That would be perfect timing for us as we'd be able to run the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine programmes with the same cold chain and AZ and Novavax from the other one. It would significantly speed up our roll out of Moderna being able to use the same supply line as Pfizer.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
That freezer storage change is a total game-changer for the Pfizer vaccine, if approved. Makes the logistics of the supplier chain much, much easier than the specialist low temperature freezers they've had to use up until now.
Humanity is slowly winning the fight against this damn virus!
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
Most surprisingly of all Camilla has now overtaken Meghan in terms of favourability, Camilla now has a favourabiliy rating of +1% compared to Meghan's -26%, so it looks like the Duchess of Cornwall has benefited most from Meghan and Harry's fall from grace
I'm sorry, but I really doubt the veracity of all such polling. People are pushed into giving a response by the options.
As I said on another matter, if "Couldn't give a flying fuck" was an option I suspect it would win hands down. I know there are some out there, maybe many, but interest in the royal family (apart maybe from the Queen) is quite a niche sport these days. Since my grandmother died 40 years ago I've never come across anybody remotely interested. Yes, it sells papers - but just because celebrity gossip does.
I don't understand this issue fully. I feel we must be missing the crux of the issue. News websites want traffic. Once they have the traffic, it's their decision what to do with it (paywall, email sign up, PPC adverts, etc.). No news website sets up and wants the opposite of traffic - otherwise what the point of being online at all?
Therefore, the crux of the issue cannot be links as we understand them, it must be Facebook somehow pulling through content and presenting it in a way that keeps people on Facebook, rather than encouraging them to click through or explore more, in a way that would benefit the creator of the content. That is quite different, and would make the Australian Government's position a little more understandable.
I'm sure Reps as part of the inclusive healing process that they're always going on about will be showing a lot of love to O'Rourke and AOC for their nonpartisan efforts in helping Texas.
Abbott issued an executive order on Tuesday calling for an investigation into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and for the legislature to “review the preparations and decisions by ERCOT so we can determine what caused this problem and find long-term solutions.”...
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
Most surprisingly of all Camilla has now overtaken Meghan in terms of favourability, Camilla now has a favourabiliy rating of +1% compared to Meghan's -26%, so it looks like the Duchess of Cornwall has benefited most from Meghan and Harry's fall from grace
I'm sorry, but I really doubt the veracity of all such polling. People are pushed into giving a response by the options.
As I said on another matter, if "Couldn't give a flying fuck" was an option I suspect it would win hands down. I know there are some out there, maybe many, but interest in the royal family (apart maybe from the Queen) is quite a niche sport these days. Since my grandmother died 40 years ago I've never come across anybody remotely interested. Yes, it sells papers - but just because celebrity gossip does.
Yes, but the issue is not whether people are hugely interested in the royal family as much as if they are actively opposed to the royal family. If people just aren't interested then things will be stable. If they are actively opposed, we could be in for more bumpy times, systemically. If Andrew were next in line for example stability and interest may well be different.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Apart from making PB followers stay up all night, are there any reasons why votes are traditionally counted overnight?
Its usual in most countries to count the votes as soon as voting ends. The difference in the UK is that we dont finish voting until 10pm which is much later than most places.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
Most surprisingly of all Camilla has now overtaken Meghan in terms of favourability, Camilla now has a favourabiliy rating of +1% compared to Meghan's -26%, so it looks like the Duchess of Cornwall has benefited most from Meghan and Harry's fall from grace
I'm sorry, but I really doubt the veracity of all such polling. People are pushed into giving a response by the options.
As I said on another matter, if "Couldn't give a flying fuck" was an option I suspect it would win hands down. I know there are some out there, maybe many, but interest in the royal family (apart maybe from the Queen) is quite a niche sport these days. Since my grandmother died 40 years ago I've never come across anybody remotely interested. Yes, it sells papers - but just because celebrity gossip does.
Pretty popular amongst the voting public. Guess they're largely voting Tory these days...
Imagine being able to walk into your local newsagent, picking up a copy of every magazine and newspaper, and walking out the door without paying for any of them. Thats what the internet is like as far as news is concerned.
No it isn't. The papers are perfectly able to firewall their product so people have to pay. If they chose not to then that is their problem.
Equally if they do it incompetently as the Telegraph does that's their problem.
The problem for a lot of papers is that the Mail has worked out how to provide stuff others insist on being paid for, for free.
I still find it impossible to believe that the Telegraph's half-arsed paywall isn't deliberate.
I know that not everyone runs their browsers in dev mode with numerous content management plugins, but to load the whole article then just display the first paragraph wouldn't be done by accident.
Doubly so since the Times paywall preceded it, and it's much more difficult, but not impossible, to read the full articles there.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Apart from making PB followers stay up all night, are there any reasons why votes are traditionally counted overnight?
Its usual in most countries to count the votes as soon as voting ends. The difference in the UK is that we dont finish voting until 10pm which is much later than most places.
The reason is surely that it leaves the vote far more open to tampering than it would otherwise be. In Scotland, I'd say this has every chance of becoming an issue - even if its just a controversy in peoples' minds. The stakes are very high for the SNP this time round, and some of their tactics leading up to this election (eg the postal voting website) are a little near the knuckle. Opposingly, if the SNP do unexpectedly badly, the overnight delay will be seen as enabling MI6 to steal the vote and prevent independence.
Anything that weakens the integrity of the vote in any way is to be totally avoided.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
He'll almost certainly lead Labour into the GE so laying him for next PM at the current 5 is a crazy bet unless you think Johnson will not be leading the Cons into it. I'm on the other side of the bet. Long at 5 and I'll be laying back at 3 tops as soon as it dawns on punters that Johnson is going nowhere.
And, no, his BLM kneel will not doom him. There is no way an election-winning coalition for this country's mainstream party of the progressive left includes lots of people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture to signify anti-racism.
I`m trying to untangle your first paragraph. You think that a different CP leader would have a better chance than Johnson?
The opposite. I think any Con bar Johnson would be an easier opponent for Lab at GE24. On the bet - laying Starmer at 5 for next PM - my point is it's value only if you think at least one of them won't be in situ for the election. Because as soon as it becomes clear it's going to be Johnson v Starmer, the latter will not be trading anything like as big as 5.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
Most surprisingly of all Camilla has now overtaken Meghan in terms of favourability, Camilla now has a favourabiliy rating of +1% compared to Meghan's -26%, so it looks like the Duchess of Cornwall has benefited most from Meghan and Harry's fall from grace
I'm sorry, but I really doubt the veracity of all such polling. People are pushed into giving a response by the options.
As I said on another matter, if "Couldn't give a flying fuck" was an option I suspect it would win hands down. I know there are some out there, maybe many, but interest in the royal family (apart maybe from the Queen) is quite a niche sport these days. Since my grandmother died 40 years ago I've never come across anybody remotely interested. Yes, it sells papers - but just because celebrity gossip does.
Yes, but the issue is not whether people are hugely interested in the royal family as much as if they are actively opposed to the royal family. If people just aren't interested then things will be stable. If they are actively opposed, we could be in for more bumpy times, systemically. If Andrew were next in line for example stability and interest may well be different.
Yes, I agree. I was claiming lack of interest rather than opposition; active opposition is a very minority position. That may change when Liz dies, of course, but certainly not before.
Labour needs a leader who would cut through the self congratulatory bullsh8t and ask the party why it took a pandemic to reveal what was going on in the sweatshops of Leicester and not their party.
Ask why the party was silent as prolonged school closures saw the gap between middle and working class kids widen to a chasm.
These are the abuses that actually spawned the labour movement, after all. Fighting them was the reason labour came into being.
If they aren't going to fight them, then what is the point? they are heading for extinction.
Almost all my extended family in the grim council estates of South Wales ended up with COVID -- this is very different from my friends in academia, none of whom have had it. (Fortunately, all my relatives made a good recovery & even my seriously overweight uncle in Caerffili seems to be OK, recovering slowly.)
But, this is a disease that has attacked the poor.
My guess is Jeremy Corbyn would have been much, much better at articulating this fundamental fact than Sir Union Jack. Also Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner, Rebecca Long Bailey and even (tho' I heartily dislike her) Jess Philips would have done this better.
Labour have made the wrong choice.
With Gordon B, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
With Ed M, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
Someone needs to hand SKS the whisky & the loaded revolver, sharpish. Because, he is not nimble enough to defeat either Boris or Nicola.
There are plenty of Jacinta Arderns in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
He'll almost certainly lead Labour into the GE so laying him for next PM at the current 5 is a crazy bet unless you think Johnson will not be leading the Cons into it. I'm on the other side of the bet. Long at 5 and I'll be laying back at 3 tops as soon as it dawns on punters that Johnson is going nowhere.
And, no, his BLM kneel will not doom him. There is no way an election-winning coalition for this country's mainstream party of the progressive left includes lots of people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture to signify anti-racism.
I`m trying to untangle your first paragraph. You think that a different CP leader would have a better chance than Johnson?
The opposite. I think any Con bar Johnson would be an easier opponent for Lab at GE24. On the bet - laying Starmer at 5 for next PM - my point is it's value only if you think at least one of them won't be in situ for the election. Because as soon as it becomes clear it's going to be Johnson v Starmer, the latter will not be trading anything like as big as 5.
It's also value if you think Boris is going to leave at some time before GE23/GE24.
And for that reason alone Starmer at 5 for next PM is a value lay bet.
That freezer storage change is a total game-changer for the Pfizer vaccine, if approved. Makes the logistics of the supplier chain much, much easier than the specialist low temperature freezers they've had to use up until now.
Humanity is slowly winning the fight against this damn virus!
Labour needs a leader who would cut through the self congratulatory bullsh8t and ask the party why it took a pandemic to reveal what was going on in the sweatshops of Leicester and not their party.
Ask why the party was silent as prolonged school closures saw the gap between middle and working class kids widen to a chasm.
These are the abuses that actually spawned the labour movement, after all. Fighting them was the reason labour came into being.
If they aren't going to fight them, then what is the point? they are heading for extinction.
Almost all my extended family in the grim council estates of South Wales ended up with COVID -- this is very different from my friends in academia, none of whom have had it. (Fortunately, all my relatives made a good recovery & even my seriously overweight uncle in Caerffili seems to be OK, recovering slowly.)
But, this is a disease that has attacked the poor.
My guess is Jeremy Corbyn would have been much, much better at articulating this fundamental fact than Sir Union Jack. Also Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner, Rebecca Long Bailey and even (tho' I heartily dislike her) Jess Philips.
Labour have made the wrong choice.
With Gordon B, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
With Ed M, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
Someone needs to hand SKS the whisky & the loaded revolver, sharpish. Because, he is not nimble enough to defeat either Boris or Nicola.
There are plenty of Jacinta Arderns in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Even accepting the premise of that last statement, which I'm dubious about, are there many NZ voters in this country to support JA here?
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Given they are exactly the same as they were when we left the EU I am not sure why this should be a wlecome surprise - but it is.
I am sure that this was announced last week. I remember commenting that it was a necessary but not sufficient step for the provision of financial services in the EU by UK based firms. If we did not have this it would have been impossible to do any retail products involving personal information.
Almost all my extended family in the grim council estates of South Wales ended up with COVID -- this is very different from my friends in academia, none of whom have had it. (Fortunately, all my relatives made a good recovery & even my seriously overweight uncle in Caerffili seems to be OK, recovering slowly.)
But, this is a disease that has attacked the poor.
My guess is Jeremy Corbyn would have been much, much better at articulating this fundamental fact than Sir Union Jack. Also Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner, Rebecca Long Bailey and even (tho' I heartily dislike her) Jess Philips.
Labour have made the wrong choice.
With Gordon B, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
With Ed M, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
Someone needs to hand SKS the whisky & the loaded revolver, sharpish. Because, he is not nimble enough to defeat either Boris or Nicola.
There are plenty of Jacinta Arderns in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Even accepting the premise of that last statement, which I'm dubious about, are there many NZ voters in this country to support JA here?
My point was that JA got the top job when the NZ-equivalent of Sir Keir fell on his sword.
I think there are a number of articulate, personable, passionate, effective female MPs in the PLP.
If the Labour males could only just get out of the way, then they might get a chance.
Specifically, Boris might have a significantly harder time against a female LOTO.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Facebook have been buying up any competition. Instagram, WhatsApp, you name it.
Isn't that a business plan these days? Come up with an idea that might just possibly annoy Facebook and then sell out?
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
He'll almost certainly lead Labour into the GE so laying him for next PM at the current 5 is a crazy bet unless you think Johnson will not be leading the Cons into it. I'm on the other side of the bet. Long at 5 and I'll be laying back at 3 tops as soon as it dawns on punters that Johnson is going nowhere.
And, no, his BLM kneel will not doom him. There is no way an election-winning coalition for this country's mainstream party of the progressive left includes lots of people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture to signify anti-racism.
It's a struggle to parse your final sentence but you seem to be arguing that " ...people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture..." should eff off and join the Tories. In which case we concur, except to say that in my opinion they already have done.
I'm obviously writing poorly today, what with a 2 para post and Stocky "trying to untangle" the 1st of them and you "struggling to parse" the 2nd!
I'm saying it would be sad if Labour have to appeal to people who get genuinely and deeply upset about anti-racist symbolism in order to do well at an election. And I don't believe they do need to do that. Why? Because there are imo enough people in this country who either share Labour values - or at least are not actively put off by them - to form a voting coalition large enough to be competitive.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 396,262 4,561 400,823 East Of England 43,086 441 43,527 London 52,819 1,093 53,912 Midlands 75,148 856 76,004 North East And Yorkshire 57,328 982 58,310 North West 52,020 300 52,320 South East 71,766 582 72,348 South West 42,295 298 42,593
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Facebook have been buying up any competition. Instagram, WhatsApp, you name it.
Isn't that a business plan these days? Come up with an idea that might just possibly annoy Facebook and then sell out?
It's a bit like back garden developers. Offer bonkers money to one house on the street for the rights to put up a house in their back garden (and the main house also) and then pretty soon everyone on the street is trying to sell up. Net result? Developers get what they want, put up XXX flats/units, and everyone curses them.
The cost in the UK would be a fraction of this - and would provide a large drop in the classroom transmissibility of the virus (whatever that figure might otherwise be). Would do the same for flu and colds next winter, so probably still worth doing then.
Is it actually a good idea to stop young children developing lifetime immunity protection factors by stopping them catching childhood colds and so on?
An interesting question. FWIW, I suspect most kids would still get colds, but it might give the teachers a break.
A break from colds... But it would reduce the breaks they get from teaching when they're able to take a legitimate sick day thanks to colds etc. Could be a finely balanced cost/benefit
Taking a sick day as a teacher is not an easy option: the work still has to be set which entails a long email detailing exactly what you want your classes to do. When you do go back in you find a large stack of work that the pupils did waiting for you to mark. Most (though by no means all) teachers will struggle in to school while feeling rotten as it is less effort than taking the time off. Long term illness is a bit different, and (ironically) sometimes results from teachers not taking time off when they should have.
Having said that, most staff rooms will have one or two teachers known for taking off far more time than they need to, though if you are known to have had a serious illness (of the order of cancer) then you do get a bit of sympathy.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need massive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet, let alone have the ability to process that data.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need maasive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet.
My laptop constantly tried to force me onto Yahoo search instead of google drove me absolutely bonkers.
The big tech companies have pushed their luck, using news providers to enhance their own offering for free. But when all is said and done, the essential problem is that news organisations have failed to come up with a model to monetise their product as much as they would like. The Australian gambit is not going to cure that.
The Washington Post asks me daily to pay $29 for an annual subscription. That would be great value if I intended to read more than one article a month in it. This morning, Matthew Goodwin tweeted a link to a Times opinion piece by Gerard Baker. I’d probably pay some very small amount to be able to glance at a well-written rant by an old-school conservative but I’m not going to sign up indefinitely to a subscription to do so. I’ll do without. Still less would I pay a subscription to read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard rave about how Belgians’ fondness for mayonnaise was an infallible indicator that the EU was on the brink of collapse through wokeness.
If newspapers offered a carnet of articles moderately priced, perhaps in sets of 100, I expect my curiosity would overcome me on occasion and the newspaper publishers would get more views, more profile and more funds. Newspapers could also learn much more accurately what content people were willing to pay for online. But they seem determined to stick to a model that imagines newspapers as indivisible items, just like the paper copies. Strange.
I have a lot of sympathy for this idea, indeed I would probably buy a carnet or two myself. The problem I can foresee is how do you know in advance which articles were worth buying individually?
Its worth noting that most alternative search engines aren't really independent search engines, they just aggregate data from Google and a few other places e.g DuckDuckGo just aggregates google, bing and stuff like Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine.
I might be wrong but I think on Google and Bing in the West are actually crawling the internet every day. The reason is the resources to do so is incredible.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
He'll almost certainly lead Labour into the GE so laying him for next PM at the current 5 is a crazy bet unless you think Johnson will not be leading the Cons into it. I'm on the other side of the bet. Long at 5 and I'll be laying back at 3 tops as soon as it dawns on punters that Johnson is going nowhere.
And, no, his BLM kneel will not doom him. There is no way an election-winning coalition for this country's mainstream party of the progressive left includes lots of people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture to signify anti-racism.
I`m trying to untangle your first paragraph. You think that a different CP leader would have a better chance than Johnson?
The opposite. I think any Con bar Johnson would be an easier opponent for Lab at GE24. On the bet - laying Starmer at 5 for next PM - my point is it's value only if you think at least one of them won't be in situ for the election. Because as soon as it becomes clear it's going to be Johnson v Starmer, the latter will not be trading anything like as big as 5.
It's also value if you think Boris is going to leave at some time before GE23/GE24.
And for that reason alone Starmer at 5 for next PM is a value lay bet.
Yep. That is exactly what I'm saying. It's a value lay at 5 if you think either leader is going before the GE. Because the bet then wins regardless of the GE result. But if neither go and it's Johnson v Starmer, the lay at 5 will look sick because Starmer will be trading much shorter. This is why I'm long of Starmer next PM at 5. For me it's terrific value since my strong strong view is that both will be there for the GE.
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Hoping for outdoor hospitality but it's a long shot I know.
Would be very happy for Good Friday for that one (2 April). One idea I did have was allowing take-away pints and food only, but letting pubs offer their beer gardens for people to drink them in (with social distancing/two households/rule of six or some such).
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need massive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet, let alone have the ability to process that data.
'Ecosia' the search engine that plants trees, seems to be a recent quite good attempt - it's German I think. I think it has got easier to launch search engines - as the business of delivering good search results has got easier. Before, there seemed to be a real gulf in the quality of search results you'd get with Google vs. its competitors like Yahoo. Now, it's easier to consider adding Ecosia or something else to your chosen browser, and you know it will be hard to tell it's not Google.
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Hoping for outdoor hospitality but it's a long shot I know.
Perhaps outdoor sports?
Edit: I mean they can't just say "primary schools" the rest as is. Can they?
I get the feeling that's what the NHS bods are pushing for. Hopefully Boris resists that over the weekend and will continue to push for a reduction in hospitalisations rather than allow cases to start becoming a major factor.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need maasive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet.
My laptop constantly tried to force me onto Yahoo search instead of google drove me absolutely bonkers.
Yahoo is a good example of not being independent search engine, it is just Bing with a few twists.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need massive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet, let alone have the ability to process that data.
'Ecosia' the search engine that plants trees, seems to be a recent quite good attempt - it's German I think. I think it has got easier to launch search engines - as the business of delivering good search results has got easier. Before, there seemed to be a real gulf in the quality of search results you'd get with Google vs. its competitors like Yahoo. Now, it's easier to consider adding Ecosia or something else to your chosen browser, and you know it will be hard to tell it's not Google.
Its effectively just a skin of Bing. It takes their results and tweaks the ordering a bit.
Repeat...in the West, all your search results were scraped by either Google or Bing. Everything else is just a skin ontop or tweaking the ordering.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need massive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet, let alone have the ability to process that data.
'Ecosia' the search engine that plants trees, seems to be a recent quite good attempt - it's German I think. I think it has got easier to launch search engines - as the business of delivering good search results has got easier. Before, there seemed to be a real gulf in the quality of search results you'd get with Google vs. its competitors like Yahoo. Now, it's easier to consider adding Ecosia or something else to your chosen browser, and you know it will be hard to tell it's not Google.
Don't they use Bing as the basis of the search results? I may be out of date on that.
Is pattern not just because the prevalence is falling in the countries doing the most testing?
Deaths appear to be following the same pattern.
Hmm. I suppose the same applies to some extent, but it is harder to hide lots of deaths.
Is there any data available on the number of people across the world in some kind of formal lockdown vs date?
I haven't dug that deep. Seasonality, to me, seems extremely unlikely as South Africa, in its eummer, scary variant and everything, has also been following this trend. And what I find truly spooky is that SA peaked on 13 January, almost the same day as the UK and the US. That's possibly a post-Christmas effect but doesn't account for the sustaned call thereafter.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need maasive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet.
My laptop constantly tried to force me onto Yahoo search instead of google drove me absolutely bonkers.
Yahoo is a good example of not being independent search engine, it is just Bing with a few twists.
Most are - it requires a lot of hardware (and time) to crawler the net and generate a decent dataset to pull results from.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need maasive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet.
My laptop constantly tried to force me onto Yahoo search instead of google drove me absolutely bonkers.
Yahoo is a good example of not being independent search engine, it is just Bing with a few twists.
The cost in the UK would be a fraction of this - and would provide a large drop in the classroom transmissibility of the virus (whatever that figure might otherwise be). Would do the same for flu and colds next winter, so probably still worth doing then.
Is it actually a good idea to stop young children developing lifetime immunity protection factors by stopping them catching childhood colds and so on?
An interesting question. FWIW, I suspect most kids would still get colds, but it might give the teachers a break.
A break from colds... But it would reduce the breaks they get from teaching when they're able to take a legitimate sick day thanks to colds etc. Could be a finely balanced cost/benefit
Taking a sick day as a teacher is not an easy option: the work still has to be set which entails a long email detailing exactly what you want your classes to do. When you do go back in you find a large stack of work that the pupils did waiting for you to mark. Most (though by no means all) teachers will struggle in to school while feeling rotten as it is less effort than taking the time off. Long term illness is a bit different, and (ironically) sometimes results from teachers not taking time off when they should have.
Having said that, most staff rooms will have one or two teachers known for taking off far more time than they need to, though if you are known to have had a serious illness (of the order of cancer) then you do get a bit of sympathy.
It wasn't meant to be a serious point. I was just thinking that, as a non-teacher (except occasionally of post-grad students, which is a bit different!) I'm not sure which I'd prefer out of having a cold and having a class-full of kids. I guess that's why I'm not a teacher!
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Secondary schools?
Doesn't it make sense to do that after Easter when all vulnerable teachers will have been immunised.
Why are vulnerable secondary teachers more vulnerable than vulnerable primary teachers?
If they're reopening why don't vulnerable teachers just stay off until they're vaccinated?
I may be out of date, but I think primary school teachers tend to be younger than secondary school ones. They are also overwhelmingly female, which further reduces the risk.
On the other hand social distancing in a primary classroom is much harder to enforce than it is in a secondary school.
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Secondary schools?
Doesn't it make sense to do that after Easter when all vulnerable teachers will have been immunised.
Why are vulnerable secondary teachers more vulnerable than vulnerable primary teachers?
If they're reopening why don't vulnerable teachers just stay off until they're vaccinated?
I suppose it's because if children can catch and pass on the disease they want to minimise the number doing so just in general, rather than in relation to teachers?
The cost in the UK would be a fraction of this - and would provide a large drop in the classroom transmissibility of the virus (whatever that figure might otherwise be). Would do the same for flu and colds next winter, so probably still worth doing then.
Is it actually a good idea to stop young children developing lifetime immunity protection factors by stopping them catching childhood colds and so on?
An interesting question. FWIW, I suspect most kids would still get colds, but it might give the teachers a break.
A break from colds... But it would reduce the breaks they get from teaching when they're able to take a legitimate sick day thanks to colds etc. Could be a finely balanced cost/benefit
Taking a sick day as a teacher is not an easy option: the work still has to be set which entails a long email detailing exactly what you want your classes to do. When you do go back in you find a large stack of work that the pupils did waiting for you to mark. Most (though by no means all) teachers will struggle in to school while feeling rotten as it is less effort than taking the time off. Long term illness is a bit different, and (ironically) sometimes results from teachers not taking time off when they should have.
Having said that, most staff rooms will have one or two teachers known for taking off far more time than they need to, though if you are known to have had a serious illness (of the order of cancer) then you do get a bit of sympathy.
It wasn't meant to be a serious point. I was just thinking that, as a non-teacher (except occasionally of post-grad students, which is a bit different!) I'm not sure which I'd prefer out of having a cold and having a class-full of kids. I guess that's why I'm not a teacher!
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Secondary schools?
Doesn't it make sense to do that after Easter when all vulnerable teachers will have been immunised.
Indeed, we've discussed before that by waiting three weeks, you snaffle an extra 17 days on top 'free of charge' because the schools break up fort Easter on Maundy Thursday anyway (1 April). They they don't return until Monday 19 April.
Its worth noting that most alternative search engines aren't really independent search engines, they just aggregate data from Google and a few other places e.g DuckDuckGo just aggregates google, bing and stuff like Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine.
I might be wrong but I think on Google and Bing in the West are actually crawling the internet every day. The reason is the resources to do so is incredible.
Common Crawl provides public datasets of crawled pages. Their December release has about 3.3 billion pages in a filesize of about ~100TB (all compressed and without imageary) - which is about the size of the Google dataset in late 2003.
Is pattern not just because the prevalence is falling in the countries doing the most testing?
Deaths appear to be following the same pattern.
Hmm. I suppose the same applies to some extent, but it is harder to hide lots of deaths.
Is there any data available on the number of people across the world in some kind of formal lockdown vs date?
I haven't dug that deep. Seasonality, to me, seems extremely unlikely as South Africa, in its eummer, scary variant and everything, has also been following this trend. And what I find truly spooky is that SA peaked on 13 January, almost the same day as the UK and the US. That's possibly a post-Christmas effect but doesn't account for the sustaned call thereafter.
They unlocked a while back didn't they? No sign yet of an effect looking at that graph at least.
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Secondary schools?
Doesn't it make sense to do that after Easter when all vulnerable teachers will have been immunised.
Why are vulnerable secondary teachers more vulnerable than vulnerable primary teachers?
If they're reopening why don't vulnerable teachers just stay off until they're vaccinated?
I may be out of date, but I think primary school teachers tend to be younger than secondary school ones. They are also overwhelmingly female, which further reduces the risk.
On the other hand social distancing in a primary classroom is much harder to enforce than it is in a secondary school.
Against both items though I think it's been seen that younger children (pre teen) are less likely to spread Covid and from memory most local primary school closures were due to missing teachers far more than children catching it.
Secondary schools were completely different with entire years off at times even when the rules were being followed to only bar immediate contacts.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need maasive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet.
My laptop constantly tried to force me onto Yahoo search instead of google drove me absolutely bonkers.
Yahoo is a good example of not being independent search engine, it is just Bing with a few twists.
Interesting.
If you ask most people on the street do they use Google or Bing, everybody will say Google. So you would think why do Microsoft persist with Bing, but I believe they make good money selling access to the search results to others, who incorporate it into their own apps / services....so everybody actually does use Bing they just don't know it.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need maasive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet.
My laptop constantly tried to force me onto Yahoo search instead of google drove me absolutely bonkers.
Since we're (kind of) on search engines and the like, Bing maps is actually surprisingly good in some ways. Not the streetview coverage of Google, but often better satellite imagery (from HERE?) and OS mapping built in too. Use it a lot when looking up holiday cottages and also at present for possible house moves - checking out footpaths nearby etc. Also has a measurement tool that directly lets you measure areas in addition to lengths, useful for comparing gardens, particularly when they're not simple shapes.
I say this as a fully paid up Linux-using Microsoft hater
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Secondary schools?
Doesn't it make sense to do that after Easter when all vulnerable teachers will have been immunised.
Why are vulnerable secondary teachers more vulnerable than vulnerable primary teachers?
If they're reopening why don't vulnerable teachers just stay off until they're vaccinated?
Transmission from younger kids to adults is not very common which is why primary schools are safer to open.
Difficult to keep schools open under those circumstances with teachers in groups 1-9 staying home. Would be massive staff shortages. I don't see the mileage in having them open for three weeks only to then close them for holidays again anyway. Might as well keep them closed and allow for the vaccine programme to continue working its way down the list so that all teachers in groups 1-9 are immunised for the return of school after the Easter break.
Its worth noting that most alternative search engines aren't really independent search engines, they just aggregate data from Google and a few other places e.g DuckDuckGo just aggregates google, bing and stuff like Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine.
I might be wrong but I think on Google and Bing in the West are actually crawling the internet every day. The reason is the resources to do so is incredible.
Common Crawl provides public datasets of crawled pages. Their December release has about 3.3 billion pages in a filesize of about ~100TB (all compressed and without imageary) - which is about the size of the Google dataset in late 2003.
I believe they only manage a "complete" crawl once a month. Where as Google are doing this every 3 days.
Labour needs a leader who would cut through the self congratulatory bullsh8t and ask the party why it took a pandemic to reveal what was going on in the sweatshops of Leicester and not their party.
Ask why the party was silent as prolonged school closures saw the gap between middle and working class kids widen to a chasm.
These are the abuses that actually spawned the labour movement, after all. Fighting them was the reason labour came into being.
If they aren't going to fight them, then what is the point? they are heading for extinction.
Almost all my extended family in the grim council estates of South Wales ended up with COVID -- this is very different from my friends in academia, none of whom have had it. (Fortunately, all my relatives made a good recovery & even my seriously overweight uncle in Caerffili seems to be OK, recovering slowly.)
But, this is a disease that has attacked the poor.
My guess is Jeremy Corbyn would have been much, much better at articulating this fundamental fact than Sir Union Jack. Also Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner, Rebecca Long Bailey and even (tho' I heartily dislike her) Jess Philips would have done this better.
Labour have made the wrong choice.
With Gordon B, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
With Ed M, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
Someone needs to hand SKS the whisky & the loaded revolver, sharpish. Because, he is not nimble enough to defeat either Boris or Nicola.
There are plenty of Jacinta Arderns in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
I agree with everything but the last line. There 'might' be some, but I don't see plenty tbh (or indeed in any party).
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
That's going to be a chunky bill for Uber between, ENI, NI, PAYE and VAT plus claims for NMW and holiday pay. They won't even be able to offset any CT because they never seem to make a profit. Must be a real question mark as to whether they survive this.
As I said the other day when the discussion was on UBI, if a firm cannot operate on a model that pays its employees a living wage and pays all the taxes and other liabilities it is due to pay then it is not a viable business and should not be propped up by the taxpayer.
It is different if it is a business operating on a viable model that then gets into difficulties because of the economic climate or other issues. Then I see the benefit of at least considering tax payer support in the short term as is the current case with the pandemic relief. But either Uber is a viable business paying its employees and taxes or it is not. If it is not then it deserves to fail.
Absolutely. And the number of genuinely self employed small taxi firms and businesses that they have been able to destroy with this illegal business model is a disgrace. Its worse than Amazon (words I never thought I would type).
Governments must try harder to ensure that there is a genuinely level playing field between indigenous businesses and these multinational tech companies (which is getting dangerously near getting back on topic, nice piece by the way).
Yes. The Uber case and RT's fascinating article are closely linked. We don't yet know what to do with the internet in terms of global regulation, safety and protection, taxation, unfair competition, pricing and so on.
I suspect many of us support the best of both sides of RT's article. Firstly we support free speech, news dissemination, informed discussion and lively debate.
We also oppose hate speech, paedophile images, racism, the destruction of quality journalism, copyright and intellectual property theft, commercial monopolies of every sort and unfair competition.
We also like to get as much as possible free, but know that everything internetted has a cost to someone somewhere even if it is free to us.
The Australian move has an irrational look to it, and Facebook's response is rational. It is the beginning not the end of a saga that will run and run.
I am not 100% clear (possibly being dim) of the (non polemical) answers to these questions:
What is the problem that the Aussies are trying to solve? What is the evil that RT would like to avert? What is the best way of solving the Aussie problem while averting RT's evil?
Gosh, anyone feel free to correct me if I get this wrong but:
1. Because so many get their news via facebook they spend a lot more time on it than they do on news sites where they buzz in for the linked article and out again. This means Facebook pick up most of the advertising revenue.
2. RT is concerned that if Facebook have to pay a fee when someone on their site links to one of these articles it will become impossible for everyone else to make such links too. PB is a good example of a site that simply could not have links to anything commercial if it had to pay. This risks diminishing and devaluing the scope of debate on the internet with freedom of speech implications.
3. I think that this is the hardest. It seems to me that the only viable answer is paywalls if the news organisations cannot generate enough advertising revenue to cover their costs and make a profit. Not entirely sure what RT's position is.
On point 2 the direction of travel is clear. Governments like Australia and the EU will take advantage of the antipathy towards big organisations like Facebook and Google to force through laws limiting linking and increasing Governmental control over the internet and then once those laws are in place they will extend them to all sites not just the big nasty one, 'as a matter of fairness'. It is interesting for example that the EU Directive as currently passed exempts smaller sites but that originally this was not the case and it took a hard rearguard action from those opposed to these laws to get it limited to sites with a higher turnover. This won't last. Once the principle is in place it will only go in one direction.
On point 3 my position is that this is a problem that does not need solving, at least not by legislation. If media companies are concerned about copyright they can put their articles behind paywalls. What this is really about is these companies thinking they are missing out on a revenue stream - one that actually wouldn't exist without the social media companies - and using sympathetic Government to muscle in rather than doing the hard work themselves.
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Secondary schools?
Doesn't it make sense to do that after Easter when all vulnerable teachers will have been immunised.
Indeed, we've discussed before that by waiting three weeks, you snaffle an extra 17 days on top 'free of charge' because the schools break up fort Easter on Maundy Thursday anyway (1 April). They they don't return until Monday 19 April.
Yeah and of the government is serious about opening up vaccines to 40-49 year olds from late March then that means by the 19th of April all teachers in groups 1-9 will have reached their 3 week post jab immunity.
To my mind it is the right course of action as hopefully it means the R value won't rise very much when schools do open fully and we don't see a huge rise in cases like last time.
If the government is serious about ensuring we don't ever have to lockdown again then actually waiting on secondary schools and universities makes the most sense as they have the largest potential for disaster.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need massive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet, let alone have the ability to process that data.
'Ecosia' the search engine that plants trees, seems to be a recent quite good attempt - it's German I think. I think it has got easier to launch search engines - as the business of delivering good search results has got easier. Before, there seemed to be a real gulf in the quality of search results you'd get with Google vs. its competitors like Yahoo. Now, it's easier to consider adding Ecosia or something else to your chosen browser, and you know it will be hard to tell it's not Google.
Its effectively just a skin of Bing. It takes their results and tweaks the ordering a bit.
Repeat...in the West, all your search results were scraped by either Google or Bing. Everything else is just a skin ontop or tweaking the ordering.
My point was that JA got the top job when the NZ-equivalent of Sir Keir fell on his sword.
I think there are a number of articulate, personable, passionate, effective female MPs in the PLP.
If the Labour males could only just get out of the way, then they might get a chance.
Specifically, Boris might have a significantly harder time against a female LOTO.
Boris against Jess Philips would be a lot harder for Boris
Easy to say, but she's not been tested in the spotlight of the leadership. She seems a reasonable, nice person, and comes across as down to earth. That she doesn't seem to hate Jacob Rees Mogg is a plus in my eyes - politics needed be tribal. Its ok to disagree, it doesn't make the other person evil.
What's with the discrepancy between EU EUR 1B and #TeamEurope EUR 2.2B? Is the rest other non-Eu contributions by EU countries? Or geographical - are we in #TeamEurope?
It's taken them long enough, they still need to do more to match the US and the UK for per capita funding though. I think €3.5bn is what they need to be looking at. Good on Germany for going in big with that €900m donation. Very good news for the world.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need maasive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet.
My laptop constantly tried to force me onto Yahoo search instead of google drove me absolutely bonkers.
Since we're (kind of) on search engines and the like, Bing maps is actually surprisingly good in some ways. Not the streetview coverage of Google, but often better satellite imagery (from HERE?) and OS mapping built in too. Use it a lot when looking up holiday cottages and also at present for possible house moves - checking out footpaths nearby etc. Also has a measurement tool that directly lets you measure areas in addition to lengths, useful for comparing gardens, particularly when they're not simple shapes.
I say this as a fully paid up Linux-using Microsoft hater
Got to say I detest Bing as a search engine. It never shows the range and accuracy of results that I get from Google and, although it is installed as the default search engine with Edge, I almost always give up and go to Google instead. It happened last night when I was researching for this article. I would love an alternative to Google but Bing just isn't it at the moment.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
What are the barriers to entry of search engines or social media sites?
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
Social media no, hence why Parler went from zero to quite big in no time, unless you piss off AWS.... search engine, that's a totally different animal, you need maasive resources to even start to be able to crawl the internet.
My laptop constantly tried to force me onto Yahoo search instead of google drove me absolutely bonkers.
Yahoo is a good example of not being independent search engine, it is just Bing with a few twists.
Interesting.
If you ask most people on the street do they use Google or Bing, everybody will say Google. So you would think why do Microsoft persist with Bing, but I believe they make good money selling access to the search results to others, who incorporate it into their own apps / services....so everybody actually does use Bing they just don't know it.
Bing also forms part of the backend to Cortana. Huawei and Apple also seem to be crawling as well for their 'AI' as well.
When does the government start to panic about the rise in Sterling? Over $1.40 now. Its not exactly going to assist with exporting our way out of a recession.
You might have thought that those headless headlines about the incredibly dramatic 0.1% increase in inflation could hardly look any sillier but they just might.
So what are we thinking apart from primary schools, if anything, will relax on March 8th?
Hoping for outdoor hospitality but it's a long shot I know.
I'd say no chance to that unfortunately. Uni's have been briefed to start getting ready for students back from the 8th (not necessarily all, and not all on the 8th). We are planning lab classes on the assumption that they will be in labs in March.
Got to say I detest Bing as a search engine. It never shows the range and accuracy of results that I get from Google and, although it is installed as the default search engine with Edge, I almost always give up and go to Google instead. It happened last night when I was researching for this article. I would love an alternative to Google but Bing just isn't it at the moment.
Exactly this.
These days in tech being able to Google the answer is at least as important as knowing the answer.
Dr John (An advocate of Vit D) has sent a good portion of his loopier antivax followers absolutely mental in the comments with him going through the facts of post vaccination deaths
Portugal has temporarily slowed down the vaccination of key workers such as police, armed forces and firefighters because of a shortage of doses.
Henrique Gouveia e Melo, head of Portugal's vaccination taskforce said the focus must be on "saving lives".
He said 90% of available doses will now be given to just two groups: people aged 80 and over, and people aged between 50 and 79 who have heart, coronary, kidney and severe respiratory diseases.
Only the remaining 10% will be given to the groups of specifiedkey workers.
What's with the discrepancy between EU EUR 1B and #TeamEurope EUR 2.2B? Is the rest other non-Eu contributions by EU countries? Or geographical - are we in #TeamEurope?
I think the €2.2bn is all of the various funding mechanisms from the EU and member states put together. It doesn't include the UK afaik as our £548m is separate to that. On a per capita basis the EU's €2.2bn is still around half of what the UK and US are donating to COVAX though so there is definitely huge room for improvement.
Is pattern not just because the prevalence is falling in the countries doing the most testing?
Deaths appear to be following the same pattern.
Hmm. I suppose the same applies to some extent, but it is harder to hide lots of deaths.
Is there any data available on the number of people across the world in some kind of formal lockdown vs date?
I haven't dug that deep. Seasonality, to me, seems extremely unlikely as South Africa, in its eummer, scary variant and everything, has also been following this trend. And what I find truly spooky is that SA peaked on 13 January, almost the same day as the UK and the US. That's possibly a post-Christmas effect but doesn't account for the sustaned call thereafter.
They unlocked a while back didn't they? No sign yet of an effect looking at that graph at least.
No they didn't. They made some tweaks, relaxing some particular draconian restrictions such as an alcohol selling ban that we never had in the first place.
Can we stop with this wishful thinking please that the virus will just somehow magically disappear? It's vaccines and social distancing that will defeat it. And hopefully just the vaccines will be enough in a few months.
Comments
Humanity is slowly winning the fight against this damn virus!
As I said on another matter, if "Couldn't give a flying fuck" was an option I suspect it would win hands down. I know there are some out there, maybe many, but interest in the royal family (apart maybe from the Queen) is quite a niche sport these days. Since my grandmother died 40 years ago I've never come across anybody remotely interested. Yes, it sells papers - but just because celebrity gossip does.
I don't understand this issue fully. I feel we must be missing the crux of the issue. News websites want traffic. Once they have the traffic, it's their decision what to do with it (paywall, email sign up, PPC adverts, etc.). No news website sets up and wants the opposite of traffic - otherwise what the point of being online at all?
Therefore, the crux of the issue cannot be links as we understand them, it must be Facebook somehow pulling through content and presenting it in a way that keeps people on Facebook, rather than encouraging them to click through or explore more, in a way that would benefit the creator of the content. That is quite different, and would make the Australian Government's position a little more understandable.
Dallas official says White House called but Texas governor has not
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/539495-dallas-official-says-biden-white-house-called-but-governor-has-not
...“We’re very thankful. The reason our water is in good shape is because the Biden administration and FEMA sent us generators,” Jenkins said. “We hook those up to our water treatment plants and we were able to save most of our water treatment plants with that help.”
Abbott issued an executive order on Tuesday calling for an investigation into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and for the legislature to “review the preparations and decisions by ERCOT so we can determine what caused this problem and find long-term solutions.”...
I know that not everyone runs their browsers in dev mode with numerous content management plugins, but to load the whole article then just display the first paragraph wouldn't be done by accident.
Doubly so since the Times paywall preceded it, and it's much more difficult, but not impossible, to read the full articles there.
Anything that weakens the integrity of the vote in any way is to be totally avoided.
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1362357897708134403
But, this is a disease that has attacked the poor.
My guess is Jeremy Corbyn would have been much, much better at articulating this fundamental fact than Sir Union Jack. Also Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner, Rebecca Long Bailey and even (tho' I heartily dislike her) Jess Philips would have done this better.
Labour have made the wrong choice.
With Gordon B, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
With Ed M, it was obvious Labour made the wrong choice almost immediately, but they persevered with the car crash.
Someone needs to hand SKS the whisky & the loaded revolver, sharpish. Because, he is not nimble enough to defeat either Boris or Nicola.
There are plenty of Jacinta Arderns in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
And for that reason alone Starmer at 5 for next PM is a value lay bet.
Not many AFAICS.
So there is no monopoly apart from a commercially successful one.
Why should that be regulated. What would you do? Make everyone unfriend half their contacts? Go to Yahoo Search?
she would have been hilariously terrible.
My point was that JA got the top job when the NZ-equivalent of Sir Keir fell on his sword.
I think there are a number of articulate, personable, passionate, effective female MPs in the PLP.
If the Labour males could only just get out of the way, then they might get a chance.
Specifically, Boris might have a significantly harder time against a female LOTO.
England up 10K on last week. Scotland and Wales both down quite a bit on last week.
Isn't that a business plan these days? Come up with an idea that might just possibly annoy Facebook and then sell out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook
I'm saying it would be sad if Labour have to appeal to people who get genuinely and deeply upset about anti-racist symbolism in order to do well at an election. And I don't believe they do need to do that. Why? Because there are imo enough people in this country who either share Labour values - or at least are not actively put off by them - to form a voting coalition large enough to be competitive.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date
Total 396,262 4,561 400,823
East Of England 43,086 441 43,527
London 52,819 1,093 53,912
Midlands 75,148 856 76,004
North East And Yorkshire 57,328 982 58,310
North West 52,020 300 52,320
South East 71,766 582 72,348
South West 42,295 298 42,593
Nothing to see here guv! Drakeford in deep trouble.
From hero to zero, deity to dullard, in a single day.
The story will then become 'how quickly are we back to normal ?'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9278447/Israeli-bar-offers-Covid-jabs-FREE-DRINK-encourage-young-people.html
Is there any data available on the number of people across the world in some kind of formal lockdown vs date?
Long term illness is a bit different, and (ironically) sometimes results from teachers not taking time off when they should have.
Having said that, most staff rooms will have one or two teachers known for taking off far more time than they need to, though if you are known to have had a serious illness (of the order of cancer) then you do get a bit of sympathy.
If it bleeds it leads, as @Andy_Cooke frequently reminds us.
Hysteria is, sadly, very popular.
Edit: I mean they can't just say "primary schools" the rest as is. Can they?
I might be wrong but I think on Google and Bing in the West are actually crawling the internet every day. The reason is the resources to do so is incredible.
I'd be happy to see that before Easter.
Repeat...in the West, all your search results were scraped by either Google or Bing. Everything else is just a skin ontop or tweaking the ordering.
If they're reopening why don't vulnerable teachers just stay off until they're vaccinated?
On the other hand social distancing in a primary classroom is much harder to enforce than it is in a secondary school.
Secondary schools were completely different with entire years off at times even when the rules were being followed to only bar immediate contacts.
I say this as a fully paid up Linux-using Microsoft hater
Difficult to keep schools open under those circumstances with teachers in groups 1-9 staying home. Would be massive staff shortages. I don't see the mileage in having them open for three weeks only to then close them for holidays again anyway. Might as well keep them closed and allow for the vaccine programme to continue working its way down the list so that all teachers in groups 1-9 are immunised for the return of school after the Easter break.
https://twitter.com/EUatUN/status/1362772277276901381
On point 3 my position is that this is a problem that does not need solving, at least not by legislation. If media companies are concerned about copyright they can put their articles behind paywalls. What this is really about is these companies thinking they are missing out on a revenue stream - one that actually wouldn't exist without the social media companies - and using sympathetic Government to muscle in rather than doing the hard work themselves.
To my mind it is the right course of action as hopefully it means the R value won't rise very much when schools do open fully and we don't see a huge rise in cases like last time.
If the government is serious about ensuring we don't ever have to lockdown again then actually waiting on secondary schools and universities makes the most sense as they have the largest potential for disaster.
What's with the discrepancy between EU EUR 1B and #TeamEurope EUR 2.2B? Is the rest other non-Eu contributions by EU countries? Or geographical - are we in #TeamEurope?
You might have thought that those headless headlines about the incredibly dramatic 0.1% increase in inflation could hardly look any sillier but they just might.
These days in tech being able to Google the answer is at least as important as knowing the answer.
Being able to Bing the answer is not a thing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHH1vWD19Fw&ab_channel=Dr.JohnCampbell
Henrique Gouveia e Melo, head of Portugal's vaccination taskforce said the focus must be on "saving lives".
He said 90% of available doses will now be given to just two groups: people aged 80 and over, and people aged between 50 and 79 who have heart, coronary, kidney and severe respiratory diseases.
Only the remaining 10% will be given to the groups of specifiedkey workers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-55896717
The lockdown started on December 29, which lines up rather well with the case peak a couple weeks later.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-55468104
Can we stop with this wishful thinking please that the virus will just somehow magically disappear? It's vaccines and social distancing that will defeat it. And hopefully just the vaccines will be enough in a few months.