starmer as next PM at current prices.
Labour's problems go far deeper than Corbyn, and being "Not Corbyn" is an insufficient answer to them for the reasons I explored on Sunday.
Corbyn was a symptom as well as a cause; a denial of the reasons Labour won office, and then lost it, in the first place. The bigger problem is the deeply-tarnished Labour brand, what it stands for, what it's learnt, and what it will do in office. Corbyn just made it much worse, and added some fantastical delusions into the mix as well.
Starmer is personally likeable and has drawn-level with Johnson as "Best PM" in the past; the trouble is that he's been shrinking in those leads and there's a huge pool of undecideds on him, now, that are starting to firm up.
He won't be Corbyn Mark II, but he could easily become Miliband Mark II.
Starmer's mountain is far too high to climb in one go. We're talking overturning an 80 seat majority with a majority of his own. He has a battle on multiple fronts to win back the red-wall whilst also winning the Swindon Norths and Nuneaton's (now with huge Con majorites) whilst simultaneously hanging on to his metropolitan seats. He's no Blair. That is evident - a little too stained with Corbyn dog-dirt, with little or no young pizazz that Blair effortlessly showed.
A hung parliament with SNP support is his worst nightmare for a myriad of reasons, and one which would lead to another election very quickly.
Labour would be best aiming at two pushes. And by the second Labour may have worked out who will need to lead them.
Try naming 10 heavyweights to form the core of a Labour cabinet in government. Or even 5. Most people can't name the shadow foreign secretary or home secretary. There are lots more biggish beasts among the left and the 'given up' moderates than there are from the future cabinet possibles.
BTW a hung parliament with SNP is likely his best hope. A paradox: the more likely it is, the more the English centre will vote to stop it (ie Tory). Another paradox: SKS would have to offer a 2nd referendum, and hope the SNP lose. It's not a voter friendly position.
Personally I don't care all that much about the origins of the virus. But what the **** were the WHO doing giving the press conference in China?
I don't either, but the reasons given for ruling out lab escape are so insultingly thin and stupid that the whole thing is obviously just a Don't let's be beastly to the Chinese exercise. So might as well go the whole hog and say so on their territory.
I think Biden is minded to come back to the WHO as proof that the insanity of Trump has ended and the US is once again a reliable partner but farcical rubbish like this won't make his job any easier.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
Well fill your boots. Personally I think that Labour under SKS has leaped ahead of the Monster Raving Loony Party, probably stepped over the dead body of the odd Lib Dem and stands as a just about ready to take over in the event of a total Tory meltdown. That's not impossible but I think 20% is not that exciting even if you ignore the high risk that Boris may have been replaced by then (making the bet a loser), especially in a melt down scenario.
Excuse me! The Lib Dems are merely resting.
wouldn't voom if you put four million volts through them??
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
Actually it could be given the high churn in care homes. It could even be higher.
One factor many don't realise is that many nursing homes operate as a halfway house between the NHS and the Community. Patients are routinely discharged from the NHS into a home for a fortnight, then discharged back home. If each of these residents are counted over the six week period it's entirely possible that over time the quantity of residents is HIGHER than the residents on any individual day.
The same bed could have been occupied three times during a six week period.
Dems argue that if being out of office exempted you from the sanction of disqualification from future office, a president about to impeached could resign immediately before the verdict was about to be passed, to evade sanction.
He won't be Corbyn Mark II, but he could easily become Miliband Mark II.
The nearest Labour came to power was 2017 not 2015 so being EICIPM means Lab do better than 2019 but worse than 2017
Yes, this fantasy is your biggest problem.
The 2017GE is absolutely the worst thing to have ever happened to Labour as it confirmed all the whackiest delusions out there.
And it was really all about how unbelievably crap May was.
It was a unique set of circumstances. It was a snap election. We had blind polling. We had people using Labour a vehicle to stop Brexit. Theresa May was found out during the campaign, and yet Corbyn hadn't been yet, and many wanted to inhibit her.
What Labour got right was a pitch to end austerity and a strong retail offer. And the Tories have now learnt that lesson and captured that.
And don't forget that even in GE2017 Labour still lost by a clear margin in votes and seats - it could have been much worse too; the red wall had started to fracture but had yet to crumble.
Rather than clinging onto that dream of what could have been they should look to GE2019, which is a true test of where that approach leads and how the political landscape has changed since.
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
My daughters saw her at T in the park some years ago now. All the big bands were there including Coldplay but it was Deborah Harry they kept talking about. Just blew them away.
She can sing.
I'm coming to Glasgow to see her and Shirley Manson.
And once upon a time, the right time for me, she was the sexiest looking woman in the world.
True story, she was asked about the posters and whether it concerned her that she had, erm, helped so many teenage boys through difficult times. Not at all, she explained. Even when Blondie was briefly the largest selling band in the world she was still making more money off the posters.
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
I still have tickets for 5-6 gigs I was supposed to be going to in 2020, which have been rescheduled once or twice already.
Same. Really am looking forward to seeing New Order.
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
0.3% refusal wasn't my biggest worry. A lot of residents (way more than 1 in 300) will have illnesses (such as pneumonia) which should exclude them from getting vaccinated.
So what happened to them?
They're excluded from the 30,000 it seems.
It's patently bullshit. There isn't a slightest chance on earth that fewer than 0.3% are medically excluded from being vaccinated yet, let alone counting refusals.
Is it really bullshit? When I was a manager I was trained to set targets that were SMART - of which the last three are 'achievable, relevant and targeted'. There is no point in including people who aren't vaccinable as a target in the current programme. The correct thing to do is to note them for another time - but right now they cannot be jabbed and don't count.
Point of order. Isn't the T timed?
Doi you know, I can't remember. Surely 'timed' came under the specific and measurable bit? But it's much the same thing anyway - a tagret has to be temporal in part.
It was hammered into me in my PGCE. Which was 20 years ago. I suppose it could be targeted in other situations. In education it ain't much use if it's targeted outwith your students.
Personally I don't care all that much about the origins of the virus. But what the **** were the WHO doing giving the press conference in China?
I don't either, but the reasons given for ruling out lab escape are so insultingly thin and stupid that the whole thing is obviously just a Don't let's be beastly to the Chinese exercise. So might as well go the whole hog and say so on their territory.
I think Biden is minded to come back to the WHO as proof that the insanity of Trump has ended and the US is once again a reliable partner but farcical rubbish like this won't make his job any easier.
I've been searching but I can't find ANY actual new evidence from WHO about the lab-origin theory. Just the bald assertion that they've decided it is "very unlikely"
What is their argument?
EDIT: Jesus, I found it
"Asked why, WHO's Embarek said accidental releases are extremely rare and that the team’s review of the Wuhan institute’s lab operations indicated it would be hard for anything to escape from it."
I actually disagree with OGH here. Moreover, I'm a layer of Starmer as next PM at current prices.
Labour's problems go far deeper than Corbyn, and being "Not Corbyn" is an insufficient answer to them for the reasons I explored on Sunday.
Corbyn was a symptom as well as a cause; a denial of the reasons Labour won office, and then lost it, in the first place. The bigger problem is the deeply-tarnished Labour brand, what it stands for, what it's learnt, and what it will do in office. Corbyn just made it much worse, and added some fantastical delusions into the mix as well.
Starmer is personally likeable and has drawn-level with Johnson as "Best PM" in the past; the trouble is that he's been shrinking in those leads and there's a huge pool of undecideds on him, now, that are starting to firm up.
He won't be Corbyn Mark II, but he could easily become Miliband Mark II.
Starmer's mountain is far too high to climb in one go. We're talking overturning an 80 seat majority with a majority of his own. He has a battle on multiple fronts to win back the red-wall whilst also winning the Swindon Norths and Nuneaton's (now with huge Con majorites) whilst simultaneously hanging on to his metropolitan seats. He's no Blair. That is evident - a little too stained with Corbyn dog-dirt, with little or no young pizazz that Blair effortlessly showed.
A hung parliament with SNP support is his worst nightmare for a myriad of reasons, and one which would lead to another election very quickly.
Labour would be best aiming at two pushes. And by the second Labour may have worked out who will need to lead them.
I'm really not sure about this. The electorate is both divided and very volatile these days and it doesn't really work on a bite and hold approach. If it goes for Labour it will go in a big way and I think he could get there (or a good hundred gains) in one go.
If it doesn't, he will just get 30-40 gains max, and more or less stay there as Labour have since 2010. The risk is that a nutjob takes over from Starmer, and they then go backwards again.
What I don't think will happen is something in between in a two-stage approach. Labour either breaks out, or it doesn't.
I see your point. Ironically 30 or 40 gains would be preferable to gaining say "only" 70 or 80. There's that dangerous squishy middle ground he needs to avoid to prevent having enough seats to have the PM "discussion" but not having to reply on the SNP (assuming Scotland stays yellow of course) to make it so. He needs enough to use the Lib Dems.
So 30-40 "making progress", 70-80 "Off to Holyrood to kiss Sturgeons hand, shit what do we do now, we're dead meat", 100-110 "Lib-Lab here we go", 120+ "Keep the Red flag flying".
I don't see 120+. 100-110 very difficult unless Cons collapse. Would he really want to be in the 70-80 area??
Personally I don't care all that much about the origins of the virus. But what the **** were the WHO doing giving the press conference in China?
I don't either, but the reasons given for ruling out lab escape are so insultingly thin and stupid that the whole thing is obviously just a Don't let's be beastly to the Chinese exercise. So might as well go the whole hog and say so on their territory.
I think Biden is minded to come back to the WHO as proof that the insanity of Trump has ended and the US is once again a reliable partner but farcical rubbish like this won't make his job any easier.
I've been searching but I can't find ANY actual new evidence from WHO about the lab-origin theory. Just the bald assertion that they've decided it is "very unlikely"
What is their argument?
The Chinese said it didn’t happen, so it didn’t happen.
I reckon 20% on Starmer being next PM is very generous. I'd put it at around 50%, with the proviso that Covid is over as a health issue, though not an economic one.
Corbyn has gone. Brexit is done - the outcome will still be an issue, but not Brexit itself. The far, far left are either leaving Labour or being marginalised. Because of Covid, neither Starmer nor his team have had a decent hearing yet on anything other than the crisis. Starmer is no fool: policy development is well under way. The Tories' support is flattered by the pandemic and boosted by vaccination; it's not that deep, and once the health crisis is over the nation will be less inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Tories have been in power a long time. And if the Shadow Cabinet has weaknesses, these are no greater, and I would suggest less, than those in the actual Cabinet. Oh, and people like JRM wittering on about 'happy fish' will lose the Tories votes. Oh, and Boris's appeal will wear a bit thin by 2024.
I'm almost persuading myself that Starmer has a better than evens chance of next PM.
It sounds like you are pricing Starmers chance of being PM after the next GE, or even his chance of being PM after the next GE vs B Johnson. This is a huge error as the market is next PM.
If Starmer does spectacularly well, Johnson will likely be replaced by another Tory, well before the election and the bet loses. If Starmer does moderately well, he will struggle with FPTP.
To win the bet you have either Starmer hits the sweet spot where Johnson can hang on and Starmer can just deny the Tories a majority, or that he does really well only in the campaign itself, once it is too late for the Tories to switch leaders.
20% is about right, if anything a lay for the above reasons.
The Tories will go into the next election with the leader best placed to win. Simple as that.
Hard to say at this stage whether that will still be Boris, or if he has had enough/is shown the door by the Men in Grey Suits, to be replaced by Rishi, Hancock or Liz Truss.
Hancock v SKS would be the borathon of the century. There are some dream fights between wannabe PMs though - Rishi v Thornberry, Patel v Burgon, JRM v Pidcock, JRM v Eagle (A), Boris v Ian Lavery.....
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
0.3% refusal wasn't my biggest worry. A lot of residents (way more than 1 in 300) will have illnesses (such as pneumonia) which should exclude them from getting vaccinated.
So what happened to them?
They're excluded from the 30,000 it seems.
It's patently bullshit. There isn't a slightest chance on earth that fewer than 0.3% are medically excluded from being vaccinated yet, let alone counting refusals.
Is it really bullshit? When I was a manager I was trained to set targets that were SMART - of which the last three are 'achievable, relevant and targeted'. There is no point in including people who aren't vaccinable as a target in the current programme. The correct thing to do is to note them for another time - but right now they cannot be jabbed and don't count.
Point of order. Isn't the T timed?
Doi you know, I can't remember. Surely 'timed' came under the specific and measurable bit? But it's much the same thing anyway - a tagret has to be temporal in part.
It was hammered into me in my PGCE. Which was 20 years ago. I suppose it could be targeted in other situations. In education it ain't much use if it's targeted outwith your students.
Just checked. It's the goals or targets that are SMART with the T timely or time-bound. I do wonder about my memory sometimes - but at least the targeting was still there somewhere ...
Apol’s for quoting Marina Hyde yet again, but she does make me laugh...
‘We do get the occasional glimpse of the prime minister, who was wheeled out this week for a visit to Derby, where we were given yet another opportunity to see Boris Johnson dressed up in a white coat. I think he’s supposed to appear medical and scientific, but only ever succeeds in looking like he’s got a lovely bit of pork cheek he can do you for £3.50.’
Personally I don't care all that much about the origins of the virus. But what the **** were the WHO doing giving the press conference in China?
I don't either, but the reasons given for ruling out lab escape are so insultingly thin and stupid that the whole thing is obviously just a Don't let's be beastly to the Chinese exercise. So might as well go the whole hog and say so on their territory.
I think Biden is minded to come back to the WHO as proof that the insanity of Trump has ended and the US is once again a reliable partner but farcical rubbish like this won't make his job any easier.
I've been searching but I can't find ANY actual new evidence from WHO about the lab-origin theory. Just the bald assertion that they've decided it is "very unlikely"
What is their argument?
The Chinese said it didn’t happen, so it didn’t happen.
Oi! It didn't happen SIR. Where's your respect? And what's happened to your internet connection?
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
I disagree he needs to use the best new talent like the shadow home Secretary Nick Thomas Symonds. He does not need to make it Milliband mark 2 which did not win. The public in the main do not care and can hardly name a cabinet member or shadow cabinet member in normal times . As in all GE the main focus is the leader ,he is doing fine especially in a pandemic when the government is able to speak to the public everyday which drowns out any other issues. So it would be a waste of time to announce them. The magic money tree has finally been broken apart as the conservatives have broken this. Which will mean they can not easily make this attack work again. )
For starters Dodds is a wallflower. Why not give Yvette an outing?
I reckon 20% on Starmer being next PM is very generous. I'd put it at around 50%, with the proviso that Covid is over as a health issue, though not an economic one.
Corbyn has gone. Brexit is done - the outcome will still be an issue, but not Brexit itself. The far, far left are either leaving Labour or being marginalised. Because of Covid, neither Starmer nor his team have had a decent hearing yet on anything other than the crisis. Starmer is no fool: policy development is well under way. The Tories' support is flattered by the pandemic and boosted by vaccination; it's not that deep, and once the health crisis is over the nation will be less inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Tories have been in power a long time. And if the Shadow Cabinet has weaknesses, these are no greater, and I would suggest less, than those in the actual Cabinet. Oh, and people like JRM wittering on about 'happy fish' will lose the Tories votes. Oh, and Boris's appeal will wear a bit thin by 2024.
I'm almost persuading myself that Starmer has a better than evens chance of next PM.
It sounds like you are pricing Starmers chance of being PM after the next GE, or even his chance of being PM after the next GE vs B Johnson. This is a huge error as the market is next PM.
If Starmer does spectacularly well, Johnson will likely be replaced by another Tory, well before the election and the bet loses. If Starmer does moderately well, he will struggle with FPTP.
To win the bet you have either Starmer hits the sweet spot where Johnson can hang on and Starmer can just deny the Tories a majority, or that he does really well only in the campaign itself, once it is too late for the Tories to switch leaders.
20% is about right, if anything a lay for the above reasons.
The Tories will go into the next election with the leader best placed to win. Simple as that.
Hard to say at this stage whether that will still be Boris, or if he has had enough/is shown the door by the Men in Grey Suits, to be replaced by Rishi, Hancock or Liz Truss.
Wow! I like your list of political Titans to replace Johnson. Can I add Williamson and Jenrick to your list?
"It has still about the same transmissibility, but it seems that this mutation might enable it to escape immunity to some extent, which means that it's possible it could evade the vaccine."
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
I've got tickets to see Blondie with Garbage as the support act in November 2021.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
My daughters saw her at T in the park some years ago now. All the big bands were there including Coldplay but it was Deborah Harry they kept talking about. Just blew them away.
She can sing.
I'm coming to Glasgow to see her and Shirley Manson.
And once upon a time, the right time for me, she was the sexiest looking woman in the world.
True story, she was asked about the posters and whether it concerned her that she had, erm, helped so many teenage boys through difficult times. Not at all, she explained. Even when Blondie was briefly the largest selling band in the world she was still making more money off the posters.
He won't be Corbyn Mark II, but he could easily become Miliband Mark II.
The nearest Labour came to power was 2017 not 2015 so being EICIPM means Lab do better than 2019 but worse than 2017
Yes, this fantasy is your biggest problem.
The 2017GE is absolutely the worst thing to have ever happened to Labour as it confirmed all the whackiest delusions out there.
And it was really all about how unbelievably crap May was.
It was a unique set of circumstances. It was a snap election. We had blind polling. We had people using Labour a vehicle to stop Brexit. Theresa May was found out during the campaign, and yet Corbyn hadn't been yet, and many wanted to inhibit her.
What Labour got right was a pitch to end austerity and a strong retail offer. And the Tories have now learnt that lesson and captured that.
And don't forget that even in GE2017 Labour still lost by a clear margin in votes and seats - it could have been much worse too; the red wall had started to fracture but had yet to crumble.
Rather than clinging onto that dream of what could have been they should look to GE2019, which is a true test of where that approach leads and how the political landscape has changed since.
Yes, May v Corbyn was embarrassing. Like Trump v Clinton only without the stage management.
The lesson is simple. If Labour could not win against the worst campaign in the world, ever, apparently designed and planned by North Korean robots with a manifesto written by the Monty Python team, with life long Tories turning out with gritted teeth to keep Corbyn out of No 10, they have a real credibility problem.
Starmer is obviously a massive improvement on Corbyn but he has his own problems. He's dull. He has no obvious sense of humour or the ridiculous, he's a bit to worthy and earnest about things that the vast majority really don't care about and he has no obvious vision (or at least he is doing a seriously good job of hiding it if he does). He also hung around with Corbyn for a bit long and tolerated some pretty disgusting behaviour without feeling the need to resign.
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
Mike is right about the odds.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
I disagree he needs to use the best new talent like the shadow home Secretary Nick Thomas Symonds. He does not need to make it Milliband mark 2 which did not win. The public in the main do not care and can hardly name a cabinet member or shadow cabinet member in normal times . As in all GE the main focus is the leader ,he is doing fine especially in a pandemic when the government is able to speak to the public everyday which drowns out any other issues. So it would be a waste of time to announce them. The magic money tree has finally been broken apart as the conservatives have broken this. Which will mean they can not easily make this attack work again. )
For starters Dodds is a wallflower. Why not give Yvette an outing?
If you want the Tories to win, by all means why not! She is all hot air and has HIPS added to her lack of credit.
I reckon 20% on Starmer being next PM is very generous. I'd put it at around 50%, with the proviso that Covid is over as a health issue, though not an economic one.
Corbyn has gone. Brexit is done - the outcome will still be an issue, but not Brexit itself. The far, far left are either leaving Labour or being marginalised. Because of Covid, neither Starmer nor his team have had a decent hearing yet on anything other than the crisis. Starmer is no fool: policy development is well under way. The Tories' support is flattered by the pandemic and boosted by vaccination; it's not that deep, and once the health crisis is over the nation will be less inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Tories have been in power a long time. And if the Shadow Cabinet has weaknesses, these are no greater, and I would suggest less, than those in the actual Cabinet. Oh, and people like JRM wittering on about 'happy fish' will lose the Tories votes. Oh, and Boris's appeal will wear a bit thin by 2024.
I'm almost persuading myself that Starmer has a better than evens chance of next PM.
It sounds like you are pricing Starmers chance of being PM after the next GE, or even his chance of being PM after the next GE vs B Johnson. This is a huge error as the market is next PM.
If Starmer does spectacularly well, Johnson will likely be replaced by another Tory, well before the election and the bet loses. If Starmer does moderately well, he will struggle with FPTP.
To win the bet you have either Starmer hits the sweet spot where Johnson can hang on and Starmer can just deny the Tories a majority, or that he does really well only in the campaign itself, once it is too late for the Tories to switch leaders.
20% is about right, if anything a lay for the above reasons.
The Tories will go into the next election with the leader best placed to win. Simple as that.
Hard to say at this stage whether that will still be Boris, or if he has had enough/is shown the door by the Men in Grey Suits, to be replaced by Rishi, Hancock or Liz Truss.
Wow! I like your list of political Titans to replace Johnson. Can I add Williamson and Jenrick to your list?
What is going to crush you is they'd still beat Starmer...
Very disappointing to see England's week-on-week decline in vaccination numbers. I think England will need to call in some Scottish experts to help get their vaccination programme back on track.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. It's only Scotland using the stockpile that has been accumulated.
Absolutely loving the "Scottish government lying about how many Care Home Residents it has vaccinated" thought line at the moment.
So, out of 36,000 Care Home residents in Scotland, only 144 have i) not given consent or ii) were not suitable because of current infection?
There aren't 36,000 older care home resident in long term care in Scotland.
As at 8:30am on Tuesday 9 February:
29,908 care home residents (99.7% of residents in older adult care homes and 93% of residents in all care homes)
Do you think they are lying about vaccinating 29,908 care home residents?
Got a link?
This says:
On 31 March 2017, there were 35,989 adults in care homes
Actually it could be given the high churn in care homes. It could even be higher.
One factor many don't realise is that many nursing homes operate as a halfway house between the NHS and the Community. Patients are routinely discharged from the NHS into a home for a fortnight, then discharged back home. If each of these residents are counted over the six week period it's entirely possible that over time the quantity of residents is HIGHER than the residents on any individual day.
The same bed could have been occupied three times during a six week period.
And that's not "long term care"
True. But they certainly could have been counted in the nominator while being excluded from the denominator.
Medically excluded and refused consent totalling 0.3% fails the sniff test. Nobody should have claimed that without someone stopping to say "that doesn't sound plausible". More than 1:300 will be medically excluded let alone refusing consent which will be non negligible.
I wouldn't particularly focus on Starmer's cabinet, which, as is, has vastly more talent in it than Johnson's. I get the impression the star of the "exception that proves the incompetence rule", ie Sunak, is on the wane. Incidentally Sunak is ahead of Starmer in the next PM stakes. A lay, I think.
A propos. A remarkable 4% of people in Northern Ireland think Brandon "No Sea Border" Lewis is doing a somewhat good job in the Province. A contrast with his capable predecessor Julian Smith, who was sacked from Johnson's cabinet on grounds of competence.
Personally I don't care all that much about the origins of the virus. But what the **** were the WHO doing giving the press conference in China?
I don't either, but the reasons given for ruling out lab escape are so insultingly thin and stupid that the whole thing is obviously just a Don't let's be beastly to the Chinese exercise. So might as well go the whole hog and say so on their territory.
I think Biden is minded to come back to the WHO as proof that the insanity of Trump has ended and the US is once again a reliable partner but farcical rubbish like this won't make his job any easier.
I've been searching but I can't find ANY actual new evidence from WHO about the lab-origin theory. Just the bald assertion that they've decided it is "very unlikely"
What is their argument?
EDIT: Jesus, I found it
"Asked why, WHO's Embarek said accidental releases are extremely rare and that the team’s review of the Wuhan institute’s lab operations indicated it would be hard for anything to escape from it."
OMFG
Yup. As forensic as that.....
And taking no account of the upgrades they had seen - that had all been built in the past year before their recent inspection.
I reckon WHO must have gone to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Chinese took the WHO team to the main door of the lab, and then one of the Chinese firmly pointed at the door.
Then the man from WHO asked, "Is this door usually shut, making it very unlikely that viruses could escape?" and the Chinese said "Yes, it is, you're right", and thus we have WHO's report today, ruling out any escape from the lab.
Comments
Live on CNN
The fewer people we have coming in and the more tightly they're controlled, the less the likelihood of a disaster being imported from abroad. This leaves us to vaccinate our way out of trouble at home: once domestic cases are ground down to very low levels then the threat of mutant Covid ruining everything is very much reduced, and our hitherto pitiful test, trace and isolate system might just have some chance of stopping it even if it breaks out.
As it is, the UK is playing Russian roulette with every arrival coming into the country. We're a sitting duck.
A long time to leave a short-odds bet running though.
We concur
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/strong-approval-governments-vaccine-programme-johnson-preferred-lead-pandemic-response
It would appear that Rishi Sunak still reigns supreme as the nation's favourite politician, if you think there's any real meaning to these kinds of polls. Starmer also earns a net positive rating, and Hancock has almost reached the stratospheric heights of zero. The latter is probably a product of the hugely positive attitudes displayed toward the vaccine rollout.
With extensive sections of McConnell's speech
As of now I expect the EU to reject Data Adequacy for the UK. The UK had a reputation of gilding the lily on EU regulations as a member. That wasn't the case with data protection, where the UK was barely compliant. As an outsider the UK will be held to a higher standard than as a member.
This will be a big, big problem for UK businesses. The UK recently published a Data Strategy that waffled somewhat on "Brexit opportunities" but didn't have any Plan B to an EU Data Adequacy decision.
I think we're moderately fucked. For the rest of the year at least. Lockdown or quasi lockdown until late Autumn, meanwhile praying that no more variants come along. We should still escape this year - but this is edgy, now.
Extreme Worst Case Scenario: new variants keep coming along, too fast for us to stall, and we are stuck in this tail-chasing cycle for years, and human society is irretrievably diminished for decades: easy travel never returns, borders go up everywhere, globalisation goes into sharp reverse, a few minor wars break out. Might be good for the planet tho. Gaia has her revenge.
Mega Extreme worst case scenario just for the lolz: it evolves into something like Avian flu, with 60% fatality and huge infectivity. A new Black Death.
OK, time for a gin
The Extreme Worst Case Scenario. may actually be the Reasonable Worst etc
The figure under debate is the vaccination of older adults in long term care.
From your PDF
At 31 March 2017, there were 31,223 long stay residents in care homes for older people,
Given the amount of deaths due to mismanagement of Covid last year 30,000osh residents fitting that criteria sounds plausible.
Do you think the Scottish government is lying about the number of older adults in long term care that they have vaccinated that it reports in its daily briefing? https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/
So not such an easy or compelling target but not someone whom the Tories should fear either. He's certainly no Blair and he has no heavyweight like Brown backing him up either. I am sure I have told the story before about a young Osborne and Finklestein going to the Labour party conference about 1994 and getting royally drunk after hearing Blair speak. They were both convinced that they could never beat him and, guess what, they never did. The equivalent attendee at this year's Labour conference is more likely to be worried about staying awake and retaining the will to live.
I think the odds are fair enough tbh.
A lot of vivid footage some of which I haven't seen before.
Footage concludes with one of Trump's tweets at the time.
"If that's not an impeachable offence, then there's no such thing"
About 4 weeks time that might be achievable
Then I think any additional waves will peak at much lower rates than this one.
Starmer is OK, but he does need to cull the dead wood from the Shadow Cabinet, and replace it with some pre-Corbyn big hitters (well of those few remaining that Corbyn didn't eject from the party).
For Starmer to become next PM he needs to survive 3 more years, he needs Boris to do so too, and then he needs to win an election. There are of course other routes, but 20% chance is at best right and probably too big.
Labour's problems go far deeper than Corbyn, and being "Not Corbyn" is an insufficient answer to them for the reasons I explored on Sunday.
Corbyn was a symptom as well as a cause; a denial of the reasons Labour won office, and then lost it, in the first place. The bigger problem is the deeply-tarnished Labour brand, what it stands for, what it's learnt, and what it will do in office. Corbyn just made it much worse, and added some fantastical delusions into the mix as well.
Starmer is personally likeable and has drawn-level with Johnson as "Best PM" in the past; the trouble is that he's been shrinking in those leads and there's a huge pool of undecideds on him, now, that are starting to firm up.
He won't be Corbyn Mark II, but he could easily become Miliband Mark II.
Yay.....No way we are going back to normal in 2021.
But the idea you can get away with impeachable actions in your last period in office is really odd, if you accept impeachment as a proccess at all.
AFAIK, these approaches have nothing to do with targeting the spike protein, so are unaffected by the current mutations.
One factor many don't realise is that many nursing homes operate as a halfway house between the NHS and the Community. Patients are routinely discharged from the NHS into a home for a fortnight, then discharged back home. If each of these residents are counted over the six week period it's entirely possible that over time the quantity of residents is HIGHER than the residents on any individual day.
The same bed could have been occupied three times during a six week period.
I soooooooo want to go to that gig.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55998272
Wales...party.... can't have one without a sheep?
When your big talkers are the left, and the heavyweights are all on the back benches - and not many of those, it will get noticed.
And Angela Rayner, while she has qualities, is not going to win votes from Tories.
Needless to say Tory voters won't switch to a party with members who regard them as 'Scum' and 'Vermin' and pretends not to understand why rational centrists might vote for them.
he can't win without lots and lots of Tory switchers.
A hung parliament with SNP support is his worst nightmare for a myriad of reasons, and one which would lead to another election very quickly.
Labour would be best aiming at two pushes. And by the second Labour may have worked out who will need to lead them.
The 2017GE is absolutely the worst thing to have ever happened to Labour as it confirmed all the whackiest delusions out there.
He does not need to make it Milliband mark 2 which did not win.
The public in the main do not care and can hardly name a cabinet member or shadow cabinet member in normal times .
As in all GE the main focus is the leader ,he is doing fine especially in a pandemic when the government is able to speak to the public everyday which drowns out any other issues.
So it would be a waste of time to announce them.
The magic money tree has finally been broken apart as the conservatives have broken this.
Which will mean they can not easily make this attack work again.
)
I'm coming to Glasgow to see her and Shirley Manson.
ex party!!
You’d never have thought of the crowds as being pop music fans, but everyone knows all the songs and the artists make a huge effort with the stage show.
Hard to say at this stage whether that will still be Boris, or if he has had enough/is shown the door by the Men in Grey Suits, to be replaced by Rishi, Hancock or Liz Truss.
If it doesn't, he will just get 30-40 gains max, and more or less stay there as Labour have since 2010. The risk is that a nutjob takes over from Starmer, and they then go backwards again.
What I don't think will happen is something in between in a two-stage approach. Labour either breaks out, or it doesn't.
BTW a hung parliament with SNP is likely his best hope. A paradox: the more likely it is, the more the English centre will vote to stop it (ie Tory). Another paradox: SKS would have to offer a 2nd referendum, and hope the SNP lose. It's not a voter friendly position.
What Labour got right was a pitch to end austerity and a strong retail offer. And the Tories have now learnt that lesson and captured that.
And don't forget that even in GE2017 Labour still lost by a clear margin in votes and seats - it could have been much worse too; the red wall had started to fracture but had yet to crumble.
Rather than clinging onto that dream of what could have been they should look to GE2019, which is a true test of where that approach leads and how the political landscape has changed since.
True story, she was asked about the posters and whether it concerned her that she had, erm, helped so many teenage boys through difficult times. Not at all, she explained. Even when Blondie was briefly the largest selling band in the world she was still making more money off the posters.
Which was 20 years ago.
I suppose it could be targeted in other situations. In education it ain't much use if it's targeted outwith your students.
What is their argument?
EDIT: Jesus, I found it
"Asked why, WHO's Embarek said accidental releases are extremely rare and that the team’s review of the Wuhan institute’s lab operations indicated it would be hard for anything to escape from it."
OMFG
So 30-40 "making progress", 70-80 "Off to Holyrood to kiss Sturgeons hand, shit what do we do now, we're dead meat", 100-110 "Lib-Lab here we go", 120+ "Keep the Red flag flying".
I don't see 120+. 100-110 very difficult unless Cons collapse. Would he really want to be in the 70-80 area??
https://youtu.be/MVuBMhXhLks
That is where we are.
All the 'do you think the government LIKES doing this!!!!!' mob on here.....
Well, there is some evidence that, yes, they clearly do. Power gets to people, guys.
Forever lockdown....suggested tin foil hatted insane ranters like......er..... recovery group leader Mark Harper MP.
The lesson is simple. If Labour could not win against the worst campaign in the world, ever, apparently designed and planned by North Korean robots with a manifesto written by the Monty Python team, with life long Tories turning out with gritted teeth to keep Corbyn out of No 10, they have a real credibility problem.
Medically excluded and refused consent totalling 0.3% fails the sniff test. Nobody should have claimed that without someone stopping to say "that doesn't sound plausible". More than 1:300 will be medically excluded let alone refusing consent which will be non negligible.
A propos. A remarkable 4% of people in Northern Ireland think Brandon "No Sea Border" Lewis is doing a somewhat good job in the Province. A contrast with his capable predecessor Julian Smith, who was sacked from Johnson's cabinet on grounds of competence.
https://twitter.com/LucidTalk/status/1357469057591705600
And taking no account of the upgrades they had seen - that had all been built in the past year before their recent inspection.
Then the man from WHO asked, "Is this door usually shut, making it very unlikely that viruses could escape?" and the Chinese said "Yes, it is, you're right", and thus we have WHO's report today, ruling out any escape from the lab.