This is the same Geoff Aberdein who @sarissa told us was not going to be a witness and whose statement has been objected to by Crown Office (again) and will not officially be before the Committee.
So this is another allegation of lying which the Committee and Mr Hamilton (the independent investigator in respect of the Ministerial code) will simply not be able to reach a view on because the relevant evidence is not before them.
But its ok because Nicola is willing to answer questions on it and that is the most we can apparently hope for. Jeez.
As expected, went for a meeting this afternoon and missed the conclusion of a two day Test.
Feel sorry for those who had tickets for tomorrow, the ICC really needs to take a good look at how such a crap pitch came to be approved for a Test Match in the first place.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
As expected, went for a meeting this afternoon and missed the conclusion of a two day Test.
Feel sorry for those who had tickets for tomorrow, the ICC really needs to take a good look at how such a crap pitch came to be approved for a Test Match in the first place.
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
Prof Devi Sridhar seems absolutely obsessed with elimination idea.
But I don't understand either how it could work with an open economy with lots of movement, or why it would even be desired in a post vaccination world given the isolation, costs and risks associated with such a policy.
New Zealand going isolationist and closing to the world until they get vaccinated makes sense.
Scotland going isolationist and closing to the world after they get vaccinated makes no sense whatsoever.
This is the final, hilariously self-unaware tweet of her rant response:
This goes to what I said, buying time with no tolerance can make sense to get to the point of vaccines being available. But she's still advocating post vaccination zero tolerance. That's madness.
PS it's possible the UK and Israel being first nations vaccinated will begin economic recovery quicker than other nations staying shut down.
Places like NZ will be in an interesting/tricky position in a few months. At some point they'll reach a vaccination limit with their population (all vaccinated except the refuseniks/medically unable). At that point - at latest* - you surely have to open borders again or stay cut off forever. You could require proof of vaccination for incomers and/or require rapid tests on entry/before entry, but neither of those will be 100%. There may very well be more cases in NZ after vaccination is complete and reopening occurs than there were before.
The exact point will be a very tricky call - costs and benefits. Likely gradual reopening with at first some strict rules, such as mandatory quarantine even for vaccinated/tested incomers? But that won't help the tourism industry. Wait too long/be too cautious and you unnecessarily do economic damage. Go too early and you do health damage and possibly economic damage if you end up having to impose some kind of lockdown. The modelling for the optimal point would be fascinating.
That's a great thread from Burn-Murdoch on the global state of the pandemic. Including a quick look at the much-trumpeted California-Florida comparison:
In other words, it is a total, brazen cover-up. Down here in London we are all gawping in amazement that she can get away with this. Yet, in modern Devolved Scotland, it seems that she can?
Don't be laughable. You live in the zero-accountability nation. When's the last time anyone carried the can for anything in London?
And no, dropping out of the cabinet for three months of penance doesn't count.
And for the whatabouters, yes, Mandelson et al, the SNP (allegedly) and the criminally sleazy current crop of Tories are all deserving of the full pitchfork.
The problem is that the Tories are supposed to be the party of sleaze and corruption. It’s priced in. Less so for the SNP
The SNP are the genuine nasty party. Look what the bastards did to poor old Charlie Kennedy. Their whole philosophy is built on hate. The only people they hate more than the English are not the Judean Peoples' Front, but anyone who is Scottish that is not a bile spewing Nationalist.
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
I think it depends. When I was in my twenties in a one bed flat in London, and went out a lot, I’d have hated enforced working from home and jumped at the chance to go back in. Now I’m more senior and secure, and I have a house and a home office (but a longer commute) the equation has changed. Many people I speak to are keen on the “I might be in up to three days a week on the new season tickets” approach. If you don’t need to be in the office, sit in your own office with your own things, or work in the garden in the sunshine.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
I pasted the wrong tweet, I was commenting on the Salmondgate Affair Scandal Hoo-Hah, but anyway I agree with you: WFH will be much rarer than we think. Everyone I know is now depressed by it. Bored. Listless. Even the older guys.
And for the young - as that Goldman Sachs banker says - WFH is a disaster. They need to be in the city, learning, meeting, socialising, drinking, watching, learning. None of that happens from a laptop on a cushion in a shared flat.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
I'll do 4 days/fortnight in offices or at client sites I think, even though I could WFH permanently if I so wished. Truth is, I don't wish. Zoom/Teams and all the other shite is no match for having a good chat with colleagues/clients/suppliers and going for a beer afterwards.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
As a contrary anecdote, none of the team I work in want to go back to the office , the exceptions being managers. Indeed my company has let all but the head office leases lapse and the head office is more a paper fiction having a staff of about 8 out of the 200 the company employs
Curve ball suggestion on 3 day weeks if you got to do that and choose but Monday, Tuesday, Friday.
4 day weekend each week would be a bit long I think. This was you get 2 weekends each week - and Friday you can check in, do whatever needs sorting, then get back to another weekend.
I used to have a job requiring Saturday working with a weekday off. I was the only one who actively sought out Wednesday or Thursday. It broke the week up. I never got a 2 day weekend. But I never did more than 3 days in a row either. Best of luck to you and yours .
Not sure what the attraction is about attacking a politician based on their appearance.
Well, I don't see the attraction of making a joke involving the deaths of a couple of dozen oldsters from Covid in a French care home and the sexual proclivities of Macron, but we're all different.
Nope - Red Wall, a need to look at things outside cities but still with decent communication links.
Where else has an airport, mainline trains and access to multiple (3/4) national parks within an hours drive.
Leeds.
Leeds doesn't have an airport - it has LBA. 😂
and it's awful. My airport priority list is
Teesside Manchester (if not 6am) Newcastle (if 6am) ...
LBA...
LBA is fine for Jet2 but for anything else nope - I dislike landing sideways as has happened to me twice there.
Yep. LBA has it all: - Location as far away from the local motorways as possible; - Elevation (200m) often above cloudbase; - Runway at 90 degrees to the prevailing SW wind; - Facilities modelled on Hartshead Moor Services (quite possibly the worst in the UK).
If you're working in Darlington then move to Middleton Tyas.
I speak as a former resident of Middleton Tyas, it broke my heart to leave there.
Middleton Tyas, Scorton, Heighington won best place to live in the UK a few years back - there is literally a whole host of villages within 5-10 miles all of which are beautiful.
God's own country.
North Yorkshire was the location of the Garden of Eden.
No! Independence, Missouri!! Read your Book of Mormon!!!
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Nope - Red Wall, a need to look at things outside cities but still with decent communication links.
Where else has an airport, mainline trains and access to multiple (3/4) national parks within an hours drive.
Leeds.
Leeds doesn't have an airport - it has LBA. 😂
and it's awful. My airport priority list is
Teesside Manchester (if not 6am) Newcastle (if 6am) ...
LBA...
LBA is fine for Jet2 but for anything else nope - I dislike landing sideways as has happened to me twice there.
Yep. LBA has it all: - Location as far away from the local motorways as possible; - Elevation (200m) often above cloudbase; - Runway at 90 degrees to he prevailing SW wind; - Facilities modelled on Hartshead Moor Services (quite possibly the worst in the UK).
Given the rapid expansion of Jet2 flights thats an insult to Hartshead Moor Services.
As I said earlier, the problem with home working is that most people will want to be allocated the long weekend option, not the working on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays option.
That's a great thread from Burn-Murdoch on the global state of the pandemic. Including a quick look at the much-trumpeted California-Florida comparison:
Not sure what the attraction is about attacking a politician based on their appearance.
I am no fan of Johnson, but I have to agree with you when the comment comes from a Scots Nat whose current leader looks and sounds like Wee Jimmy Krankie and whose previous notorious leader makes Boris Johnson look like slimmer of the year
Not sure what the attraction is about attacking a politician based on their appearance.
I am no fan of Johnson, but I have to agree with you when the comment comes from a Scots Nat whose current leader looks and sounds like Wee Jimmy Krankie and whose previous notorious leader makes Boris Johnson look like slimmer of the year
My point is who cares what they look like. The important thing is what they say/do or say they will do.
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Ulster remains in the UK.
So killing innocent civilians won them the battle.
But Sinn Fein won the war as will be discovered come the elections..
Bet Sunak is very sympathetic to moving faster if data is good.
JeezSunak.
Johnson won't let him bring in austerity. SAGE won't let him open the economy. The back benchers won't let him raise taxes. Long bond rates are starting to push higher, threatening his borrowing rates.
Why doesn't he just f8cking wear a strait jacket to work and be done it with?
Prof Devi Sridhar seems absolutely obsessed with elimination idea.
But I don't understand either how it could work with an open economy with lots of movement, or why it would even be desired in a post vaccination world given the isolation, costs and risks associated with such a policy.
New Zealand going isolationist and closing to the world until they get vaccinated makes sense.
Scotland going isolationist and closing to the world after they get vaccinated makes no sense whatsoever.
This is the final, hilariously self-unaware tweet of her rant response:
This goes to what I said, buying time with no tolerance can make sense to get to the point of vaccines being available. But she's still advocating post vaccination zero tolerance. That's madness.
PS it's possible the UK and Israel being first nations vaccinated will begin economic recovery quicker than other nations staying shut down.
Places like NZ will be in an interesting/tricky position in a few months. At some point they'll reach a vaccination limit with their population (all vaccinated except the refuseniks/medically unable). At that point - at latest* - you surely have to open borders again or stay cut off forever. You could require proof of vaccination for incomers and/or require rapid tests on entry/before entry, but neither of those will be 100%. There may very well be more cases in NZ after vaccination is complete and reopening occurs than there were before.
The exact point will be a very tricky call - costs and benefits. Likely gradual reopening with at first some strict rules, such as mandatory quarantine even for vaccinated/tested incomers? But that won't help the tourism industry. Wait too long/be too cautious and you unnecessarily do economic damage. Go too early and you do health damage and possibly economic damage if you end up having to impose some kind of lockdown. The modelling for the optimal point would be fascinating.
The other point that Devi Sridhar has rather glossed over is that -- 6 or 9 months ago -- it was not clear how much time would actually be needed to develop the vaccines.
As it actually happened, buying time worked out very well because the vaccines came quickly and turned out to be very effective.
But, I think there was no way of knowing that in advance.
Bet Sunak is very sympathetic to moving faster if data is good.
They could limit the acceleration to special 'test' events that they can ring fence and to some degree monitor and regulate – e.g. Euro 2021, World Test Championship, Royal Ascot etc.
There is provision for test events in the Road Map.
"COVID-19: UK alert level downgraded as threat of NHS being overwhelmed recedes The number of hospital patients are declining and pressure on the NHS has reduced, the UK's chief medical officers said."
As I said earlier, the problem with home working is that most people will want to be allocated the long weekend option, not the working on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays option.
There's a cleverer way of doing it if you must regulate days (realise some businesses will have to).
Sadly I think that, given the level of our death toll, we will be assisted by T-Cell immunity going forward as well. Look at the under 30s in the chart I posted earlier. That's nearly a quarter of them having got it, around half of those in the last two months.
His seat is Richmond, less than 10 miles down the road.... There will be folk commuting from his constituency.
Well duh. Northallerton is probably a nicer place to live than Darlo...
Northallerton is a nicer place is some ways - for communication links though it's a nightmare - you add 20 minutes just getting to the motorway.
In my biased view Newcastle is a better choice though. We already have some HMRC and the commuter belt feeds just as many Tory constituencies and potential Tory voters. And of course we're also on the ECML and have a bigger and better airport.
If I was a civil servant I'd want Newcastle too - but it's already got Benton Park View - so its got to go somewhere else....
Shall I cover the other secret. For culture Darlington has a 1000 seat theatre (and Stockton will have a 2000 seat one by October)
Newcastle is 30 minutes drive away, Leeds about 1 hour - Manchester is 2 if you want a band doing the London, Manchester, Glasgow 3 UK date tour.
30 minutes is generous in rush hour but i'll give you that! My old boss used to commute from Darlo to Gateshead. He didn't enjoy it.
Well he wouldn't. Seeing as how he ended up in Gateshead.
If the public see Johnson, warts and all, they'll be repelled.
Or it will have no effect like that brexit dramatisation. The liberal left (you) will wank themselves blind and post furiously on twitter about how this will change everything, the rest of the country will roll its collective eyes and get on with life and Starmer will still lose.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
As a contrary anecdote, none of the team I work in want to go back to the office , the exceptions being managers. Indeed my company has let all but the head office leases lapse and the head office is more a paper fiction having a staff of about 8 out of the 200 the company employs
FOMO tho.
You'll be sat at home and the keen youngsters will go in. They will have those chance meetings, water cooler moments, important drinks, which can help a business and advance a career in multiple ways. They will have the whole shared office experience which makes a *team mentality* - the jokes and anecdotes and crises and Days to Remember - you won't.
They will make rapid progress, and be rewarded for their eagerness, the homesters might not.
This stuff is actually more important in areas beyond the obvious (banking, law, insurance).
In the creative industries the face to face stuff is absolutely crucial. Brainstorming doesn't work on Zoom. The lunch with that talented actor, dancer, writer, sculptor, agent, editor, singer, flint toy knapper, which tells you if they are any good, cannot happen if everyone is in their kitchen.
Right now most media/arts companies - publishing, journalism, events, drama, music, are WFH. I expect all of them to come back for nearly all of the week.
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
As a contrary anecdote, none of the team I work in want to go back to the office , the exceptions being managers. Indeed my company has let all but the head office leases lapse and the head office is more a paper fiction having a staff of about 8 out of the 200 the company employs
None of my team want to go back - including the manager (me)
Sadly I think that, given the level of our death toll, we will be assisted by T-Cell immunity going forward as well. Look at the under 30s in the chart I posted earlier. That's nearly a quarter of them having got it, around half of those in the last two months.
Surely the only way the Saffers and Indians could have had a great deal more natural immunity pre-vaccine is by exposure.
Or sickness and death on a huge scale, as it is otherwise known.
If the public see Johnson, warts and all, they'll be repelled.
Or it will have no effect like that brexit dramatisation. The liberal left (you) will wank themselves blind and post furiously on twitter about how this will change everything, the rest of the country will roll its collective eyes and get on with life and Starmer will still lose.
Jesus, Max, I'd hate to see you fillet a fish - that was quite the brutal deboning.
Sadly I think that, given the level of our death toll, we will be assisted by T-Cell immunity going forward as well. Look at the under 30s in the chart I posted earlier. That's nearly a quarter of them having got it, around half of those in the last two months.
Surely the only way the Saffers and Indians could have had a great deal more natural immunity pre-vaccine is by exposure.
Or sickness and death on a huge scale, as it is otherwise known.
There is some speculation that the massive array of exposure to varied antigens that we in more sterilised west the west have no knowledge of may contribute.
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Ulster remains in the UK.
2/3rds of Ulster. Three of the nine counties remain unoccupied.
If the public see Johnson, warts and all, they'll be repelled.
Or it will have no effect like that brexit dramatisation. The liberal left (you) will wank themselves blind and post furiously on twitter about how this will change everything, the rest of the country will roll its collective eyes and get on with life and Starmer will still lose.
It might be like Peston - "we all knew what Brown was like but whilst he was in charge we kept quite"
What you learn if you model. I asked the informal biosecurity group I am part how constrained the receptor-binding domain (RBD - the bit of the virus that binds to the ACE2 receptor on the human cell surface allowing infection, and hence key to transmissibility) of COVID is - i.e. if mutations to this vital region of the spike protein will result in reduced transmissibility or not.
The answer is that it is highly constrained but not totally - there are potential mutations that can escape the vaccines and retain efficient binding, but not that many.
This is the response I got from a viral evolution expert:
"You're absolutely right that the spike—especially the receptor binding domain—may be highly constrained. But I wouldn't count on it being sufficiently constrained make antigenic evolution impossible. Prospective mapping shows that the SARS-CoV-2 spike has at least *some* places to go. Moreover, the human seasonal coronaviruses evolve antigenically through changes in spike.
"That said: E484K, the bad boy antigenic substitution, doesn't manage to wriggle out from under vaccine-induced immunity. And indeed, BNT/Pfizer double vaccinees show non-trivial neutralizing antibody activity against SARS...CoV-1. As in SARS classic. This suggests that the vaccines are hitting highly conserved—and thus possibly highly constrained—parts of the the spike.
"It's hard to overstate what a home run prefusion stabilized spike vaccines are. I think we may see moderately to very effective vaccines for the seasonal coronaviruses in the near-ish future."
So I'm provisionally returning back to the office on the 5th of July.
We've set the same provisional date too. Flexible working available with everyone eligible for up to 3 days from home and remote working available with the agreement of management. Interestingly they've said no to overseas remote working due to data concerns which has been quite poorly received but management have said anyone who can't live with it will have to go and find a new job.
Same here, as you can appreciate, working for a financial institution and working from home has tested data security/GDPR/etc to its limits and then some.
I seriously don't know how any law firm can expect a trainee solicitor living in a two bed flat with a mate to work from home and maintain any semblance of cleint confidentiality in meetings. I had a questionnaire round about it today and made the point quite strongly.
For all of my friends, WFH has got very stale. I reckon we might go back to an almost-normal routine in the end, with SOME staff allowed to WFH on one or two days a week. As a perk, maybe?
Testing and vaxxing will be mandatory: you either do one or the other
Employers will find it hard to get a lot of people back in 5 days a week, or even 3-4 days for those who could already flexi it a bit. Indeed, given lack of office space with more employees than desks, many were already expected to work from home a bit, and those places will find it hard to return to normal.
Personally I am perfectly happy going back 5 days a week, more than anything else I do not like workspace intruding on my living space, not least when when it means I spend 16 hours of the day in the same room (albeit half of it asleep).
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Ulster remains in the UK.
2/3rds of Ulster. Three of the nine counties remain unoccupied.
If you're working in Darlington then move to Middleton Tyas.
I speak as a former resident of Middleton Tyas, it broke my heart to leave there.
Middleton Tyas, Scorton, Heighington won best place to live in the UK a few years back - there is literally a whole host of villages within 5-10 miles all of which are beautiful.
God's own country.
North Yorkshire was the location of the Garden of Eden.
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Ulster remains in the UK.
So killing innocent civilians won them the battle.
But Sinn Fein won the war as will be discovered come the elections..
Both sides killed civilians, in horrible numbers. The IRA started it (and were mercilessly cruel), the Loyalists saw that it was working so copied it, and, in the end, outdid them in their cruelty
The only serious metric of who "won" that terrible war is: has Ireland been reunified? It has not. The IRA failed in their main objective. They are now sensibly making the most of the peace.
There has never been a consistent lead for a United Ireland in the polling. The latest poll has NO 5% ahead. It moves a lot. Three years ago YES was 13% ahead. But, overall, the polling generally shows a lead for NO.
Why? My guess: people don't want the Troubles to return, and a Border Poll is probably the one thing that might do that
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Ulster remains in the UK.
2/3rds of Ulster. Three of the nine counties remain unoccupied.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
As a contrary anecdote, none of the team I work in want to go back to the office , the exceptions being managers. Indeed my company has let all but the head office leases lapse and the head office is more a paper fiction having a staff of about 8 out of the 200 the company employs
None of my team want to go back - including the manager (me)
Some of our offices are reopening on Monday for those staff who have difficulties WFH. I am not in that category and am just about to pass a full year without visiting the place.
Bet Sunak is very sympathetic to moving faster if data is good.
JeezSunak.
Johnson won't let him bring in austerity. SAGE won't let him open the economy. The back benchers won't let him raise taxes. Long bond rates are starting to push higher, threatening his borrowing rates.
Why doesn't he just f8cking wear a strait jacket to work and be done it with?
It's a shit job and no mistake. When he took it on all he had to worry about was how much to open the floodgates for Boris' spending splurges, now he has to do that, on top of funding Covid stuff, and cannot do anything more to fund it.
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Ulster remains in the UK.
So killing innocent civilians won them the battle.
But Sinn Fein won the war as will be discovered come the elections..
Both sides killed civilians, in horrible numbers. The IRA started it (and were mercilessly cruel), the Loyalists saw that it was working so copied it, and, in the end, outdid them in their cruelty
The only serious metric of who "won" that terrible war is: has Ireland been reunified? It has not. The IRA failed in their main objective. They are now sensibly making the most of the peace.
There has never been a consistent lead for a United Ireland in the polling. The latest poll has NO 5% ahead. It moves a lot. Three years ago YES was 13% ahead. But, overall, the polling generally shows a lead for NO.
Why? My guess: people don't want the Troubles to return, and a Border Poll is probably the one thing that might do that
Prof Devi Sridhar seems absolutely obsessed with elimination idea.
But I don't understand either how it could work with an open economy with lots of movement, or why it would even be desired in a post vaccination world given the isolation, costs and risks associated with such a policy.
New Zealand going isolationist and closing to the world until they get vaccinated makes sense.
Scotland going isolationist and closing to the world after they get vaccinated makes no sense whatsoever.
This is the final, hilariously self-unaware tweet of her rant response:
This goes to what I said, buying time with no tolerance can make sense to get to the point of vaccines being available. But she's still advocating post vaccination zero tolerance. That's madness.
PS it's possible the UK and Israel being first nations vaccinated will begin economic recovery quicker than other nations staying shut down.
Places like NZ will be in an interesting/tricky position in a few months. At some point they'll reach a vaccination limit with their population (all vaccinated except the refuseniks/medically unable). At that point - at latest* - you surely have to open borders again or stay cut off forever. You could require proof of vaccination for incomers and/or require rapid tests on entry/before entry, but neither of those will be 100%. There may very well be more cases in NZ after vaccination is complete and reopening occurs than there were before.
The exact point will be a very tricky call - costs and benefits. Likely gradual reopening with at first some strict rules, such as mandatory quarantine even for vaccinated/tested incomers? But that won't help the tourism industry. Wait too long/be too cautious and you unnecessarily do economic damage. Go too early and you do health damage and possibly economic damage if you end up having to impose some kind of lockdown. The modelling for the optimal point would be fascinating.
The other point that Devi Sridhar has rather glossed over is that -- 6 or 9 months ago -- it was not clear how much time would actually be needed to develop the vaccines.
As it actually happened, buying time worked out very well because the vaccines came quickly and turned out to be very effective.
But, I think there was no way of knowing that in advance.
Indeed, many people thought it might take 2 or 3 years to develop an effective vaccine. I'm not sure what we would have done had that been the case.
Quite why certain Euro leaders thought it would be without consequence to imply the vaccines don't work or are riskier than they are I do not know - there were other ways to condemn AZ or indeed try to stick it to the UK.
His seat is Richmond, less than 10 miles down the road.... There will be folk commuting from his constituency.
Well duh. Northallerton is probably a nicer place to live than Darlo...
Northallerton is a nicer place is some ways - for communication links though it's a nightmare - you add 20 minutes just getting to the motorway.
In my biased view Newcastle is a better choice though. We already have some HMRC and the commuter belt feeds just as many Tory constituencies and potential Tory voters. And of course we're also on the ECML and have a bigger and better airport.
If I was a civil servant I'd want Newcastle too - but it's already got Benton Park View - so its got to go somewhere else....
Shall I cover the other secret. For culture Darlington has a 1000 seat theatre (and Stockton will have a 2000 seat one by October)
Newcastle is 30 minutes drive away, Leeds about 1 hour - Manchester is 2 if you want a band doing the London, Manchester, Glasgow 3 UK date tour.
30 minutes is generous in rush hour but i'll give you that! My old boss used to commute from Darlo to Gateshead. He didn't enjoy it.
Well he wouldn't. Seeing as how he ended up in Gateshead.
I'm sure he was happy to be in a first class county, rather than that minor county over the Tyne.
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Ulster remains in the UK.
2/3rds of Ulster. Three of the nine counties remain unoccupied.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
As a contrary anecdote, none of the team I work in want to go back to the office , the exceptions being managers. Indeed my company has let all but the head office leases lapse and the head office is more a paper fiction having a staff of about 8 out of the 200 the company employs
None of my team want to go back - including the manager (me)
Some of our offices are reopening on Monday for those staff who have difficulties WFH. I am not in that category and am just about to pass a full year without visiting the place.
My employer has hinted things will not go back to the way things were.
I doubt it will be full time WAH but employee consultation starts over next couple of weeks.
Surely the only way the Saffers and Indians could have had a great deal more natural immunity pre-vaccine is by exposure.
Or sickness and death on a huge scale, as it is otherwise known.
South Africa's excess deaths for the last year dwarf the deaths attributed to COVID-19, running at about 3 times the official numbers. So yes South Africa almost certainly has had death on a huge scale, despite a much younger population than us.
Surely the only way the Saffers and Indians could have had a great deal more natural immunity pre-vaccine is by exposure.
Or sickness and death on a huge scale, as it is otherwise known.
South Africa's excess deaths for the last year dwarf the deaths attributed to COVID-19, running at about 3 times the official numbers. So yes South Africa almost certainly has had death on a huge scale, despite a much younger population than us.
Merkel, 66 says she WON'T have Oxford vaccine: German leader backs officials who have STILL not recommended jab for over-65s, while 1.2m doses sit unused
But on the positive side
Austria was set to perform a U-turn by approving the Oxford jab for over-65s after new data offered further proof that it is effective;
Why is that depressing? Sinn Fein - until quite recently the political wing of a violently murderous revolutionary movement - are in power in Ulster and in parliament in Dublin.
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
The issue with the loyalist groups is that they ended up in Prison and spent their time body building.
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
Brutally speaking: the loyalists won. They amped up the violence in Ulster to such an extent, in the end more Catholic civilians were dying than Protestants. It is one of the key reasons the IRA sued for peace. They were losing.
Ulster remains in the UK.
So killing innocent civilians won them the battle.
But Sinn Fein won the war as will be discovered come the elections..
Both sides killed civilians, in horrible numbers. The IRA started it (and were mercilessly cruel), the Loyalists saw that it was working so copied it, and, in the end, outdid them in their cruelty
The only serious metric of who "won" that terrible war is: has Ireland been reunified? It has not. The IRA failed in their main objective. They are now sensibly making the most of the peace.
There has never been a consistent lead for a United Ireland in the polling. The latest poll has NO 5% ahead. It moves a lot. Three years ago YES was 13% ahead. But, overall, the polling generally shows a lead for NO.
Why? My guess: people don't want the Troubles to return, and a Border Poll is probably the one thing that might do that
Surely the only way the Saffers and Indians could have had a great deal more natural immunity pre-vaccine is by exposure.
Or sickness and death on a huge scale, as it is otherwise known.
South Africa's excess deaths for the last year dwarf the deaths attributed to COVID-19, running at about 3 times the official numbers. So yes South Africa almost certainly has had death on a huge scale, despite a much younger population than us.
He's right, from my team the requests for remote working are zero so far. Almost all of the responses are 3 or 4 days in office with a few choosing 1 day from home every fortnight and two in the 5 days in office, only one has opted for 3 days WFH and she already did two days WFH before all this started.
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
As a contrary anecdote, none of the team I work in want to go back to the office , the exceptions being managers. Indeed my company has let all but the head office leases lapse and the head office is more a paper fiction having a staff of about 8 out of the 200 the company employs
FOMO tho.
You'll be sat at home and the keen youngsters will go in. They will have those chance meetings, water cooler moments, important drinks, which can help a business and advance a career in multiple ways. They will have the whole shared office experience which makes a *team mentality* - the jokes and anecdotes and crises and Days to Remember - you won't.
They will make rapid progress, and be rewarded for their eagerness, the homesters might not.
This stuff is actually more important in areas beyond the obvious (banking, law, insurance).
In the creative industries the face to face stuff is absolutely crucial. Brainstorming doesn't work on Zoom. The lunch with that talented actor, dancer, writer, sculptor, agent, editor, singer, flint toy knapper, which tells you if they are any good, cannot happen if everyone is in their kitchen.
Right now most media/arts companies - publishing, journalism, events, drama, music, are WFH. I expect all of them to come back for nearly all of the week.
Team drinks have been pretty much a myth in any company I have worked for since 1990. Simple reason being when most finish work they have a 1 to 2 hour commute to go home often by car. Even for big things like the company christmas do it was rare to get more than 50% attendance.
Merkel, 66 says she WON'T have Oxford vaccine: German leader backs officials who have STILL not recommended jab for over-65s, while 1.2m doses sit unused
Comments
This is the same Geoff Aberdein who @sarissa told us was not going to be a witness and whose statement has been objected to by Crown Office (again) and will not officially be before the Committee.
So this is another allegation of lying which the Committee and Mr Hamilton (the independent investigator in respect of the Ministerial code) will simply not be able to reach a view on because the relevant evidence is not before them.
But its ok because Nicola is willing to answer questions on it and that is the most we can apparently hope for. Jeez.
https://twitter.com/hhesterm/status/1364964256907751431
Feel sorry for those who had tickets for tomorrow, the ICC really needs to take a good look at how such a crap pitch came to be approved for a Test Match in the first place.
https://twitter.com/MrDanDonoghue/status/1364929952114737154?s=20
The death of inner cities and offices are overdone and I expect the young, social under 40s will hold onto city life and that will force people back into offices as they will find their career growth stunted by remote working.
Teesside
Manchester (if not 6am)
Newcastle (if 6am)
...
LBA...
LBA is fine for Jet2 but for anything else nope - I dislike landing sideways as has happened to me twice there.
Soz Boz, Apolibobs
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1364960884020424707?s=20
It makes sense to talk to these people rather than ignore them.
But will Boris accelerate the timetable so all the matches can have full houses?
https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1364898501772066816
I need a new irony meter.
https://twitter.com/skytv/status/1364902717395775488?s=20
The exact point will be a very tricky call - costs and benefits. Likely gradual reopening with at first some strict rules, such as mandatory quarantine even for vaccinated/tested incomers? But that won't help the tourism industry. Wait too long/be too cautious and you unnecessarily do economic damage. Go too early and you do health damage and possibly economic damage if you end up having to impose some kind of lockdown. The modelling for the optimal point would be fascinating.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1364963319967326211
Sinn Fein and the IRA spent their time studying and worked out how the future could be played out to their advantage.
And for the young - as that Goldman Sachs banker says - WFH is a disaster. They need to be in the city, learning, meeting, socialising, drinking, watching, learning. None of that happens from a laptop on a cushion in a shared flat.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1364963313042546690
Bet Sunak is very sympathetic to moving faster if data is good.
I was the only one who actively sought out Wednesday or Thursday.
It broke the week up. I never got a 2 day weekend. But I never did more than 3 days in a row either.
Best of luck to you and yours .
- Location as far away from the local motorways as possible;
- Elevation (200m) often above cloudbase;
- Runway at 90 degrees to the prevailing SW wind;
- Facilities modelled on Hartshead Moor Services (quite possibly the worst in the UK).
That is a particularly nightmarish picture of Trumpton is an extremely broad genre.
Ulster remains in the UK.
Meanwhile Sunak and Johnson borrow untold billions more to stave off people discovering the truth for a couple more months.
Good luck with getting seven million people back to work....
If the public see Johnson, warts and all, they'll be repelled.
But Sinn Fein won the war as will be discovered come the elections..
Johnson won't let him bring in austerity.
SAGE won't let him open the economy.
The back benchers won't let him raise taxes.
Long bond rates are starting to push higher, threatening his borrowing rates.
Why doesn't he just f8cking wear a strait jacket to work and be done it with?
As it actually happened, buying time worked out very well because the vaccines came quickly and turned out to be very effective.
But, I think there was no way of knowing that in advance.
There is provision for test events in the Road Map.
The number of hospital patients are declining and pressure on the NHS has reduced, the UK's chief medical officers said."
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-uk-alert-level-downgraded-as-threat-of-nhs-being-overwhelmed-recedes-12228748
There's a cleverer way of doing it if you must regulate days (realise some businesses will have to).
Let Cohort 1 WFH Thu-Wed while Cohort 2 WFO.
Then, every Wednesday night, the cohorts flip.
https://twitter.com/PHE_uk/status/1364964077148262400?s=20
You'll be sat at home and the keen youngsters will go in. They will have those chance meetings, water cooler moments, important drinks, which can help a business and advance a career in multiple ways. They will have the whole shared office experience which makes a *team mentality* - the jokes and anecdotes and crises and Days to Remember - you won't.
They will make rapid progress, and be rewarded for their eagerness, the homesters might not.
This stuff is actually more important in areas beyond the obvious (banking, law, insurance).
In the creative industries the face to face stuff is absolutely crucial. Brainstorming doesn't work on Zoom. The lunch with that talented actor, dancer, writer, sculptor, agent, editor, singer, flint toy knapper, which tells you if they are any good, cannot happen if everyone is in their kitchen.
Right now most media/arts companies - publishing, journalism, events, drama, music, are WFH. I expect all of them to come back for nearly all of the week.
Or sickness and death on a huge scale, as it is otherwise known.
The answer is that it is highly constrained but not totally - there are potential mutations that can escape the vaccines and retain efficient binding, but not that many.
This is the response I got from a viral evolution expert:
"You're absolutely right that the spike—especially the receptor binding domain—may be highly constrained. But I wouldn't count on it being sufficiently constrained make antigenic evolution impossible. Prospective mapping shows that the SARS-CoV-2 spike has at least *some* places to go. Moreover, the human seasonal coronaviruses evolve antigenically through changes in spike.
"That said: E484K, the bad boy antigenic substitution, doesn't manage to wriggle out from under vaccine-induced immunity. And indeed, BNT/Pfizer double vaccinees show non-trivial neutralizing antibody activity against SARS...CoV-1. As in SARS classic. This suggests that the vaccines are hitting highly conserved—and thus possibly highly constrained—parts of the the spike.
"It's hard to overstate what a home run prefusion stabilized spike vaccines are. I think we may see moderately to very effective vaccines for the seasonal coronaviruses in the near-ish future."
For a very recently published paper on this, see:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/371/6531/850.full.pdf
Personally I am perfectly happy going back 5 days a week, more than anything else I do not like workspace intruding on my living space, not least when when it means I spend 16 hours of the day in the same room (albeit half of it asleep).
The only serious metric of who "won" that terrible war is: has Ireland been reunified? It has not. The IRA failed in their main objective. They are now sensibly making the most of the peace.
There has never been a consistent lead for a United Ireland in the polling. The latest poll has NO 5% ahead. It moves a lot. Three years ago YES was 13% ahead. But, overall, the polling generally shows a lead for NO.
Why? My guess: people don't want the Troubles to return, and a Border Poll is probably the one thing that might do that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Ireland#Opinion_polling
Otherwise it is definitely <1hr to 3 national parks and there's a main line station 90 minutes from Kings Cross.
Would anyone want to live in Donny though?
A first dose, a second dose, and a fandabidosee.
As the Evening Standard points out, 3rd day in a row cases below 10,000
I doubt it will be full time WAH but employee consultation starts over next couple of weeks.
I suppose it shows how terrible this has been that sub-2,000 deaths a week is something to cheer.
*Touch wood* we may never see over 10k cases in a day again.
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1364972365860462596?s=20
This year is peak population year for Germany according to this page.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DEU/germany/population-growth-rate
Personally, won't mourn their passing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-55674139
And the birth rate might be crushed by the virus - as it has been in Italy.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/26/covid-and-climate-of-fear-puts-italian-birth-rate-at-lowest-since-unification
Add in 150,000 dead of the bug, and a knackered economy making people emigrate.....
It is quite possible the UK's population will sharply decline from here, at least for a while.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9298717/French-vaccination-drive-slow-prevent-wave.html
Merkel, 66 says she WON'T have Oxford vaccine: German leader backs officials who have STILL not recommended jab for over-65s, while 1.2m doses sit unused
But on the positive side
Austria was set to perform a U-turn by approving the Oxford jab for over-65s after new data offered further proof that it is effective;