Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
"A society in which oppressive control of every detail of our lives is unthinkable except when it is thought to be a good idea, is not free. It is not free while the controls are in place. And it is not free after they are lifted, because the new attitude will allow the same thing to happen again whenever there is enough public support."
I recommend listening to his interview with Paxman on the latter`s podcast: "The Lock In".
Sumption is very critical of the government which he regards as weak and which instead of thinking "What is in the country`s best interests" substitutes "What are we most likely to be criticised for" in a quest for short-term approval.
Sumption is shocked by the degree of public acceptance of all this and he reminds us that the way in which a constitution works is more important than the way we deal with any particular crisis. The government, as we know, did not present (or even do) a comprehensive cost benefit analysis on the myriad effects of lockdowns and brought in a new act because it felt that the Civil Contingencies Act was not strong enough.
Sumption questions the legality of all this and points out: "The government rarely forgets things and it has discovered that fear empowers it".
No matter what you think personally , it`s an excellent interview and well worth a listen. Paxman clearly agrees with him.
Sumption believes that regardless of the facts we won`t get out of this under this government (or any other for that matter) without a strong tide of public opinion in that direction because the public hasn`t fully appreciated the severity of all aspects and is only focused on fear.
Edit: apologies - I originally tagged the wrong Andy above.
The Irish must be getting incredibly frustrated with the EU over the border issues. Irish issues have always been dealt with by a large packet of fudge, and it’s the only way it will be dealt with this time too. Let the Irish take the lead, and it’ll all be sorted out out quickly.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
Sympathies. I hesitate to say this, but "nothing left to... read"? There's a lot of books out there, fiction and non-fiction. I've found that broadening my reading repertoire has kept me sane over the last year.
I was reading a lot last summer, but I've just gone off it during this latest lockdown. It feels a lot like trying to use up time.
At the moment it is knitting that makes me happiest. It gives me something to do when around the others I live with so that I don't feel I have to talk, but it doesn't get in the way of talking if someone has something to say.
Or I can watch something really crap, or listen to radio/podcasts, and don't feel like I'm eating my time, because I'll end up with a pair of socks, a jumper, blanket or whatever.
Heading off for the jab (Pfizer)... at the young end of group seven suggests that this part of North Yorkshire will comfortably hit the end of phase one milestone in April... plenty of over-80s round here have had their second jab too...
Another way of looking at this - the first two indices (vs UK, vs Malta) don't tell us much we don't already know (they both cheated? - ed.), but the third, vs Denmark is instructive. The EU says it is handing out vaccine supplies in proportion to population (much as the UK is wrt countries, OTs and Crown Dependencies) - and what this shows is the very variable job some countries are doing at rolling out the vaccines, assuming they've all had proportionately as many vaccines as Denmark. And it's not just a function of size - some stallar small countries, some serious laggers.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
Got to go with the exercise thing. Don't learn how to knit or speak/read Greek.
My tip? Spenny but worth it - get a VR set and knock yourself out on the exercise/activity games. I play "Thrill of the Fight" every day (6 x 3mins x2) and not only is it pretty good at replicating as much as possible the actual activity but all the good exercise/endorphin benefits.
You can pick up an Oculus headset for around £300 I think. Not cheap but well worth it for overall well-being and cheaper (I think?) than the entire Loeb Classics series.
That's not a bad idea, actually. I will look into that.
Yawn. There isn't going to be a "federal" Europe Philip. This is just a hobby horse of the extreme ends of the European debate, and those Brexiteers who really don't have the first clue about how Europe, or the EU works. When the EU expanded to the East this "dear" or nightmare was killed off as that trade off.
Hmm, let's look at that shall we? Since the EU started the process to admit the Eastern European countries, it has:
- launched a single currency, then seen it nearly fall apart - implemented the European Constitution, badly disguised as an intergovernmental treaty to avoid democracy - begun a European foreign policy - increased its budget - gained more and more say over dozens of policy areas, and given back only I think the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states - set up EU Border Guards - passed the GDPR - etc etc etc.
It is a remorseless accretion of power, and a fully federal EU is the logical outcome.
I don't think its even given back the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states, which would be logical.
Instead I believe its gone from saying all states must have daylight savings time (despite some not wanting it) to saying that all states must not have daylight savings time (despite some still wanting it).
Reading up on it, you're right.
So in this respect it is even more of a unitary state than the United States or Australia, which allow their states to set DST.
Very sinister.
(Although ironically I'd be happy if we scrapped DST myself. Still that's a choice for us to make).
The way that some states have more than one time zone is weird; I guess somewhere like South Dakota where most people live at one or other ends of the state you can argue there's some sense to it, but in states like Kentucky it just seems odd.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
I don't know if this helps but I've kept myself busy with projects in the house and garden, and Hobbycraft - I like railway modelling, for example, but there's also furniture building or woodcraft in the garden - or playing online games with friends.
Yes, exceptionally nerdy but this is pb.com and none of us were in the cool gang at school.
Wow, we actually have something in common, as my lockdown project is an N scale layout, currently at the sawing up plyboard for the sub roadbase stage.
Good man. Personally? I've never get on with N gauge. Too small and fiddly. O gauge shows up the imperfections too easily and is just too big.
I'm a OO man myself, even though the scaling is strictly speaking not entirely accurate.
I know what you mean (and am starting to realise that as fiddly jobs start to loom). On the other hand, I wanted a proper layout with some proper scenery; most HO/OO layouts are so constrained by the space that they are really diaromas, just a station or industrial scene with a track looping around the back.
My layout is (of course) set in Europe.
I told somebody to do a railway layout the other day.
Totally shocked that it was already planned, and the debate was "garage loft" or "garden room". Chap is a tech startup type in Cambridge. Far more decadent than my Cornish Oysters. *
I still have a 1970s Hornby set in it's original packaging, that probably needs to be sold. Ditto a Zero One.
Personally I'm about to get into the garden a bit earlier this year.
* Cornish Octopuses today. Does anyone have any tips? Last time was shallow fried with dips.
The real problem is that the combination of a surge in people returning to railway modelling during lockdown, and the manufacturers (notably Peco) being hampered by having staff in isolation, with the addition of Brexit import problems for makes like Noch and Faller, mean that getting hold of model railway supplies is extemely difficult right now. Supply is well below demand, most of the more popular online sites are sold out of all sorts of stuff, and when an order comes in it disappears in no time. To get my track I had to phone round model shops that don't sell online before i could get all that I needed (indeed not even that, as a fair bit is still on order).
Thank you, Philip. A nicely executed piece in the "Hater of X gives advice to X" genre.
It's none of our business now - although interesting to discuss - but my view is that a Federal Europe is akin to the old Clause 4 in Labour. It serves as a tonic for the troops rather than a genuine and realistic goal. I see the EU in a permanent state of muddling along, its decisions driven by pragmatic self-interest not superstate ideology. I think this has been the case for some time.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
I don't know if this helps but I've kept myself busy with projects in the house and garden, and Hobbycraft - I like railway modelling, for example, but there's also furniture building or woodcraft in the garden - or playing online games with friends.
Yes, exceptionally nerdy but this is pb.com and none of us were in the cool gang at school.
Wow, we actually have something in common, as my lockdown project is an N scale layout, currently at the sawing up plyboard for the sub roadbase stage.
Good man. Personally? I've never get on with N gauge. Too small and fiddly. O gauge shows up the imperfections too easily and is just too big.
I'm a OO man myself, even though the scaling is strictly speaking not entirely accurate.
I know what you mean (and am starting to realise that as fiddly jobs start to loom). On the other hand, I wanted a proper layout with some proper scenery; most HO/OO layouts are so constrained by the space that they are really diaromas, just a station or industrial scene with a track looping around the back.
My layout is (of course) set in Europe.
Ha. Of course it is!
That can still be quite fun, though. Particularly Bavarian/Swiss models.
Mine is loosely inspired by the Germany-Austria-Italy journey of the Brenner Eurocity, which I've done many times. Rather than stickle for accuracy I'm just using it as an excuse to have a lot of mountains and stuff from the three countries as best I can source it, given current difficulties.
I decided on it last May when I couldnt do it for real.
I might plant some EU flags on it, although of course at N scale you'll hardly see them
Yawn. There isn't going to be a "federal" Europe Philip. This is just a hobby horse of the extreme ends of the European debate, and those Brexiteers who really don't have the first clue about how Europe, or the EU works. When the EU expanded to the East this "dear" or nightmare was killed off as that trade off.
Hmm, let's look at that shall we? Since the EU started the process to admit the Eastern European countries, it has:
- launched a single currency, then seen it nearly fall apart - implemented the European Constitution, badly disguised as an intergovernmental treaty to avoid democracy - begun a European foreign policy - increased its budget - gained more and more say over dozens of policy areas, and given back only I think the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states - set up EU Border Guards - passed the GDPR - etc etc etc.
It is a remorseless accretion of power, and a fully federal EU is the logical outcome.
I don't think its even given back the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states, which would be logical.
Instead I believe its gone from saying all states must have daylight savings time (despite some not wanting it) to saying that all states must not have daylight savings time (despite some still wanting it).
Reading up on it, you're right.
So in this respect it is even more of a unitary state than the United States or Australia, which allow their states to set DST.
Very sinister.
(Although ironically I'd be happy if we scrapped DST myself. Still that's a choice for us to make).
The way that some states have more than one time zone is weird; I guess somewhere like South Dakota where most people live at one or other ends of the state you can argue there's some sense to it, but in states like Kentucky it just seems odd.
Actually, I was wrong, time zones in the US is a federal responsibility, though they mostly follow state boundaries, and, unlike in the EU, states have the ability to opt out of DST.
I agree it's weird that different parts of states are in different time zones. Also apparently the Dept of Transportation, which oversees it, gets requests from cities and counties each year to change time zone. That the DoT oversees it is apparently a legacy of the days when railway timetables determined the need for time zone standardisation.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
My wife has started buying me Lego kits.
I have a 1969-piece Saturn V, an international space station and a Porsche racing car so far - each takes about 10-15 hours and costs around £100. Good for something relaxing to do indoors
That 1969 - a curious coincidence indeed.
Indeed. They definitely didn’t spend ages trying to work that out.
I'm a big fan of Lego sets for mindfulness. However, I wouldn't do the Saturn V rocket. The reason is that as it is symmetrical there will be lots of making very similar sections repeatedly before joining them together. It becomes boring and a chore. I saw recently that the new biggest ever Lego set (the Colosseum) was released. It looks amazing but I wouldn't want to build it because there are so many sections that you have to repeat build.
In my view look for sets which aren't so regular (e.g. the huge Harry Potter Hogwarts castle) or the Technics sets (car ones are quite good - Bugatti Chiron etc.) which are quite amazing often how they have been designed. Expensive, of course, but what price is there on your mental health?! Links below.
My biggest worry about returning back to normal is that I might have gone to seed.
I've regressed back into habits I had when I was a student twenty years ago: I get up late, fart about*, dodge pointless meetings (except those client ones I cannot), pump out my work in just 3-4 hours a day and otherwise do my own thing. I don't look particularly hard for extra work to do, or to be "seen" at the right events doing and saying the right things, I'm mature enough in my career that no-one checks up on me anymore. And I just don't care anymore.
The 8-9 hour office day - together with 1.5-hour commute each way, each day, all suited and booted - isn't really something I can project myself back into easily anymore :-/
(*that includes posting on here)
Probably the best post this morning. A lot of truth here.
However, I am keen to get back into the office for the very same reasons.
It’s hard to measure, but my own productivity has declined in the “soft” measures : network building, persuasion, etc — also in terms of the creative work I need to do with my teams (I run a digital products JV).
I won’t go back and likely will never go back 5 days, but I’d quite like 3 days.
Yawn. There isn't going to be a "federal" Europe Philip. This is just a hobby horse of the extreme ends of the European debate, and those Brexiteers who really don't have the first clue about how Europe, or the EU works. When the EU expanded to the East this "dear" or nightmare was killed off as that trade off.
Hmm, let's look at that shall we? Since the EU started the process to admit the Eastern European countries, it has:
- launched a single currency, then seen it nearly fall apart - implemented the European Constitution, badly disguised as an intergovernmental treaty to avoid democracy - begun a European foreign policy - increased its budget - gained more and more say over dozens of policy areas, and given back only I think the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states - set up EU Border Guards - passed the GDPR - etc etc etc.
It is a remorseless accretion of power, and a fully federal EU is the logical outcome.
I don't think its even given back the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states, which would be logical.
Instead I believe its gone from saying all states must have daylight savings time (despite some not wanting it) to saying that all states must not have daylight savings time (despite some still wanting it).
Reading up on it, you're right.
So in this respect it is even more of a unitary state than the United States or Australia, which allow their states to set DST.
Very sinister.
(Although ironically I'd be happy if we scrapped DST myself. Still that's a choice for us to make).
The way that some states have more than one time zone is weird; I guess somewhere like South Dakota where most people live at one or other ends of the state you can argue there's some sense to it, but in states like Kentucky it just seems odd.
Actually, I was wrong, time zones in the US is a federal responsibility, though they mostly follow state boundaries.
I agree it's weird that different parts of states are in different time zones. Also apparently the Dept of Transportation, which oversees it, gets requests from cities and counties each year to change time zone. That the DoT oversees it is apparently a legacy of the days when railway timetables determined the need for time zone standardisation.
Wierdly, standardisation of time is something relatively recent across the world. Every city used to set their time locally by sunrise and sunset, until the railways came along.
The EU is a gigantic toddler playing with one of those toys that toddlers use -- the toy with specially shaped slots. Unless you use the correctly shaped piece, it won't go in the slot.
I have plenty of dealing with the EU over e.g., contact extensions with grants. I know how it works.
You can have an excellent & sensible argument -- e.g., this contract should be extended because the holder has taken maternity leave. Or this contract should be delayed to be in the cycle for the academic job round.
That will get you absolutely nowhere. There is NO specially shaped slot for such arguments. The answer is NO.
However, there is a specially shaped slot for delays to grants because of scientific delay.
So, a completely absurd & ridiculous argument, like building activity has destabilised the laboratory and the experiment cannot begin so the grant must be delayed, will actually work.
I find many of the pro-EU people I talk to are completely unaware of how ridiculous & cumbersome & Kafka-esque the bureaucracy of the EU has become.
Ultimately, this bureaucracy is very stultifying and destructive.
I was not at all surprised by their vaccine failure. There is no slot shaped "Urgent, this is fecking pandemic, let's move it"
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
My wife has started buying me Lego kits.
I have a 1969-piece Saturn V, an international space station and a Porsche racing car so far - each takes about 10-15 hours and costs around £100. Good for something relaxing to do indoors
That 1969 - a curious coincidence indeed.
Indeed. They definitely didn’t spend ages trying to work that out.
I'm a big fan of Lego sets for mindfulness. However, I wouldn't do the Saturn V rocket. The reason is that as it is symmetrical there will be lots of making very similar sections repeatedly before joining them together. It becomes boring and a chore. I saw recently that the new biggest ever Lego set (the Colosseum) was released. It looks amazing but I wouldn't want to build it because there are so many sections that you have to repeat build.
In my view look for sets which aren't so regular (e.g. the huge Harry Potter Hogwarts castle) or the Technics sets (car ones are quite good - Bugatti Veyron etc.) which are quite amazing often how they have been designed.
They’ve actually gone out of their way to try and make it less repeating than you’d expect, there’s quite a complex structure inside it.
Yes, the Technic cars are awesome, I just did the 911 RSR over Christmas.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
Sympathies. I hesitate to say this, but "nothing left to... read"? There's a lot of books out there, fiction and non-fiction. I've found that broadening my reading repertoire has kept me sane over the last year.
Can I recommend audio books, particularly for when you are doing something like walking or cooking? There is a huge range out there. I use Audible (which is now owned by Amazon I think). A good start might be Stephen Fry reading the complete Sherlock Holmes works: it counts as one book if you sign up to the monthly credit system. There are also a lot of BBC radio dramas if that is more your thing. I have found that listening to one I know well is a good way of getting to sleep: there is a special sleep setting in the app which turns it off after a set (by you) length of time.
LOL, Ali 43 from 18 balls, to be England’s highest scorer of the match!
Which says a lot about England’s performance with the bat, and not in a good way.
Next Test, Crawley and Bairstow become available. Do Lawrence and Pope keep their places? What about Burns?
Similarly, do we recall Anderson in place of Broad? Or play Woakes instead of either?
Does Moeen get asked to stay for a bit longer? Or should Dom Bess be asked to return to the side having been told he’s not good enough?
Some difficult questions ahead of the next Test.
But let’s not forget, England did win the first Test. These are questions that can be answered.
Aren't Anderson and Broad alternating ? If Anderson plays, and Moeen (or less likely, a returning Bess) can find some consistent accuracy (both big ifs), then England have a real chance. In both India's and England's match winning innings, it was only two or three batsmen who made significant runs.
I thought Moeen was scheduled to go home after this Test?
A and B may be alternating but if I’m honest Broad didn’t look that dangerous. Archer and Stone have both offered more bite.
Agreed. But Anderson at his best is the real difference. Unfortunately, were he to play every test, he would likely be far less effective. I hadn't realised Moeen was going home after a single game; that's utterly crazy. He was fairly hopeless in terms of accuracy in the first innings, when it mattered, and had just about found some form in the second, when it didn't. If he's not going to play in the next test, what was the point of picking him ?
One position that does look "solved" to me for the near future is wicketkeeper, Foakes looks the real deal. Pope, Butler, Bairstow can compete for a batting spot but Foakes should keep the gloves.
Yawn. There isn't going to be a "federal" Europe Philip. This is just a hobby horse of the extreme ends of the European debate, and those Brexiteers who really don't have the first clue about how Europe, or the EU works. When the EU expanded to the East this "dear" or nightmare was killed off as that trade off.
Hmm, let's look at that shall we? Since the EU started the process to admit the Eastern European countries, it has:
- launched a single currency, then seen it nearly fall apart - implemented the European Constitution, badly disguised as an intergovernmental treaty to avoid democracy - begun a European foreign policy - increased its budget - gained more and more say over dozens of policy areas, and given back only I think the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states - set up EU Border Guards - passed the GDPR - etc etc etc.
It is a remorseless accretion of power, and a fully federal EU is the logical outcome.
I don't think its even given back the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states, which would be logical.
Instead I believe its gone from saying all states must have daylight savings time (despite some not wanting it) to saying that all states must not have daylight savings time (despite some still wanting it).
Reading up on it, you're right.
So in this respect it is even more of a unitary state than the United States or Australia, which allow their states to set DST.
Very sinister.
(Although ironically I'd be happy if we scrapped DST myself. Still that's a choice for us to make).
The way that some states have more than one time zone is weird; I guess somewhere like South Dakota where most people live at one or other ends of the state you can argue there's some sense to it, but in states like Kentucky it just seems odd.
Actually, I was wrong, time zones in the US is a federal responsibility, though they mostly follow state boundaries.
I agree it's weird that different parts of states are in different time zones. Also apparently the Dept of Transportation, which oversees it, gets requests from cities and counties each year to change time zone. That the DoT oversees it is apparently a legacy of the days when railway timetables determined the need for time zone standardisation.
Wierdly, standardisation of time is something relatively recent across the world. Every city used to set their time locally by sunrise and sunset, until the railways came along.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
Agreed - and as a general point too. That something works in the special circumstances of the pandemic does not mean it makes sense otherwise. For example, we have half the country on the state payroll.
No idea of the specifics but I think it's a bad generally idea for courts (As they are in the USA) to get involved with pandemic micromanagement particularly when they're striking down health measures. Gov'ts can and will be held to account for their actions. A judge ? Less so.
The EU is a gigantic toddler playing with one of those toys that toddlers use -- the toy with specially shaped slots. Unless you use the correctly shaped piece, it won't go in the slot.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
The lack of accountability swings both ways.
Yes Europe screwed up here and yes the Commission should take some responsibility.
But the buck does not stop there; it was not their job in the first place. Every national government besides Malta is dodging taking responsibility because they are effectively letting the Commission carry the can on what was their duty they were elected to deal with.
So how do the voters respond? The EU don't face meaningful elections and the national governments are shrugging it off as "Brussels" fault when it was their duty to deal with - not Brussels.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
Yes, but as you say individual governments are also perfectly capable of screwing things up. For example, the Blair government's Rural Payments Agency was quite extraordinarily incompetent, and they dodged the blame on that - no ministers resigned or were sacked. The same was true of the NHS database. So I'm not sure that the EU is any worse in these respects, TBH.
So the Scottish version of quarantine only covers those who arrive in Scotland on international flights, not those with internal transfers. Whoops.
I hope Edinburgh Airport has got it wrong - IF your intention is to quarantine all/some international travellers, then where they have been in the 14 days before they took off should be the criterion - not the route they chose, otherwise everyone will end up going via Dublin.
I've never been to prison. I'll defer to those who have. But the past year has seen a robbing of freedoms somewhat akin to having been handed a 4 year sentence for something you didn't do. You can hope that maybe everybody will see it was a terrible miscarriage of justice, but nobody is listening, so you have to serve your time.
Some are in a more comfortable open prison, some locked up 23 hours a day in maximum security. But each day is the same for us all: tedium, tinged with the risk of getting unlucky and being on the wrong end of a violent episode that leaves you hurting - or worse.
As we are coming up to our first parole hearing, we've been good, kept our noses clean and hopeful that we will get let out again. To see family and friends who have not been able to visit, to go back down the pub, be intimate. Hopefully back to your old job, though that is no means certain. It will all take some adjusting to. And there is always the niggling worry that somebody will decide that you have broken parole - and you'll be back inside again.
I suspect nearly all of us have been damaged in some ways by the past year.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
The EU's fundamental problem came with the Euro (and, arguably, the ERM) - until then, the EU was generally successful, although the CAP was a complete bung to farmers.
The EU just didn't meet the necessary criteria for a successful currency union but they pushed ahead with it anyway. In doing so, they should have gone full hog onto political integration and alignment of pension systems, work practices etc. However, they didn't because member politicians didn't want to become regional governors. As a result, they have been stuck in a half-way house that has benefited Germany and a few other nations and left Southern Europe locked into a cycle of high debt and high unemployment.
Yawn. There isn't going to be a "federal" Europe Philip. This is just a hobby horse of the extreme ends of the European debate, and those Brexiteers who really don't have the first clue about how Europe, or the EU works. When the EU expanded to the East this "dear" or nightmare was killed off as that trade off.
Hmm, let's look at that shall we? Since the EU started the process to admit the Eastern European countries, it has:
- launched a single currency, then seen it nearly fall apart - implemented the European Constitution, badly disguised as an intergovernmental treaty to avoid democracy - begun a European foreign policy - increased its budget - gained more and more say over dozens of policy areas, and given back only I think the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states - set up EU Border Guards - passed the GDPR - etc etc etc.
It is a remorseless accretion of power, and a fully federal EU is the logical outcome.
I don't think its even given back the ability to set daylight savings time to its member states, which would be logical.
Instead I believe its gone from saying all states must have daylight savings time (despite some not wanting it) to saying that all states must not have daylight savings time (despite some still wanting it).
Reading up on it, you're right.
So in this respect it is even more of a unitary state than the United States or Australia, which allow their states to set DST.
Very sinister.
(Although ironically I'd be happy if we scrapped DST myself. Still that's a choice for us to make).
The way that some states have more than one time zone is weird; I guess somewhere like South Dakota where most people live at one or other ends of the state you can argue there's some sense to it, but in states like Kentucky it just seems odd.
Actually, I was wrong, time zones in the US is a federal responsibility, though they mostly follow state boundaries.
I agree it's weird that different parts of states are in different time zones. Also apparently the Dept of Transportation, which oversees it, gets requests from cities and counties each year to change time zone. That the DoT oversees it is apparently a legacy of the days when railway timetables determined the need for time zone standardisation.
Wierdly, standardisation of time is something relatively recent across the world. Every city used to set their time locally by sunrise and sunset, until the railways came along.
Not really that surprising when the only consist point across the world to set the time was the sun is due south so it's midday.
And until there was multiple journeys a day going a long distance the need for a single time just didn't exist.
The trouble with that definition of noon is that the time between them is not usually exactly 24 hours (although it averages out at that over a year). Hence the "mean" in GMT. A sundial can be about a quarter of an hour out on clock time depending on the time of year. That is not a problem if you just need to know what time to have lunch, so most people didn't notice until the invention of accurate clocks.
So the Scottish version of quarantine only covers those who arrive in Scotland on international flights, not those with internal transfers. Whoops.
I hope Edinburgh Airport has got it wrong - IF your intention is to quarantine all/some international travellers, then where they have been in the 14 days before they took off should be the criterion - not the route they chose, otherwise everyone will end up going via Dublin.
My guess is that they forgot that RoI is an internal flight, and didn’t think to work with rules there too. A cynic might say they were too interested in doing something different to England, and misjudged it.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
Yes, but as you say individual governments are also perfectly capable of screwing things up. For example, the Blair government's Rural Payments Agency was quite extraordinarily incompetent, and they dodged the blame on that - no ministers resigned or were sacked. The same was true of the NHS database. So I'm not sure that the EU is any worse in these respects, TBH.
The difference is Blair's government became the Brown government and got the sack at the 2010 general election. Do the EU think about whether a decision will cost them the next election?
Not a new idea, it was the whole point of the "brave" or "courageous" joke in Yes, Minister.
I've never been to prison. I'll defer to those who have. But the past year has seen a robbing of freedoms somewhat akin to having been handed a 4 year sentence for something you didn't do. You can hope that maybe everybody will see it was a terrible miscarriage of justice, but nobody is listening, so you have to serve your time.
Some are in a more comfortable open prison, some locked up 23 hours a day in maximum security. But each day is the same for us all: tedium, tinged with the risk of getting unlucky and being on the wrong end of a violent episode that leaves you hurting - or worse.
As we are coming up to our first parole hearing, we've been good, kept our noses clean and hopeful that we will get let out again. To see family and friends who have not been able to visit, to go back down the pub, be intimate. Hopefully back to your old job, though that is no means certain. It will all take some adjusting to. And there is always the niggling worry that somebody will decide that you have broken parole - and you'll be back inside again.
I suspect nearly all of us have been damaged in some ways by the past year.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
So how do the voters respond? The EU don't face meaningful elections and the national governments are shrugging it off as "Brussels" fault when it was their duty to deal with - not Brussels.
On the evidence available the Maltese in particular and Danish governments are doing a good job, given their resources, the Dutch, Latvian or Croatian ones, much less so.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
Yes, but as you say individual governments are also perfectly capable of screwing things up. For example, the Blair government's Rural Payments Agency was quite extraordinarily incompetent, and they dodged the blame on that - no ministers resigned or were sacked. The same was true of the NHS database. So I'm not sure that the EU is any worse in these respects, TBH.
EU Commission definitely has less capacity than the UK civil service though. It's a tenth of the size and has to navigate a much more complicated political environment.
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
I first visited the Acropolis back in '89 while Interrailing round Europe. It was covered in scaffolding then. I've been there a couple of times since and it still had scaffolding. I see from this that nothing seems to have changed.
So the Scottish version of quarantine only covers those who arrive in Scotland on international flights, not those with internal transfers. Whoops.
And Nicola wants to shut the England / Scotland border.....
Why shouldn't she?
If there's cases in Melbourne then Sydney and Adelaide close the border and shut down travel between themselves and Melbourne.
If Nicola wants to close the border she should do it.
I'm sure the Scottish Tories who keep telling everyone that Holyrood is the most powerful devolved parliament in the world will be just fine with it.
If she wants to order everyone who arrives in Scotland (even if from NI, Eire, Wal or Eng) into a hotel quarantine she should just do it.
That she hasn't is her own choice. Aussie state Premiers have done similar. She could announce that as a policy in a few weeks time as an emergency health proviso but she hasn't done so. 🤷🏻♂️
I first visited the Acropolis back in '89 while Interrailing round Europe. It was covered in scaffolding then. I've been there a couple of times since and it still had scaffolding. I see from this that nothing seems to have changed.
There's a lot of continual restoration work to be done on the structure. I remember an engineer from somewhere or other telling me it was to do with the size and proportions of the structure, or something like that.
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
Boris has finally learnt to under promise and over deliver.
Expectation management is everything here and keep expectations low is the sane approach regardless of what other MPs may want.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
Yes, but as you say individual governments are also perfectly capable of screwing things up. For example, the Blair government's Rural Payments Agency was quite extraordinarily incompetent, and they dodged the blame on that - no ministers resigned or were sacked. The same was true of the NHS database. So I'm not sure that the EU is any worse in these respects, TBH.
EU Commission definitely has less capacity than the UK civil service though. It's a tenth of the size and has to navigate a much more complicated political environment.
Yes, but of course it is not generally responsible for the implementation of policy. That's no doubt one reason why the vaccine procurement was mishandled, it's not the kind of thing the Commission usually does. The EU Border Force seems to be shaping up as another example of things going badly wrong when the Commission is directly running things.
Institutionally, the EU does well when it concentrates on its core competence, which is setting regulatory standards for the Single Market.
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
Boris has finally learnt to under promise and over deliver.
Expectation management is everything here and keep expectations low is the sane approach regardless of what other MPs may want.
Looks like the government want to see exactly what the next few weeks’ deliveries are going to look like, before committing to anything over-ambitious.
Looks like 1 metre + will be with us for a while, per Sky.
This is in line with my own expectations. This won't be released until all over 18s have had two doses which we might/will get to by September. So quite possibly no crowds at football until 2021/2022 season.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
Yes, but as you say individual governments are also perfectly capable of screwing things up. For example, the Blair government's Rural Payments Agency was quite extraordinarily incompetent, and they dodged the blame on that - no ministers resigned or were sacked. The same was true of the NHS database. So I'm not sure that the EU is any worse in these respects, TBH.
EU Commission definitely has less capacity than the UK civil service though. It's a tenth of the size and has to navigate a much more complicated political environment.
Yes, but of course it is not generally responsible for the implementation of policy. That's no doubt one reason why the vaccine procurement was mishandled, it's not the kind of thing the Commission usually does. The EU Border Force seems to be shaping up as another example of things going badly wrong when the Commission is directly running things.
Institutionally, the EU does well when it concentrates on its core competence, which is setting regulatory standards for the Single Market.
Perhaps it should stick to that, rather than trying to extend its competences (ahem) in all directions.
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
Looks like 1 metre + will be with us for a while, per Sky.
This is in line with my own expectations. This won't be released until all over 18s have had two doses which we might/will get to by September. So quite possibly no crowds at football until 2021/2022 season.
As long as we can have the rule of 6 before hand then it's not the end of the world.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
I don't know, I think it's of a piece with other grandiose fuckups by the EU - Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Aid corruption, the euro, etc., etc. Federalising policy better done by member states, arrogantly assuming the EU solution has to be perfect, then dodging blame when the screwup is obvious to anybody who looks.
National governments often mess up too of course.
Yes, but as you say individual governments are also perfectly capable of screwing things up. For example, the Blair government's Rural Payments Agency was quite extraordinarily incompetent, and they dodged the blame on that - no ministers resigned or were sacked. The same was true of the NHS database. So I'm not sure that the EU is any worse in these respects, TBH.
EU Commission definitely has less capacity than the UK civil service though. It's a tenth of the size and has to navigate a much more complicated political environment.
Yes, but of course it is not generally responsible for the implementation of policy. That's no doubt one reason why the vaccine procurement was mishandled, it's not the kind of thing the Commission usually does. The EU Border Force seems to be shaping up as another example of things going badly wrong when the Commission is directly running things.
Institutionally, the EU does well when it concentrates on its core competence, which is setting regulatory standards for the Single Market.
The EEC did well at that.
The EU has been reaching out into ever expanding areas for decades.
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
No, if supply stays constant at around 3-3.2m doses per week then the 30th April target looks about right as we need to significantly slow down first jabs to start doing second ones in two weeks time. The idea behind the 12 week gap is that by now supply issues will have been resolved and happily in two weeks it does look as though that will be the case and we'll get to a stage of doing 0.9-1.1m jabs per day so there's no real slowdown of first to make way for second doses.
What the government is saying is that in the current scenario 30th April looks about right, and that's fair I think.
Looks like 1 metre + will be with us for a while, per Sky.
This is in line with my own expectations. This won't be released until all over 18s have had two doses which we might/will get to by September. So quite possibly no crowds at football until 2021/2022 season.
As long as we can have the rule of 6 before hand then it's not the end of the world.
Yes - we should get 'Rule of 6' or something similar - will apply from allowing outdoor gatherings (late March?) then also applied to hospitality when it reopens. Also for indoor domestic gatherings, these are unlikely to be allowed before May.
Looks like 1 metre + will be with us for a while, per Sky.
This is in line with my own expectations. This won't be released until all over 18s have had two doses which we might/will get to by September. So quite possibly no crowds at football until 2021/2022 season.
As long as we can have the rule of 6 before hand then it's not the end of the world.
Yes - we should get 'Rule of 6' or something similar - will apply from allowing outdoor gatherings (late March?) then also applied to hospitality when it reopens. Also for indoor domestic gatherings, these are unlikely to be allowed before May.
It's amazing that the government is able to dictate who we can and can't meet in our own homes. And we all seem to have normalised it and the majority don't even question it.
By end-March plenty of 70-80yr olds will have had two jabs. Try to stop them meeting up.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
I've been avoiding even looking at Toby Young's Lockdown Sceptics site due to being so annoyed by the misinformation he spews, but as he's hit a new low, some of the people I do follow have been incensed by his latest crap:
That's right - Toby's now doing the "I'm only asking the question" crap while implying that the covid vaccine kills. (And repeating the lie that they weren't tested on the old and vulnerable)
For clarity, he's showing a graph of covid infections surging up. Then, about twenty days afterwards, covid deaths surging up. Then, a few days AFTER that, vaccination doses increasing. (You can see the blue line (infections), orange line (deaths) and THEN green line (vaccinations)
My word. What a surprise. Covid deaths rising about twenty days after infection rising. Anyone would think that the link was here, and that there was a lag of about twenty days between infection and death.
Meanwhile, apparently there are "concerns" that vaccinations are having an effect backwards in time, causing side effects that somehow ripple through the space-time continuum and kill people a few days earlier.
I mean, it would be laughable if it wasn't so stupid and dangerous - pandering to antivaxxers right now as we're trying to emerge from a pandemic. Yes, I get that antivaxxers must be a big chunk of Young's Lockdown Sceptic audience, but I didn't realise his morals were so far gone.
We are likely only a few months away, from every firewall in the West being configured to drop Russian IPs entirely, with huge pressure on VPN providers and others providing routing services, to either drop Russian IPs or be added to the blacklists themselves.
(He says, while looking at a project to secure a piece of infrastructure, and absolutely sh!tting himself about Russian and/or Chinese hackers).
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
No, if supply stays constant at around 3-3.2m doses per week then the 30th April target looks about right as we need to significantly slow down first jabs to start doing second ones in two weeks time. The idea behind the 12 week gap is that by now supply issues will have been resolved and happily in two weeks it does look as though that will be the case and we'll get to a stage of doing 0.9-1.1m jabs per day so there's no real slowdown of first to make way for second doses.
What the government is saying is that in the current scenario 30th April looks about right, and that's fair I think.
Clearly there are still supply constraints from the Pfizer and AZN....Must be the EU nations stealing our vaccines, we should threaten to sue them ;-)
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
No, if supply stays constant at around 3-3.2m doses per week then the 30th April target looks about right as we need to significantly slow down first jabs to start doing second ones in two weeks time. The idea behind the 12 week gap is that by now supply issues will have been resolved and happily in two weeks it does look as though that will be the case and we'll get to a stage of doing 0.9-1.1m jabs per day so there's no real slowdown of first to make way for second doses.
What the government is saying is that in the current scenario 30th April looks about right, and that's fair I think.
Have I got my mental calcs wrong? Should have written it down.
Try again. 30 April is 10-11 weeks away. Call it 30-35 million jabs capacity at current rate of 3 million per week.
Crudely, to be done = 17 million in groups 5-9 jab 1, and 15 million for 2nd jabs of groups 1-4.
So your increase from .5 -> 1 million per day rolls over onto 2nd jabs of Group 5-9, and then beyond that.
We are likely only a few months away, from every firewall in the West being configured to drop Russian IPs entirely, with huge pressure on VPN providers and others providing routing services, to either drop Russian IPs or be added to the blacklists themselves.
(He says, while looking at a project to secure a piece of infrastructure, and absolutely sh!tting himself about Russian and/or Chinese hackers).
I remember being told not to be so paranoid. I was pointing out, while contracting in a Bank, that having a dev centre in Russia meant that at least 10% of your devs would be FSB.
A month later the Ukrainian War happened.
The testers in Lvov announced on the call that no code from Russian would *ever* pass QA again.....
“Another coronavirus variant that could dodge vaccine-triggered immunity has been identified in the UK, scientists say.
“The strain — called B.1.525 — has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be a huge underestimate. It shares the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian variants, which make the current crop of jabs slightly less effective.
“The variant also carries the Q677H mutation on its crucial spike protein, prompting warnings from scientists that this could make it even more resistant to vaccines. And there are some similarities to the Kent strain, which studies show is up to 70 per cent more infectious.”
“Another coronavirus variant that could dodge vaccine-triggered immunity has been identified in the UK, scientists say.
“The strain — called B.1.525 — has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be a huge underestimate. It shares the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian variants, which make the current crop of jabs slightly less effective.
“The variant also carries the Q677H mutation on its crucial spike protein, prompting warnings from scientists that this could make it even more resistant to vaccines. And there are some similarities to the Kent strain, which studies show is up to 70 per cent more infectious.”
Does it come with a £1m to be deposited in my bank account?
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
No, if supply stays constant at around 3-3.2m doses per week then the 30th April target looks about right as we need to significantly slow down first jabs to start doing second ones in two weeks time. The idea behind the 12 week gap is that by now supply issues will have been resolved and happily in two weeks it does look as though that will be the case and we'll get to a stage of doing 0.9-1.1m jabs per day so there's no real slowdown of first to make way for second doses.
What the government is saying is that in the current scenario 30th April looks about right, and that's fair I think.
Have I got my mental calcs wrong? Should have written it down.
Try again. 30 April is 10-11 weeks away. Call it 30-35 million jabs capacity at current rate of 3 million per week.
Crudely, to be done = 17 million in groups 5-9 jab 1, and 15 million for 2nd jabs of groups 1-4.
So your increase from .5 -> 1 million per day rolls over onto 2nd jabs of Group 5-9, and then beyond that.
I think.
Yes, I think that's the plan, to do first jabs out of new supply while maintaining second ones from current supply. The timing of the Moderna deliveries speaks to that.
I've been avoiding even looking at Toby Young's Lockdown Sceptics site due to being so annoyed by the misinformation he spews, but as he's hit a new low, some of the people I do follow have been incensed by his latest crap:
That's right - Toby's now doing the "I'm only asking the question" crap while implying that the covid vaccine kills. (And repeating the lie that they weren't tested on the old and vulnerable)
For clarity, he's showing a graph of covid infections surging up. Then, about twenty days afterwards, covid deaths surging up. Then, a few days AFTER that, vaccination doses increasing. (You can see the blue line (infections), orange line (deaths) and THEN green line (vaccinations)
My word. What a surprise. Covid deaths rising about twenty days after infection rising. Anyone would think that the link was here, and that there was a lag of about twenty days between infection and death.
Meanwhile, apparently there are "concerns" that vaccinations are having an effect backwards in time, causing side effects that somehow ripple through the space-time continuum and kill people a few days earlier.
I mean, it would be laughable if it wasn't so stupid and dangerous - pandering to antivaxxers right now as we're trying to emerge from a pandemic. Yes, I get that antivaxxers must be a big chunk of Young's Lockdown Sceptic audience, but I didn't realise his morals were so far gone.
We should miss no opportunity to call out anti-vaxxers as twats.
“Another coronavirus variant that could dodge vaccine-triggered immunity has been identified in the UK, scientists say.
“The strain — called B.1.525 — has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be a huge underestimate. It shares the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian variants, which make the current crop of jabs slightly less effective.
“The variant also carries the Q677H mutation on its crucial spike protein, prompting warnings from scientists that this could make it even more resistant to vaccines. And there are some similarities to the Kent strain, which studies show is up to 70 per cent more infectious.”
Does it come with a £1m to be deposited in my bank account?
As soon as you wire them the $1,500 administration fee.
“Another coronavirus variant that could dodge vaccine-triggered immunity has been identified in the UK, scientists say.
“The strain — called B.1.525 — has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be a huge underestimate. It shares the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian variants, which make the current crop of jabs slightly less effective.
“The variant also carries the Q677H mutation on its crucial spike protein, prompting warnings from scientists that this could make it even more resistant to vaccines. And there are some similarities to the Kent strain, which studies show is up to 70 per cent more infectious.”
I've been avoiding even looking at Toby Young's Lockdown Sceptics site due to being so annoyed by the misinformation he spews, but as he's hit a new low, some of the people I do follow have been incensed by his latest crap:
That's right - Toby's now doing the "I'm only asking the question" crap while implying that the covid vaccine kills. (And repeating the lie that they weren't tested on the old and vulnerable)
For clarity, he's showing a graph of covid infections surging up. Then, about twenty days afterwards, covid deaths surging up. Then, a few days AFTER that, vaccination doses increasing. (You can see the blue line (infections), orange line (deaths) and THEN green line (vaccinations)
My word. What a surprise. Covid deaths rising about twenty days after infection rising. Anyone would think that the link was here, and that there was a lag of about twenty days between infection and death.
Meanwhile, apparently there are "concerns" that vaccinations are having an effect backwards in time, causing side effects that somehow ripple through the space-time continuum and kill people a few days earlier.
I mean, it would be laughable if it wasn't so stupid and dangerous - pandering to antivaxxers right now as we're trying to emerge from a pandemic. Yes, I get that antivaxxers must be a big chunk of Young's Lockdown Sceptic audience, but I didn't realise his morals were so far gone.
We should miss no opportunity to call out anti-vaxxers as twats.
Toby Young, you are being a twat.
Surely “lockdown sceptics” should want us all vaccinated yesterday?
“Another coronavirus variant that could dodge vaccine-triggered immunity has been identified in the UK, scientists say.
“The strain — called B.1.525 — has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be a huge underestimate. It shares the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian variants, which make the current crop of jabs slightly less effective.
“The variant also carries the Q677H mutation on its crucial spike protein, prompting warnings from scientists that this could make it even more resistant to vaccines. And there are some similarities to the Kent strain, which studies show is up to 70 per cent more infectious.”
CLOSE THE BORDER....
Remarkable that a new variant can come out of a country that has only suffered 8 covid deaths/million .
“Another coronavirus variant that could dodge vaccine-triggered immunity has been identified in the UK, scientists say.
“The strain — called B.1.525 — has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be a huge underestimate. It shares the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian variants, which make the current crop of jabs slightly less effective.
“The variant also carries the Q677H mutation on its crucial spike protein, prompting warnings from scientists that this could make it even more resistant to vaccines. And there are some similarities to the Kent strain, which studies show is up to 70 per cent more infectious.”
CLOSE THE BORDER....
Remarkable that a new variant can come out of a country that has only suffered 8 covid deaths .
Nigerian COVID figures are about as believable as the Chinese ones from a year ago. A country of 200+ million people and they are supposedly never having case numbers more than London sees.....and it isn't like in Nigeria they will be welding folks in their homes for months on end.
This is a speculative straw in the wind, that I have not really thought about yet politically.
Is the Climate Conference later in the year a potential further challenge for the EC, when Brexit Britain will have done distinctly well on the numbers (C02 per pop)? Amongst European comparables, afaik only France are doing better.
And our self-consciously green parties tend to be euro-enthusiast.
This chap sounds a little surprised, but UK per capita greenhouse gas has been below China for some years.
I've been avoiding even looking at Toby Young's Lockdown Sceptics site due to being so annoyed by the misinformation he spews, but as he's hit a new low, some of the people I do follow have been incensed by his latest crap:
That's right - Toby's now doing the "I'm only asking the question" crap while implying that the covid vaccine kills. (And repeating the lie that they weren't tested on the old and vulnerable)
For clarity, he's showing a graph of covid infections surging up. Then, about twenty days afterwards, covid deaths surging up. Then, a few days AFTER that, vaccination doses increasing. (You can see the blue line (infections), orange line (deaths) and THEN green line (vaccinations)
My word. What a surprise. Covid deaths rising about twenty days after infection rising. Anyone would think that the link was here, and that there was a lag of about twenty days between infection and death.
Meanwhile, apparently there are "concerns" that vaccinations are having an effect backwards in time, causing side effects that somehow ripple through the space-time continuum and kill people a few days earlier.
I mean, it would be laughable if it wasn't so stupid and dangerous - pandering to antivaxxers right now as we're trying to emerge from a pandemic. Yes, I get that antivaxxers must be a big chunk of Young's Lockdown Sceptic audience, but I didn't realise his morals were so far gone.
We should miss no opportunity to call out anti-vaxxers as twats.
Toby Young, you are being a twat.
Surely “lockdown sceptics” should want us all vaccinated yesterday?
The problem is that some of his audience are keen antivaxxers. the "Great Barrington Declaration" (or sheer bald-faced denial) was the only route out for antivaxxers that didn't involve mass vaccination, and if he doesn't pander to them, he loses a chunk of his readership. So there HAS to be an element of "Get rid of lockdown, don't bother with vaccines, it's all either unnecessary, or a price we just have to pay, or we can handwave and solve it some other way" in his emissions.
These sorts of American style attack ads are best left to the Americans. They wouldn't be allowed on British TV and it'll be a pity if they are allowed access to the internet. They are deliberately designed to mislead and the subliminal cuts make it meaningless.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
Got to go with the exercise thing. Don't learn how to knit or speak/read Greek.
My tip? Spenny but worth it - get a VR set and knock yourself out on the exercise/activity games. I play "Thrill of the Fight" every day (6 x 3mins x2) and not only is it pretty good at replicating as much as possible the actual activity but all the good exercise/endorphin benefits.
You can pick up an Oculus headset for around £300 I think. Not cheap but well worth it for overall well-being and cheaper (I think?) than the entire Loeb Classics series.
What?! As Dionysus muses in the Frogs to the chagrin of Euripides' ghost:
‘Who knows if life be death, if breath be a banquet, or sleep a woolly fleece?’
As one of those funny people who appreciates tech as much as antiquity, there’s no need for them to be mutually-exclusive propositions. But at least for now, ancient literature is still the best virtual reality simulator money can buy.
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
They've not been so cautious before though, so its curious.
Good piece from Philip. Unlike some other comments in disagree that it doesnt even offer faint praise.
Does anyone have any mood lifting lockdown tips? Work a bit of a nightmare, done all the walks I can do, I’ve completed eBay,Amazon, Netflix, etc, there is nothing left to buy, read or watch. I’ve cooked interesting food. Zoom drinks leave me cold. Done DIY nonsense. Want to drive to Barnard Castle Scotland, but can’t. Even bored of arguing on the Internet.
Normally quite good at bootstrapping myself, but currently at a total loss.
Got to go with the exercise thing. Don't learn how to knit or speak/read Greek.
My tip? Spenny but worth it - get a VR set and knock yourself out on the exercise/activity games. I play "Thrill of the Fight" every day (6 x 3mins x2) and not only is it pretty good at replicating as much as possible the actual activity but all the good exercise/endorphin benefits.
You can pick up an Oculus headset for around £300 I think. Not cheap but well worth it for overall well-being and cheaper (I think?) than the entire Loeb Classics series.
What?! As Dionysus muses in the Frogs to the chagrin of Euripides' ghost:
‘Who knows if life be death, if breath be a banquet, or sleep a woolly fleece?’
As one of those funny people who appreciates tech as much as antiquity, there’s no need for them to be mutually-exclusive propositions. But at least for now, ancient literature is still the best virtual reality simulator money can buy.
You're a person of eclectic tastes that's for sure.
“Another coronavirus variant that could dodge vaccine-triggered immunity has been identified in the UK, scientists say.
“The strain — called B.1.525 — has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be a huge underestimate. It shares the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian variants, which make the current crop of jabs slightly less effective.
“The variant also carries the Q677H mutation on its crucial spike protein, prompting warnings from scientists that this could make it even more resistant to vaccines. And there are some similarities to the Kent strain, which studies show is up to 70 per cent more infectious.”
CLOSE THE BORDER....
This is going to be great ideological divide of the next year or two isn’t it. Close the border and even with a thorough vaccination programme, you risk becoming Melbourne. Snap lockdowns upon even a single case. The insidious impact on the nation’s psychology and economy then can’t abate, as you will forever be wondering when Timbuktu Covid will bring life suddenly crashing to a halt.
Conversely, you let life and travel go on, noting how many British families are internationally distributed. And you do careful monitoring and sequencing of variants circulating both at home and in the wider world. And stand ready to produce and deliver 15 million tweaked mrna doses in a month if you get sufficiently concerned. All while letting life go on and accepting that some winters the numbers will be worse than others.
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
They've not been so cautious before though, so its curious.
Good piece from Philip. Unlike some other comments in disagree that it doesnt even offer faint praise.
Bit concerning this might be a bit like testing....set a difficult stretch target, force people to really go balls to the wall... hit it (yeah ok there was some fudge)...then ease of the accelerator and coast for several months, before realising shit we really should have kept pushing hard.
A good article from @Philip_Thompson, especially the penultimate paragraph.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
Damning with feint praise but under the circumstances more than fair
Comments
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1980-FORD-ESCORT-MK2-2-DOOR-1600-SPORT-RESTORATION-PROJECT-STAY-HOME-TINKER/193888988904?hash=item2d24af2ee8:g:cE8AAOSwVQhgJYeY
Black top Zetec with Kent cams/ITBs and ur str8 m8.
@rottenborough
I recommend listening to his interview with Paxman on the latter`s podcast: "The Lock In".
Sumption is very critical of the government which he regards as weak and which instead of thinking "What is in the country`s best interests" substitutes "What are we most likely to be criticised for" in a quest for short-term approval.
Sumption is shocked by the degree of public acceptance of all this and he reminds us that the way in which a constitution works is more important than the way we deal with any particular crisis. The government, as we know, did not present (or even do) a comprehensive cost benefit analysis on the myriad effects of lockdowns and brought in a new act because it felt that the Civil Contingencies Act was not strong enough.
Sumption questions the legality of all this and points out: "The government rarely forgets things and it has discovered that fear empowers it".
No matter what you think personally , it`s an excellent interview and well worth a listen. Paxman clearly agrees with him.
Sumption believes that regardless of the facts we won`t get out of this under this government (or any other for that matter) without a strong tide of public opinion in that direction because the public hasn`t fully appreciated the severity of all aspects and is only focused on fear.
Edit: apologies - I originally tagged the wrong Andy above.
https://twitter.com/perthshiremags/status/1361477932900900864?s=21
At the moment it is knitting that makes me happiest. It gives me something to do when around the others I live with so that I don't feel I have to talk, but it doesn't get in the way of talking if someone has something to say.
Or I can watch something really crap, or listen to radio/podcasts, and don't feel like I'm eating my time, because I'll end up with a pair of socks, a jumper, blanket or whatever.
https://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.com/2014/06/cycling-to-persia.html
And now, I really must go. Work beckons.
It's none of our business now - although interesting to discuss - but my view is that a Federal Europe is akin to the old Clause 4 in Labour. It serves as a tonic for the troops rather than a genuine and realistic goal. I see the EU in a permanent state of muddling along, its decisions driven by pragmatic self-interest not superstate ideology. I think this has been the case for some time.
I decided on it last May when I couldnt do it for real.
I might plant some EU flags on it, although of course at N scale you'll hardly see them
9:45am each day.
Perhaps 10.45 pm too, but I have not listened then.
I agree it's weird that different parts of states are in different time zones. Also apparently the Dept of Transportation, which oversees it, gets requests from cities and counties each year to change time zone. That the DoT oversees it is apparently a legacy of the days when railway timetables determined the need for time zone standardisation.
In my view look for sets which aren't so regular (e.g. the huge Harry Potter Hogwarts castle) or the Technics sets (car ones are quite good - Bugatti Chiron etc.) which are quite amazing often how they have been designed. Expensive, of course, but what price is there on your mental health?! Links below.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-71043-Hogwarts-Building-Multicolour/dp/B07BLDTWVW
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Supersports-Exclusive-Collectors-Advanced-Construction/dp/B08P69Q4KZ
A lot of truth here.
However, I am keen to get back into the office for the very same reasons.
It’s hard to measure, but my own productivity has declined in the “soft” measures : network building, persuasion, etc — also in terms of the creative work I need to do with my teams (I run a digital products JV).
I won’t go back and likely will never go back 5 days, but I’d quite like 3 days.
When the Great Western Railway opened in 1838, Bristol Time was 10 minutes behind London Time.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-43323013
I have plenty of dealing with the EU over e.g., contact extensions with grants. I know how it works.
You can have an excellent & sensible argument -- e.g., this contract should be extended because the holder has taken maternity leave. Or this contract should be delayed to be in the cycle for the academic job round.
That will get you absolutely nowhere. There is NO specially shaped slot for such arguments. The answer is NO.
However, there is a specially shaped slot for delays to grants because of scientific delay.
So, a completely absurd & ridiculous argument, like building activity has destabilised the laboratory and the experiment cannot begin so the grant must be delayed, will actually work.
I find many of the pro-EU people I talk to are completely unaware of how ridiculous & cumbersome & Kafka-esque the bureaucracy of the EU has become.
Ultimately, this bureaucracy is very stultifying and destructive.
I was not at all surprised by their vaccine failure. There is no slot shaped "Urgent, this is fecking pandemic, let's move it"
I also once stood on it when I got out of bed.
Yes, the Technic cars are awesome, I just did the 911 RSR over Christmas.
The issue of the vaccine procurement failure was, I think, very particular particular to the circumstances, and I'm not sure that it has the wider significance which many people have ascribed to it. I expect that it sounds the death knell for any further attempts as moving healthcare from member-states to the EU - if indeed there were ever going to be any such attempts, which I doubt.
National governments often mess up too of course.
I have found that listening to one I know well is a good way of getting to sleep: there is a special sleep setting in the app which turns it off after a set (by you) length of time.
And until there was multiple journeys a day going a long distance the need for a single time just didn't exist.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000s7ly
https://twitter.com/HTScotPol/status/1361618262707101697?s=20
Gov'ts can and will be held to account for their actions. A judge ? Less so.
Yes Europe screwed up here and yes the Commission should take some responsibility.
But the buck does not stop there; it was not their job in the first place. Every national government besides Malta is dodging taking responsibility because they are effectively letting the Commission carry the can on what was their duty they were elected to deal with.
So how do the voters respond? The EU don't face meaningful elections and the national governments are shrugging it off as "Brussels" fault when it was their duty to deal with - not Brussels.
After all, the Dutch are - culturally - the “next best” thing to the Brits.
Some are in a more comfortable open prison, some locked up 23 hours a day in maximum security. But each day is the same for us all: tedium, tinged with the risk of getting unlucky and being on the wrong end of a violent episode that leaves you hurting - or worse.
As we are coming up to our first parole hearing, we've been good, kept our noses clean and hopeful that we will get let out again. To see family and friends who have not been able to visit, to go back down the pub, be intimate. Hopefully back to your old job, though that is no means certain. It will all take some adjusting to. And there is always the niggling worry that somebody will decide that you have broken parole - and you'll be back inside again.
I suspect nearly all of us have been damaged in some ways by the past year.
The EU just didn't meet the necessary criteria for a successful currency union but they pushed ahead with it anyway. In doing so, they should have gone full hog onto political integration and alignment of pension systems, work practices etc. However, they didn't because member politicians didn't want to become regional governors. As a result, they have been stuck in a half-way house that has benefited Germany and a few other nations and left Southern Europe locked into a cycle of high debt and high unemployment.
That is not a problem if you just need to know what time to have lunch, so most people didn't notice until the invention of accurate clocks.
Not a new idea, it was the whole point of the "brave" or "courageous" joke in Yes, Minister.
https://youtu.be/ik8JT2S-kBE
It's a tenth of the size and has to navigate a much more complicated political environment.
If there's cases in Melbourne then Sydney and Adelaide close the border and shut down travel between themselves and Melbourne.
If Nicola wants to close the border she should do it.
why has the Government given itself such huge room for error in its May target for vaccinating all 32 million people in JCVI groups 1-9. The Government has officially announced that this should be completed by 1 May, yet the UK is currently on pace for 28 March, more than a month sooner. With a large load of second doses not due to start until the end of March, the current 3 million a week pace is significantly faster than Government targets…
Which I think is correct. But I think that the cautious rhetoric is the best tactic at present.
That she hasn't is her own choice. Aussie state Premiers have done similar. She could announce that as a policy in a few weeks time as an emergency health proviso but she hasn't done so. 🤷🏻♂️
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1361628283209723905?s=20
Expectation management is everything here and keep expectations low is the sane approach regardless of what other MPs may want.
Institutionally, the EU does well when it concentrates on its core competence, which is setting regulatory standards for the Single Market.
This is in line with my own expectations. This won't be released until all over 18s have had two doses which we might/will get to by September. So quite possibly no crowds at football until 2021/2022 season.
The EU has been reaching out into ever expanding areas for decades.
What the government is saying is that in the current scenario 30th April looks about right, and that's fair I think.
https://twitter.com/mikercarpenter/status/1361458567354662916?s=20
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/1361632705843183618?s=20
By end-March plenty of 70-80yr olds will have had two jabs. Try to stop them meeting up.
https://twitter.com/RichardJaEvans/status/1361610860788150274
That's right - Toby's now doing the "I'm only asking the question" crap while implying that the covid vaccine kills.
(And repeating the lie that they weren't tested on the old and vulnerable)
For clarity, he's showing a graph of covid infections surging up.
Then, about twenty days afterwards, covid deaths surging up.
Then, a few days AFTER that, vaccination doses increasing.
(You can see the blue line (infections), orange line (deaths) and THEN green line (vaccinations)
My word. What a surprise. Covid deaths rising about twenty days after infection rising. Anyone would think that the link was here, and that there was a lag of about twenty days between infection and death.
Meanwhile, apparently there are "concerns" that vaccinations are having an effect backwards in time, causing side effects that somehow ripple through the space-time continuum and kill people a few days earlier.
I mean, it would be laughable if it wasn't so stupid and dangerous - pandering to antivaxxers right now as we're trying to emerge from a pandemic. Yes, I get that antivaxxers must be a big chunk of Young's Lockdown Sceptic audience, but I didn't realise his morals were so far gone.
(He says, while looking at a project to secure a piece of infrastructure, and absolutely sh!tting himself about Russian and/or Chinese hackers).
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1361622355320180742?s=20
https://twitter.com/christiancalgie/status/1361621783644930048?s=20
Try again. 30 April is 10-11 weeks away. Call it 30-35 million jabs capacity at current rate of 3 million per week.
Crudely, to be done = 17 million in groups 5-9 jab 1, and 15 million for 2nd jabs of groups 1-4.
So your increase from .5 -> 1 million per day rolls over onto 2nd jabs of Group 5-9, and then beyond that.
I think.
A month later the Ukrainian War happened.
The testers in Lvov announced on the call that no code from Russian would *ever* pass QA again.....
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9265045/UK-spots-33-cases-Covid-variant.html
“Another coronavirus variant that could dodge vaccine-triggered immunity has been identified in the UK, scientists say.
“The strain — called B.1.525 — has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be a huge underestimate. It shares the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian variants, which make the current crop of jabs slightly less effective.
“The variant also carries the Q677H mutation on its crucial spike protein, prompting warnings from scientists that this could make it even more resistant to vaccines. And there are some similarities to the Kent strain, which studies show is up to 70 per cent more infectious.”
Toby Young, you are being a twat.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1361628283209723905?s=19
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9265237/London-mayor-Sadiq-Khan-LAUGHS-asked-confidence-Home-Secretary-Priti-Patel.html
Is the Climate Conference later in the year a potential further challenge for the EC, when Brexit Britain will have done distinctly well on the numbers (C02 per pop)? Amongst European comparables, afaik only France are doing better.
And our self-consciously green parties tend to be euro-enthusiast.
This chap sounds a little surprised, but UK per capita greenhouse gas has been below China for some years.
https://twitter.com/marceldirsus/status/1361372592691687424
the "Great Barrington Declaration" (or sheer bald-faced denial) was the only route out for antivaxxers that didn't involve mass vaccination, and if he doesn't pander to them, he loses a chunk of his readership.
So there HAS to be an element of "Get rid of lockdown, don't bother with vaccines, it's all either unnecessary, or a price we just have to pay, or we can handwave and solve it some other way" in his emissions.
I'd sooner people linked to Guido.
τίς δ’ οἶδεν εἰ τὸ ζῆν μέν ἐστι κατθανεῖν,
τὸ πνεῖν δὲ δειπνεῖν, τὸ δὲ καθεύδειν κῴδιον;
‘Who knows if life be death,
if breath be a banquet, or sleep a woolly fleece?’
As one of those funny people who appreciates tech as much as antiquity, there’s no need for them to be mutually-exclusive propositions. But at least for now, ancient literature is still the best virtual reality simulator money can buy.
Good piece from Philip. Unlike some other comments in disagree that it doesnt even offer faint praise.
Conversely, you let life and travel go on, noting how many British families are internationally distributed. And you do careful monitoring and sequencing of variants circulating both at home and in the wider world. And stand ready to produce and deliver 15 million tweaked mrna doses in a month if you get sufficiently concerned. All while letting life go on and accepting that some winters the numbers will be worse than others.