After a simply gloriously sunny day yesterday, rain and wind here today. A reminder that spring weather is unreliable and often far too cold to be outside for any prolonged period, especially in the evening, and in most of the country.
Very few beer gardens are going to open on the earliest possible date because it is hard to do so profitably during a month when in large parts of the country the weather is often poor and unreliable, which makes planning and ordering stock difficult. Remember also that if you have a tent with sides in the garden it cannot be used as it is classed as "inside space". If it open at the sides then who is going to want to sit in there in the evening open to the elements in April in many parts of the country?
What would be more useful is allowing takeaway alcohol sales for, gasp, pubs which have been prohibited from doing so, even though off licences and supermarkets have been allowed to.
Also important in the general rejoicing is to know what is to happen to the support offered to hospitality because currently it is to stop well before venues are allowed to open properly.
More than a week's notice is needed for opening. Breweries have already said that they will need 2-3 weeks notice to start operations so don't be surprised to find many places not opening until the end of May/ early June. From mid-February until then is a way to go without income and with support significantly less than fixed costs.
But at least there is a plan and the recognition that zero-Covid is unachievable is a welcome dose of realism.
Very few restaurants, if any, will find it viable to open up to serve people outside in April in the UK. It's virtually pointless, we are not in the South of France or the Algarve (unfortunately)
"we should establish “green zones” – areas where the virus has been judged to be under control, where there is no danger of infection and thus no need for restrictions."
"The overarching aim should be maintaining minimal cases of Covid-19 (a level of about 10 new cases per 100,000 people a week, for example, might be judged low enough)."
If you listen to the fanbois on here, scientists don't want lockdown to go on a minute longer than necessary. Not a minute.
Yeah right.....
Absolutely right.
Did you here Whitty last night explaining why cases likely would go up again in the future and R would go above one, but that its not concerning with the vaccine and we need to live with it?
Almost as if SAGE are not your SPECTRE madmen who want to control the world and lock us down forever afterall.
Wow what a concession. Thanks Chris!
Whitty is only onside because Johnson agreed to a timetable that saved his reputation. Florida and other US states have broken the link between lockdown and covid. There is no thermostat for turning the diseaseup or down beyond seasonality and vaccination. Demonstrably.
Our emergence from lockdown is to maintain the notion that lockdown is such a thermostat as Whitless and Unabalanced have maintained all along .
At a massive cost to Britain.
But of course. Why on Earth would anyone expect that lockdown - a strategy of reducing person-to-person contact - would have any effect at all on a disease spread by person-to-person contact?
Well, I'm convinced - it must all have been a secret plot to save Chris Whitty's reputation instead.
That might work in your brain, but unfortunately it does not work in practice. Not in the way you think. Demonstrably. California locked down hard. Florida didn't. Same sort of climate. Result? not much difference. The link is not there in the 'turn down the covid, dear' way you think it is.
And I can see why you do not want to admit the truth, because of the implications of the truth are pretty big.
It will be very interesting indeed when all the global data gets crunched and we get a more precise idea of why exactly some areas did better or worse with the same or different measures. There'll be a vast array of factors to consider: restrictions, compliance, demographics, politics, geography, culture, economics, health systems, reporting standards, you name it. But that research hasn't been done yet - just juxtaposing the numbers from Florida and California is barely step 1 of the above process - and until it has, it's reasonable to assume from the preponderance of data available now that lockdowns reduce transmission in the same way that condoms help prevent pregnancies and umbrellas keep you from getting wet in the rain.
I am sure you will clutch at any straw in your desperation to cover up the biggest peacetime policy error by any government since appeasement.
Its still the biggest policy error since appeasment. And I intend to make the fake tories that propounded it wear it like an albatross.
I'm sure a fantasist who doesn't understand the most basic principles of science or logic will pose a huge electoral threat.
Does Farr's Law incorporate measures such as lockdown?
I'm not sure that Farr's observation can count as a "law".
The question remains, nevertheless, whatever it is.
@BluestBlue said that @contrarian doesn't understand the most basic principles of science or logic. And hence I just wondered how or if Farr could be relevant to the discussion.
If his observation of pandemics does not include any inhibiting factors (eg lockdowns) then although small children can see that keeping people apart will reduce transmission, it also means that lockdowns are/were to some extent incidental to the pandemic's journey.
You yourself have consistently noted the attributes in SA and Kent, for example.
All I have claimed is that the idea lockdown acts like some sort of thermostat on COVID, that you can turn up or turn down at will to control the disease is false, based on the US evidence. Why? many different versions of lockdown, same chuffin' result.
The main controlling factors are, surely, seasonality and vaccination. Otherwise the relationship is complex.
Which season in particular?
The key variable is simply mobility. The more people are moving around, the more likely an infection is, and the higher R will be. And vice versa. If sufficient people reduce mobility, it will fall; if not, it will rise.
When enough people get scared, mobility decreases on its own (as @rcs1000 keeps pointing out). This, however, due to lag, is always far later than the people in question would have liked in retrospect, and is unevenly distributed (there are always some who'll refuse to reduce mobility voluntarily, but they can freeload on the effects from others taking the hit on reduction). And, of course, if there is less need to interact, or a culture is culturally more distant, or if people are willing to follow common sense (rather than, for example, go all "but what about scotch eggs?!?"), there's less need for imposition of mobility restriction externally.
Masks help to an extent, as well.
Lockdowns are needed when the above fail. Unfortunately, we've failed to come up with any way in the UK's particular culture and setup (and tendency to scotchegg things) that works short of announcing a lockdown.
That graphic leaves out spring and Summer....??
I thought those were supposed to be the key variables of when the infection subsides? So it's October, November, December, January, or February depending on which country you're looking at, right? And it comes and goes away, as well - for example, Czechia (negligible vaccination so far) has had seasonal increasing happening in October, seasonal decreasing happening in November, seasonal increasing in December, decreasing in January, and now increasing again in February.
While here, we've had a marvellous summer from (checks dates) early January. Looking warmer and better than the summer we had in November after that unpleasant winter in September and October...
The Excel centre in London kicked into gear today, a friend of mine had a 2.5 hr wait for a jab there.
Probably teething troubles. At the centre in Eastbourne that we went to, there had been quite long delays in the first couple of days, but a week or so later when we went it was like clockwork and very very quick.
Made me chuckle....while ranting about why isn't Starmer standing up, why aren't the normal people standing up to this corrupt evil government, they show a clip of what I presume he wants it to be for "us" to be getting together and demanding change...by showing a clip of wokerity people no appaulding, rather doing the jazz hands, the sort of people who have a badge with their pronouns on like It, Z and They...I can't see Stoke man having much in common with those type of people and there in lies the problem for the Corbynista rip it all up and start again.
That still at first glance looks like a gritty new detective drama "Tonight, on BBC1, Monibot & Starmer, one's a mild mannered centrist, the other a firebrand radical. Together they get results".
After a simply gloriously sunny day yesterday, rain and wind here today. A reminder that spring weather is unreliable and often far too cold to be outside for any prolonged period, especially in the evening, and in most of the country.
Very few beer gardens are going to open on the earliest possible date because it is hard to do so profitably during a month when in large parts of the country the weather is often poor and unreliable, which makes planning and ordering stock difficult. Remember also that if you have a tent with sides in the garden it cannot be used as it is classed as "inside space". If it open at the sides then who is going to want to sit in there in the evening open to the elements in April in many parts of the country?
What would be more useful is allowing takeaway alcohol sales for, gasp, pubs which have been prohibited from doing so, even though off licences and supermarkets have been allowed to.
Also important in the general rejoicing is to know what is to happen to the support offered to hospitality because currently it is to stop well before venues are allowed to open properly.
More than a week's notice is needed for opening. Breweries have already said that they will need 2-3 weeks notice to start operations so don't be surprised to find many places not opening until the end of May/ early June. From mid-February until then is a way to go without income and with support significantly less than fixed costs.
But at least there is a plan and the recognition that zero-Covid is unachievable is a welcome dose of realism.
Very few restaurants, if any, will find it viable to open up to serve people outside in April in the UK. It's virtually pointless, we are not in the South of France or the Algarve (unfortunately)
Agreed. My fear is that the fact that it is theoretically possible will be used as an excuse to stop giving support too early. I hope I am wrong.
That's not going to happen.
Where you are wrong is by concurring with Olly's view that "very few, if any" restaurants will open. Many will do in the south in particular, but not exclusively. Heaters make this very possible.
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Yes, I think my concern is that those who can't take it for medical reasons get caught up in it.
Don't they get a medical pass in their vaccine passport app. That gives them anonymity as well so they don't necessarily need to declare they haven't had a vaccine as there may be some stigma attached to it. Tbh, there's probably only 50-60k adults who are ineligible with current vaccines and that number will go down too as more vaccines are approved and more trials are completed among those people currently deemed ineligible.
(Also, that group is probably going to be among the last likely to travel during a global pandemic, so this may be solving for a problem that doesn't exist.)
How come we aren't talking about the really big story of the day? The Hundred draft.....are we not excited?
Sod franchise cricket in England & Wales.
We already have a fantastic product in the t20 blast and this is going to damage that.
Northern Superchargers sounds like a bloody class of train.
"Southern Brave".....Southern Softies would be a better name.
Cockney Cowards to go with Cockney Covid.
Northern Numpties would be a wise choice in that regard, given your obviously shite geographical skills. The variant is from Kent, not east London. It's like saying Liverpool FC are a Manchester-based club.
How come we aren't talking about the really big story of the day? The Hundred draft.....are we not excited?
Sod franchise cricket in England & Wales.
We already have a fantastic product in the t20 blast and this is going to damage that.
Northern Superchargers sounds like a bloody class of train.
Agree 100%
The t20 blast is absolutely perfect. I love test cricket as much as the next man, but t20 gives me an afternoon out with some of my daughters that the three of us can enjoy for a combined total of £10. It's packed with families. All those kids who wouldn't have given cricket a look because they never see it on the telly are now interested. We are entertained for two or three hours; if Lancashire win we are elated; if they don't, well, it's only a game and we still go home happy. Having 20 balls fewer is clearly worse. Calling the team 'Manchester' rather than 'Lancashire' helps no-one. It would be good to see a few more players I've heard of, but I want them to have some passing association with the area. And I don't know, but I imagine we will be sacrificing the best thing of all, which is that we can all go to see it for £10 - a price you really don't mind chancing.
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)
But why won't they get away with it? They have the legal establishment onside. They have the cultural establishment onside. The voters vote for them regardless. What's to stop them getting away with it?
Nothing really. The state has been suborned.
NB: Sturgeon has just announced the new lockdown rules - to run up until a week before polling day.
Then she gets to dominate the media cycle with the next series of measures - no doubt, a relaxation of rules to the sounds of joy and thanksgiving from a grateful Scottish public.
Smart, cynical and ruthless. Poor old Salmond never stood a chance.
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Yes, I think my concern is that those who can't take it for medical reasons get caught up in it.
They just need a card/certificate issued via their GP in an extremely difficult to forge form. Show that in all the circumstances the vaxxed have to show their certificate.
But medical reason only - not through choice.
The app can cover that too though, when they login to it with their NHS number it essentially gives them a free pass. It can act identically to those who have been vaccinated that way because I don't think it's a good idea for those with medical exemptions to be given a different system that singles them out.
How do apps work for non-residents?
Why would it be any different? As long as they have an NHS number then we should have their medical records. Tourists would need to have one that is compatible and has data sharing with whatever the UK system is using. It needs a lot of international co-operation and data sharing.
Trying to convince a technologist that app-based systems will work for vaccinations, is like trying to convince the same technologist that electronic voting systems are better than paper and pencils.
Who would pay to develop the app, who would manage it, what information would it require and who would have access to the data, including medical data? How would one challenge mistakes, would there be a customer support centre staffed by humans?
My wife doesn’t have an NHS a number, I’ve not needed mine for 20 years so God knows what it is or where I’d find it. We will both have been vaccinated abroad. My Mum has my old iphone with no data plan etc...
If everyone gets vaccinated on time, all of the above will useful for about six weeks. Why bother?
It would be massively complex. We (my research team) have been tapped up in relation to vaccination priority groups to try and identify who those people are (we've done previous research identifying people with similar sets of conditions). You can match on hospital diagnoses or primary care diagnoses (separate diagnosis coding systems and, in primary care, three - that I know of - major database systems). Even so, the diagnoses are only there if the hospital coder or GP noted the diagnosis, which is not guaranteed if you came in for something else. For some diagnoses, particularly in hospital records, a single code covers a range of severity of conditions, some relevant, some not. In short, complicated and still imperfect.
So, you might say, instead get the GP to add a 'vaccine exempt' status to the medical records. Well, GPs only have access to their own database (and, as mentioned before, at least three providers). So, instead, set up a new system storing vaccine/vaccine exempt status, accessible by GP. Still need an identifier. NHS numbers are imperfect, some people acquire more than one. New ID system? same objections as ID cards.
Not sure how this could be best approached... Download app, enter your name, address, photo, DoB, but how do you validate vaccination/exempton status in an easy way. Can be sent to your GP (app lets you select your GP) and they then validate your status. But I don't even know where vaccinations in non-GP settings are being recorded, e.g. mass vaccination centres and who can then check those to validate. Doable I guess if you instead select from app where you had your vaccination and that can tie up to the records automatically/send a request to the person who can.
Presumably we're all OK with England granting political asylum to Alex Salmond?
No.
Well I guess he could always take refuge in the Ecuador embassy.
First Assange, then Salmond. What have the poor embassy staff done to constantly be lumbered with creepy sex pests suffering from narcissistic personality disorder who claim to be the victim of political conspiracies?
How come we aren't talking about the really big story of the day? The Hundred draft.....are we not excited?
Sod franchise cricket in England & Wales.
We already have a fantastic product in the t20 blast and this is going to damage that.
Northern Superchargers sounds like a bloody class of train.
Agree 100%
The t20 blast is absolutely perfect. I love test cricket as much as the next man, but t20 gives me an afternoon out with some of my daughters that the three of us can enjoy for a combined total of £10. It's packed with families. All those kids who wouldn't have given cricket a look because they never see it on the telly are now interested. We are entertained for two or three hours; if Lancashire win we are elated; if they don't, well, it's only a game and we still go home happy. Having 20 balls fewer is clearly worse. Calling the team 'Manchester' rather than 'Lancashire' helps no-one. It would be good to see a few more players I've heard of, but I want them to have some passing association with the area. And I don't know, but I imagine we will be sacrificing the best thing of all, which is that we can all go to see it for £10 - a price you really don't mind chancing.
And there's no Durham team in "the Hundred" which sucks.
How come we aren't talking about the really big story of the day? The Hundred draft.....are we not excited?
Sod franchise cricket in England & Wales.
We already have a fantastic product in the t20 blast and this is going to damage that.
Northern Superchargers sounds like a bloody class of train.
Agree 100%
The t20 blast is absolutely perfect. I love test cricket as much as the next man, but t20 gives me an afternoon out with some of my daughters that the three of us can enjoy for a combined total of £10. It's packed with families. All those kids who wouldn't have given cricket a look because they never see it on the telly are now interested. We are entertained for two or three hours; if Lancashire win we are elated; if they don't, well, it's only a game and we still go home happy. Having 20 balls fewer is clearly worse. Calling the team 'Manchester' rather than 'Lancashire' helps no-one. It would be good to see a few more players I've heard of, but I want them to have some passing association with the area. And I don't know, but I imagine we will be sacrificing the best thing of all, which is that we can all go to see it for £10 - a price you really don't mind chancing.
And there's no Durham team in "the Hundred" which sucks.
Or West Country. Or Kentish. Or East Anglian.
That's four of the strongest regions of English cricket ignored right there.
- an EU that has cozied up to China - an EU that has cozied up to Russia - an EU that has put a hard border across the island of Ireland, however "mistakenly"
- a UK that has applied to join the CP-TPP to broaden its world trade base - a UK that has taken a firm stand against China in IT and security - a UK that has taken the vaccine rollout very seriously in battling Covid
Where do you think the Biden administration thinks its friends currently reside?
The thesis that Biden will waste his time feuding with the UK relies on the rather demeaning assumption that he is even more of a petulant man-child than his predecessor. I don't think he is at all, so I suspect the papers will be full of quotes about the 'surprisingly warm' nature of his first face-to-face meeting with Boris when it happens.
I think Biden is complex.
He's gone full Woke (probably he doesn't really understand it at heart, but knows it's important to the next generation in the Dem base - so he does it)....
I suspect he might understand it rather better than you .
But I agree with the rest of your comments.
Nope, he doesn't not at all.
But you've been captured wholesale by this "movement" so your supine comment doesn't surprise me.
Really, and what form does this 'wholesale capture' take - do you have any specifics, or are you simply indulging in your occasional reactionary caricature ?
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Yes, I think my concern is that those who can't take it for medical reasons get caught up in it.
They just need a card/certificate issued via their GP in an extremely difficult to forge form. Show that in all the circumstances the vaxxed have to show their certificate.
But medical reason only - not through choice.
The app can cover that too though, when they login to it with their NHS number it essentially gives them a free pass. It can act identically to those who have been vaccinated that way because I don't think it's a good idea for those with medical exemptions to be given a different system that singles them out.
How do apps work for non-residents?
Why would it be any different? As long as they have an NHS number then we should have their medical records. Tourists would need to have one that is compatible and has data sharing with whatever the UK system is using. It needs a lot of international co-operation and data sharing.
Trying to convince a technologist that app-based systems will work for vaccinations, is like trying to convince the same technologist that electronic voting systems are better than paper and pencils.
Who would pay to develop the app, who would manage it, what information would it require and who would have access to the data, including medical data? How would one challenge mistakes, would there be a customer support centre staffed by humans?
My wife doesn’t have an NHS a number, I’ve not needed mine for 20 years so God knows what it is or where I’d find it. We will both have been vaccinated abroad. My Mum has my old iphone with no data plan etc...
If everyone gets vaccinated on time, all of the above will useful for about six weeks. Why bother?
It would be massively complex. We (my research team) have been tapped up in relation to vaccination priority groups to try and identify who those people are (we've done previous research identifying people with similar sets of conditions). You can match on hospital diagnoses or primary care diagnoses (separate diagnosis coding systems and, in primary care, three - that I know of - major database systems). Even so, the diagnoses are only there if the hospital coder or GP noted the diagnosis, which is not guaranteed if you came in for something else. For some diagnoses, particularly in hospital records, a single code covers a range of severity of conditions, some relevant, some not. In short, complicated and still imperfect.
So, you might say, instead get the GP to add a 'vaccine exempt' status to the medical records. Well, GPs only have access to their own database (and, as mentioned before, at least three providers). So, instead, set up a new system storing vaccine/vaccine exempt status, accessible by GP. Still need an identifier. NHS numbers are imperfect, some people acquire more than one. New ID system? same objections as ID cards.
Not sure how this could be best approached... Download app, enter your name, address, photo, DoB, but how do you validate vaccination/exempton status in an easy way. Can be sent to your GP (app lets you select your GP) and they then validate your status. But I don't even know where vaccinations in non-GP settings are being recorded, e.g. mass vaccination centres and who can then check those to validate. Doable I guess if you instead select from app where you had your vaccination and that can tie up to the records automatically/send a request to the person who can.
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Yes, I think my concern is that those who can't take it for medical reasons get caught up in it.
They just need a card/certificate issued via their GP in an extremely difficult to forge form. Show that in all the circumstances the vaxxed have to show their certificate.
But medical reason only - not through choice.
The app can cover that too though, when they login to it with their NHS number it essentially gives them a free pass. It can act identically to those who have been vaccinated that way because I don't think it's a good idea for those with medical exemptions to be given a different system that singles them out.
How do apps work for non-residents?
Why would it be any different? As long as they have an NHS number then we should have their medical records. Tourists would need to have one that is compatible and has data sharing with whatever the UK system is using. It needs a lot of international co-operation and data sharing.
Trying to convince a technologist that app-based systems will work for vaccinations, is like trying to convince the same technologist that electronic voting systems are better than paper and pencils.
Who would pay to develop the app, who would manage it, what information would it require and who would have access to the data, including medical data? How would one challenge mistakes, would there be a customer support centre staffed by humans?
My wife doesn’t have an NHS a number, I’ve not needed mine for 20 years so God knows what it is or where I’d find it. We will both have been vaccinated abroad. My Mum has my old iphone with no data plan etc...
If everyone gets vaccinated on time, all of the above will useful for about six weeks. Why bother?
It would be massively complex. We (my research team) have been tapped up in relation to vaccination priority groups to try and identify who those people are (we've done previous research identifying people with similar sets of conditions). You can match on hospital diagnoses or primary care diagnoses (separate diagnosis coding systems and, in primary care, three - that I know of - major database systems). Even so, the diagnoses are only there if the hospital coder or GP noted the diagnosis, which is not guaranteed if you came in for something else. For some diagnoses, particularly in hospital records, a single code covers a range of severity of conditions, some relevant, some not. In short, complicated and still imperfect.
So, you might say, instead get the GP to add a 'vaccine exempt' status to the medical records. Well, GPs only have access to their own database (and, as mentioned before, at least three providers). So, instead, set up a new system storing vaccine/vaccine exempt status, accessible by GP. Still need an identifier. NHS numbers are imperfect, some people acquire more than one. New ID system? same objections as ID cards.
Not sure how this could be best approached... Download app, enter your name, address, photo, DoB, but how do you validate vaccination/exempton status in an easy way. Can be sent to your GP (app lets you select your GP) and they then validate your status. But I don't even know where vaccinations in non-GP settings are being recorded, e.g. mass vaccination centres and who can then check those to validate. Doable I guess if you instead select from app where you had your vaccination and that can tie up to the records automatically/send a request to the person who can.
I thought those were supposed to be the key variables of when the infection subsides? So it's October, November, December, January, or February depending on which country you're looking at, right? And it comes and goes away, as well - for example, Czechia (negligible vaccination so far) has had seasonal increasing happening in October, seasonal decreasing happening in November, seasonal increasing in December, decreasing in January, and now increasing again in February.
While here, we've had a marvellous summer from (checks dates) early January. Looking warmer and better than the summer we had in November after that unpleasant winter in September and October...
Lockdown helps a lot locally. Globally there is little or no seasonal effect. If Topping is right about Farr's Law, suggesting the virus rips through populations until it starts to find it hard to find bodies to infect, then globally the acute phase of the pandemic peaked on 11-13 January and should be coming to an end at the end of this calendar year - or thereabouts.
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Maybe. It certainly feels that way. But I'm not sure it will pan out like that. There's a desire to get back to normal and "normal" does not involve prying into what jabs people have had. There will be anger if refuseniks are enough in number to threaten the 21/6 end of pandemic but assuming this is not the case I can see the issue receding into the background.
- an EU that has cozied up to China - an EU that has cozied up to Russia - an EU that has put a hard border across the island of Ireland, however "mistakenly"
- a UK that has applied to join the CP-TPP to broaden its world trade base - a UK that has taken a firm stand against China in IT and security - a UK that has taken the vaccine rollout very seriously in battling Covid
Where do you think the Biden administration thinks its friends currently reside?
The thesis that Biden will waste his time feuding with the UK relies on the rather demeaning assumption that he is even more of a petulant man-child than his predecessor. I don't think he is at all, so I suspect the papers will be full of quotes about the 'surprisingly warm' nature of his first face-to-face meeting with Boris when it happens.
I think Biden is complex.
He's gone full Woke (probably he doesn't really understand it at heart, but knows it's important to the next generation in the Dem base - so he does it)....
I suspect he might understand it rather better than you .
But I agree with the rest of your comments.
Nope, he doesn't not at all.
But you've been captured wholesale by this "movement" so your supine comment doesn't surprise me.
Really, and what form does this 'wholesale capture' take - do you have any specifics, or are you simply indulging in your occasional reactionary caricature ?
I've regularly explored it on here. You can go and do some more research of your own to understand why rational people object to it if you still don't get it.
It's clearly beyond the comprehension of your puny mind.
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Yes, I think my concern is that those who can't take it for medical reasons get caught up in it.
They just need a card/certificate issued via their GP in an extremely difficult to forge form. Show that in all the circumstances the vaxxed have to show their certificate.
But medical reason only - not through choice.
The app can cover that too though, when they login to it with their NHS number it essentially gives them a free pass. It can act identically to those who have been vaccinated that way because I don't think it's a good idea for those with medical exemptions to be given a different system that singles them out.
How do apps work for non-residents?
Why would it be any different? As long as they have an NHS number then we should have their medical records. Tourists would need to have one that is compatible and has data sharing with whatever the UK system is using. It needs a lot of international co-operation and data sharing.
Trying to convince a technologist that app-based systems will work for vaccinations, is like trying to convince the same technologist that electronic voting systems are better than paper and pencils.
Who would pay to develop the app, who would manage it, what information would it require and who would have access to the data, including medical data? How would one challenge mistakes, would there be a customer support centre staffed by humans?
My wife doesn’t have an NHS a number, I’ve not needed mine for 20 years so God knows what it is or where I’d find it. We will both have been vaccinated abroad. My Mum has my old iphone with no data plan etc...
If everyone gets vaccinated on time, all of the above will useful for about six weeks. Why bother?
Your GP should be able to give you both your NHS numbers without a problem. I found mine on my birth certificate. My wife, a US immigrant, called the GP about hers.
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)
You should listen to Times Red Box podcast when they do their Monthly Focus Group editions (last one was 8 Feb).
Each month they catch up with their respondents and ask them various questions, and let`s just say that Johnson is more popular than many give him credit for here and some respondents either do not know who Starmer is or have no idea about what he is about.
- an EU that has cozied up to China - an EU that has cozied up to Russia - an EU that has put a hard border across the island of Ireland, however "mistakenly"
- a UK that has applied to join the CP-TPP to broaden its world trade base - a UK that has taken a firm stand against China in IT and security - a UK that has taken the vaccine rollout very seriously in battling Covid
Where do you think the Biden administration thinks its friends currently reside?
The thesis that Biden will waste his time feuding with the UK relies on the rather demeaning assumption that he is even more of a petulant man-child than his predecessor. I don't think he is at all, so I suspect the papers will be full of quotes about the 'surprisingly warm' nature of his first face-to-face meeting with Boris when it happens.
I think Biden is complex.
He's gone full Woke (probably he doesn't really understand it at heart, but knows it's important to the next generation in the Dem base - so he does it)....
I suspect he might understand it rather better than you .
But I agree with the rest of your comments.
Nope, he doesn't not at all.
But you've been captured wholesale by this "movement" so your supine comment doesn't surprise me.
Really, and what form does this 'wholesale capture' take - do you have any specifics, or are you simply indulging in your occasional reactionary caricature ?
I've regularly explored it on here. You can go and do some more research of your own to understand why rational people object to it if you still don't get it.
It's clearly beyond the comprehension of your puny mind.
Mate. Love all your posts. And really appreciated your one about your feelings. These few, however, are a bit "out there". Perhaps a cup of tea might be in order. It's only PB and blokes off the internet after all!
The Excel centre in London kicked into gear today, a friend of mine had a 2.5 hr wait for a jab there.
Probably teething troubles. At the centre in Eastbourne that we went to, there had been quite long delays in the first couple of days, but a week or so later when we went it was like clockwork and very very quick.
I'm guessing they are working on the basis of very high and rapid turnover to jab as many people as fast as possible, but when things go wrong (can't find the keys to the door, computers go down, etc) it becomes a big delay. Everyone I know has been in and out in a jiffy except one who waited hours. It is the Ryanair model; really efficient, but when it rarely goes wrong, boy does it go wrong.
I thought those were supposed to be the key variables of when the infection subsides? So it's October, November, December, January, or February depending on which country you're looking at, right? And it comes and goes away, as well - for example, Czechia (negligible vaccination so far) has had seasonal increasing happening in October, seasonal decreasing happening in November, seasonal increasing in December, decreasing in January, and now increasing again in February.
While here, we've had a marvellous summer from (checks dates) early January. Looking warmer and better than the summer we had in November after that unpleasant winter in September and October...
Lockdown helps a lot locally. Globally there is little or no seasonal effect. If Topping is right about Farr's Law, suggesting the virus rips through populations until it starts to find it hard to find bodies to infect, then globally the acute phase of the pandemic peaked on 11-13 January and should be coming to an end at the end of this calendar year - or thereabouts.
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Yes, I think my concern is that those who can't take it for medical reasons get caught up in it.
They just need a card/certificate issued via their GP in an extremely difficult to forge form. Show that in all the circumstances the vaxxed have to show their certificate.
But medical reason only - not through choice.
The app can cover that too though, when they login to it with their NHS number it essentially gives them a free pass. It can act identically to those who have been vaccinated that way because I don't think it's a good idea for those with medical exemptions to be given a different system that singles them out.
How do apps work for non-residents?
Why would it be any different? As long as they have an NHS number then we should have their medical records. Tourists would need to have one that is compatible and has data sharing with whatever the UK system is using. It needs a lot of international co-operation and data sharing.
Trying to convince a technologist that app-based systems will work for vaccinations, is like trying to convince the same technologist that electronic voting systems are better than paper and pencils.
Who would pay to develop the app, who would manage it, what information would it require and who would have access to the data, including medical data? How would one challenge mistakes, would there be a customer support centre staffed by humans?
My wife doesn’t have an NHS a number, I’ve not needed mine for 20 years so God knows what it is or where I’d find it. We will both have been vaccinated abroad. My Mum has my old iphone with no data plan etc...
If everyone gets vaccinated on time, all of the above will useful for about six weeks. Why bother?
Your GP should be able to give you both your NHS numbers without a problem. I found mine on my birth certificate. My wife, a US immigrant, called the GP about hers.
I don’t even know who my GP is, and my wife has only ever visited the UK on a tourist visa. Interesting on the birth certificate though, might need to dig that out...
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Yes, I think my concern is that those who can't take it for medical reasons get caught up in it.
They just need a card/certificate issued via their GP in an extremely difficult to forge form. Show that in all the circumstances the vaxxed have to show their certificate.
But medical reason only - not through choice.
The app can cover that too though, when they login to it with their NHS number it essentially gives them a free pass. It can act identically to those who have been vaccinated that way because I don't think it's a good idea for those with medical exemptions to be given a different system that singles them out.
How do apps work for non-residents?
Why would it be any different? As long as they have an NHS number then we should have their medical records. Tourists would need to have one that is compatible and has data sharing with whatever the UK system is using. It needs a lot of international co-operation and data sharing.
Trying to convince a technologist that app-based systems will work for vaccinations, is like trying to convince the same technologist that electronic voting systems are better than paper and pencils.
Who would pay to develop the app, who would manage it, what information would it require and who would have access to the data, including medical data? How would one challenge mistakes, would there be a customer support centre staffed by humans?
My wife doesn’t have an NHS a number, I’ve not needed mine for 20 years so God knows what it is or where I’d find it. We will both have been vaccinated abroad. My Mum has my old iphone with no data plan etc...
If everyone gets vaccinated on time, all of the above will useful for about six weeks. Why bother?
It would be massively complex. We (my research team) have been tapped up in relation to vaccination priority groups to try and identify who those people are (we've done previous research identifying people with similar sets of conditions). You can match on hospital diagnoses or primary care diagnoses (separate diagnosis coding systems and, in primary care, three - that I know of - major database systems). Even so, the diagnoses are only there if the hospital coder or GP noted the diagnosis, which is not guaranteed if you came in for something else. For some diagnoses, particularly in hospital records, a single code covers a range of severity of conditions, some relevant, some not. In short, complicated and still imperfect.
So, you might say, instead get the GP to add a 'vaccine exempt' status to the medical records. Well, GPs only have access to their own database (and, as mentioned before, at least three providers). So, instead, set up a new system storing vaccine/vaccine exempt status, accessible by GP. Still need an identifier. NHS numbers are imperfect, some people acquire more than one. New ID system? same objections as ID cards.
Not sure how this could be best approached... Download app, enter your name, address, photo, DoB, but how do you validate vaccination/exempton status in an easy way. Can be sent to your GP (app lets you select your GP) and they then validate your status. But I don't even know where vaccinations in non-GP settings are being recorded, e.g. mass vaccination centres and who can then check those to validate. Doable I guess if you instead select from app where you had your vaccination and that can tie up to the records automatically/send a request to the person who can.
The Excel centre in London kicked into gear today, a friend of mine had a 2.5 hr wait for a jab there.
Probably teething troubles. At the centre in Eastbourne that we went to, there had been quite long delays in the first couple of days, but a week or so later when we went it was like clockwork and very very quick.
I'm guessing they are working on the basis of very high and rapid turnover to jab as many people as fast as possible, but when things go wrong (can't find the keys to the door, computers go down, etc) it becomes a big delay. Everyone I know has been in and out in a jiffy except one who waited hours. It is the Ryanair model; really efficient, but when it rarely goes wrong, boy does it go wrong.
Which in fairness is exactly the right way to do it - you'd far rather vaccinate 95 people and irritate 5 than vaccinate 50 people with no-one complaining.
- an EU that has cozied up to China - an EU that has cozied up to Russia - an EU that has put a hard border across the island of Ireland, however "mistakenly"
- a UK that has applied to join the CP-TPP to broaden its world trade base - a UK that has taken a firm stand against China in IT and security - a UK that has taken the vaccine rollout very seriously in battling Covid
Where do you think the Biden administration thinks its friends currently reside?
The thesis that Biden will waste his time feuding with the UK relies on the rather demeaning assumption that he is even more of a petulant man-child than his predecessor. I don't think he is at all, so I suspect the papers will be full of quotes about the 'surprisingly warm' nature of his first face-to-face meeting with Boris when it happens.
I think Biden is complex.
He's gone full Woke (probably he doesn't really understand it at heart, but knows it's important to the next generation in the Dem base - so he does it)....
I suspect he might understand it rather better than you .
But I agree with the rest of your comments.
Nope, he doesn't not at all.
But you've been captured wholesale by this "movement" so your supine comment doesn't surprise me.
Really, and what form does this 'wholesale capture' take - do you have any specifics, or are you simply indulging in your occasional reactionary caricature ?
I've regularly explored it on here. You can go and do some more research of your own to understand why rational people object to it if you still don't get it.
It's clearly beyond the comprehension of your puny mind.
Mate. Love all your posts. And really appreciated your one about your feelings. These few, however, are a bit "out there". Perhaps a cup of tea might be in order. It's only PB and blokes off the internet after all!
Thanks. I just don't like being patronised.
I've regularly explored my views on this subject on here - which I think are considered and balanced - so such insinuations do irritate me.
Maybe you're right though and I should just ignore him.
Glorious comrades, join me in basking in the great future that Supreme Leader Sturgeon's Scotland will enjoy!
Now that the unperson disgraced ex-leader has been rightly consigned to the dustbin of history and his doubleplusungood utterances prevented from contaminating the proletariat, justice can finally reign.
And reign it shall, for his baseless slurs against the Beacon of Hope have been proven pathetic beyond contempt, unworthy of even being published without considerable redaction to eliminate the malice and woe contained therein.
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)
You should listen to Times Red Box podcast when they do their Monthly Focus Group editions (last one was 8 Feb).
Each month they catch up with their respondents and ask them various questions, and let`s just say that Johnson is more popular than many give him credit for here and some respondents either do not know who Starmer is or have no idea about what he is about.
Well worth a listen to each month.
Without taking a view on their likeability, what I wonder is - have people quoting Net Satisfaction been including the 30% of people who don't vote, therefore inflating the popularity, or whatever characteristic being measured, of the leader with more don't know/don't cares? It seems they are given the same value as those who positively express a view, which I don't think can be correct
How can you have Cricket without 6 balls in an over?
That is all.
Eight ball overs used to be standard. In fact, I think a local evening league of mine played eight ball overs when I was a kid (c.2000).
Did not know that. It has always been 6 for me since I started playing and following Cricket (1992)
100 balls is absurd. Doing away with the concept of overs altogether. And for what, why not just T20 which is pretty close to 100 balls but actually uses proper overs?
How can you have Cricket without 6 balls in an over?
That is all.
Eight ball overs used to be standard. In fact, I think a local evening league of mine played eight ball overs when I was a kid (c.2000).
Did not know that. It has always been 6 for me since I started playing and following Cricket (1992)
100 balls is absurd. Doing away with the concept of overs altogether. And for what, why not just T20 which is pretty close to 100 balls but actually uses proper overs?
The answer to the latter is because they wanted to ensure matches took no more than three hours.
I can think of a Hundred different and better ways of doing it.
The Excel centre in London kicked into gear today, a friend of mine had a 2.5 hr wait for a jab there.
Probably teething troubles. At the centre in Eastbourne that we went to, there had been quite long delays in the first couple of days, but a week or so later when we went it was like clockwork and very very quick.
I'm guessing they are working on the basis of very high and rapid turnover to jab as many people as fast as possible, but when things go wrong (can't find the keys to the door, computers go down, etc) it becomes a big delay. Everyone I know has been in and out in a jiffy except one who waited hours. It is the Ryanair model; really efficient, but when it rarely goes wrong, boy does it go wrong.
Which in fairness is exactly the right way to do it - you'd far rather vaccinate 95 people and irritate 5 than vaccinate 50 people with no-one complaining.
I must confess I have limited interest in the Salmond/Sturgeon affair. Even to the extent of being interested enough to read about it.
My view is that Salmond is a See You Next Tuesday, basically a ScotNat Trump, whereas Sturgeon is a skilled but highly manipulative, and secretly rather unpleasant, political operator so I don't feel I have any dog in the fight and nor do I think it'll have any political bearing on the future of the Union.
My sympathies lie wholly with the Scottish people who must put up with it, and the collateral damage it causes.
The Scotsman reports "It followed the Crown Office writing to the SPCB on Monday night expressing “grave concerns” around the legality of the submission and the potential for jigsaw identification of complainers in Mr Salmond’s criminal trial."
I have read the unredacted version. The accusation is just absurd. The complainers are barely mentioned. Their complaints are not mentioned at all. It is about whether Sturgeon breached the code by lying to Parliament about various meetings and assurances given to Salmond himself.
Why do you think the SPCB has taken the action of withdrawing and redacting Salmond's submission? Have the 2 SLabbers, 1 SLD, 1 SCon, and Wightman been bullied into by the single SNP member?
Glorious comrades, join me in basking in the great future that Supreme Leader Sturgeon's Scotland will enjoy!
Now that the unperson disgraced ex-leader has been rightly consigned to the dustbin of history and his doubleplusungood utterances prevented from contaminating the proletariat, justice can finally reign.
And reign it shall, for his baseless slurs against the Beacon of Hope have been proven pathetic beyond contempt, unworthy of even being published without considerable redaction to eliminate the malice and woe contained therein.
Huzzah!
The Gulags of Gigha are ready to receive any that have a copy of the unredacted records. For they are an abomination against time itself - to have something that can no longer exist.
- an EU that has cozied up to China - an EU that has cozied up to Russia - an EU that has put a hard border across the island of Ireland, however "mistakenly"
- a UK that has applied to join the CP-TPP to broaden its world trade base - a UK that has taken a firm stand against China in IT and security - a UK that has taken the vaccine rollout very seriously in battling Covid
Where do you think the Biden administration thinks its friends currently reside?
The thesis that Biden will waste his time feuding with the UK relies on the rather demeaning assumption that he is even more of a petulant man-child than his predecessor. I don't think he is at all, so I suspect the papers will be full of quotes about the 'surprisingly warm' nature of his first face-to-face meeting with Boris when it happens.
I think Biden is complex.
He's gone full Woke (probably he doesn't really understand it at heart, but knows it's important to the next generation in the Dem base - so he does it)....
I suspect he might understand it rather better than you .
But I agree with the rest of your comments.
Nope, he doesn't not at all.
But you've been captured wholesale by this "movement" so your supine comment doesn't surprise me.
Really, and what form does this 'wholesale capture' take - do you have any specifics, or are you simply indulging in your occasional reactionary caricature ?
I've regularly explored it on here. You can go and do some more research of your own to understand why rational people object to it if you still don't get it.
It's clearly beyond the comprehension of your puny mind.
Mate. Love all your posts. And really appreciated your one about your feelings. These few, however, are a bit "out there". Perhaps a cup of tea might be in order. It's only PB and blokes off the internet after all!
Thanks. I just don't like being patronised.
I've regularly explored my views on this subject on here - which I think are considered and balanced - so such insinuations do irritate me.
Maybe you're right though and I should just ignore him.
We're on the run in to this whole bloody thing ending - no point getting wound up by randoms on the internet. Everyone here can give as good as they get but at this particular point in what has been an extraordinary 12 months, sometimes it's best to just move on to the next comment.
The Scotsman reports "It followed the Crown Office writing to the SPCB on Monday night expressing “grave concerns” around the legality of the submission and the potential for jigsaw identification of complainers in Mr Salmond’s criminal trial."
I have read the unredacted version. The accusation is just absurd. The complainers are barely mentioned. Their complaints are not mentioned at all. It is about whether Sturgeon breached the code by lying to Parliament about various meetings and assurances given to Salmond himself.
Why do you think the SPCB has taken the action of withdrawing and redacting Salmond's submission? Have the 2 SLabbers, 1 SLD, 1 SCon, and Wightman been bullied into by the single SNP member?
So, what you're saying is that if you're a Scottish Liberal Democrat, you have a 100% chance of being on the SPCB?
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)
You should listen to Times Red Box podcast when they do their Monthly Focus Group editions (last one was 8 Feb).
Each month they catch up with their respondents and ask them various questions, and let`s just say that Johnson is more popular than many give him credit for here and some respondents either do not know who Starmer is or have no idea about what he is about.
Well worth a listen to each month.
Without taking a view on their likeability, what I wonder is - have people quoting Net Satisfaction been including the 30% of people who don't vote, therefore inflating the popularity, or whatever characteristic being measured, of the leader with more don't know/don't cares? It seems they are given the same value as those who positively express a view, which I don't think can be correct
All I can say is the polling on this and other matters often bears little relationship to my anecdotal experience of the views of people I know. I find this with many poll results. I know we are all in our bubbles but even so I wonder who on earth they find when they conduct their surveys.
I must confess I have limited interest in the Salmond/Sturgeon affair. Even to the extent of being interested enough to read about it.
My view is that Salmond is a See You Next Tuesday, basically a ScotNat Trump, whereas Sturgeon is a skilled but highly manipulative, and secretly rather unpleasant, political operator so I don't feel I have any dog in the fight and nor do I think it'll have any political bearing on the future of the Union.
My sympathies lie wholly with the Scottish people who must put up with it, and the collateral damage it causes.
This is me, except I have limited sympathy with the Scottish people who kept voting for them, even after comprehensively rejecting the only plank of their policy platform.
Made me chuckle....while ranting about why isn't Starmer standing up, why aren't the normal people standing up to this corrupt evil government, they show a clip of what I presume he wants it to be for "us" to be getting together and demanding change...by showing a clip of wokerity people no appaulding, rather doing the jazz hands, the sort of people who have a badge with their pronouns on like It, Z and They...I can't see Stoke man having much in common with those type of people and there in lies the problem for the Corbynista rip it all up and start again.
That still at first glance looks like a gritty new detective drama "Tonight, on BBC1, Monibot & Starmer, one's a mild mannered centrist, the other a firebrand radical. Together they get results".
The last 4 words . . . shurely shome mishtake?
Look, they may not be the results that were hoped for, but they were definitely results.
Quite right too, care home residents will unfortunately be amongst those who are least likely to respond to vaccination by virtue of having weaker immune systems. All staff must be vaccinated.
Agree. More generally, we are in a national emergency that has blighted lives of everyone for over a year. The vaccine is the only hope of a route back to normality. The workplace is probably the most significant vector of transmission of all.
So at a minimum the government should legislate to: 1. Require employers to change contracts of employment to require their employees to be vaccinated, or otherwise resign, in any specifically defined workplace environment where Covid outbreaks are likely to lead to relatively high levels of deaths and hospital admissions (e.g. care homes, hospitals.) 2. In any contract of employment in all settings, end the risk to employers to stop changes to contracts to require vaccination potentially opening up claims of breach of contract/constructive dismissal by refusniks. 3. Place a duty on all employers to conduct an assessment of the risk of transmission within or between their workforce, and to require vaccination of employees as a condition of employment unless that assessment showed that risks could be adequately minimised by control measures, and to explicitly place a liability on employers for damages arising any Covid outbreak that could be shown to have arisen from failure of such documented control measures. 4. Extend the above to agency staff as well as directly employed staff.
Result: Pretty well all employers move to require vaccination to avoid breaking the law or the risk of being sued.
All broadly sensible but you are going to need to make an exception for women of child-bearing age, many of whom work in care homes and hospitals. AIUI the vaccine is not recommended for those trying to get pregnant. So making it a condition of employment that such women must have one is not on.
You also - if you are going to force people to have a medicine - need to have no fault compensation paid for by the state for anyone harmed by this, as is the case for other vaccinations I believe.
There will inevitably be those who don't get vaccinated for reasons both rational and irrational. But I'm not sure how much this matters so long as the % population protected either by prior infection or vaccine is sufficient to squash community transmission? The primary objective of the vaccine rollout is macro not micro.
It is mainly a macro concern yes, but specifically a micro concern within health and social care settings due to the fact patients/residents may well have weaker immune systems even vaccinated. Which is why I expect it to be made mandatory in time for health and social care workers.
I do see a case for that but I'm not sure how much of a slam dunk it is in the event the virus is squashed due to aggregate immunity. You'd have to weight the benefit of the reduced risk of transmission to the vulnerable versus the cost of losing staff in a sector that finds recruitment difficult.
Antivaxxers are going to become social pariahs and they know it.
Yes, I think my concern is that those who can't take it for medical reasons get caught up in it.
They just need a card/certificate issued via their GP in an extremely difficult to forge form. Show that in all the circumstances the vaxxed have to show their certificate.
But medical reason only - not through choice.
The app can cover that too though, when they login to it with their NHS number it essentially gives them a free pass. It can act identically to those who have been vaccinated that way because I don't think it's a good idea for those with medical exemptions to be given a different system that singles them out.
How do apps work for non-residents?
Why would it be any different? As long as they have an NHS number then we should have their medical records. Tourists would need to have one that is compatible and has data sharing with whatever the UK system is using. It needs a lot of international co-operation and data sharing.
Trying to convince a technologist that app-based systems will work for vaccinations, is like trying to convince the same technologist that electronic voting systems are better than paper and pencils.
Who would pay to develop the app, who would manage it, what information would it require and who would have access to the data, including medical data? How would one challenge mistakes, would there be a customer support centre staffed by humans?
My wife doesn’t have an NHS a number, I’ve not needed mine for 20 years so God knows what it is or where I’d find it. We will both have been vaccinated abroad. My Mum has my old iphone with no data plan etc...
If everyone gets vaccinated on time, all of the above will useful for about six weeks. Why bother?
It would be massively complex. We (my research team) have been tapped up in relation to vaccination priority groups to try and identify who those people are (we've done previous research identifying people with similar sets of conditions). You can match on hospital diagnoses or primary care diagnoses (separate diagnosis coding systems and, in primary care, three - that I know of - major database systems). Even so, the diagnoses are only there if the hospital coder or GP noted the diagnosis, which is not guaranteed if you came in for something else. For some diagnoses, particularly in hospital records, a single code covers a range of severity of conditions, some relevant, some not. In short, complicated and still imperfect.
So, you might say, instead get the GP to add a 'vaccine exempt' status to the medical records. Well, GPs only have access to their own database (and, as mentioned before, at least three providers). So, instead, set up a new system storing vaccine/vaccine exempt status, accessible by GP. Still need an identifier. NHS numbers are imperfect, some people acquire more than one. New ID system? same objections as ID cards.
Not sure how this could be best approached... Download app, enter your name, address, photo, DoB, but how do you validate vaccination/exempton status in an easy way. Can be sent to your GP (app lets you select your GP) and they then validate your status. But I don't even know where vaccinations in non-GP settings are being recorded, e.g. mass vaccination centres and who can then check those to validate. Doable I guess if you instead select from app where you had your vaccination and that can tie up to the records automatically/send a request to the person who can.
Or us 000 000 0001, and pretend you are the Queen.
Indeed. However, you may be surprised to find it isn't foolproof. For example, the process of linking research extracts of primary care data to hospital data is described here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-018-0442-4 (open access)
Among 9.1 million patients of 'research quality' (which essentially means the GP practice kept good enough records - so these are the most likely to be valid) 8.0 million (88%) were found to have a valid NHS number in the primary care data. I think you can see the problem.
This is the problem Care.Data was supposed to solve (along with many others, not only in research but in healthcare delivery).
How come we aren't talking about the really big story of the day? The Hundred draft.....are we not excited?
Sod franchise cricket in England & Wales.
We already have a fantastic product in the t20 blast and this is going to damage that.
Northern Superchargers sounds like a bloody class of train.
Agree 100%
The t20 blast is absolutely perfect. I love test cricket as much as the next man, but t20 gives me an afternoon out with some of my daughters that the three of us can enjoy for a combined total of £10. It's packed with families. All those kids who wouldn't have given cricket a look because they never see it on the telly are now interested. We are entertained for two or three hours; if Lancashire win we are elated; if they don't, well, it's only a game and we still go home happy. Having 20 balls fewer is clearly worse. Calling the team 'Manchester' rather than 'Lancashire' helps no-one. It would be good to see a few more players I've heard of, but I want them to have some passing association with the area. And I don't know, but I imagine we will be sacrificing the best thing of all, which is that we can all go to see it for £10 - a price you really don't mind chancing.
After a simply gloriously sunny day yesterday, rain and wind here today. A reminder that spring weather is unreliable and often far too cold to be outside for any prolonged period, especially in the evening, and in most of the country.
Very few beer gardens are going to open on the earliest possible date because it is hard to do so profitably during a month when in large parts of the country the weather is often poor and unreliable, which makes planning and ordering stock difficult. Remember also that if you have a tent with sides in the garden it cannot be used as it is classed as "inside space". If it open at the sides then who is going to want to sit in there in the evening open to the elements in April in many parts of the country?
What would be more useful is allowing takeaway alcohol sales for, gasp, pubs which have been prohibited from doing so, even though off licences and supermarkets have been allowed to.
Also important in the general rejoicing is to know what is to happen to the support offered to hospitality because currently it is to stop well before venues are allowed to open properly.
More than a week's notice is needed for opening. Breweries have already said that they will need 2-3 weeks notice to start operations so don't be surprised to find many places not opening until the end of May/ early June. From mid-February until then is a way to go without income and with support significantly less than fixed costs.
But at least there is a plan and the recognition that zero-Covid is unachievable is a welcome dose of realism.
Very few restaurants, if any, will find it viable to open up to serve people outside in April in the UK. It's virtually pointless, we are not in the South of France or the Algarve (unfortunately)
Agreed. My fear is that the fact that it is theoretically possible will be used as an excuse to stop giving support too early. I hope I am wrong.
That's not going to happen.
Where you are wrong is by concurring with Olly's view that "very few, if any" restaurants will open. Many will do in the south in particular, but not exclusively. Heaters make this very possible.
In California (yes, yes, I know), restaurants have managed to keep outdoor heating working reasonably well and terraces full so long as the temperature was above about 8-9 degrees C.
After a simply gloriously sunny day yesterday, rain and wind here today. A reminder that spring weather is unreliable and often far too cold to be outside for any prolonged period, especially in the evening, and in most of the country.
Very few beer gardens are going to open on the earliest possible date because it is hard to do so profitably during a month when in large parts of the country the weather is often poor and unreliable, which makes planning and ordering stock difficult. Remember also that if you have a tent with sides in the garden it cannot be used as it is classed as "inside space". If it open at the sides then who is going to want to sit in there in the evening open to the elements in April in many parts of the country?
What would be more useful is allowing takeaway alcohol sales for, gasp, pubs which have been prohibited from doing so, even though off licences and supermarkets have been allowed to.
Also important in the general rejoicing is to know what is to happen to the support offered to hospitality because currently it is to stop well before venues are allowed to open properly.
More than a week's notice is needed for opening. Breweries have already said that they will need 2-3 weeks notice to start operations so don't be surprised to find many places not opening until the end of May/ early June. From mid-February until then is a way to go without income and with support significantly less than fixed costs.
But at least there is a plan and the recognition that zero-Covid is unachievable is a welcome dose of realism.
Very few restaurants, if any, will find it viable to open up to serve people outside in April in the UK. It's virtually pointless, we are not in the South of France or the Algarve (unfortunately)
Wrong. Plenty down here will open.
How many people can the average restaurant seat outside? Enough to make it worthwhile opening? I doubt it and that's before you factor in the rain and howling gales.
How come we aren't talking about the really big story of the day? The Hundred draft.....are we not excited?
Sod franchise cricket in England & Wales.
We already have a fantastic product in the t20 blast and this is going to damage that.
Northern Superchargers sounds like a bloody class of train.
Agree 100%
The t20 blast is absolutely perfect. I love test cricket as much as the next man, but t20 gives me an afternoon out with some of my daughters that the three of us can enjoy for a combined total of £10. It's packed with families. All those kids who wouldn't have given cricket a look because they never see it on the telly are now interested. We are entertained for two or three hours; if Lancashire win we are elated; if they don't, well, it's only a game and we still go home happy. Having 20 balls fewer is clearly worse. Calling the team 'Manchester' rather than 'Lancashire' helps no-one. It would be good to see a few more players I've heard of, but I want them to have some passing association with the area. And I don't know, but I imagine we will be sacrificing the best thing of all, which is that we can all go to see it for £10 - a price you really don't mind chancing.
I think The Hundred will be very popular.
Not among the old grumblies on PB.
But with the wider public.
Why do I have to travel 100 miles to go to a match?
I must confess I have limited interest in the Salmond/Sturgeon affair. Even to the extent of being interested enough to read about it.
My view is that Salmond is a See You Next Tuesday, basically a ScotNat Trump, whereas Sturgeon is a skilled but highly manipulative, and secretly rather unpleasant, political operator so I don't feel I have any dog in the fight and nor do I think it'll have any political bearing on the future of the Union.
My sympathies lie wholly with the Scottish people who must put up with it, and the collateral damage it causes.
This is me, except I have limited sympathy with the Scottish people who kept voting for them, even after comprehensively rejecting the only plank of their policy platform.
The Scots must have a REALLY overpowering sense of grievance to keep voting for the Aliens AND the Predators....
- an EU that has cozied up to China - an EU that has cozied up to Russia - an EU that has put a hard border across the island of Ireland, however "mistakenly"
- a UK that has applied to join the CP-TPP to broaden its world trade base - a UK that has taken a firm stand against China in IT and security - a UK that has taken the vaccine rollout very seriously in battling Covid
Where do you think the Biden administration thinks its friends currently reside?
The thesis that Biden will waste his time feuding with the UK relies on the rather demeaning assumption that he is even more of a petulant man-child than his predecessor. I don't think he is at all, so I suspect the papers will be full of quotes about the 'surprisingly warm' nature of his first face-to-face meeting with Boris when it happens.
I think Biden is complex.
He's gone full Woke (probably he doesn't really understand it at heart, but knows it's important to the next generation in the Dem base - so he does it)....
I suspect he might understand it rather better than you .
But I agree with the rest of your comments.
Nope, he doesn't not at all.
But you've been captured wholesale by this "movement" so your supine comment doesn't surprise me.
Really, and what form does this 'wholesale capture' take - do you have any specifics, or are you simply indulging in your occasional reactionary caricature ?
I've regularly explored it on here. You can go and do some more research of your own to understand why rational people object to it if you still don't get it.
It's clearly beyond the comprehension of your puny mind.
I don't believe you've ever detailed the ways in which I have "been captured wholesale by this movement' - though it would be pretty odd if you had.
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)
There must be far more than 10% of respondents who like both - otherwise Boris is getting 40.5/70 (58%) and Sir Keir 32.4/70 (46%)
So I have assumed 30% of respondents like both leaders, and used that to have a guess at likely GE vote, based on Gross Positive likeabilty. I wonder what the actual number of people who like both (or think both are likeable, rather) It would help to know
The Scotsman reports "It followed the Crown Office writing to the SPCB on Monday night expressing “grave concerns” around the legality of the submission and the potential for jigsaw identification of complainers in Mr Salmond’s criminal trial."
I have read the unredacted version. The accusation is just absurd. The complainers are barely mentioned. Their complaints are not mentioned at all. It is about whether Sturgeon breached the code by lying to Parliament about various meetings and assurances given to Salmond himself.
Why do you think the SPCB has taken the action of withdrawing and redacting Salmond's submission? Have the 2 SLabbers, 1 SLD, 1 SCon, and Wightman been bullied into by the single SNP member?
Haha - let me get this right, you are *actually* trying to sell us this line on this being about protecting the anonymity of the complainers?
Perhaps you could tell us how we could identify the complainers from this bit - the entirety of which has been redacted?
30. The First Minister told Parliament (see Official Report of 8th,10th & 17th January 2019) that she first learned of the complaints against me when I visited her home on 2nd April 2018. That is untrue and is a breach of the Ministerial Code.
The evidence from Mr Aberdein that he personally discussed the existence of the complaints, and summarised the substance of the complaints, with the First Minister in a pre arranged meeting in Parliament on 29th March 2018 arranged for that specific purpose cannot be reconciled with the position of the First Minister to Parliament. The fact that Mr Aberdein learned of these complaints in early March 2018 from the Chief of Staff to the First Minister who thereafter arranged for the meeting between Mr Aberdein and the First Minister on 29th March to discuss them, is supported by his sharing that information contemporaneously with myself, Kevin Pringle and Duncan Hamilton, Advocate.
What I don't quite understand, but no doubt our Scottish legal experts can explain, is what is to stop Alex Salmond appearing at the inquiry and repeating what he said in his now-censored written evidence (which anyone interested has already read anyway)? After all, the High Court have said they're cool with it being published, so what's to stop him repeating it?
Made me chuckle....while ranting about why isn't Starmer standing up, why aren't the normal people standing up to this corrupt evil government, they show a clip of what I presume he wants it to be for "us" to be getting together and demanding change...by showing a clip of wokerity people no appaulding, rather doing the jazz hands, the sort of people who have a badge with their pronouns on like It, Z and They...I can't see Stoke man having much in common with those type of people and there in lies the problem for the Corbynista rip it all up and start again.
That still at first glance looks like a gritty new detective drama "Tonight, on BBC1, Monibot & Starmer, one's a mild mannered centrist, the other a firebrand radical. Together they get results".
The last 4 words . . . shurely shome mishtake?
Look, they may not be the results that were hoped for, but they were definitely results.
"There’s a UK ZeroCovid chapter, which last month hosted its own well-attended online conference; the Scottish government is committed to their campaign, alongside Independent SAGE, British trade unions and Labour MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott. Meanwhile, influential Tory MPs like Jeremy Hunt advocate a strategy of “zero infections and elimination of the disease” and routinely refer to the Asian model. Google search results in the UK and US for “ZeroCovid” are at an all-time high. The campaign has momentum."
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)
I think it's complicated.
I think for some leaders - like Corbyn - their negatives really matter, and therefore net is a better judge of how he will do than gross. Had I been in the UK, I would have dragged my sorry ass down to the polling station to ensure he wasn't Prime Minister, and who I voted for wouldn't matter. Corbyn's negatives really mattered. (As in, it doesn't matter if 40% of people love you, if the other 60% will go out and vote against you.)
But in the case of Starmer, I think you're broadly right. People aren't that enthused. That being said... I wouldn't vote against Starmer, either. So while his lack of positives (relative to Boris) is an issue, he will probably benefit from less tactical voting against Labour.
After a simply gloriously sunny day yesterday, rain and wind here today. A reminder that spring weather is unreliable and often far too cold to be outside for any prolonged period, especially in the evening, and in most of the country.
Very few beer gardens are going to open on the earliest possible date because it is hard to do so profitably during a month when in large parts of the country the weather is often poor and unreliable, which makes planning and ordering stock difficult. Remember also that if you have a tent with sides in the garden it cannot be used as it is classed as "inside space". If it open at the sides then who is going to want to sit in there in the evening open to the elements in April in many parts of the country?
What would be more useful is allowing takeaway alcohol sales for, gasp, pubs which have been prohibited from doing so, even though off licences and supermarkets have been allowed to.
Also important in the general rejoicing is to know what is to happen to the support offered to hospitality because currently it is to stop well before venues are allowed to open properly.
More than a week's notice is needed for opening. Breweries have already said that they will need 2-3 weeks notice to start operations so don't be surprised to find many places not opening until the end of May/ early June. From mid-February until then is a way to go without income and with support significantly less than fixed costs.
But at least there is a plan and the recognition that zero-Covid is unachievable is a welcome dose of realism.
Very few restaurants, if any, will find it viable to open up to serve people outside in April in the UK. It's virtually pointless, we are not in the South of France or the Algarve (unfortunately)
Wrong. Plenty down here will open.
How many people can the average restaurant seat outside? Enough to make it worthwhile opening? I doubt it and that's before you factor in the rain and howling gales.
London is usually warmer than everywhere else due to the number of buildings and amount of concrete, so I wouldnt be surprised to see it happening there.
What I don't quite understand, but no doubt our Scottish legal experts can explain, is what is to stop Alex Salmond appearing at the inquiry and repeating what he said in his now-censored written evidence (which anyone interested has already read anyway)? After all, the High Court have said they're cool with it being published, so what's to stop him repeating it?
According to some sources, nothing, and that's what he may do.
However, since the redacted portions cannot be included in the Committee's report, and those portions that seem to have fallen foul of the Crown Office are the ones that allege that Sturgeon misled Parliament, the purpose of thwarting any finding against Sturgeon still appears to be served.
After a simply gloriously sunny day yesterday, rain and wind here today. A reminder that spring weather is unreliable and often far too cold to be outside for any prolonged period, especially in the evening, and in most of the country.
Very few beer gardens are going to open on the earliest possible date because it is hard to do so profitably during a month when in large parts of the country the weather is often poor and unreliable, which makes planning and ordering stock difficult. Remember also that if you have a tent with sides in the garden it cannot be used as it is classed as "inside space". If it open at the sides then who is going to want to sit in there in the evening open to the elements in April in many parts of the country?
What would be more useful is allowing takeaway alcohol sales for, gasp, pubs which have been prohibited from doing so, even though off licences and supermarkets have been allowed to.
Also important in the general rejoicing is to know what is to happen to the support offered to hospitality because currently it is to stop well before venues are allowed to open properly.
More than a week's notice is needed for opening. Breweries have already said that they will need 2-3 weeks notice to start operations so don't be surprised to find many places not opening until the end of May/ early June. From mid-February until then is a way to go without income and with support significantly less than fixed costs.
But at least there is a plan and the recognition that zero-Covid is unachievable is a welcome dose of realism.
Very few restaurants, if any, will find it viable to open up to serve people outside in April in the UK. It's virtually pointless, we are not in the South of France or the Algarve (unfortunately)
Wrong. Plenty down here will open.
How many people can the average restaurant seat outside? Enough to make it worthwhile opening? I doubt it and that's before you factor in the rain and howling gales.
Howling gales being while not unknown decidedly uncommon in the South East of England.
As for rain, it's one of the driest regions in Europe.
There are plenty of places down here that can and will open. Not all by any means, but plenty.
A million miles away from your "very few, if any" claim. You will be proved very wrong about that.
"There’s a UK ZeroCovid chapter, which last month hosted its own well-attended online conference; the Scottish government is committed to their campaign, alongside Independent SAGE, British trade unions and Labour MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott. Meanwhile, influential Tory MPs like Jeremy Hunt advocate a strategy of “zero infections and elimination of the disease” and routinely refer to the Asian model. Google search results in the UK and US for “ZeroCovid” are at an all-time high. The campaign has momentum."
What I don't quite understand, but no doubt our Scottish legal experts can explain, is what is to stop Alex Salmond appearing at the inquiry and repeating what he said in his now-censored written evidence (which anyone interested has already read anyway)? After all, the High Court have said they're cool with it being published, so what's to stop him repeating it?
Well the implication from Crown Office is that giving evidence in those terms would be a contempt of court and that they would prosecute it. Being prosecuted in the High Court is a very serious matter and not something to be risked if you can avoid it.
Lady Dorrian made it clear that the purpose of her order was to protect the identity of the complainers who gave evidence at the trial, not to interfere with the decision of the Committee but Crown Office are claiming that the redacted material does facilitate that.
I have been trying to think why. I have a theory but its no more than speculation and I am not going to share it on a public site.
How come we aren't talking about the really big story of the day? The Hundred draft.....are we not excited?
Sod franchise cricket in England & Wales.
We already have a fantastic product in the t20 blast and this is going to damage that.
Northern Superchargers sounds like a bloody class of train.
Agree 100%
The t20 blast is absolutely perfect. I love test cricket as much as the next man, but t20 gives me an afternoon out with some of my daughters that the three of us can enjoy for a combined total of £10. It's packed with families. All those kids who wouldn't have given cricket a look because they never see it on the telly are now interested. We are entertained for two or three hours; if Lancashire win we are elated; if they don't, well, it's only a game and we still go home happy. Having 20 balls fewer is clearly worse. Calling the team 'Manchester' rather than 'Lancashire' helps no-one. It would be good to see a few more players I've heard of, but I want them to have some passing association with the area. And I don't know, but I imagine we will be sacrificing the best thing of all, which is that we can all go to see it for £10 - a price you really don't mind chancing.
I think The Hundred will be very popular.
Not among the old grumblies on PB.
But with the wider public.
Why do I have to travel 100 miles to go to a match?
You don't unless you want to see The Hundred. No different to Cornish people having to travel 100 miles to see a Premier League match.
I agree they should have had a Newcastle team though – used the Riverside (I know it's not in Newcastle, but near enough)
I thought those were supposed to be the key variables of when the infection subsides? So it's October, November, December, January, or February depending on which country you're looking at, right? And it comes and goes away, as well - for example, Czechia (negligible vaccination so far) has had seasonal increasing happening in October, seasonal decreasing happening in November, seasonal increasing in December, decreasing in January, and now increasing again in February.
While here, we've had a marvellous summer from (checks dates) early January. Looking warmer and better than the summer we had in November after that unpleasant winter in September and October...
Lockdown helps a lot locally. Globally there is little or no seasonal effect. If Topping is right about Farr's Law, suggesting the virus rips through populations until it starts to find it hard to find bodies to infect, then globally the acute phase of the pandemic peaked on 11-13 January and should be coming to an end at the end of this calendar year - or thereabouts.
The problem with that theory is that places with the worst bouts of infection in 2020 (like Northern Italy, where it was absolutely brutal), should have done much, much better this year.
But if you look at the numbers for Lombardy, it did more than twice as badly as the rest of Italy in 2020, and then no better in 2021. So, why shouldn't the rest of Italy not still have a terrible experience to come? (Assuming Farr's law is correct?)
I thought those were supposed to be the key variables of when the infection subsides? So it's October, November, December, January, or February depending on which country you're looking at, right? And it comes and goes away, as well - for example, Czechia (negligible vaccination so far) has had seasonal increasing happening in October, seasonal decreasing happening in November, seasonal increasing in December, decreasing in January, and now increasing again in February.
While here, we've had a marvellous summer from (checks dates) early January. Looking warmer and better than the summer we had in November after that unpleasant winter in September and October...
Lockdown helps a lot locally. Globally there is little or no seasonal effect. If Topping is right about Farr's Law, suggesting the virus rips through populations until it starts to find it hard to find bodies to infect, then globally the acute phase of the pandemic peaked on 11-13 January and should be coming to an end at the end of this calendar year - or thereabouts.
More from the Zero Covid article I posted just now:
"David Rennie, Beijing bureau chief of The Economist, recently gave an astonishingly candid account of current ZeroCovid life in the Chinese capital:
“China’s strategy, from the start, was to have no infections at all… Still in Beijing, where we have hardly any cases, every time you step outside your door you have to use a smartphone to scan a QR code — every shop, every taxi, every bus, every metro station. You have no privacy at all — it’s all built around this electronic system of contact tracing. To leave Beijing you have to have a Covid test, to come back in you have to have a Covid test…. We basically don’t have the virus here, but the flip side is that they are keeping this place locked down as tight as a drum… It’s very hard to know where Covid containment starts and a Communist police state with an obsession with control kicks in.” "
What I don't quite understand, but no doubt our Scottish legal experts can explain, is what is to stop Alex Salmond appearing at the inquiry and repeating what he said in his now-censored written evidence (which anyone interested has already read anyway)? After all, the High Court have said they're cool with it being published, so what's to stop him repeating it?
Well the implication from Crown Office is that giving evidence in those terms would be a contempt of court and that they would prosecute it. Being prosecuted in the High Court is a very serious matter and not something to be risked if you can avoid it.
Lady Dorrian made it clear that the purpose of her order was to protect the identity of the complainers who gave evidence at the trial, not to interfere with the decision of the Committee but Crown Office are claiming that the redacted material does facilitate that.
I have been trying to think why. I have a theory but its no more than speculation and I am not going to share it on a public site.
But how can it be in contempt of court if the court has said it's OK? That's the bit I don't understand. The opinion of the Crown Office is surely irrelevant.
How come we aren't talking about the really big story of the day? The Hundred draft.....are we not excited?
Sod franchise cricket in England & Wales.
We already have a fantastic product in the t20 blast and this is going to damage that.
Northern Superchargers sounds like a bloody class of train.
Agree 100%
The t20 blast is absolutely perfect. I love test cricket as much as the next man, but t20 gives me an afternoon out with some of my daughters that the three of us can enjoy for a combined total of £10. It's packed with families. All those kids who wouldn't have given cricket a look because they never see it on the telly are now interested. We are entertained for two or three hours; if Lancashire win we are elated; if they don't, well, it's only a game and we still go home happy. Having 20 balls fewer is clearly worse. Calling the team 'Manchester' rather than 'Lancashire' helps no-one. It would be good to see a few more players I've heard of, but I want them to have some passing association with the area. And I don't know, but I imagine we will be sacrificing the best thing of all, which is that we can all go to see it for £10 - a price you really don't mind chancing.
I think The Hundred will be very popular.
Not among the old grumblies on PB.
But with the wider public.
Why do I have to travel 100 miles to go to a match?
You don't unless you want to see The Hundred. No different to Cornish people having to travel 100 miles to see a Premier League match.
I agree they should have had a Newcastle team though – used the Riverside (I know it's not in Newcastle, but near enough)
Ridiculous that Bristol and Leicester were left off the list as well. Or Brighton/Hove.
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)
I think it's complicated.
I think for some leaders - like Corbyn - their negatives really matter, and therefore net is a better judge of how he will do than gross. Had I been in the UK, I would have dragged my sorry ass down to the polling station to ensure he wasn't Prime Minister, and who I voted for wouldn't matter. Corbyn's negatives really mattered. (As in, it doesn't matter if 40% of people love you, if the other 60% will go out and vote against you.)
But in the case of Starmer, I think you're broadly right. People aren't that enthused. That being said... I wouldn't vote against Starmer, either. So while his lack of positives (relative to Boris) is an issue, he will probably benefit from less tactical voting against Labour.
My point really is that 30% of people don't vote, and so when
45 positive 40 negative 15 DK (+5)
plays
36 positive 28 negative 28 DK, (+8)
The (+5) and (+8 ) are red herrings, & its more likely to be (+28) vs (+12) when non voters are filtered out
45/70=64 & 40/70=36 for Boris 36/70=51 & 28/70=40 for Sir Keir rounded up to 56 & 44 by *1.09 to make the sum (91) up to 100
More from the Zero Covid article I posted just now:
"David Rennie, Beijing bureau chief of The Economist, recently gave an astonishingly candid account of current ZeroCovid life in the Chinese capital:
“China’s strategy, from the start, was to have no infections at all… Still in Beijing, where we have hardly any cases, every time you step outside your door you have to use a smartphone to scan a QR code — every shop, every taxi, every bus, every metro station. You have no privacy at all — it’s all built around this electronic system of contact tracing. To leave Beijing you have to have a Covid test, to come back in you have to have a Covid test…. We basically don’t have the virus here, but the flip side is that they are keeping this place locked down as tight as a drum… It’s very hard to know where Covid containment starts and a Communist police state with an obsession with control kicks in.” "
Zero covid and a desire for a police state are perfect partners.
Coming soon to Scotland as well by the sounds of it.
The Scotsman reports "It followed the Crown Office writing to the SPCB on Monday night expressing “grave concerns” around the legality of the submission and the potential for jigsaw identification of complainers in Mr Salmond’s criminal trial."
I have read the unredacted version. The accusation is just absurd. The complainers are barely mentioned. Their complaints are not mentioned at all. It is about whether Sturgeon breached the code by lying to Parliament about various meetings and assurances given to Salmond himself.
Why do you think the SPCB has taken the action of withdrawing and redacting Salmond's submission? Have the 2 SLabbers, 1 SLD, 1 SCon, and Wightman been bullied into by the single SNP member?
No they are being bullied/taking the advice of Crown Office. Whether that advice is correct or not....
Edit, another major frustration is the failure of 3 senior Judges who sat as a panel in the prosecution of Craig Murray for an alleged breach of the same contempt of court order to produce a decision. Had they given their written ruling on that matter much of the uncertainty relating to Salmond's appearance tomorrow might have been avoided.
Comments
So it's October, November, December, January, or February depending on which country you're looking at, right?
And it comes and goes away, as well - for example, Czechia (negligible vaccination so far) has had seasonal increasing happening in October, seasonal decreasing happening in November, seasonal increasing in December, decreasing in January, and now increasing again in February.
While here, we've had a marvellous summer from (checks dates) early January. Looking warmer and better than the summer we had in November after that unpleasant winter in September and October...
Where you are wrong is by concurring with Olly's view that "very few, if any" restaurants will open. Many will do in the south in particular, but not exclusively. Heaters make this very possible.
https://twitter.com/GMB_MPs_Staff/status/1364188133584175107
I would not have said that of Sturgeon - writing it off as sour grapes by Salmond - but for that weird business over Rangers.
The t20 blast is absolutely perfect. I love test cricket as much as the next man, but t20 gives me an afternoon out with some of my daughters that the three of us can enjoy for a combined total of £10. It's packed with families. All those kids who wouldn't have given cricket a look because they never see it on the telly are now interested. We are entertained for two or three hours; if Lancashire win we are elated; if they don't, well, it's only a game and we still go home happy.
Having 20 balls fewer is clearly worse.
Calling the team 'Manchester' rather than 'Lancashire' helps no-one.
It would be good to see a few more players I've heard of, but I want them to have some passing association with the area.
And I don't know, but I imagine we will be sacrificing the best thing of all, which is that we can all go to see it for £10 - a price you really don't mind chancing.
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)
NB: Sturgeon has just announced the new lockdown rules - to run up until a week before polling day.
Then she gets to dominate the media cycle with the next series of measures - no doubt, a relaxation of rules to the sounds of joy and thanksgiving from a grateful Scottish public.
Smart, cynical and ruthless. Poor old Salmond never stood a chance.
So, you might say, instead get the GP to add a 'vaccine exempt' status to the medical records. Well, GPs only have access to their own database (and, as mentioned before, at least three providers). So, instead, set up a new system storing vaccine/vaccine exempt status, accessible by GP. Still need an identifier. NHS numbers are imperfect, some people acquire more than one. New ID system? same objections as ID cards.
Not sure how this could be best approached... Download app, enter your name, address, photo, DoB, but how do you validate vaccination/exempton status in an easy way. Can be sent to your GP (app lets you select your GP) and they then validate your status. But I don't even know where vaccinations in non-GP settings are being recorded, e.g. mass vaccination centres and who can then check those to validate. Doable I guess if you instead select from app where you had your vaccination and that can tie up to the records automatically/send a request to the person who can.
Don't they deserve a rest?
That's four of the strongest regions of English cricket ignored right there.
Excellent job UK
https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/online-services/find-nhs-number/
Or us 000 000 0001, and pretend you are the Queen.
It's clearly beyond the comprehension of your puny mind.
https://twitter.com/holyroodmandy/status/1364226202026663938?s=20
Each month they catch up with their respondents and ask them various questions, and let`s just say that Johnson is more popular than many give him credit for here and some respondents either do not know who Starmer is or have no idea about what he is about.
Well worth a listen to each month.
How can you have Cricket without 6 balls in an over?
That is all.
Only needed post code, DoB and name. Then got a text with the number. Didn't know that service existed, thanks.
I've regularly explored my views on this subject on here - which I think are considered and balanced - so such insinuations do irritate me.
Maybe you're right though and I should just ignore him.
Now that the unperson disgraced ex-leader has been rightly consigned to the dustbin of history and his doubleplusungood utterances prevented from contaminating the proletariat, justice can finally reign.
And reign it shall, for his baseless slurs against the Beacon of Hope have been proven pathetic beyond contempt, unworthy of even being published without considerable redaction to eliminate the malice and woe contained therein.
Huzzah!
100 balls is absurd. Doing away with the concept of overs altogether. And for what, why not just T20 which is pretty close to 100 balls but actually uses proper overs?
I can think of a Hundred different and better ways of doing it.
My view is that Salmond is a See You Next Tuesday, basically a ScotNat Trump, whereas Sturgeon is a skilled but highly manipulative, and secretly rather unpleasant, political operator so I don't feel I have any dog in the fight and nor do I think it'll have any political bearing on the future of the Union.
My sympathies lie wholly with the Scottish people who must put up with it, and the collateral damage it causes.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-018-0442-4 (open access)
Among 9.1 million patients of 'research quality' (which essentially means the GP practice kept good enough records - so these are the most likely to be valid) 8.0 million (88%) were found to have a valid NHS number in the primary care data. I think you can see the problem.
This is the problem Care.Data was supposed to solve (along with many others, not only in research but in healthcare delivery).
Not among the old grumblies on PB.
But with the wider public.
They're all without exception rubbish.
I see you're just in random insult mode today.
So I have assumed 30% of respondents like both leaders, and used that to have a guess at likely GE vote, based on Gross Positive likeabilty. I wonder what the actual number of people who like both (or think both are likeable, rather) It would help to know
https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1363957791619219461
Perhaps you could tell us how we could identify the complainers from this bit - the entirety of which has been redacted?
30. The First Minister told Parliament (see Official Report of 8th,10th & 17th January 2019) that she first learned of the complaints against me when I visited her home on 2nd April 2018. That is untrue and is a breach of the Ministerial Code.
The evidence from Mr Aberdein that he personally discussed the existence of the complaints, and summarised the substance of the complaints, with the First Minister in a pre arranged meeting in Parliament on 29th March 2018 arranged for that specific purpose cannot be reconciled with the position of the First Minister to Parliament. The fact that Mr Aberdein learned of these complaints in early March 2018 from the Chief of Staff to the First Minister who thereafter arranged for the meeting between Mr Aberdein and the First Minister on 29th March to discuss them, is supported by his sharing that information contemporaneously with myself, Kevin Pringle and Duncan Hamilton, Advocate.
https://order-order.com/2021/02/23/redaction-hides-salmonds-accusation-sturgeon-lied-to-parliament/
"Scotland. Better than my best...."
That's showing some serious balls.
I could just wait and see who gets banned...
The urge to eliminate the virus is understandable — but at what cost?
Freddie Sayers"
https://unherd.com/2021/02/inside-the-zero-covid-campaign/
Excerpt:
"There’s a UK ZeroCovid chapter, which last month hosted its own well-attended online conference; the Scottish government is committed to their campaign, alongside Independent SAGE, British trade unions and Labour MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott. Meanwhile, influential Tory MPs like Jeremy Hunt advocate a strategy of “zero infections and elimination of the disease” and routinely refer to the Asian model. Google search results in the UK and US for “ZeroCovid” are at an all-time high. The campaign has momentum."
I think for some leaders - like Corbyn - their negatives really matter, and therefore net is a better judge of how he will do than gross. Had I been in the UK, I would have dragged my sorry ass down to the polling station to ensure he wasn't Prime Minister, and who I voted for wouldn't matter. Corbyn's negatives really mattered. (As in, it doesn't matter if 40% of people love you, if the other 60% will go out and vote against you.)
But in the case of Starmer, I think you're broadly right. People aren't that enthused. That being said... I wouldn't vote against Starmer, either. So while his lack of positives (relative to Boris) is an issue, he will probably benefit from less tactical voting against Labour.
However, since the redacted portions cannot be included in the Committee's report, and those portions that seem to have fallen foul of the Crown Office are the ones that allege that Sturgeon misled Parliament, the purpose of thwarting any finding against Sturgeon still appears to be served.
As for rain, it's one of the driest regions in Europe.
There are plenty of places down here that can and will open. Not all by any means, but plenty.
A million miles away from your "very few, if any" claim. You will be proved very wrong about that.
Lady Dorrian made it clear that the purpose of her order was to protect the identity of the complainers who gave evidence at the trial, not to interfere with the decision of the Committee but Crown Office are claiming that the redacted material does facilitate that.
I have been trying to think why. I have a theory but its no more than speculation and I am not going to share it on a public site.
I agree they should have had a Newcastle team though – used the Riverside (I know it's not in Newcastle, but near enough)
But if you look at the numbers for Lombardy, it did more than twice as badly as the rest of Italy in 2020, and then no better in 2021. So, why shouldn't the rest of Italy not still have a terrible experience to come? (Assuming Farr's law is correct?)
"David Rennie, Beijing bureau chief of The Economist, recently gave an astonishingly candid account of current ZeroCovid life in the Chinese capital:
“China’s strategy, from the start, was to have no infections at all… Still in Beijing, where we have hardly any cases, every time you step outside your door you have to use a smartphone to scan a QR code — every shop, every taxi, every bus, every metro station. You have no privacy at all — it’s all built around this electronic system of contact tracing. To leave Beijing you have to have a Covid test, to come back in you have to have a Covid test…. We basically don’t have the virus here, but the flip side is that they are keeping this place locked down as tight as a drum… It’s very hard to know where Covid containment starts and a Communist police state with an obsession with control kicks in.” "
45 positive 40 negative 15 DK (+5)
plays
36 positive 28 negative 28 DK, (+8)
The (+5) and (+8 ) are red herrings, & its more likely to be (+28) vs (+12) when non voters are filtered out
45/70=64 & 40/70=36 for Boris
36/70=51 & 28/70=40 for Sir Keir rounded up to 56 & 44 by *1.09 to make the sum (91) up to 100
Coming soon to Scotland as well by the sounds of it.
Edit, another major frustration is the failure of 3 senior Judges who sat as a panel in the prosecution of Craig Murray for an alleged breach of the same contempt of court order to produce a decision. Had they given their written ruling on that matter much of the uncertainty relating to Salmond's appearance tomorrow might have been avoided.