Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
Baxtered, just for fun, gives Con Maj 20 on current boundaries, 48 on 2018 proposed boundaries.
The former I'd say is barely a working majority, despite the SFers not bothering to represent their constituents. The latter is obviously a comfortable one, especially as it's in a Parliament of 600 seats.
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
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.
Unless someone wants to claim this reward.... £25,000 Reward Offered for Copy of Geoff Aberdein Testimony This website is offering a reward of £25,000 cash to help a public spirited whistleblower to come forward and reveal a copy of Geoff Aberdein’s evidence to the Sturgeon Inquiry, which the Committee of Crooks has refused to publish, accept or consider, because it categorically proves that Sturgeon lied to Parliament. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/02/25000-reward-offered-for-copy-of-geoff-aberdein-testimony/
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.
Ha. I'm that part of the liberal left that has given up all hope of anything changing for the better. I guess I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes (which it inevitably will do, as you lot roll your collective eyes instead of fixing the constitution and the social settlement), it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories, the rentier class and the oligarchy, but of course it's far more likely to be fascism...
Anyway WWIII will kick off before that happens.
Back to the cricket now.
Oh, bugger.
Lol, you're funny.
Yeah. Hoping for the mass executions of Tories? I think that’s crossing a line.
He's talking about the danger of a break to extremism unless we wise up.
Bollocks. It's right there in the post "I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes, it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories"
Nothing about how that would be a bad thing and should be avoided.
I didn't read it that way. I read it as a warning that if we carry on like this there will be a slide into fascism or a violent kickback from the left. And given that choice of two evils the latter and lesser would iho be preferable.
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.
Ha. I'm that part of the liberal left that has given up all hope of anything changing for the better. I guess I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes (which it inevitably will do, as you lot roll your collective eyes instead of fixing the constitution and the social settlement), it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories, the rentier class and the oligarchy, but of course it's far more likely to be fascism...
Anyway WWIII will kick off before that happens.
Back to the cricket now.
Oh, bugger.
Lol, you're funny.
Yeah. Hoping for the mass executions of Tories? I think that’s crossing a line.
He's talking about the danger of a break to extremism unless we wise up.
Bollocks. It's right there in the post "I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes, it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories"
Nothing about how that would be a bad thing and should be avoided.
I didn't read it that way. I read it as a warning that if we carry on like this there will be a slide into fascism or a violent kickback from the left. And given that choice of two evils the latter and lesser would iho be preferable.
I read it, and Big_G's response, as a good illustration of Poe's law.
Was wondering earlier today exactly why it was that hacks had been asking Allegra Stratton about what would happen to Tory MPs who voted down the Budget, to which she of course replied that the whip would be removed. I thought that Budgets were always regarded as a matter of confidence, so why would anyone bother to ask?
Anyhow, the Torygraph is now reporting ructions over a mooted hike in CGT. Now, what I know about tax accountancy could be summarised on the back of a postage stamp, but I'm guessing that this is something along the lines of bringing the bands into line with those for income tax, which I seem previously to remember reading ought to raise quite a lot of revenue - at the expense, of course, of those rich enough to be paying CGT in the first place.
Now, I may be missing something obvious here, but I'm not at all sure why the Chancellor WOULDN'T take the opportunity to give the rich a bit of a soaking. He's got to start work on balancing the books some time, most of the affected people are probably rolling in money after having their high incomes bolstered with the abolition of commuting (and can therefore well afford the extra expense,) and the Red Wall will be more than happy to hear those pips squeak if it means more cash for Our Beloved NHS.
After all, the next election is going to be fought primarily in the Midlands and the North, not down South. And it doesn't much matter if the Tories cause a mild wave of indignation to propagate through the stockbroker belt. It's not as if wealthy voters have anywhere preferable to go.
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.
You've been working for the wrong companies.
Or maybe I am just one of those people who has a perfectly adequate social life and don't need to socialise with random work colleagues?
I think the distinction between city dwellers and more suburban people is the biggest difference.
If you're driving home then after work drinks are not a good option. The overwhelming majority of the country drives home, but those who don't seem to view their choices as the mainstream.
If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot.
You sometimes risk a shandy, though, as I recall. A shandy and then you get behind the wheel.
Not very often, but yes a single shandy especially over a meal, is well within the limits and not a risk.
I won't drink more than that though, so I won't have even a single pint.
Fair enough. A shandy is alcoholic though. Many people consider it a soft drink but it isn't. Depending how it's made it can have quite a kick.
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.
You've been working for the wrong companies.
Or maybe I am just one of those people who has a perfectly adequate social life and don't need to socialise with random work colleagues?
I think the distinction between city dwellers and more suburban people is the biggest difference.
If you're driving home then after work drinks are not a good option. The overwhelming majority of the country drives home, but those who don't seem to view their choices as the mainstream.
If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot.
You sometimes risk a shandy, though, as I recall. A shandy and then you get behind the wheel.
Not very often, but yes a single shandy especially over a meal, is well within the limits and not a risk.
I won't drink more than that though, so I won't have even a single pint.
Fair enough. A shandy is alcoholic though. Many people consider it a soft drink but it isn't. Depending how it's made it can have quite a kick.
It is half a pint of lager with same of lemonade, not enough to make a budgie over the limit.
Just noticed that in the disaster that was the Third Test, Root got a five-for
And is now - by the measure of batting average minus bowling average, for any player with more than 20 wickets, England's sixth best test all rounder. I think.
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.
Ha. I'm that part of the liberal left that has given up all hope of anything changing for the better. I guess I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes (which it inevitably will do, as you lot roll your collective eyes instead of fixing the constitution and the social settlement), it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories, the rentier class and the oligarchy, but of course it's far more likely to be fascism...
Anyway WWIII will kick off before that happens.
Back to the cricket now.
Oh, bugger.
Lol, you're funny.
Yeah. Hoping for the mass executions of Tories? I think that’s crossing a line.
He's talking about the danger of a break to extremism unless we wise up.
Bollocks. It's right there in the post "I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes, it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories"
Nothing about how that would be a bad thing and should be avoided.
I didn't read it that way. I read it as a warning that if we carry on like this there will be a slide into fascism or a violent kickback from the left. And given that choice of two evils the latter and lesser would iho be preferable.
Given that left wing revolutions have brought an order of magnitude more death and misery than fascism I can only conclude you are as delusional as your ideology
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.
Ha. I'm that part of the liberal left that has given up all hope of anything changing for the better. I guess I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes (which it inevitably will do, as you lot roll your collective eyes instead of fixing the constitution and the social settlement), it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories, the rentier class and the oligarchy, but of course it's far more likely to be fascism...
Anyway WWIII will kick off before that happens.
Back to the cricket now.
Oh, bugger.
Lol, you're funny.
Yeah. Hoping for the mass executions of Tories? I think that’s crossing a line.
He's talking about the danger of a break to extremism unless we wise up.
Bollocks. It's right there in the post "I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes, it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories"
Nothing about how that would be a bad thing and should be avoided.
I didn't read it that way. I read it as a warning that if we carry on like this there will be a slide into fascism or a violent kickback from the left. And given that choice of two evils the latter and lesser would iho be preferable.
I'm not sure how you can read the quote and come to that conclusion. It is pretty explicit, without any discussion of a choice between two evils.
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.
Ha. I'm that part of the liberal left that has given up all hope of anything changing for the better. I guess I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes (which it inevitably will do, as you lot roll your collective eyes instead of fixing the constitution and the social settlement), it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories, the rentier class and the oligarchy, but of course it's far more likely to be fascism...
Anyway WWIII will kick off before that happens.
Back to the cricket now.
Oh, bugger.
Lol, you're funny.
Yeah. Hoping for the mass executions of Tories? I think that’s crossing a line.
He's talking about the danger of a break to extremism unless we wise up.
Bollocks. It's right there in the post "I have a tiny hope that when the violent change comes, it will lead to mass conviction/execution of Tories"
Nothing about how that would be a bad thing and should be avoided.
I didn't read it that way. I read it as a warning that if we carry on like this there will be a slide into fascism or a violent kickback from the left. And given that choice of two evils the latter and lesser would iho be preferable.
'Violent kickback from the left', indeed. We'd just use the wrong pronouns on them and they'd flee in terror...
He is forgetting the main characteristic of violent revolution -
"But, I *am* loyal to the party..."
{sound of rifle bolts}....
Oh, I have no doubt they'd haul my liberal middle class ass off to the Isle of Wight gulag. But it beats waiting for electoral reform, or a free press, or any of that make-your-society-function-fairly nonsense.
Ah, so a blood and iron revolution will deliver a free press. Pravda editors would agree, I'm sure.
No, of course not. But the lack of free press might deliver a blood and iron revolution.
As I said, it's more likely to be fascist than marxist.
Coming as I do from the Threads generation this gives me the chills. I can understand Gen Z finding it funny on their Tik Tok but for me the realism of the spoof video sends shivers down my spine.
Nice Guardian story climate possesses every element to make it a perfect example of the genre:
It's unprecedented, it hasn't happened yet, we are getting warmer so Athens will all freeze over and be covered in glaciers, and just so happens we are just in time to do something or other to stop it as long as you do it now. (And it's all the fault of people who don't read the Guardian).
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.
You've been working for the wrong companies.
Or maybe I am just one of those people who has a perfectly adequate social life and don't need to socialise with random work colleagues?
I think the distinction between city dwellers and more suburban people is the biggest difference.
If you're driving home then after work drinks are not a good option. The overwhelming majority of the country drives home, but those who don't seem to view their choices as the mainstream.
If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot.
You sometimes risk a shandy, though, as I recall. A shandy and then you get behind the wheel.
Not very often, but yes a single shandy especially over a meal, is well within the limits and not a risk.
I won't drink more than that though, so I won't have even a single pint.
Fair enough. A shandy is alcoholic though. Many people consider it a soft drink but it isn't. Depending how it's made it can have quite a kick.
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.
You've been working for the wrong companies.
Or maybe I am just one of those people who has a perfectly adequate social life and don't need to socialise with random work colleagues?
I think the distinction between city dwellers and more suburban people is the biggest difference.
If you're driving home then after work drinks are not a good option. The overwhelming majority of the country drives home, but those who don't seem to view their choices as the mainstream.
If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot.
You sometimes risk a shandy, though, as I recall. A shandy and then you get behind the wheel.
Not very often, but yes a single shandy especially over a meal, is well within the limits and not a risk.
I won't drink more than that though, so I won't have even a single pint.
Fair enough. A shandy is alcoholic though. Many people consider it a soft drink but it isn't. Depending how it's made it can have quite a kick.
It is half a pint of lager with same of lemonade, not enough to make a budgie over the limit.
Welcome back, malc. I thought drink driving limits was one area where Scotland diverged from England. Is it zero-tolerance, or just lower?
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
20,000 cases in Italy today. A sudden leap. A third wave looms
There's two ways out of this. Let it rip and end up with an outcome like South Africa, reaching some sort of population immunity but with what appears to be an off the scale bad excess death toll this past year, or vaccinate and be like Israel. They need to get on with the latter.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Coming as I do from the Threads generation this gives me the chills. I can understand Gen Z finding it funny on their Tik Tok but for me the realism of the spoof video sends shivers down my spine.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
20,000 cases in Italy today. A sudden leap. A third wave looms
Third wave alerts in much of Europe, it would seem. Read earlier today that Finland is entering a third lockdown starting March 8th (though it's intended to be short - 3 weeks - and not particularly strict, so what both it and the preceding delay are meant to achieve I don't know. AIUI they've handled the whole thing comparatively well so I guess one has to assume that they know what they're doing.)
The French are also doing a re-enactment of our Tier system from last Autumn, with various regions stumbling backwards into lockdown. It'll probably end up a bit like that moment when the whole of England was in lockdown except for Cornwall, so it wasn't really a national lockdown, oh no (with Corsica perhaps playing the role of Cornwall in the French version of the pantomime.)
And they'll end up in lockdown at the end of it anyway. And they'll still struggle to find anyone willing to take the Oxford vaccine. And if they're not desperately careful then they'll still be in lockdown when the Reading Festival kicks off.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
20,000 cases in Italy today. A sudden leap. A third wave looms
There's two ways out of this. Let it rip and end up with an outcome like South Africa, reaching some sort of population immunity but with what appears to be an off the scale bad excess death toll this past year, or vaccinate and be like Israel. They need to get on with the latter.
Does SA even have immunity?
They thought the same of Manaus, yet the plague still rocks along there. The other risk of letting it rip is: more mutations
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
Could be the same for the UK. We've lost 500,000 overseas residents, at least, thanks to Covid. Are they coming back?
And the birth rate might be crushed by the virus - as it has been in Italy.
Isn't that because couples/husbands & wives now hate each other after living together 24x7 for the past year?
That is, indeed, one of the theories. A few couples I know suggest it might be right
I am in the fortunate position where my wife has gone to look after a house that some friends have been unable to visit since before Christmas. Alone, she is writing there and bringing it back to life for when they can return.
We have been together 28 years and had lengthy periods during that when we have spent weeks, even months at a time apart with work. This past year we have not spent a night apart. We have survived it surprisingly well, but man alive am I enjoying a few days when I can do exactly as I like, when I like. This is what "normal" was - and I really like it!
Yes.
A happily married friend of mine (in his 40s) was going slowly insane, locked in a two bed flat with his wife and teen daughter, 24/7. Wife lost her job early on in the Rona, so was at home all the time, for the first time ever, he is a freelancer so works from home anyway.
He was inches from divorce... when she at last got a new job, meaning she's out of the house most of the day, 5 days a week. Marriage saved. But it was close
What a dull ending. I thought at least after finding a job she'd find a new partner. I remember when we had thriller writers on this board. Can we persuade Daisy Buchanan to post?
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
20,000 cases in Italy today. A sudden leap. A third wave looms
There's two ways out of this. Let it rip and end up with an outcome like South Africa, reaching some sort of population immunity but with what appears to be an off the scale bad excess death toll this past year, or vaccinate and be like Israel. They need to get on with the latter.
Does SA even have immunity?
They thought the same of Manaus, yet the plague still rocks along there. The other risk of letting it rip is: more mutations
It appears that Manaus was nowhere near herd immunity. Dodgy study.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
Would anyone actually notice if he developed dementia?
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
20,000 cases in Italy today. A sudden leap. A third wave looms
There's two ways out of this. Let it rip and end up with an outcome like South Africa, reaching some sort of population immunity but with what appears to be an off the scale bad excess death toll this past year, or vaccinate and be like Israel. They need to get on with the latter.
Does SA even have immunity?
They thought the same of Manaus, yet the plague still rocks along there. The other risk of letting it rip is: more mutations
And have a look at that antibody (not even including T-Cell immunity) prevalence in Eastern Cape
He is forgetting the main characteristic of violent revolution -
"But, I *am* loyal to the party..."
{sound of rifle bolts}....
Oh, I have no doubt they'd haul my liberal middle class ass off to the Isle of Wight gulag. But it beats waiting for electoral reform, or a free press, or any of that make-your-society-function-fairly nonsense.
Ah, so a blood and iron revolution will deliver a free press. Pravda editors would agree, I'm sure.
No, of course not. But the lack of free press might deliver a blood and iron revolution.
As I said, it's more likely to be fascist than marxist.
Ok, I'll bite because I'm bored. You're saying that the press isn't free in the UK?
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
Baxtered, just for fun, gives Con Maj 20 on current boundaries, 48 on 2018 proposed boundaries.
The former I'd say is barely a working majority, despite the SFers not bothering to represent their constituents. The latter is obviously a comfortable one, especially as it's in a Parliament of 600 seats.
I thought the reduction to 600 was shelved?
Yes, but there's no more recent redistribution on the site.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
He is forgetting the main characteristic of violent revolution -
"But, I *am* loyal to the party..."
{sound of rifle bolts}....
Oh, I have no doubt they'd haul my liberal middle class ass off to the Isle of Wight gulag. But it beats waiting for electoral reform, or a free press, or any of that make-your-society-function-fairly nonsense.
Ah, so a blood and iron revolution will deliver a free press. Pravda editors would agree, I'm sure.
No, of course not. But the lack of free press might deliver a blood and iron revolution.
As I said, it's more likely to be fascist than marxist.
Ok, I'll bite because I'm bored. You're saying that the press isn't free in the UK?
Only if you have the software to break through their paywalls.
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
20,000 cases in Italy today. A sudden leap. A third wave looms
Third wave alerts in much of Europe, it would seem. Read earlier today that Finland is entering a third lockdown starting March 8th (though it's intended to be short - 3 weeks - and not particularly strict, so what both it and the preceding delay are meant to achieve I don't know. AIUI they've handled the whole thing comparatively well so I guess one has to assume that they know what they're doing.)
The French are also doing a re-enactment of our Tier system from last Autumn, with various regions stumbling backwards into lockdown. It'll probably end up a bit like that moment when the whole of England was in lockdown except for Cornwall, so it wasn't really a national lockdown, oh no (with Corsica perhaps playing the role of Cornwall in the French version of the pantomime.)
And they'll end up in lockdown at the end of it anyway. And they'll still struggle to find anyone willing to take the Oxford vaccine. And if they're not desperately careful then they'll still be in lockdown when the Reading Festival kicks off.
Ok, I'll bite because I'm bored. You're saying that the press isn't free in the UK?
I wouldn't go quite that far.
But I would say that the interaction between the media and our political system is more reminiscent of an oligarchy than a robust and truly free democracy.
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
You are becoming as tiresome as the Boris rampers, picking and choosing your polls. I don't recall you commenting on yesterday's 2 point margin "outlier".
You inadvertently make a good point. SKS should model hiimself on Merkel not on these tinsel and glitter poseurs. He's looking for an identity. Who in the world commands more respect than Angela?
Ok, I'll bite because I'm bored. You're saying that the press isn't free in the UK?
I wouldn't go quite that far.
But I would say that the interaction between the media and our political system is more reminiscent of an oligarchy than a robust and truly free democracy.
Yes, in a proper democracy the state broadcaster would be far less all-encompassing.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
Was wondering earlier today exactly why it was that hacks had been asking Allegra Stratton about what would happen to Tory MPs who voted down the Budget, to which she of course replied that the whip would be removed. I thought that Budgets were always regarded as a matter of confidence, so why would anyone bother to ask?
Anyhow, the Torygraph is now reporting ructions over a mooted hike in CGT. Now, what I know about tax accountancy could be summarised on the back of a postage stamp, but I'm guessing that this is something along the lines of bringing the bands into line with those for income tax, which I seem previously to remember reading ought to raise quite a lot of revenue - at the expense, of course, of those rich enough to be paying CGT in the first place.
Now, I may be missing something obvious here, but I'm not at all sure why the Chancellor WOULDN'T take the opportunity to give the rich a bit of a soaking. He's got to start work on balancing the books some time, most of the affected people are probably rolling in money after having their high incomes bolstered with the abolition of commuting (and can therefore well afford the extra expense,) and the Red Wall will be more than happy to hear those pips squeak if it means more cash for Our Beloved NHS.
After all, the next election is going to be fought primarily in the Midlands and the North, not down South. And it doesn't much matter if the Tories cause a mild wave of indignation to propagate through the stockbroker belt. It's not as if wealthy voters have anywhere preferable to go.
Changing the CGT rules will mostly just result in companies changing how they pay people. Imagine you have a business, which I shall call Fred Ltd.
If you make profits of £100,000 a year, then you can either leave them in the business or pay them out as salary, bonus, dividends. If they taken them out as salary or bonus, then the business doesn't make a profit, but you pay income tax. If you leave them in the business, then the company pays corporation tax on them.
If you increase CGT to income tax rates, you encourage keeping zero money in your business. Why bother, because if you wind up or sell the company later to get hold of the cash inside it, then you'll have paid both corporation tax and capital gains.
This - of course - is why changes to things like CGT never bring in the expected revenues, because they change the behaviour of taxpayers.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Both worked at very high levels until reasonably advanced ages.
Was wondering earlier today exactly why it was that hacks had been asking Allegra Stratton about what would happen to Tory MPs who voted down the Budget, to which she of course replied that the whip would be removed. I thought that Budgets were always regarded as a matter of confidence, so why would anyone bother to ask?
Anyhow, the Torygraph is now reporting ructions over a mooted hike in CGT. Now, what I know about tax accountancy could be summarised on the back of a postage stamp, but I'm guessing that this is something along the lines of bringing the bands into line with those for income tax, which I seem previously to remember reading ought to raise quite a lot of revenue - at the expense, of course, of those rich enough to be paying CGT in the first place.
Now, I may be missing something obvious here, but I'm not at all sure why the Chancellor WOULDN'T take the opportunity to give the rich a bit of a soaking. He's got to start work on balancing the books some time, most of the affected people are probably rolling in money after having their high incomes bolstered with the abolition of commuting (and can therefore well afford the extra expense,) and the Red Wall will be more than happy to hear those pips squeak if it means more cash for Our Beloved NHS.
After all, the next election is going to be fought primarily in the Midlands and the North, not down South. And it doesn't much matter if the Tories cause a mild wave of indignation to propagate through the stockbroker belt. It's not as if wealthy voters have anywhere preferable to go.
Changing the CGT rules will mostly just result in companies changing how they pay people. Imagine you have a business, which I shall call Fred Ltd.
If you make profits of £100,000 a year, then you can either leave them in the business or pay them out as salary, bonus, dividends. If they taken them out as salary or bonus, then the business doesn't make a profit, but you pay income tax. If you leave them in the business, then the company pays corporation tax on them.
If you increase CGT to income tax rates, you encourage keeping zero money in your business. Why bother, because if you wind up or sell the company later to get hold of the cash inside it, then you'll have paid both corporation tax and capital gains.
This - of course - is why changes to things like CGT never bring in the expected revenues, because they change the behaviour of taxpayers.
Agreed and I think it hurts business investment in a country that already struggles with it.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I found it an interesting book, but he does exaggerate the evidence.
Actually, I agree with you, in part. I think he's a brilliant scientist with some amazing science, but he is over-invested in his cause: SLEEP IS EVERYTHING!!! He uses too many exclamation marks, and those are generally the places where he is over-egging the pudding
Nonetheless he is pretty convincing in many places. Sleep is overlooked as a fundamental part of human health. We obsess about diet and exercise, but get a good kip too
What I would like to see Rishi bring in is income tax CGT for non-primary residential property with an 10 year exemption from the higher rates for new builds. That would encourage huge investment in new property and shaft the lazy existing property landlords.
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
20,000 cases in Italy today. A sudden leap. A third wave looms
There's two ways out of this. Let it rip and end up with an outcome like South Africa, reaching some sort of population immunity but with what appears to be an off the scale bad excess death toll this past year, or vaccinate and be like Israel. They need to get on with the latter.
Does SA even have immunity?
They thought the same of Manaus, yet the plague still rocks along there. The other risk of letting it rip is: more mutations
This second point is key: if the virus isn't living anywhere, it isn't mutating. If you have it lingering in millions of people, you have lots of opportunity for mutations.
Perhaps the LibDems could have a genuinely differentiated policy around executing people with CV19 to minimise the risk of mutations?
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Note to rcs1000: Is there any reason why the link to past threads has disappeared from the sidebar? Sometimes it's instructive to go back and read what people were writing a year (or ten years) ago.
For example, the other day someone repeated the charge that the government had introduced Lockdown 1 too late and I was wondering who, if anyone, was advocating a lockdown as early as, say, 1 March.
I think there is a simple explanation as to why the College's wine cellar might be exhausted.
Skiiers?
I once knew the wine steward of Shitbag College, Cambridge.
An inventory of the wine cellar revealed over £ 200,000 worth of missing, very high quality wine. Goodness know who could possibly have taken it ? Who might have had access to the College's Cellar and been interested in vast amounts of drink ?
By sturdy Cantab logic, the Wine Steward narrowed the field of suspects down to the 100-strong Fellowship.
I asked the Wine Steward whether the Master & Fellows of Shitbag College had called the police to investigate the grand theft.
He smiled at me, and said ... "You still have much to learn from Cambridge, YBarddCwsc"
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Note to rcs1000: Is there any reason why the link to past threads has disappeared from the sidebar? Sometimes it's instructive to go back and read what people were writing a year (or ten years) ago.
For example, the other day someone repeated the charge that the government had introduced Lockdown 1 too late and I was wondering who, if anyone, was advocating a lockdown as early as, say, 1 March.
There's currently a Google outage that is affecting a lot of sites that rely on their infrastructure.
I think there is a simple explanation as to why the College's wine cellar might be exhausted.
Skiiers?
I once knew the wine steward of Shitbag College, Cambridge.
An inventory of the wine cellar revealed over £ 200,000 worth of missing, very high quality wine. Goodness know who could possibly have taken it ? Who might have had access to the College's Cellar and been interested in vast amounts of drink ?
By sturdy Cantab logic, the Wine Steward narrowed the field of suspects down to the 100-strong Fellowship.
I asked the Wine Steward whether the Master & Fellows of Shitbag College had called the police to investigate the grand theft.
He smiled at me, and said ... "You still have much to learn from Cambridge, YBarddCwsc"
I heard of a college where the fellows are obliged to pay for their booze at cost price. They are, I believe, still being charged 7/6d a bottle for the finest vintage port.
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
You are becoming as tiresome as the Boris rampers, picking and choosing your polls. I don't recall you commenting on yesterday's 2 point margin "outlier".
manic keith preachers behind by between 2 or 7% when any other leader was going to be "ahead by 20%"
You inadvertently make a good point. SKS should model hiimself on Merkel not on these tinsel and glitter poseurs. He's looking for an identity. Who in the world commands more respect than Angela?
I think Starmer always looks rather uncomfortable, as if suffering from Imposter Syndrome. His manifest success from modest beginnings, his stiffness and awkwardness and even how he dresses speak of this to me.
We have a political system where braying self conceit are rewarded rather than conscientious self doubt and introversion, though the latter tend to be much more effective at the real work, as any employer knows.
Note to rcs1000: Is there any reason why the link to past threads has disappeared from the sidebar? Sometimes it's instructive to go back and read what people were writing a year (or ten years) ago.
For example, the other day someone repeated the charge that the government had introduced Lockdown 1 too late and I was wondering who, if anyone, was advocating a lockdown as early as, say, 1 March.
There's currently a Google outage that is affecting a lot of sites that rely on their infrastructure.
OK. Thanks. Maybe Google has finally run out of storage.
A really important thread on the global drop in cases I have been commenting upon. That drop has slowed, indeed started to reverse, because of the countries (largely in Europe) that have loose restrictions AND little in the way of antibody/T-Cell immunity. You can have either (to an extent) but you can't do neither. In the UK we have the a very strict lockdown and the benefit of an increasing amount of antibodies through vaccination. In South Africa the fall can at least in part be explained by the fact that in Eastern Cape (by way of example) peak antibody levels exceeded 60%. Those will decrease but T-Cell immunity will remain.
20,000 cases in Italy today. A sudden leap. A third wave looms
There's two ways out of this. Let it rip and end up with an outcome like South Africa, reaching some sort of population immunity but with what appears to be an off the scale bad excess death toll this past year, or vaccinate and be like Israel. They need to get on with the latter.
Does SA even have immunity?
They thought the same of Manaus, yet the plague still rocks along there. The other risk of letting it rip is: more mutations
This second point is key: if the virus isn't living anywhere, it isn't mutating. If you have it lingering in millions of people, you have lots of opportunity for mutations.
Perhaps the LibDems could have a genuinely differentiated policy around executing people with CV19 to minimise the risk of mutations?
I've been commenting for weeks now on the drop in cases in South Africa. Again, look at the antibody responses in Eastern Cape in the below.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Was just thinking that today in the context of antidepressants which are routinely tested on rats in things like the "forced swim test" - a proxy for human depression so incredibly unsatisfying that the concomitant cruelty can never be justified.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I found it an interesting book, but he does exaggerate the evidence.
Actually, I agree with you, in part. I think he's a brilliant scientist with some amazing science, but he is over-invested in his cause: SLEEP IS EVERYTHING!!! He uses too many exclamation marks, and those are generally the places where he is over-egging the pudding
Nonetheless he is pretty convincing in many places. Sleep is overlooked as a fundamental part of human health. We obsess about diet and exercise, but get a good kip too
The stuff on dreams is wild.
If you want to sleep well, cut out alcohol and caffeine, get at least an hour exercising outdoors in the evening, and no electronic devices or Internet after 2100.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Yeah, a bit uncomfortable reading that.
It reminds me of the infamously cruel experiment on rhesus monkeys: depriving them of mothers, done by Harry Harlow
Reading Harlow's Wiki page - just now - I find the same scientist was responsible for this experiment (which I did not know, and which is even worse). What a lovely chap
"Harlow's first experiments involved isolating a monkey in a cage surrounded by steel walls with a small one-way mirror, so the experimenters could look in, but the monkey could not look out. The only connection the monkey had with the world was when the experimenters' hands changed his bedding or delivered fresh water and food. Baby monkeys were placed in these boxes soon after birth; four were left for 30 days, four for six months, and four for a year. After 30 days, the "total isolates", as they were called, were found to be "enormously disturbed". After being isolated for a year, they barely moved, did not explore or play, and were incapable of having sexual relations. When placed with other monkeys for a daily play session, they were badly bullied. Two of them refused to eat and starved themselves to death.
"Harlow also wanted to test how isolation would affect parenting skills, but the isolates were unable to mate. Artificial insemination had not then been developed; instead, Harlow devised what he called a "rape rack", to which the female isolates were tied in normal monkey mating posture. He found that, just as they were incapable of having sexual relations, they were also unable to parent their offspring, either abusing or neglecting them. "Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were", he wrote. Having no social experience themselves, they were incapable of appropriate social interaction. One mother held her baby's face to the floor and chewed off his feet and fingers. Another crushed her baby's head."
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Was just thinking that today in the context of antidepressants which are routinely tested on rats in things like the "forced swim test" - a proxy for human depression so incredibly unsatisfying that the concomitant cruelty can never be justified.
I have a desire to write a murder mystery where pharmacologists are murdered in the style of some of the animal experiments, the forced swim being one of them. Probably suit midsomer murders. Obviously as I’m involved in med chem research I also work with pharmacologists and accept the need for animal research, albeit as little as possible. But some of the depression trials just baffles me. How can we be sure that the length of time a rat struggles in water equates to its state of mind? Maybe the ones who struggle for the shortest time are more intelligent and realise it’s pointless?
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
What has caused the sudden surge in LD support to 11%?
I think the LibDems will remain invisible at national level but are firing up the Quattro at local level.
It is the usual story of fighting for coverage in any National media when most papers and channels are talking about vaccine, holidays and schoolchildren at home. It's the same reason that Johnson's government is getting away with the massive decline in our exports in certain industries due to the new Brexit paperwork without any real comeback.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Was just thinking that today in the context of antidepressants which are routinely tested on rats in things like the "forced swim test" - a proxy for human depression so incredibly unsatisfying that the concomitant cruelty can never be justified.
I have a desire to write a murder mystery where pharmacologists are murdered in the style of some of the animal experiments, the forced swim being one of them. Probably suit midsomer murders. Obviously as I’m involved in med chem research I also work with pharmacologists and accept the need for animal research, albeit as little as possible. But some of the depression trials just baffles me. How can we be sure that the length of time a rat struggles in water equates to its state of mind? Maybe the ones who struggle for the shortest time are more intelligent and realise it’s pointless?
I was just thinking the exact same! It's the perfect plot for a thriller. Sigh.
I will just have to carve my feelings into other granitic butt plug instead.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Was just thinking that today in the context of antidepressants which are routinely tested on rats in things like the "forced swim test" - a proxy for human depression so incredibly unsatisfying that the concomitant cruelty can never be justified.
I have a desire to write a murder mystery where pharmacologists are murdered in the style of some of the animal experiments, the forced swim being one of them. Probably suit midsomer murders. Obviously as I’m involved in med chem research I also work with pharmacologists and accept the need for animal research, albeit as little as possible. But some of the depression trials just baffles me. How can we be sure that the length of time a rat struggles in water equates to its state of mind? Maybe the ones who struggle for the shortest time are more intelligent and realise it’s pointless?
I was just thinking the exact same! It's the perfect plot for a thriller. Sigh.
I will just have to carve my feelings into other granitic butt plug instead.
If only one of us was a gifted writer of airport fiction...
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
You are becoming as tiresome as the Boris rampers, picking and choosing your polls. I don't recall you commenting on yesterday's 2 point margin "outlier".
manic keith preachers behind by between 2 or 7% when any other leader was going to be "ahead by 20%"
Direction of travel is disastrous imo.
You think SKS is doing well?
No, I don't think SKS is doing particularly well. But nor do I think Nandy, who like you I voted for, would be faring much better at this stage. It's possible that her greater pizzazz and sense of humour would have helped, but given the pandemic I'm not so sure.
Too many on the left are too impatient. All the stars are aligned for any government to get general support during this crisis unless it cocks everything up, and the Tories are benefiting from that "all in it together" mantra despite some huge errors. Arguably, the Tories should be even further ahead given the world-beating vaccination stuff and the fact that so many people are receiving most of their pay but not working. Starmer has had 10 months so far - that's all - and most polls show fair progress. Anything he or his colleagues say is drowned out by Covid. I'm not that keen on him at the moment, but I would reserve judgement until round about this time in 2023.
But in one crucial respect it is wrong. The inconsistencies and major problems with the marking criteria, especially at GCSE, mean it is very difficult to judge what ‘level’ a student is working at. In History, we have just one year’s cohort to judge by (because OFQUAL buggered up the 2018 series). That isn’t enough.
If it was the old GCSE, or indeed the old A-level, I don’t think there would be quite such variance in results.
And that is why it is utter madness not to have proper external moderation processes.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Was just thinking that today in the context of antidepressants which are routinely tested on rats in things like the "forced swim test" - a proxy for human depression so incredibly unsatisfying that the concomitant cruelty can never be justified.
I have a desire to write a murder mystery where pharmacologists are murdered in the style of some of the animal experiments, the forced swim being one of them. Probably suit midsomer murders. Obviously as I’m involved in med chem research I also work with pharmacologists and accept the need for animal research, albeit as little as possible. But some of the depression trials just baffles me. How can we be sure that the length of time a rat struggles in water equates to its state of mind? Maybe the ones who struggle for the shortest time are more intelligent and realise it’s pointless?
Yeah, I can understand doing some but at a very small level. Isolating a monkey in a box for a year? There is literally no need to do that.
I have to say one of the huge benefits of the last 11 months of lockdown for me has been sleep. As I don't have to commute, I get two hours extra sleep every night and I feel so much better for it.
Fortunately, I don't work for Goldman Sachs whose CEO sounds like a typical macho management control freak and bully. He hides behind notions of "collaborative working" and "mentoring" and "mental health" but he sounds as though he just wants his poor staff back in the office as he feels he's not getting his ton of flesh from them at home.
It's interesting to see train operators realise the day of the commute is over and thinking about a different form of train service with more services catering for leisure at weekends which means re-thinking engineering works and track maintenance. It could be a huge fillip for some areas which have seen a declining service but if we are looking at a lot of staycations this summer we need the train service to get those who are able to the coast and countryside.
I also note the Jockey Club has slapped down a proposal to move the Grand National back a week to take advantage of the proposed re-opening of betting shops on April 12th. It's another blow to the bookmaking industry and to racing as well which stood to gain from returning betting shop turnover.
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
What has caused the sudden surge in LD support to 11%?
I think the LibDems will remain invisible at national level but are firing up the Quattro at local level.
It is the usual story of fighting for coverage in any National media when most papers and channels are talking about vaccine, holidays and schoolchildren at home. It's the same reason that Johnson's government is getting away with the massive decline in our exports in certain industries due to the new Brexit paperwork without any real comeback.
But the more unusual story is that they appear to have nothing to say. On anything. They invested so heavily in "Bollocks to Brexit", that with it gone they appear, well, emasculated.
But in one crucial respect it is wrong. The inconsistencies and major problems with the marking criteria, especially at GCSE, mean it is very difficult to judge what ‘level’ a student is working at. In History, we have just one year’s cohort to judge by (because OFQUAL buggered up the 2018 series). That isn’t enough.
If it was the old GCSE, or indeed the old A-level, I don’t think there would be quite such variance in results.
And that is why it is utter madness not to have proper external moderation processes.
It is. We are undergoing an interesting experiment where some people who would normally get into Med School get crowded out by others with inflated grades. Will they be able to hack it? Will they get chucked out after resits? Will it do something for social mobility, or will it entrench privilege?
A very interesting experiment, but I am glad that neither me or mine are the lab rats in this one.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Was just thinking that today in the context of antidepressants which are routinely tested on rats in things like the "forced swim test" - a proxy for human depression so incredibly unsatisfying that the concomitant cruelty can never be justified.
I have a desire to write a murder mystery where pharmacologists are murdered in the style of some of the animal experiments, the forced swim being one of them. Probably suit midsomer murders. Obviously as I’m involved in med chem research I also work with pharmacologists and accept the need for animal research, albeit as little as possible. But some of the depression trials just baffles me. How can we be sure that the length of time a rat struggles in water equates to its state of mind? Maybe the ones who struggle for the shortest time are more intelligent and realise it’s pointless?
I was just thinking the exact same! It's the perfect plot for a thriller. Sigh.
I will just have to carve my feelings into other granitic butt plug instead.
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
What has caused the sudden surge in LD support to 11%?
I think the LibDems will remain invisible at national level but are firing up the Quattro at local level.
It is the usual story of fighting for coverage in any National media when most papers and channels are talking about vaccine, holidays and schoolchildren at home. It's the same reason that Johnson's government is getting away with the massive decline in our exports in certain industries due to the new Brexit paperwork without any real comeback.
But the more unusual story is that they appear to have nothing to say. On anything. They invested so heavily in "Bollocks to Brexit", that with it gone they appear, well, emasculated.
How do you know that? It's a vicious circle. They don't get covered, so we don't know what they are saying, which leads to them not having anything to contribute.
Usual story. Those in charge of the agenda (the government) have everything their way.
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
What has caused the sudden surge in LD support to 11%?
I think the LibDems will remain invisible at national level but are firing up the Quattro at local level.
It is the usual story of fighting for coverage in any National media when most papers and channels are talking about vaccine, holidays and schoolchildren at home. It's the same reason that Johnson's government is getting away with the massive decline in our exports in certain industries due to the new Brexit paperwork without any real comeback.
But the more unusual story is that they appear to have nothing to say. On anything. They invested so heavily in "Bollocks to Brexit", that with it gone they appear, well, emasculated.
How do you know that? It's a vicious circle. They don't get covered, so we don't know what they are saying, which leads to them not having anything to contribute.
Usual story. Those in charge of the agenda (the government) have everything their way.
Because if they had any story, we would hear it on pb.com. Their supporters here are not exactly shy and retiring.
The utter silence from the LibDems here tells the story. Sir Ed is leading the way - by saying nothing.
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Was just thinking that today in the context of antidepressants which are routinely tested on rats in things like the "forced swim test" - a proxy for human depression so incredibly unsatisfying that the concomitant cruelty can never be justified.
I have a desire to write a murder mystery where pharmacologists are murdered in the style of some of the animal experiments, the forced swim being one of them. Probably suit midsomer murders. Obviously as I’m involved in med chem research I also work with pharmacologists and accept the need for animal research, albeit as little as possible. But some of the depression trials just baffles me. How can we be sure that the length of time a rat struggles in water equates to its state of mind? Maybe the ones who struggle for the shortest time are more intelligent and realise it’s pointless?
I was just thinking the exact same! It's the perfect plot for a thriller. Sigh.
I will just have to carve my feelings into other granitic butt plug instead.
If only one of us was a gifted writer of airport fiction...
Airport fiction not a great business at present. SeanT may not know it, but his next job may be selling sex toys.
Via @Kantar_UKI , 18-22 Feb. Changes w/ 21-25 Jan.
SKS fans please explain
DBMIVN (Don't blame me I voted Nandy)
What has caused the sudden surge in LD support to 11%?
I think the LibDems will remain invisible at national level but are firing up the Quattro at local level.
It is the usual story of fighting for coverage in any National media when most papers and channels are talking about vaccine, holidays and schoolchildren at home. It's the same reason that Johnson's government is getting away with the massive decline in our exports in certain industries due to the new Brexit paperwork without any real comeback.
But the more unusual story is that they appear to have nothing to say. On anything. They invested so heavily in "Bollocks to Brexit", that with it gone they appear, well, emasculated.
Does anyone know about current Lib Dem policies? Have they published anything recently?
I get the impression that they are doing too much trying to poke the govt in the eye, and not coming up with new ideas.
And that now is a time when everything is changing, which would seem ideal for some new ideas
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.
You've been working for the wrong companies.
Or maybe I am just one of those people who has a perfectly adequate social life and don't need to socialise with random work colleagues?
I think the distinction between city dwellers and more suburban people is the biggest difference.
If you're driving home then after work drinks are not a good option. The overwhelming majority of the country drives home, but those who don't seem to view their choices as the mainstream.
If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot.
You sometimes risk a shandy, though, as I recall. A shandy and then you get behind the wheel.
Not very often, but yes a single shandy especially over a meal, is well within the limits and not a risk.
I won't drink more than that though, so I won't have even a single pint.
Fair enough. A shandy is alcoholic though. Many people consider it a soft drink but it isn't. Depending how it's made it can have quite a kick.
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.
You've been working for the wrong companies.
Or maybe I am just one of those people who has a perfectly adequate social life and don't need to socialise with random work colleagues?
I think the distinction between city dwellers and more suburban people is the biggest difference.
If you're driving home then after work drinks are not a good option. The overwhelming majority of the country drives home, but those who don't seem to view their choices as the mainstream.
If you drink and drive you're a bloody idiot.
You sometimes risk a shandy, though, as I recall. A shandy and then you get behind the wheel.
Not very often, but yes a single shandy especially over a meal, is well within the limits and not a risk.
I won't drink more than that though, so I won't have even a single pint.
Fair enough. A shandy is alcoholic though. Many people consider it a soft drink but it isn't. Depending how it's made it can have quite a kick.
It is half a pint of lager with same of lemonade, not enough to make a budgie over the limit.
I remember getting to a steam rally, having helped road in a traction engine (as in drive it there under its own steam at an average speed of about 7mph) - 14 hard hours on the road without stopping for anything to eat, so fairly tired, and running on empty. I don't usually drink a lot, but for some reason I had a pint of lager shandy, and it left me feeling like I'd been pole-axed!
How do you know that? It's a vicious circle. They don't get covered, so we don't know what they are saying, which leads to them not having anything to contribute.
Usual story. Those in charge of the agenda (the government) have everything their way.
I wouldn't worry about the frequent "what's the point of the Lib Dems?" from some on here. It's part of the background noise - the Party doesn't have to justify its existence to Conservative activists.
Try asking them "what's the point of the Conservative Party?".
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.
Fair enough. All I know is that central London pubs - esp in the City, Soho, Mayfair, the Wharf - were, generally, absolutely rammed after about 6pm pre-Covid. And not with tourists.
London = no need to drive.
Once you get outside London (and other cities) the idea of going for drinks after work falls apart very rapidly
But Pagan2 talks of a 1-2 hour commute, generally by car. The only city big enough and rich enough to justify a 2 hour commute (in the UK) is London.
Are there people commuting for 2 hours to get to Bristol?! Manc? Edinburgh? Why?? The nice villages begin - max - 30 minutes from the centre...
That is just your londophilia talks personally you couldn't pay me enough to work there. Plus these nice villages you talk of are expensive to live in and those earning less get pushed out further.
In addition as its quite common to change jobs these days most people still don't want to move every few years so for example since the 90's I have worked in epsom,slough,reading,wantage,aylesbury,swindon all without moving many of those were over an hour away
If you're driving four hours a day to work anywhere you should move house, or change job. That is inhuman.
Relatedly, right now I am suffering from insomnia (not sure if it is plague-related). So I spent nearly all of last night awake and reading Why We Sleep, a brilliant explanation of the latest sleep science
It argues, most convincingly, that much of the western world is chronically sleep deprived, because of the pressures of work and commuting (as you illustrate). This in turn has caused, in part, the explosion in Alzheimer's, obesity, drug abuse, depression, and so on.
The science on exactly how important good sleep is, to us, is fascinating, and hugely persuasive. eg I had no idea that every animal that has ever been closely studied has been found to sleep: in some form.
eg it is commonly thought that sharks don't sleep, because they never close their eyes. Not true, they sleep like all animals, they just don't have eyelids.
Birds sleep as they fly. Insects take a nap. Sleep is a fundamental part of all life. Get More Kip.
Margaret Thatcher.
Died with dementia, after claiming she lived on five hours kip a night. Ditto Ronald Reagan, he made a very similar claim, and died with dementia.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
Though for a critique of the evidence for what is claimed:
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
Yeah, a bit uncomfortable reading that.
It reminds me of the infamously cruel experiment on rhesus monkeys: depriving them of mothers, done by Harry Harlow
Reading Harlow's Wiki page - just now - I find the same scientist was responsible for this experiment (which I did not know, and which is even worse). What a lovely chap
"Harlow's first experiments involved isolating a monkey in a cage surrounded by steel walls with a small one-way mirror, so the experimenters could look in, but the monkey could not look out. The only connection the monkey had with the world was when the experimenters' hands changed his bedding or delivered fresh water and food. Baby monkeys were placed in these boxes soon after birth; four were left for 30 days, four for six months, and four for a year. After 30 days, the "total isolates", as they were called, were found to be "enormously disturbed". After being isolated for a year, they barely moved, did not explore or play, and were incapable of having sexual relations. When placed with other monkeys for a daily play session, they were badly bullied. Two of them refused to eat and starved themselves to death.
"Harlow also wanted to test how isolation would affect parenting skills, but the isolates were unable to mate. Artificial insemination had not then been developed; instead, Harlow devised what he called a "rape rack", to which the female isolates were tied in normal monkey mating posture. He found that, just as they were incapable of having sexual relations, they were also unable to parent their offspring, either abusing or neglecting them. "Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were", he wrote. Having no social experience themselves, they were incapable of appropriate social interaction. One mother held her baby's face to the floor and chewed off his feet and fingers. Another crushed her baby's head."
How do you know that? It's a vicious circle. They don't get covered, so we don't know what they are saying, which leads to them not having anything to contribute.
Usual story. Those in charge of the agenda (the government) have everything their way.
I wouldn't worry about the frequent "what's the point of the Lib Dems?" from some on here. It's part of the background noise - the Party doesn't have to justify its existence to Conservative activists.
Try asking them "what's the point of the Conservative Party?".
Quite lately, and in the medium term, it has been about winning power and empowering individuals over vested interests.
Thanks for this, the numbers really do look quite similar to the AZ real world study for 28 days post single dose that we've seen recently. I wonder whether all of the vaccines will end up around the same place with one dose and with two.
Comments
Seeing that picture of Anneliese Dodds brought it back so clearly.
Was wondering earlier today exactly why it was that hacks had been asking Allegra Stratton about what would happen to Tory MPs who voted down the Budget, to which she of course replied that the whip would be removed. I thought that Budgets were always regarded as a matter of confidence, so why would anyone bother to ask?
Anyhow, the Torygraph is now reporting ructions over a mooted hike in CGT. Now, what I know about tax accountancy could be summarised on the back of a postage stamp, but I'm guessing that this is something along the lines of bringing the bands into line with those for income tax, which I seem previously to remember reading ought to raise quite a lot of revenue - at the expense, of course, of those rich enough to be paying CGT in the first place.
Now, I may be missing something obvious here, but I'm not at all sure why the Chancellor WOULDN'T take the opportunity to give the rich a bit of a soaking. He's got to start work on balancing the books some time, most of the affected people are probably rolling in money after having their high incomes bolstered with the abolition of commuting (and can therefore well afford the extra expense,) and the Red Wall will be more than happy to hear those pips squeak if it means more cash for Our Beloved NHS.
After all, the next election is going to be fought primarily in the Midlands and the North, not down South. And it doesn't much matter if the Tories cause a mild wave of indignation to propagate through the stockbroker belt. It's not as if wealthy voters have anywhere preferable to go.
Lady Gaga's dog-walker shot and bulldogs stolen
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56196226
As I said, it's more likely to be fascist than marxist.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9298639/TikTok-users-terrify-parents-believing-UK-nuclear-attack.html
It's unprecedented, it hasn't happened yet, we are getting warmer so Athens will all freeze over and be covered in glaciers, and just so happens we are just in time to do something or other to stop it as long as you do it now. (And it's all the fault of people who don't read the Guardian).
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-leaders-clash-over-hungary-and-poland-budget-veto/a-55664684
https://twitter.com/patrick_kidd/status/1364872099496677381
The French are also doing a re-enactment of our Tier system from last Autumn, with various regions stumbling backwards into lockdown. It'll probably end up a bit like that moment when the whole of England was in lockdown except for Cornwall, so it wasn't really a national lockdown, oh no (with Corsica perhaps playing the role of Cornwall in the French version of the pantomime.)
And they'll end up in lockdown at the end of it anyway. And they'll still struggle to find anyone willing to take the Oxford vaccine. And if they're not desperately careful then they'll still be in lockdown when the Reading Festival kicks off.
Poor Emmanuel.
And you know who else boasts of his meagre need for sleep?
The Donald.
The book is brilliant. I highly recommend.
They thought the same of Manaus, yet the plague still rocks along there. The other risk of letting it rip is: more mutations
(But you're correct, for once.)
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1364963342129971202
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1364963313042546690
https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
Boom boom.
But I would say that the interaction between the media and our political system is more reminiscent of an oligarchy than a robust and truly free democracy.
Without even going back to Walker's book. I am fairly certain that if you do not sleep at all, you will die
Some lovely scientists actually did this to rats: deprived them of any sleep, day after day. They all died within weeks.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016643289500020T?via=ihub
If you make profits of £100,000 a year, then you can either leave them in the business or pay them out as salary, bonus, dividends. If they taken them out as salary or bonus, then the business doesn't make a profit, but you pay income tax. If you leave them in the business, then the company pays corporation tax on them.
If you increase CGT to income tax rates, you encourage keeping zero money in your business. Why bother, because if you wind up or sell the company later to get hold of the cash inside it, then you'll have paid both corporation tax and capital gains.
This - of course - is why changes to things like CGT never bring in the expected revenues, because they change the behaviour of taxpayers.
Nonetheless he is pretty convincing in many places. Sleep is overlooked as a fundamental part of human health. We obsess about diet and exercise, but get a good kip too
The stuff on dreams is wild.
Perhaps the LibDems could have a genuinely differentiated policy around executing people with CV19 to minimise the risk of mutations?
I'm normally quite unsqueamish about these things: medicine must have its way.
But these boffins sat down and worked out a method of how they could torture rats to death with sleep deprivation. Ugh. I wonder how THEY sleep at night.
"Chronic sleep deprivation may be required to reveal the most serious physiological consequences of sleep loss, but it usually requires strong stimulation which can obscure the interpretation of effects. The disk-over-water method permits chronic sleep deprivation of rats with gentle physical stimulation that can be equally applied to yoked control rats"
For example, the other day someone repeated the charge that the government had introduced Lockdown 1 too late and I was wondering who, if anyone, was advocating a lockdown as early as, say, 1 March.
An inventory of the wine cellar revealed over £ 200,000 worth of missing, very high quality wine. Goodness know who could possibly have taken it ? Who might have had access to the College's Cellar and been interested in vast amounts of drink ?
By sturdy Cantab logic, the Wine Steward narrowed the field of suspects down to the 100-strong Fellowship.
I asked the Wine Steward whether the Master & Fellows of Shitbag College had called the police to investigate the grand theft.
He smiled at me, and said ... "You still have much to learn from Cambridge, YBarddCwsc"
Direction of travel is disastrous imo.
You think SKS is doing well?
We have a political system where braying self conceit are rewarded rather than conscientious self doubt and introversion, though the latter tend to be much more effective at the real work, as any employer knows.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1364963313042546690
In short, do as I say, not as I do!
Reading Harlow's Wiki page - just now - I find the same scientist was responsible for this experiment (which I did not know, and which is even worse). What a lovely chap
"Harlow's first experiments involved isolating a monkey in a cage surrounded by steel walls with a small one-way mirror, so the experimenters could look in, but the monkey could not look out. The only connection the monkey had with the world was when the experimenters' hands changed his bedding or delivered fresh water and food. Baby monkeys were placed in these boxes soon after birth; four were left for 30 days, four for six months, and four for a year. After 30 days, the "total isolates", as they were called, were found to be "enormously disturbed". After being isolated for a year, they barely moved, did not explore or play, and were incapable of having sexual relations. When placed with other monkeys for a daily play session, they were badly bullied. Two of them refused to eat and starved themselves to death.
"Harlow also wanted to test how isolation would affect parenting skills, but the isolates were unable to mate. Artificial insemination had not then been developed; instead, Harlow devised what he called a "rape rack", to which the female isolates were tied in normal monkey mating posture. He found that, just as they were incapable of having sexual relations, they were also unable to parent their offspring, either abusing or neglecting them. "Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were", he wrote. Having no social experience themselves, they were incapable of appropriate social interaction. One mother held her baby's face to the floor and chewed off his feet and fingers. Another crushed her baby's head."
Jesus F Christ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair
And yet, it does tell us something about humans. The same way some Nazi science done in the death camps is still paradoxically and troublingly useful.
https://twitter.com/Mediavenir/status/1365007774598463495
I will just have to carve my feelings into other granitic butt plug instead.
And "the Rape Rack"??
WTAF
Clearly perverse and horribly cruel. Jeesh
Too many on the left are too impatient. All the stars are aligned for any government to get general support during this crisis unless it cocks everything up, and the Tories are benefiting from that "all in it together" mantra despite some huge errors. Arguably, the Tories should be even further ahead given the world-beating vaccination stuff and the fact that so many people are receiving most of their pay but not working. Starmer has had 10 months so far - that's all - and most polls show fair progress. Anything he or his colleagues say is drowned out by Covid. I'm not that keen on him at the moment, but I would reserve judgement until round about this time in 2023.
Exams go from control freakery to freewheeling
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-56196295
But in one crucial respect it is wrong. The inconsistencies and major problems with the marking criteria, especially at GCSE, mean it is very difficult to judge what ‘level’ a student is working at. In History, we have just one year’s cohort to judge by (because OFQUAL buggered up the 2018 series). That isn’t enough.
If it was the old GCSE, or indeed the old A-level, I don’t think there would be quite such variance in results.
And that is why it is utter madness not to have proper external moderation processes.
I have to say one of the huge benefits of the last 11 months of lockdown for me has been sleep. As I don't have to commute, I get two hours extra sleep every night and I feel so much better for it.
Fortunately, I don't work for Goldman Sachs whose CEO sounds like a typical macho management control freak and bully. He hides behind notions of "collaborative working" and "mentoring" and "mental health" but he sounds as though he just wants his poor staff back in the office as he feels he's not getting his ton of flesh from them at home.
It's interesting to see train operators realise the day of the commute is over and thinking about a different form of train service with more services catering for leisure at weekends which means re-thinking engineering works and track maintenance. It could be a huge fillip for some areas which have seen a declining service but if we are looking at a lot of staycations this summer we need the train service to get those who are able to the coast and countryside.
I also note the Jockey Club has slapped down a proposal to move the Grand National back a week to take advantage of the proposed re-opening of betting shops on April 12th. It's another blow to the bookmaking industry and to racing as well which stood to gain from returning betting shop turnover.
A very interesting experiment, but I am glad that neither me or mine are the lab rats in this one.
"27 Little Commissioners"
Usual story. Those in charge of the agenda (the government) have everything their way.
The utter silence from the LibDems here tells the story. Sir Ed is leading the way - by saying nothing.
I get the impression that they are doing too much trying to poke the govt in the eye, and not coming up with new ideas.
And that now is a time when everything is changing, which would seem ideal for some new ideas
Try asking them "what's the point of the Conservative Party?".
https://www.fda.gov/media/146219/download
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ed-davey
(Caroline Lucas has three)
Utterly lacking in self awareness, as well as empathy.
Did the backbenchers expect spending close to half a trillion would come without a price tag?
She did so because of the dedication to her work and the job. It's all in Charles Moore's exceptionally well-researched and referenced biography.
On the one opportunity she got to take a full 8-hour sleep shortly after GE1987 she took it, and said after she hadn't felt better in years.