Surely the most significant moment in the press conference came from Chris Whitty confirming that in the future R may go above 1 but thanks to the vaccines that will be ok.
The idea SAGE would be demanding lockdown forever died today. Good!
That Edmunds monkey is right back in his box. Perhaps they’ll stop inviting him to give his view on telly and the Sunday newspapers.
Hopefully all four nations will be aligned in this too, no unnecessary hanging around to unlock once the oldies are immunised.
I'm slightly surprised that there were 1,000 EU finance firms without UK offices, but there you go. One would have thought that anyone with more than about 50 employees would have a UK presence already.
That graph at the top really is quite good news isn't it.
There's a lot of good news out there in the last 48 hours. In addition to that chart, I'd note:
(1) AZ is just as good as Pfizer at preventing hospitalisations (Scotland) (2) In Israel, while cases of SA/Brazil variant are increasing in the unvaccinated, they are basically unknown in the vaccinated
Yes. There’s almost too much going on to unpack. Needs someone to clear the decks at the Times/Guardian and lay it all out in tomorrow’s paper.
I'm catching up again (got something else on the TV.) Am I also correct in my understanding from reports that Whitty and Vallance both backed the all-in-one-go reopening of the schools?
Because that, of course, is very interesting. It would appear to put the central Government's scientific advisers as well as its politicians at odds with the approach taken in Scotland and Wales.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
That graph at the top really is quite good news isn't it.
There's a lot of good news out there in the last 48 hours. In addition to that chart, I'd note:
(1) AZ is just as good as Pfizer at preventing hospitalisations (Scotland) (2) In Israel, while cases of SA/Brazil variant are increasing in the unvaccinated, they are basically unknown in the vaccinated
Yes. There’s almost too much going on to unpack. Needs someone to clear the decks at the Times/Guardian and lay it all out in tomorrow’s paper.
I'm catching up again (got something else on the TV.) Am I also correct in my understanding from reports that Whitty and Vallance both backed the all-in-one-go reopening of the schools?
Because that, of course, is very interesting. It would appear to put the central Government's scientific advisers as well as its politicians at odds with the approach taken in Scotland and Wales.
Personally, I would have held Secondary Schools back until after Easter.
(My kids haven't been to school in a year now, and the LA teachers unions are threatening to strike if they have to do in person teaching before the risk of CV19 is zero.)
"How many people will your decision to unlock kill" or words to that effect.
Presumably they have done the sums on that as part of the risk/benefit calculation. After all, clearly the r value is projected to go up, and the country is far from being vaccinated. Few on our ICU are in vaccine eligible groups.
I am not opposed to relaxations, but those are the brutal sums required.
I watched a bit of Parliament earlier, I’ve pretty much not watched broadcast telly or the news since the Nov lockdown was announced (try it, its great).
My overriding observation. Starmer really needs to lighten up. Wear a jazzy tie. Crack a few gags. Smile even. He comes across as so sanctimonious and boring. Campaign in poetry, govern in prose and all that. I’m pretty confident now in predicting he will never be PM.
People like their PM's to not consistently have a face like a slapped arse.
Way too small a sample. Thatcher wasn't a grinning idiot. Nor was Major.
The early 90s might as well be caveman times as far as I'm concerned.
Why do you say that?
Because I'm joking.
But the relevant point is while kinabalu is right in this instance, there comes a point when comparisons to past political eras will become redundant. People have obsesses over the 70s and 80s for way too long already,a nd will in time obsess over the 90s too much.
I'd actually think it's legitimate to draw a line there and the distinction is 24/7 news followed by the internet both of which came of age as we know them under Blair.
Our modern era of the internet, soundbites and 24/7 news is so alien from what existed in the eighties that the comparison is like comparing those in the eighties getting news from TV versus those in the 40s and 50s getting theirs from the radio.
I watched a bit of Parliament earlier, I’ve pretty much not watched broadcast telly or the news since the Nov lockdown was announced (try it, its great).
My overriding observation. Starmer really needs to lighten up. Wear a jazzy tie. Crack a few gags. Smile even. He comes across as so sanctimonious and boring. Campaign in poetry, govern in prose and all that. I’m pretty confident now in predicting he will never be PM.
People like their PM's to not consistently have a face like a slapped arse.
Way too small a sample. Thatcher wasn't a grinning idiot. Nor was Major.
The early 90s might as well be caveman times as far as I'm concerned.
Why do you say that?
Because I'm joking.
But the relevant point is while kinabalu is right in this instance, there comes a point when comparisons to past political eras will become redundant. People have obsesses over the 70s and 80s for way too long already,a nd will in time obsess over the 90s too much.
As I mentioned before the Vanillas blackout, Blair changed so radically how we perceive a PM that comparisons before Blair are increasingly meaningless. Added to which Thatcher and Major didn't have to deal with the relentless 24 hour news cycle and social media we have today.
Blair finished the work of what Thatcher (either deliberately or by accident) started - the Presidential PM. They have to "connect" with voters at a much more profound level than just rocking-up as the leader of their party.
I'm slightly surprised that there were 1,000 EU finance firms without UK offices, but there you go. One would have thought that anyone with more than about 50 employees would have a UK presence already.
It was always going to be the case. They needed to open up a domestic branch to access capital markets in the long term, what that means for employment and tax revenue remains to be seen. I've seen cases of small outposts in London being staffed up quite rapidly despite head office pressure not to do so. Mainly because of the ease of finding people who can do the work.
It's the hope that gets you, I can live with the despair.
No hope, just despair for me. Boing, boing!
It was 10 years ago today that my eldest son was involved if the huge Christchurch earthquake witnessing many terrible sights especially at ground zero, and this morning he has received his 5th electroconvulsive therapy treatment out of ten as he still carries the enormity of his involvement with his PTSD worsening by the day
Beautiful words from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, today that could have been written especially for him but he is one of so many affected that terrible day
To be honest, he and our family are well versed in despair
It is strange to think that anywhere is still using ECT. I remember several years ago there was much talk of banning it. In Holland at that time it was forbidden. Someone I knew well had three series of it and I've little doubt that they wouldn't have survived without it but that wasn't a popular view at the time. I'm really surprised it's still being used in New Zealand
I watched a bit of Parliament earlier, I’ve pretty much not watched broadcast telly or the news since the Nov lockdown was announced (try it, its great).
My overriding observation. Starmer really needs to lighten up. Wear a jazzy tie. Crack a few gags. Smile even. He comes across as so sanctimonious and boring. Campaign in poetry, govern in prose and all that. I’m pretty confident now in predicting he will never be PM.
People like their PM's to not consistently have a face like a slapped arse.
Way too small a sample. Thatcher wasn't a grinning idiot. Nor was Major.
The early 90s might as well be caveman times as far as I'm concerned.
Why do you say that?
Because I'm joking.
But the relevant point is while kinabalu is right in this instance, there comes a point when comparisons to past political eras will become redundant. People have obsesses over the 70s and 80s for way too long already,a nd will in time obsess over the 90s too much.
Sort of but Mrs Thatcher is a special case. It is not about 1980s Trots shouting about Fatcha (as is often the pb Tory response) but of reminding those Conservatives who do venerate her politics, or what they think were her politics, that actually she was sometimes on the other side.
pb Labour (or any Labour people really) do not venerate Harold Wilson or Tony Blair in the same way so there is no direct equivalent.
I'm slightly surprised that there were 1,000 EU finance firms without UK offices, but there you go. One would have thought that anyone with more than about 50 employees would have a UK presence already.
It was always going to be the case. They needed to open up a domestic branch to access capital markets in the long term, what that means for employment and tax revenue remains to be seen. I've seen cases of small outposts in London being staffed up quite rapidly despite head office pressure not to do so. Mainly because of the ease of finding people who can do the work.
Oh, I buy the staffing up. I'm just surprised that so many firms didn't have any UK presences.
It's the hope that gets you, I can live with the despair.
No hope, just despair for me. Boing, boing!
It was 10 years ago today that my eldest son was involved if the huge Christchurch earthquake witnessing many terrible sights especially at ground zero, and this morning he has received his 5th electroconvulsive therapy treatment out of ten as he still carries the enormity of his involvement with his PTSD worsening by the day
Beautiful words from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, today that could have been written especially for him but he is one of so many affected that terrible day
To be honest, he and our family are well versed in despair
It is strange to think that anywhere is still using ECT. I remember several years ago there was much talk of banning it. In Holland at that time it was forbidden. Someone I knew well had three series of it and I've little doubt that they wouldn't have survived without it but that wasn't a popular view at the time. I'm really surprised it's still being used in New Zealand
Actually he has since married and lives in BC, Canada and is under the top psychologist in this field
Surely the most significant moment in the press conference came from Chris Whitty confirming that in the future R may go above 1 but thanks to the vaccines that will be ok.
The idea SAGE would be demanding lockdown forever died today. Good!
That Edmunds monkey is right back in his box. Perhaps they’ll stop inviting him to give his view on telly and the Sunday newspapers.
Hopefully all four nations will be aligned in this too, no unnecessary hanging around to unlock once the oldies are immunised.
Surely it’s too good an opportunity to miss using the England Scotland footy match on 18 June as a deafeningly loud punctuation mark for the country. None of this 10k max in the stadium nonsense. Full house with the Queen in attendance.
I watched a bit of Parliament earlier, I’ve pretty much not watched broadcast telly or the news since the Nov lockdown was announced (try it, its great).
My overriding observation. Starmer really needs to lighten up. Wear a jazzy tie. Crack a few gags. Smile even. He comes across as so sanctimonious and boring. Campaign in poetry, govern in prose and all that. I’m pretty confident now in predicting he will never be PM.
People like their PM's to not consistently have a face like a slapped arse.
Way too small a sample. Thatcher wasn't a grinning idiot. Nor was Major.
The early 90s might as well be caveman times as far as I'm concerned.
Why do you say that?
Because I'm joking.
But the relevant point is while kinabalu is right in this instance, there comes a point when comparisons to past political eras will become redundant. People have obsesses over the 70s and 80s for way too long already,a nd will in time obsess over the 90s too much.
Sort of but Mrs Thatcher is a special case. It is not about 1980s Trots shouting about Fatcha (as is often the pb Tory response) but of reminding those Conservatives who do venerate her politics, or what they think were her politics, that actually she was sometimes on the other side.
pb Labour (or any Labour people really) do not venerate Harold Wilson or Tony Blair in the same way so there is no direct equivalent.
I'm content to leave analysing Thatcher to historians, and for political activists to stop trying to scare me or inspire me by banging on about her. I'm not particularly interested in whether someone is the next Thatcher, since as you suggest those thinking that's a good thing will probably miss out a lot in their gushing worship, and those who think it is a bad thing are just looking to get an outrage stiffy.
I'm slightly surprised that there were 1,000 EU finance firms without UK offices, but there you go. One would have thought that anyone with more than about 50 employees would have a UK presence already.
It was always going to be the case. They needed to open up a domestic branch to access capital markets in the long term, what that means for employment and tax revenue remains to be seen. I've seen cases of small outposts in London being staffed up quite rapidly despite head office pressure not to do so. Mainly because of the ease of finding people who can do the work.
Oh, I buy the staffing up. I'm just surprised that so many firms didn't have any UK presences.
I guess they didn't think they needed to given the passport. It will be interesting to see how many end up growing into proper locations rather than 3 or 4 person outposts in a WeWork with a City brass plate.
It's the hope that gets you, I can live with the despair.
No hope, just despair for me. Boing, boing!
It was 10 years ago today that my eldest son was involved if the huge Christchurch earthquake witnessing many terrible sights especially at ground zero, and this morning he has received his 5th electroconvulsive therapy treatment out of ten as he still carries the enormity of his involvement with his PTSD worsening by the day
Beautiful words from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, today that could have been written especially for him but he is one of so many affected that terrible day
To be honest, he and our family are well versed in despair
It is strange to think that anywhere is still using ECT. I remember several years ago there was much talk of banning it. In Holland at that time it was forbidden. Someone I knew well had three series of it and I've little doubt that they wouldn't have survived without it but that wasn't a popular view at the time. I'm really surprised it's still being used in New Zealand
ECT does have a reasonable evidence base, particularly for refractory depression with strong biological features. I have seen it work well. With modern anaesthesia and unipolar technique it is not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Boris has been impressive today. I’m warming to him.
A sensible balanced roadmap and it gives us all real hope now.
Boris does seem physically better than he has been but also more on top of his material. We must hope this shows a new, dedicated Boris, and not merely the effect of having repeated the same spiel three times today. With hindsight, perhaps his determination to master drug names was a sign of the new serious Boris. His hagiographers have long told us he had a first class brain, and perhaps now he is using it. Mind you, they said the same of David Cameron so there is an element of crying wolf.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
Question is- how much do any of us realise the relative degrees of messed-upness in different countries?
Partly, that's about absolute death tolls- the January spike seems to have just happened with a shrug.
Also, it's the extent of current lockdown. If you take the numbers here,
The UK has been in an unusually long and hard lockdown this winter, compared with other similar countries.
(And to save anyone the trouble- lockdown is what you do when you've messed up. You can hold cases constant fairly easily, and as long as you hold them constant and low, that's sort of tolerable. If you let them get out of control, you have to lockdown harder to reduce them. It's germ theory and maths.)
But I don't know how the numbers are generated. What would be interesting would be:
1 What actually have been the social controls in different places over the winter? 2 What is the public perception of what the social controls in different places have been? 3 What is the public perception of the infection rates in different places?
Because that gets to the heart of whether this is an awful challenge that most nations have fumbled or an awful challenge where the UK government have done significantly worse.
Only the first of those is in any way significant. The other two do not have any objective or even subjective validity because different populations have different attitudes to social controls based on their cultures and history.
Badly phrased- which was my fault, sorry.
I'm interested in how the GBP thinks GB is doing compared with elsewhere. My hypothesis is that we are all assuming that the English experience of Winter 2020/1 is much of a muchness with other rich countries currently leaving winter and entering spring.
There are some hints (which match what I see when I check in with news from Spain, purely because I used to live there and am interested) that it's not quite like that; that the social restrictions in Seville are looser than in London.
So what I'm interested in (because it affects the politics in the UK) is what do people in the UK think is going on elsewhere, and how well that matches reality? Because those two things taken together might explain some of the odder aspects of the conversation.
It's the hope that gets you, I can live with the despair.
No hope, just despair for me. Boing, boing!
It was 10 years ago today that my eldest son was involved if the huge Christchurch earthquake witnessing many terrible sights especially at ground zero, and this morning he has received his 5th electroconvulsive therapy treatment out of ten as he still carries the enormity of his involvement with his PTSD worsening by the day
Beautiful words from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, today that could have been written especially for him but he is one of so many affected that terrible day
To be honest, he and our family are well versed in despair
It is strange to think that anywhere is still using ECT. I remember several years ago there was much talk of banning it. In Holland at that time it was forbidden. Someone I knew well had three series of it and I've little doubt that they wouldn't have survived without it but that wasn't a popular view at the time. I'm really surprised it's still being used in New Zealand
ECT does have a reasonable evidence base, particularly for refractory depression with strong biological features. I have seen it work well. With modern anaesthesia and unipolar technique it is not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
I am pleased to hear your view Foxy
Thank you as this is a very stressful time for his wife, mother and our family
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
That graph at the top really is quite good news isn't it.
There's a lot of good news out there in the last 48 hours. In addition to that chart, I'd note:
(1) AZ is just as good as Pfizer at preventing hospitalisations (Scotland) (2) In Israel, while cases of SA/Brazil variant are increasing in the unvaccinated, they are basically unknown in the vaccinated
Yes. There’s almost too much going on to unpack. Needs someone to clear the decks at the Times/Guardian and lay it all out in tomorrow’s paper.
I'm catching up again (got something else on the TV.) Am I also correct in my understanding from reports that Whitty and Vallance both backed the all-in-one-go reopening of the schools?
Because that, of course, is very interesting. It would appear to put the central Government's scientific advisers as well as its politicians at odds with the approach taken in Scotland and Wales.
Personally, I would have held Secondary Schools back until after Easter.
(My kids haven't been to school in a year now, and the LA teachers unions are threatening to strike if they have to do in person teaching before the risk of CV19 is zero.)
It will be interesting to see if the boarding schools reopen before Easter. They would provide more data as effectively they'd be (or contain) households as well.
That graph at the top really is quite good news isn't it.
There's a lot of good news out there in the last 48 hours. In addition to that chart, I'd note:
(1) AZ is just as good as Pfizer at preventing hospitalisations (Scotland) (2) In Israel, while cases of SA/Brazil variant are increasing in the unvaccinated, they are basically unknown in the vaccinated
Yes. There’s almost too much going on to unpack. Needs someone to clear the decks at the Times/Guardian and lay it all out in tomorrow’s paper.
I'm catching up again (got something else on the TV.) Am I also correct in my understanding from reports that Whitty and Vallance both backed the all-in-one-go reopening of the schools?
Because that, of course, is very interesting. It would appear to put the central Government's scientific advisers as well as its politicians at odds with the approach taken in Scotland and Wales.
I'm slightly surprised that there were 1,000 EU finance firms without UK offices, but there you go. One would have thought that anyone with more than about 50 employees would have a UK presence already.
It was always going to be the case. They needed to open up a domestic branch to access capital markets in the long term, what that means for employment and tax revenue remains to be seen. I've seen cases of small outposts in London being staffed up quite rapidly despite head office pressure not to do so. Mainly because of the ease of finding people who can do the work.
And the fact that people like London. One of my clients had its ‘head office’ in a fairly dreary part of northern England. All of the key people ended up working in the ‘small back office’ in EC1. It was a bit of a squeeze, but infinitely more fun!
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
What's wrong with a Nokia 3310.... won't need recharging mid flight after 4hrs of snake!
It's the hope that gets you, I can live with the despair.
No hope, just despair for me. Boing, boing!
It was 10 years ago today that my eldest son was involved if the huge Christchurch earthquake witnessing many terrible sights especially at ground zero, and this morning he has received his 5th electroconvulsive therapy treatment out of ten as he still carries the enormity of his involvement with his PTSD worsening by the day
Beautiful words from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, today that could have been written especially for him but he is one of so many affected that terrible day
To be honest, he and our family are well versed in despair
It is strange to think that anywhere is still using ECT. I remember several years ago there was much talk of banning it. In Holland at that time it was forbidden. Someone I knew well had three series of it and I've little doubt that they wouldn't have survived without it but that wasn't a popular view at the time. I'm really surprised it's still being used in New Zealand
ECT does have a reasonable evidence base, particularly for refractory depression with strong biological features. I have seen it work well. With modern anaesthesia and unipolar technique it is not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
It was remarkably effective though in the case I was involved with it's effect was very short lived. For very short periods of time the person seemed like their old selves again. It seemed like a miracle cure but ultimately if the underlying problem wasn't tackled it just returned. It was a very severe case of anorexia though not convincingly diagnosed as such at the time
Trying to unpack my thoughts on the conundrum of Net Satisfaction vs Gross Positives. I wonder, is turnout factored in to the Leader Ratings? If not, I think there is a good case as to why NS is a poorer indicator than GP
Sir Keir is said to be the more likeable, because his "net like" is three points higher than that of Boris. To me this seems absurd, because more people said they liked Boris (45-36), Sir Keir only wins because he is allocated 50% of those who neither know nor care. Maybe those who neither know nor care are unlikely to vote, and if this is filtered into the numbers, I think it is a different story.
I am assuming turnout of 70% as a rough guide for when my "Turnout tweak" button is pushed.
For Boris, 85% of voters have made their mind up about him. I would say a large percentage of the 45 who like him can be thought of as pretty certain to vote for him (I have allowed 10% margin for people who say they like both leaders, but this could be way off the mark) giving Boris a max score of 45 and a min of 40.5. The non voters would be the 15 who don't know and 15 of those who dislike him
In Sir Keir's case, only 64% of voters have made up their minds about him. It seems that people infer this means 36% of votes are up for grabs. But, as only 70% of people vote, and those without a strong opinion must be less inclined to be voters, only 6% are realistically available to him. So I give him a max vote of 39% (His 36 + half of the undecided's once the turnout tweak button is pushed) and a minimum of 32.4% (his 36% less the 10% who may like both he and Boris)
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
What's wrong with a Nokia 3310.... won't need recharging mid flight after 4hrs of snake!
Flight tickets... hotel bookings... Google Maps... taxi and/or public transport apps...
It's the hope that gets you, I can live with the despair.
No hope, just despair for me. Boing, boing!
It was 10 years ago today that my eldest son was involved if the huge Christchurch earthquake witnessing many terrible sights especially at ground zero, and this morning he has received his 5th electroconvulsive therapy treatment out of ten as he still carries the enormity of his involvement with his PTSD worsening by the day
Beautiful words from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, today that could have been written especially for him but he is one of so many affected that terrible day
To be honest, he and our family are well versed in despair
It is strange to think that anywhere is still using ECT. I remember several years ago there was much talk of banning it. In Holland at that time it was forbidden. Someone I knew well had three series of it and I've little doubt that they wouldn't have survived without it but that wasn't a popular view at the time. I'm really surprised it's still being used in New Zealand
ECT does have a reasonable evidence base, particularly for refractory depression with strong biological features. I have seen it work well. With modern anaesthesia and unipolar technique it is not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
It was remarkably effective though in the case I was involved with it's effect was very short lived. For very short periods of time the person seemed like their old selves again. It seemed like a miracle cure but ultimately if the underlying problem wasn't tackled it just returned. It was a very severe case of anorexia though not convincingly diagnosed as such at the time
We have been made aware that he may need further sessions or maintenance sessions as they seem to call them
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
What's wrong with a Nokia 3310.... won't need recharging mid flight after 4hrs of snake!
It's not 2001 anymore?
Besides can't you buy a cheap smartphone nowadays for around a tenner? If you're flying to NZ you can afford to get a smartphone even if it's a disposable one as part of the ticket price.
I am not surprised and expect EU businesses across many sectors to do the same
I think we're seeing a reshuffle of the deck of cards, with financial firms having subsidiaries either side of the Channel.
I'm not convinced it means very much, except that Frankfurt and Paris will be annoyed that Amsterdam has stolen their EU-crown (very probably because it speaks English).
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
What's wrong with a Nokia 3310.... won't need recharging mid flight after 4hrs of snake!
It's not 2001 anymore?
Besides can't you buy a cheap smartphone nowadays for around a tenner? If you're flying to NZ you can afford to get a smartphone even if it's a disposable one as part of the ticket price.
I was obviously joking... nobody is travelling without a smart phone, even the illegal immigrant boat people have them, as they can't function without them.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
That graph at the top really is quite good news isn't it.
There's a lot of good news out there in the last 48 hours. In addition to that chart, I'd note:
(1) AZ is just as good as Pfizer at preventing hospitalisations (Scotland) (2) In Israel, while cases of SA/Brazil variant are increasing in the unvaccinated, they are basically unknown in the vaccinated
Yes. There’s almost too much going on to unpack. Needs someone to clear the decks at the Times/Guardian and lay it all out in tomorrow’s paper.
I'm catching up again (got something else on the TV.) Am I also correct in my understanding from reports that Whitty and Vallance both backed the all-in-one-go reopening of the schools?
Because that, of course, is very interesting. It would appear to put the central Government's scientific advisers as well as its politicians at odds with the approach taken in Scotland and Wales.
Personally, I would have held Secondary Schools back until after Easter.
(My kids haven't been to school in a year now, and the LA teachers unions are threatening to strike if they have to do in person teaching before the risk of CV19 is zero.)
It will be interesting to see if the boarding schools reopen before Easter. They would provide more data as effectively they'd be (or contain) households as well.
Not all boarding schools are shut (at least not fully). Just as not all boarding schools are private.
I am not surprised and expect EU businesses across many sectors to do the same
I think we're seeing a reshuffle of the deck of cards, with financial firms having subsidiaries either side of the Channel.
I'm not convinced it means very much, except that Frankfurt and Paris will be annoyed that Amsterdam has stolen their EU-crown (very probably because it speaks English).
Like the reverse of British companies opening offices in Europe I expect for these "1000 companies" to be little more than glorified PO Boxes.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
OMFG
One sentence came about 15 seconds after the other
"The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers"
"There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths."
I feel like Hugh Laurie, as Doctor House, pointing to an obvious and troubling tumour on a CAT scan, laughing cynically at the blatancy of the affliction
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
She's no oil painting, but I think Jess is the one to do it
Did any journalist ask why we only did ~ 150,000 jabs yesterday if there is no issue with supply ?
Without having watched it, were they too busy asking about their holidays?
Dunno, but the vaccinations seem to have lost impetus since the challenging but made target of 15 million by February 15th was made and beaten. If it's down to supply, so be it but I heard Bojo say there were no supply issues today. Should be half a million jabs every day.
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
I have a smartphone but no phone contract, because I use it as a tablet. For mobile phoning & texting I have a very old Nokia.
The arrangement suits me very well, but I do wonder what facilities will only work if you do have a phone contract. For example, I don't have internet access out of range of a router I have access to.
Would this airline proposal need internet access or would it be something stored on the phone, do you think?
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
OMFG
One sentence came about 15 seconds after the other
"The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers"
"There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths."
I feel like Hugh Laurie, as Doctor House, pointing to an obvious and troubling tumour on a CAT scan, laughing cynically at the blatancy of the affliction
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
I have a smartphone but no phone contract, because I use it as a tablet. For mobile phoning & texting I have a very old Nokia.
The arrangement suits me very well, but I do wonder what facilities will only work if you do have a phone contract. For example, I don't have internet access out of range of a router I have access to.
Would this airline proposal need internet access or would it be something stored on the phone, do you think?
It's probably just a QR code that they would scan to verify on their end.
It's the hope that gets you, I can live with the despair.
No hope, just despair for me. Boing, boing!
It was 10 years ago today that my eldest son was involved if the huge Christchurch earthquake witnessing many terrible sights especially at ground zero, and this morning he has received his 5th electroconvulsive therapy treatment out of ten as he still carries the enormity of his involvement with his PTSD worsening by the day
Beautiful words from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, today that could have been written especially for him but he is one of so many affected that terrible day
To be honest, he and our family are well versed in despair
It is strange to think that anywhere is still using ECT. I remember several years ago there was much talk of banning it. In Holland at that time it was forbidden. Someone I knew well had three series of it and I've little doubt that they wouldn't have survived without it but that wasn't a popular view at the time. I'm really surprised it's still being used in New Zealand
ECT does have a reasonable evidence base, particularly for refractory depression with strong biological features. I have seen it work well. With modern anaesthesia and unipolar technique it is not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
I am pleased to hear your view Foxy
Thank you as this is a very stressful time for his wife, mother and our family
Like any treatment it has side effects and risks, but then so does inadequately treated depression.
PTSD is difficult to deal with. I think a lot of the covid staff will have it to a greater or lesser degree. The ICU that I have been helping with usually runs at 2-3% mortality, but is currently running at ten times that.
Did any journalist ask why we only did ~ 150,000 jabs yesterday if there is no issue with supply ?
Without having watched it, were they too busy asking about their holidays?
Dunno, but the vaccinations seem to have lost impetus since the challenging but made target of 15 million by February 15th was made and beaten. If it's down to supply, so be it but I heard Bojo say there were no supply issues today. Should be half a million jabs every day.
Someone must surely have a copy of the Scottish plan with delivery numbers in it so we can make the calculation. But everyone has gone off a cliff with vaccination numbers so it must surely be supply.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
Question is- how much do any of us realise the relative degrees of messed-upness in different countries?
Partly, that's about absolute death tolls- the January spike seems to have just happened with a shrug.
Also, it's the extent of current lockdown. If you take the numbers here,
The UK has been in an unusually long and hard lockdown this winter, compared with other similar countries.
(And to save anyone the trouble- lockdown is what you do when you've messed up. You can hold cases constant fairly easily, and as long as you hold them constant and low, that's sort of tolerable. If you let them get out of control, you have to lockdown harder to reduce them. It's germ theory and maths.)
But I don't know how the numbers are generated. What would be interesting would be:
1 What actually have been the social controls in different places over the winter? 2 What is the public perception of what the social controls in different places have been? 3 What is the public perception of the infection rates in different places?
Because that gets to the heart of whether this is an awful challenge that most nations have fumbled or an awful challenge where the UK government have done significantly worse.
Only the first of those is in any way significant. The other two do not have any objective or even subjective validity because different populations have different attitudes to social controls based on their cultures and history.
Badly phrased- which was my fault, sorry.
I'm interested in how the GBP thinks GB is doing compared with elsewhere. My hypothesis is that we are all assuming that the English experience of Winter 2020/1 is much of a muchness with other rich countries currently leaving winter and entering spring.
There are some hints (which match what I see when I check in with news from Spain, purely because I used to live there and am interested) that it's not quite like that; that the social restrictions in Seville are looser than in London.
So what I'm interested in (because it affects the politics in the UK) is what do people in the UK think is going on elsewhere, and how well that matches reality? Because those two things taken together might explain some of the odder aspects of the conversation.
Again not entirely sure how you judge these things.
France has kept shops open but has had a strict nightly curfew 6pm - 6am. All bars, restaurants etc have been closed. But whatever they have been doing has basically failed because they are seeing a rapid increase in cases and are saying they will have to go into lockdown again.
Italy also has a curfew (10pm to 5am)
Germany has shut all shops, schools, bars, restaurants etc and ha similar rules to us on meeting people from outside your household.
In spite of what you say about Spain, officially they are under a nationwide curfew until early May 2021. People are only allowed out to go to work, for education, to buy medicine, or care for elderly people or children. That seems much stricter than the UK.
Personally it seems to me that the rest of the EU are generally pretty much on a par with the strictness of their lockdowns but the detail varies (I see a curfew as far more intrusive and strict than anything we have in the UK)
But sadly even if this was working it is completely undermined by their poor vaccination progress.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
I think the winner for the dickhead question of the day....
Sky News' Sam Coates asks whether the PM would resign if England had to be locked down again. He also asks if it's possible for this progress to be irreversible.
As far as anybody knows ww could get super mutant covid appear thar makes Saffers COVID look like Mr Muscle from those old ads.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
OMFG
One sentence came about 15 seconds after the other
"The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers"
"There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths."
I feel like Hugh Laurie, as Doctor House, pointing to an obvious and troubling tumour on a CAT scan, laughing cynically at the blatancy of the affliction
I made this very point in response.
It just reinforced my original one.
I had not mentioned Brexit because it is irrelevant to the question. Mad Leavers, perhaps deranged from a misplaced knapped dildo, keep raising it in relation to Covid-19. I then note this.
And still the pair of you witter on about Brexit. Anything rather than talk about the government’s catastrophic missteps causing untold thousands of avoidable deaths.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
She's no oil painting, but I think Jess is the one to do it
Trouble is that, passionate campaigner though she is and valid though that is, can you imagine her walking into No 10 and running the whole show?
Near the top, yes. At the top, I'm not sure.
But that's the problem for Leaders of the Opposition- how do you balance the oomph to tear chunks out of the government with the gravitas to look like you can take over? It's not easy.
I think the winner for the dickhead question of the day....
Sky News' Sam Coates asks whether the PM would resign if England had to be locked down again. He also asks if it's possible for this progress to be irreversible.
As far as anybody knows ww could get super mutant covid appear thar makes Saffers COVID look like Mr Muscle from those old ads.
I think I made the right decision in deciding not to watch the questions from April last year onwards.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Worse than that, Starmer’s only shtick is to try and condescend the PM for being affable and trying to be optimistic. I’ll cut him slack. Most of us have spent this winter teetering on the brink of darkness.
Well I saw my first daff in bloom yesterday under a bright blue sky. And I shall dream tonight of burning my manky facemask around a euphoric solstice pyre. Keir/Kier needs to book an April Airbnb and try and remember what life’s all about.
Air New Zealand says it will trial a new digital health pass designed to help streamline safe international travel.
The Travel Pass app, developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will store Covid test results and vaccination details in one place that can be shared among airlines and border control agencies. The trial will start in April with flights between Auckland and the Australian city of Sydney.
What do people without smartphones do?
If you're flying abroad, you'll have a smartphone.
I have a smartphone but no phone contract, because I use it as a tablet. For mobile phoning & texting I have a very old Nokia.
The arrangement suits me very well, but I do wonder what facilities will only work if you do have a phone contract. For example, I don't have internet access out of range of a router I have access to.
Would this airline proposal need internet access or would it be something stored on the phone, do you think?
You can buy a PAYG sim for a few pounds that gives you plenty of 4G data in any country.
Loads of people buy them as one offs when their contract doesn't cover a particular country or doesn't give them much data.
I am not surprised and expect EU businesses across many sectors to do the same
I think we're seeing a reshuffle of the deck of cards, with financial firms having subsidiaries either side of the Channel.
I'm not convinced it means very much, except that Frankfurt and Paris will be annoyed that Amsterdam has stolen their EU-crown (very probably because it speaks English).
It does and it doesn't and I'd be surprised if many companies based here will bother with an EU subsidiary company beyond a brass plate that allows them to trade EU equities, but loads are already in New York which has just been given equivalence for that.
What's going to be interesting is if these firms walk the same path as so many of those that came before them. Start out with a few people in a shared office that didn't want to go in the first place, decide that London is great, younger staff start asking to work from the London office, they start realising the depth of available talent is much better than what they're used to in their domestic market, advertise for jobs in London. In a few years it's gone from just a few people to being a major overseas presence that has 20-30% of your global presence and does 40-50% of your global revenue.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
It's the hope that gets you, I can live with the despair.
No hope, just despair for me. Boing, boing!
It was 10 years ago today that my eldest son was involved if the huge Christchurch earthquake witnessing many terrible sights especially at ground zero, and this morning he has received his 5th electroconvulsive therapy treatment out of ten as he still carries the enormity of his involvement with his PTSD worsening by the day
Beautiful words from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, today that could have been written especially for him but he is one of so many affected that terrible day
To be honest, he and our family are well versed in despair
It is strange to think that anywhere is still using ECT. I remember several years ago there was much talk of banning it. In Holland at that time it was forbidden. Someone I knew well had three series of it and I've little doubt that they wouldn't have survived without it but that wasn't a popular view at the time. I'm really surprised it's still being used in New Zealand
ECT does have a reasonable evidence base, particularly for refractory depression with strong biological features. I have seen it work well. With modern anaesthesia and unipolar technique it is not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
I am pleased to hear your view Foxy
Thank you as this is a very stressful time for his wife, mother and our family
Like any treatment it has side effects and risks, but then so does inadequately treated depression.
PTSD is difficult to deal with. I think a lot of the covid staff will have it to a greater or lesser degree. The ICU that I have been helping with usually runs at 2-3% mortality, but is currently running at ten times that.
I am sure you are right and we are aware this may not be a magic cure
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
She's no oil painting, but I think Jess is the one to do it
I think Jess is great, but Angela Rayner more likely, as she is both Deputy Leader, and quite appealing to the Corbynite faction.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
There is a valid reason for Johnson to resign in my opinion: not closing the borders last March. It may have been the experts who recommended it, but he could have overruled them.
Sky now covering the Salmond story and reading his statement
This looks like it is going to be a big event in Scotland over the next week
Would one of our Scottish contributors be so good as to write a thread header succinctly explaining for the rest of us wtf is going on with the Salmond/Sturgeon thing?
It would be a great service to PB, if not to humanity in general.
I used to think Politicians were the lowest of the low. The more I see and hear of them the more I think that applies to journalists. A great and important part of our democratic process brought low by the idiots who practice it today.
Kuenssberg, Peston and Coates all asking extraordinarily stupid questions.
I agree but let's be clear - the journalists don't care that they are stupid questions.
The point is that these so called journalists are in the entertainment industry. There's a pretence that it's "news" in order to look worthy and justify the BBC Licence Fee / privileged EPG positions for ITV etc. But that's all it is - a pretence.
The bottom line is that if less people watch, they lose revenue. Which in turn means lower programme budgets. Which then means smaller staffs and lower salaries.
So the only thing they care about is maximising viewers. Which means mass dumbing down.
I think the winner for the dickhead question of the day....
Sky News' Sam Coates asks whether the PM would resign if England had to be locked down again. He also asks if it's possible for this progress to be irreversible.
As far as anybody knows ww could get super mutant covid appear thar makes Saffers COVID look like Mr Muscle from those old ads.
I think I made the right decision in deciding not to watch the questions from April last year onwards.
And these people are supposed the Premier League of journalists....
If the Scottish Government is determined to take a different approach then it can, presumably, resolve the tensions by using its devolved authority over public health to prohibit travel between Scotland and England?
However, if Scotland wants to do a permanent New Zealand then it would also have to cut itself off from the rest of the world permanently. Nobody else, including insofar as I'm aware the New Zealand Government itself, his proposed such an extreme and bizarre policy. And in truth of course, the Scots couldn't do it for any length of time either. It would ruin them.
It all rather smacks of the narcissism of small differences.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
She's no oil painting, but I think Jess is the one to do it
Trouble is that, passionate campaigner though she is and valid though that is, can you imagine her walking into No 10 and running the whole show?
Near the top, yes. At the top, I'm not sure.
But that's the problem for Leaders of the Opposition- how do you balance the oomph to tear chunks out of the government with the gravitas to look like you can take over? It's not easy.
For me, the single biggest thing Labour need to do is to sound like they are on the side of ordinary people (it's a horrible phrase, I know).
That's not to say that improving things for the bottom 10% shouldn't be part of their offering, but more that they need to be thinking about the median voter more.
Blair connected with Middle England. Labour need to get talking to the people who swing elections and finding out what they care about.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
Personally, I think most, perhaps all, countries away from the West Pacific rim will be pretty much a wash by the time we are flooded with vaccines in the summer. Our good vaccine performance balanced by errors elsewhere, particularly on lockdowns, but also foreign travel, EOTHO etc, and a bigger economic hit.
There are no winners in this, just different forms of losing.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
She's no oil painting, but I think Jess is the one to do it
Trouble is that, passionate campaigner though she is and valid though that is, can you imagine her walking into No 10 and running the whole show?
Near the top, yes. At the top, I'm not sure.
But that's the problem for Leaders of the Opposition- how do you balance the oomph to tear chunks out of the government with the gravitas to look like you can take over? It's not easy.
Well Boris is doing it! Often you cant imagine something happening until you see it and realise are ok with it
Many people are saying it on here, and in the media - Sir Keir is just too dull. I think JP is almost a complete fraud in the working class/dragged up/chav earrings persona she portrays, but I also think it doesn't really matter. Celebrity sells, and I think she has the passion of a Corbynite with the politics of Starmer with neither of the personality problems of either men, and it is my belief that is what Labour need. She is like a left of centre female Boris - a bit of a cabaret act.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
I mean, sorry, but this is..... insane. I have a daughter suffering terribly from Lockdown. I have a good friend dying of Covid: right this minute. I have close relatives who are suffering: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I know a young child - very well - that has attempted suicide during lockdown. I have wept many times over the past year, when normally I don't sob from one year to the next. Yet I have a "void where any person of decency has a soul"???
You, Sir, are turning into a nasty old c*nt, because of Brexit. Please go away, and calm down
Sky now covering the Salmond story and reading his statement
This looks like it is going to be a big event in Scotland over the next week
Would one of our Scottish contributors be so good as to write a thread header succinctly explaining for the rest of us wtf is going on with the Salmond/Sturgeon thing?
It would be a great service to PB, if not to humanity in general.
It's pretty simple. Sturgeon covered up Salmond murdering a hobo whilst simultaneously framing him for a high value jewel heist.
As far as anybody knows ww could get super mutant covid appear thar makes Saffers COVID look like Mr Muscle from those old ads.
I'll be quite surprised if we don't see worse strains that evade vaccines and make NPIs necessary at times. I think we will be fighting this virus for many more years. Hopefully most of the time we will be able to keep the infections at a low level and have a steady supply of updated vaccines to deal the changing virus, but I wouldn't for a moment assume that the worst is over.
I know that the scruffiness is part of the Boris persona, part of the act, but I really felt that today it was also quite the power play.
The normal rules simply don't apply to Boris. No other politician could get away with being so unkempt, let alone failing the country in the most basic duty of protecting them, to the tune of tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
The other notable sign of his untrammelled power was the criticism of Carrie's position. It's always been the case that when it's too dangerous to criticise the person in charge malcontents will criticise the "evil advisers"and so it is with Boris the Mightily Dishevelled.
The question is: how long does Boris want to be Prime Minister for?
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
Personally, I think most, perhaps all, countries away from the West Pacific rim will be pretty much a wash by the time we are flooded with vaccines in the summer. Our good vaccine performance balanced by errors elsewhere, particularly on lockdowns, but also foreign travel, EOTHO etc, and a bigger economic hit.
There are no winners in this, just different forms of losing.
How can we say there were failures on lockdowns? Who succeeded where we failed?
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
I’d be saying “these bloody Stalinist, nanny state lunatics have bankrupted the country, turned fiat into toilet paper, taken away ancient liberties with no reasoned evidence as to why and don’t seem to even care about the cascade of mental illness they’ve unleashed, such is their fixation on a single, likely undeliverable policy goal”.
I’d then say, what do Her Maj’s Oppositon have to say? Much the same. But at least the leader has banter, an exciting sex life and an amusing hairline with a mind of its own.
Starmer is not as clever as he looks if he thinks he’ll win Downing St in 3 years by harping on about locking down / not locking down in Spring 2020. He needs to pivot to cheerful optimism and fast or he’s done for.
Is this your main requirement from political leaders then? Cheerful optimism?
Cheerful optimism is quite important for prospective political leaders. Most people want something to hope for in the future, not just cold, hard reality.
Labour's challenge isn't resolving the rift between hard and centre left. Or even coming up with interesting policies. Blair didn't really win on policies in 97. He stuck to Tory spending plans for his first parliament safe in the knowledge he had destroyed the Tory challenge for as long as he wanted to be PM.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
She's no oil painting, but I think Jess is the one to do it
Trouble is that, passionate campaigner though she is and valid though that is, can you imagine her walking into No 10 and running the whole show?
Near the top, yes. At the top, I'm not sure.
But that's the problem for Leaders of the Opposition- how do you balance the oomph to tear chunks out of the government with the gravitas to look like you can take over? It's not easy.
Well Boris is doing it! Often you cant imagine something happening until you see it and realise are ok with it
Many people are saying it on here, and in the media - Sir Keir is just too dull. I think JP is almost a complete fraud in the working class/dragged up/chav earrings persona she portrays, but I also think it doesn't really matter. Celebrity sells, and I think she has the passion of a Corbynite with the politics of Starmer with neither of the personality problems of either men, and it is my belief that is what Labour need. She is like a left of centre female Boris - a bit of a cabaret act.
She does give the impression of always being about to burst into tears though.
"However, underlying all of this and perhaps the most serious issue of all is the complete breakdown of the necessary barriers which should exist between Government, political party and indeed the prosecution authorities in any country which abides by the rule of law.
"I leave to others the question of what is, or is not, a conspiracy but am very clear in my position that the evidence supports a deliberate, prolonged, malicious and concerted effort amongst a range of individuals within the Scottish Government and the SNP to damage my reputation, even to the extent of having me imprisoned.
"That includes, for the avoidance of doubt, Peter Murrell (chief executive), Ian McCann (compliance officer) and Sue Ruddick (chief operating officer) of the SNP together with Liz Lloyd, the First Minister's Chief of Staff.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Note that Alastair is sticking to his guns on open borders, despite being the single biggest error the government made not a single mention in his (fair IMO) list of errors that they've made.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
This is incorrect. I only omitted from my list by accident closing the borders. That is a clear and gross error, and I have thought that for a very long time.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
Personally, I think most, perhaps all, countries away from the West Pacific rim will be pretty much a wash by the time we are flooded with vaccines in the summer. Our good vaccine performance balanced by errors elsewhere, particularly on lockdowns, but also foreign travel, EOTHO etc, and a bigger economic hit.
There are no winners in this, just different forms of losing.
How can we say there were failures on lockdowns? Who succeeded where we failed?
I was thinking in terms of timing, such as schools returning for a single day six weeks ago, for example.
Today we went over 140k nameable individuals dead. (133,077 death certificate by date to 5/2, 7,000 exactly hospital deaths by date since then).
There was one key, killer failure that made the UKs second wave so bad - in the last week of November, the failure to appreciate quite what was going on in Kent - the numbers were there to be seen - and the failure to moderate the lockdown release accordingly. The over generous initial Christmas offer, didn't help and limited how much could be scaled back, but that was secondary, the damage was already done in early December with Kent in tier 3 and Essex and London in tier 2, by waiting for the confirmation of the new strain before acting, rather than acting on the 'something' in the numbers.
Unfortunately, rapid vaccination compared with Europe and our likely faster downswing, although welcome and a psychological boon, will be a lesser influence in overall assessment than people believe. We will save lives here, but Europe will, is, downswinging and will have the summer to play catch up on that downswing.
Yes, people still don't grasp how absolutely appalling the second wave has been. The absolute botching of the response to case and death rises in SEPTEMBER, never mind November is a key topic for the Truth and Reconciliation comission.
Which country will the T&R commission be holding up as best practice? that'll be an interesting one.
That's not the point of a t&r commission. The point is to find out what decisions were made, when they were made and more importantly why they were made so that the next time there is a pandemic the same mistakes are not repeated.
It is not a dick measuring contest. Nor a sop to make people feel better because other countries did badly.
It is an internal process.
It is still intended to find Government witches to burn.
Just be honest.
Ah so you are willing to let another hundred and forty thousand people die just so long as it doesn't hurt a Conservative Minister's feelings.
Glad we've got your position clear.
There is nothing government supporters will not excuse. But they’d prefer not to have to make the effort.
Can you imagine what they would be saying if Labour were in power and had produced results like these, having made the unforced errors that this government has made?
Your analysis of the government's mistakes rests upon your belief that you can use lockdown to turn up or turn down COVID like you would your central heating.
That US experience shows graphically that the relationship is much more complex than that.
He's frustrated he can't hang Covid-19 around Boris's neck to bring him down, because of his obsession with his original leading role in Brexit.
It really is that simple.
The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers. Boris Johnson has made a series of unforgivable mistakes on Covid-19. But Leavers are willing to overlook them all because of Brexit.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
This has important betting implications. (It also means the country will continue its long term decline under atrocious governance, but that’s a side note really.)
OMFG
One sentence came about 15 seconds after the other
"The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers"
"There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths."
I feel like Hugh Laurie, as Doctor House, pointing to an obvious and troubling tumour on a CAT scan, laughing cynically at the blatancy of the affliction
I made this very point in response.
It just reinforced my original one.
I had not mentioned Brexit because it is irrelevant to the question. Mad Leavers, perhaps deranged from a misplaced knapped dildo, keep raising it in relation to Covid-19. I then note this.
And still the pair of you witter on about Brexit. Anything rather than talk about the government’s catastrophic missteps causing untold thousands of avoidable deaths.
You're better than this.
You don't want to spend the rest of your life being angry about a vote that didn't go your way five years ago. Our presence on this planet is all too short. And you don't want to be angry at yourself for ruining all of the years of your life that followed with visceral bitterness on your deathbed.
Put the smartphone down, pour out a small whisky, and reflect on it.
My biggest concern of the plan is it is clear thr government again want us all to have a summer holiday abroad again...I think that is very unwise given most of EU will be way off in terms of vaccinations and places like Portugal have plenty of Brazilian variant, let alone SA variant.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
Personally, I think most, perhaps all, countries away from the West Pacific rim will be pretty much a wash by the time we are flooded with vaccines in the summer. Our good vaccine performance balanced by errors elsewhere, particularly on lockdowns, but also foreign travel, EOTHO etc, and a bigger economic hit.
There are no winners in this, just different forms of losing.
That's true, but someone else getting an F doesn't excuse our government for doing the same. There does need to be a full investigation to look at where poor decisions were made so we don't repeat them and I think voters will have their say on Boris.
My biggest concern of the plan is it is clear thr government again want us all to be able to have a summer holiday abroad.
May 18th is far too early for holidays in my opinion. Best be accompanied by a vaccine passport... Also anyone coming in here needs to have had a vaccine, I don't care if their countries are behind; money will solve that for those who need to travel the most.
Lots of man love ❤️ for Boris, for his roadmap and for his luxuriant hair on PB this afternoon. Some positive swooning. Bless.
And bloody well deserved too. We can all quibble over the exact speed of the unlocking, but we're now in a position to escape this thing faster than almost all countries that are not led by a certain Boris Johnson.
Before quibbling over the exact speed of the unlocking, you ought to take off your hat and bow your head for the tens of thousands killed by Boris Johnson's negligence to date.
Give it a rest.
Useful to have a list of all the pbers who have a vacuum where their souls should be. Tens of thousands died because Boris Johnson was asleep at the wheel - not once, but over and over.
And you want to forget that. Well, it will not be forgotten by anyone with a conscience.
Stop being an idiot.
So, we are supposed to forget, among other things:
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
I'm not ignoring it, HMG has made terrible and egregious errors, and I happily point and shriek with horror when they happen. The inability to close the fucking borders, from February 2020, is particularly incendiary. A total mistake. Likewise, the advice on masks. Shitshow (tho here the scientists - yes, you, Van Tam - are probably guiltier than the politicians)
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
You are ignoring it. Because you have a void where any person of decency has a soul, and you desperately seek to avoid any analysis of that catastrophe because it is imperative for you that this government be forgiven any mistake, no matter how abysmal.
Personally, I think most, perhaps all, countries away from the West Pacific rim will be pretty much a wash by the time we are flooded with vaccines in the summer. Our good vaccine performance balanced by errors elsewhere, particularly on lockdowns, but also foreign travel, EOTHO etc, and a bigger economic hit.
There are no winners in this, just different forms of losing.
How can we say there were failures on lockdowns? Who succeeded where we failed?
I was thinking in terms of timing, such as schools returning for a single day six weeks ago, for example.
And Christmas. That was another avoidable error. He'd promised so much he had to give us one Xmas day, in the end, even tho it was pointless by then
Boris' great failing WAS the inability to relay bad news. He seems to have corrected this, and is now keener to under-promise and over-deliver. In the context of a pandemic, when news can often surprise on the downside (to a hellish extent) that is the better way to go, politically
Comments
(She obviously hadn’t read the document: A: 21 June)
Because that, of course, is very interesting. It would appear to put the central Government's scientific advisers as well as its politicians at odds with the approach taken in Scotland and Wales.
(My kids haven't been to school in a year now, and the LA teachers unions are threatening to strike if they have to do in person teaching before the risk of CV19 is zero.)
I am not opposed to relaxations, but those are the brutal sums required.
Our modern era of the internet, soundbites and 24/7 news is so alien from what existed in the eighties that the comparison is like comparing those in the eighties getting news from TV versus those in the 40s and 50s getting theirs from the radio.
Blair finished the work of what Thatcher (either deliberately or by accident) started - the Presidential PM. They have to "connect" with voters at a much more profound level than just rocking-up as the leader of their party.
PM's need pizzazz. Like it or not.
pb Labour (or any Labour people really) do not venerate Harold Wilson or Tony Blair in the same way so there is no direct equivalent.
This looks like it is going to be a big event in Scotland over the next week
I'm interested in how the GBP thinks GB is doing compared with elsewhere. My hypothesis is that we are all assuming that the English experience of Winter 2020/1 is much of a muchness with other rich countries currently leaving winter and entering spring.
There are some hints (which match what I see when I check in with news from Spain, purely because I used to live there and am interested) that it's not quite like that; that the social restrictions in Seville are looser than in London.
So what I'm interested in (because it affects the politics in the UK) is what do people in the UK think is going on elsewhere, and how well that matches reality? Because those two things taken together might explain some of the odder aspects of the conversation.
It's like North Korea, where you have to have a haircut like the leader.
Thank you as this is a very stressful time for his wife, mother and our family
Sir Keir is said to be the more likeable, because his "net like" is three points higher than that of Boris. To me this seems absurd, because more people said they liked Boris (45-36), Sir Keir only wins because he is allocated 50% of those who neither know nor care. Maybe those who neither know nor care are unlikely to vote, and if this is filtered into the numbers, I think it is a different story.
I am assuming turnout of 70% as a rough guide for when my "Turnout tweak" button is pushed.
For Boris, 85% of voters have made their mind up about him. I would say a large percentage of the 45 who like him can be thought of as pretty certain to vote for him (I have allowed 10% margin for people who say they like both leaders, but this could be way off the mark) giving Boris a max score of 45 and a min of 40.5. The non voters would be the 15 who don't know and 15 of those who dislike him
In Sir Keir's case, only 64% of voters have made up their minds about him. It seems that people infer this means 36% of votes are up for grabs. But, as only 70% of people vote, and those without a strong opinion must be less inclined to be voters, only 6% are realistically available to him. So I give him a max vote of 39% (His 36 + half of the undecided's once the turnout tweak button is pushed) and a minimum of 32.4% (his 36% less the 10% who may like both he and Boris)
What do you say?
Besides can't you buy a cheap smartphone nowadays for around a tenner? If you're flying to NZ you can afford to get a smartphone even if it's a disposable one as part of the ticket price.
I'm not convinced it means very much, except that Frankfurt and Paris will be annoyed that Amsterdam has stolen their EU-crown (very probably because it speaks English).
1) Boris Johnson bunking off February 2020 to spend his time billing and cooing over Carrie. He missed five Cobra meetings at the time the risks of Covid-19 were becoming apparent to all.
2) lockdown 1 starting at least a week late.
3) the murderous discharge of Covid patients to care homes.
4) his bayoneting of the government’s public health messages by backing Dominic Cummings’ flagrant flouting of Covid regulations.
5) Ignoring Sage recommendations to lockdown in September, only to put a longer one in place six weeks later, 6,000 deaths later.
6) Relaxing restrictions in early December with the intention of further relaxing them for Christmas in defiance of the emerging horrific data, before backtracking when the turkeys were already defrosting.
7) Yet again, imposing lockdown 3 far too late.
The consequence was that Britain has a death rate per million exceeded only by Belgium, Slovenia and Czechia (and imminently about to overtake Slovenia). Excess deaths look almost as bad.
But there is no mistake, no matter how deadly or how obvious, that government supporters won’t try to overlook.
Labour's challenge is actually trying to find someone, anyone, within the PLP to lead them and fight for PM who doesn't look like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle.
To steal a phrase...
One sentence came about 15 seconds after the other
"The obsession with Brexit is entirely among Leavers"
"There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse, up to and including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths."
I feel like Hugh Laurie, as Doctor House, pointing to an obvious and troubling tumour on a CAT scan, laughing cynically at the blatancy of the affliction
BBC News - Nicola Sturgeon challenges Alex Salmond over 'conspiracy' claims
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56155102
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1363930496523259911?s=20
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1363930498075156491?s=20
If it's down to supply, so be it but I heard Bojo say there were no supply issues today. Should be half a million jabs every day.
The arrangement suits me very well, but I do wonder what facilities will only work if you do have a phone contract. For example, I don't have internet access out of range of a router I have access to.
Would this airline proposal need internet access or would it be something stored on the phone, do you think?
It just reinforced my original one.
PTSD is difficult to deal with. I think a lot of the covid staff will have it to a greater or lesser degree. The ICU that I have been helping with usually runs at 2-3% mortality, but is currently running at ten times that.
https://twitter.com/murdo_fraser/status/1363942275051630595?s=20
Does Bojo mean not "unexpected" supply problems.
France has kept shops open but has had a strict nightly curfew 6pm - 6am. All bars, restaurants etc have been closed. But whatever they have been doing has basically failed because they are seeing a rapid increase in cases and are saying they will have to go into lockdown again.
Italy also has a curfew (10pm to 5am)
Germany has shut all shops, schools, bars, restaurants etc and ha similar rules to us on meeting people from outside your household.
In spite of what you say about Spain, officially they are under a nationwide curfew until early May 2021. People are only allowed out to go to work, for education, to buy medicine, or care for elderly people or children. That seems much stricter than the UK.
Personally it seems to me that the rest of the EU are generally pretty much on a par with the strictness of their lockdowns but the detail varies (I see a curfew as far more intrusive and strict than anything we have in the UK)
But sadly even if this was working it is completely undermined by their poor vaccination progress.
But, I also acknowledge that Britain was uniquely and unfortunately positioned to have a very bad plague, whatever happened - old, obese, internationally super-connected, world city, plentiful BAME community, generally libertarian, individualistic, service industry oriented - and I genuinely doubt most UK govts would have done much better (or many European govts, as we see in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Portugal)
Besides, you seem intent on grief-shaming others for "not caring about death", rather than making any specific point. This is beneath you. For all you know, you are accusing people who have lost loved ones to Covid, of "not caring".
As I say below, you were driven mad by Brexit, and every so often the psychosis re-emerges. Tonight is one such. Tsk
Sky News' Sam Coates asks whether the PM would resign if England had to be locked down again. He also asks if it's possible for this progress to be irreversible.
As far as anybody knows ww could get super mutant covid appear thar makes Saffers COVID look like Mr Muscle from those old ads.
And still the pair of you witter on about Brexit. Anything rather than talk about the government’s catastrophic missteps causing untold thousands of avoidable deaths.
Near the top, yes. At the top, I'm not sure.
But that's the problem for Leaders of the Opposition- how do you balance the oomph to tear chunks out of the government with the gravitas to look like you can take over? It's not easy.
Well I saw my first daff in bloom yesterday under a bright blue sky. And I shall dream tonight of burning my manky facemask around a euphoric solstice pyre. Keir/Kier needs to book an April Airbnb and try and remember what life’s all about.
Loads of people buy them as one offs when their contract doesn't cover a particular country or doesn't give them much data.
What's going to be interesting is if these firms walk the same path as so many of those that came before them. Start out with a few people in a shared office that didn't want to go in the first place, decide that London is great, younger staff start asking to work from the London office, they start realising the depth of available talent is much better than what they're used to in their domestic market, advertise for jobs in London. In a few years it's gone from just a few people to being a major overseas presence that has 20-30% of your global presence and does 40-50% of your global revenue.
It would be a great service to PB, if not to humanity in general.
The point is that these so called journalists are in the entertainment industry. There's a pretence that it's "news" in order to look worthy and justify the BBC Licence Fee / privileged EPG positions for ITV etc. But that's all it is - a pretence.
The bottom line is that if less people watch, they lose revenue. Which in turn means lower programme budgets. Which then means smaller staffs and lower salaries.
So the only thing they care about is maximising viewers. Which means mass dumbing down.
That's like putting pineapple on your pizza or having a orgy on your own.
Lockdown exit plan raises prospect of British & Irish Lions 'home tour'
Capacity crowds in England may be permitted from 21 June
Opponents of home fixtures include Willie John McBride
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/feb/22/rugby-union-british-irish-lions-south-africa-tour-relocate-home-tour
However, if Scotland wants to do a permanent New Zealand then it would also have to cut itself off from the rest of the world permanently. Nobody else, including insofar as I'm aware the New Zealand Government itself, his proposed such an extreme and bizarre policy. And in truth of course, the Scots couldn't do it for any length of time either. It would ruin them.
It all rather smacks of the narcissism of small differences.
That's not to say that improving things for the bottom 10% shouldn't be part of their offering, but more that they need to be thinking about the median voter more.
Blair connected with Middle England. Labour need to get talking to the people who swing elections and finding out what they care about.
Maybe it is supply, but the Gov't needs pressure here
https://order-order.com/2021/02/22/uk-records-lowest-number-of-jabs-done-since-daily-reporting-began/
There are no winners in this, just different forms of losing.
Every single one of those pales in comparison to not closing the borders but his ideological need to keep the county "open" means he won't ever criticise that absolutely horrible and ongoing rubbish decision not to mandate quarantine for all incoming arrivals.
https://twitter.com/paulhutcheon/status/1363954653721989121?s=20
Many people are saying it on here, and in the media - Sir Keir is just too dull. I think JP is almost a complete fraud in the working class/dragged up/chav earrings persona she portrays, but I also think it doesn't really matter. Celebrity sells, and I think she has the passion of a Corbynite with the politics of Starmer with neither of the personality problems of either men, and it is my belief that is what Labour need. She is like a left of centre female Boris - a bit of a cabaret act.
I know a young child - very well - that has attempted suicide during lockdown. I have wept many times over the past year, when normally I don't sob from one year to the next. Yet I have a "void where any person of decency has a soul"???
You, Sir, are turning into a nasty old c*nt, because of Brexit. Please go away, and calm down
The normal rules simply don't apply to Boris. No other politician could get away with being so unkempt, let alone failing the country in the most basic duty of protecting them, to the tune of tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
The other notable sign of his untrammelled power was the criticism of Carrie's position. It's always been the case that when it's too dangerous to criticise the person in charge malcontents will criticise the "evil advisers"and so it is with Boris the Mightily Dishevelled.
The question is: how long does Boris want to be Prime Minister for?
"I leave to others the question of what is, or is not, a conspiracy but am very clear in my position that the evidence supports a deliberate, prolonged, malicious and concerted effort amongst a range of individuals within the Scottish Government and the SNP to damage my reputation, even to the extent of having me imprisoned.
"That includes, for the avoidance of doubt, Peter Murrell (chief executive), Ian McCann (compliance officer) and Sue Ruddick (chief operating officer) of the SNP together with Liz Lloyd, the First Minister's Chief of Staff.
Nicola Sturgeon is Mrs Murrell
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/alex-salmond-claims-malicious-concerted-23546891?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar
You mischaracterised me.
You don't want to spend the rest of your life being angry about a vote that didn't go your way five years ago. Our presence on this planet is all too short. And you don't want to be angry at yourself for ruining all of the years of your life that followed with visceral bitterness on your deathbed.
Put the smartphone down, pour out a small whisky, and reflect on it.
Also anyone coming in here needs to have had a vaccine, I don't care if their countries are behind; money will solve that for those who need to travel the most.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
Last few days show a good trend on new English hospitalizations:
16/02 1,311
17/02 1,233
18/02 1,149
19/02 1,068
20/02 904
Hopefully it will continue without too many blips upwards.
Boris' great failing WAS the inability to relay bad news. He seems to have corrected this, and is now keener to under-promise and over-deliver. In the context of a pandemic, when news can often surprise on the downside (to a hellish extent) that is the better way to go, politically