So the NHS Online booking system is now open to the over 50's. Except me. Computer says No!
Have you tried calling your GP? *troll face*
My GP is strongly pushing everyone *that can* to go to the mass vaccination centre (Which would either be Mansfield or Sheffield). They're on G6 without transport means.
Mansfield - former Wickes - was fine when I went there. I am CEV with transport.
"McKinsey: how private-sector technocracy took over The pandemic-driven surge in management consultants is a serious threat to democracy. Fraser Myers"
Wouldn’t be so bad if they were any good at their job. The vast waste of money on test and trace last year shows that all they are interested in is how much of it sticks to them.
It’s a little harsh to blame McKinsey for Purdue. They were asked how to increase sales and they gave an answer. It’s the directors of Purdue Frederick who are to blame for the choices they made.
(FWIW the Pharma industry was well aware of the risks that Purdue was running - they turned up their nose at the company on multiple occasions)
Sure, Charles. That’s why they paid several hundred million dollars in fines.
Of course the company was to blame, but so were McKinsey.
I’m aware of the history - of course McKinsey showed rather less qualms than the rest of the pharma industry.
Consultants are just guns for hire - don’t associate them with the industry.
But the settlement was just a classic US shakedown. I remember David Brennan telling me used to budget for $1bn a year in settlement payments
That is cynical almost beyond belief.
Just because your being paid to advise on how to push addictive drugs doesn’t absolve you of blame.
You said yourself the rest of the industry was aware of the company’s practices (as were informed members of the public) - how much more aware would be those intimately involved in the management of its affairs ? You’re effectively arguing that mercenaries bear no ethical responsibility for their actions.
No legal responsibility. Law and morals are not the same thing!
But ultimately in my view the directors should bear the blame
The EU hoo har might mean a bit more vaccine sceptisicm in the short turn for the UK, which means we'll get through the age groups slightly quicker and have a marginally bigger "mopping up" job on the hesitant.
Indeed, this has been my feeling. If some people are unable to figure the balance of risk favours being vaccinated, I am happy to take "risk" based on the available overwhelming evidence and have myself and my family vaccinated before them. Once the majority of the genuinely vulnerable have had their jab, no time should be wasted on the reluctant until everyone who is non-reluctant has been vaccinated.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
That is literally the point he is making. Einstein was funded by the Patent Office. A 2021 Einstein would be told to get a job with Deliveroo.
Yes, I think it's a fair point to some degree, though the UK definitely remains a world leader in scientific research and I've got no doubt that Einstein would get funding for his research just as Stephen Hawking did for so many years.
The point is more that we don't properly monetise our research and a lot of that is because there's a serious lack of risk appetite within the state. It's something that needs to change.
Re RP's comment, the Patent Office only funded his research in the same way that Deliveroo might fund someone's research today. You have a job to pay the bills and do the stuff you want to do in your spare time.
I sit on some funding bodies and we do fund high risk stuff. Some of our funding is for stuff that has clear applicability, some of it is much more blue-sky. The latter is always much harder to decide, it helps if you have a track record (not necessarily in blue sky stuff) but there's a problem there, clearly, in that a lot of innovative thinking comes from younger, less experienced people. It is fairly easy to get relatively small grants to try something out and follow up if results look promising (my area is mostly in data crunching and occasionally small scale medical tech, so a high tens of thousands can be enough to get started).
I agree entirely about the follow up when valuable IP is produced. That's not in our remit and it's not really in anyone's remit in particular. The more switched on universities will find industrial partners and crack on, but a government backed venture capital type fund would make a lot of sense (particularly to help new UK companies grow, rather than universities just partnering with existing - often US - giants). There also tends to be a narrow view where getting an idea up and running in a small company and then selling out to a US giant is seen as success, when we could be more ambitious and grow the company into a UK giant instead.
There is a UK company that's been doing that for over a decade. They funded Oxford Nanopore, for example. https://www.ipgroupplc.com
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
Hmm, I think he's probably right. There is definitely an unnecessary safety first approach, especially in the public sector.
Newton would be governor of the Bank of England, Einstein would be at Imperial or Cambridge, and Turing CTO of a startup recently acquired by Softbank.
Yes, and their discoveries and advancements would be lost to the UK economy and everything offshored.
If this is about the UK DARPA, it's not its function to fund an Einstein or a Newton. That's really not what it's about at all.
Indeed, but I'm not sure that's the point he was making. I think the point is more that the UK fails to properly take advantage of its own world class scientific research base with commercialisation. I don't think UK advanced research lab particularly makes a difference here, there needs to be a culture change among scientists and universities as well as real tax incentives for keeping IP onshore and forcing foreign companies to invest their cash in the UK should they wish to monetise UK IP.
There's a whole chain of stuff needed.
DARPA works very well at what it does, and a UK version could certainly be part of that culture change among scientists and universities, if it has the right management and organisational structure. This is the best article on it I've seen: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/wddw
The ongoing commercialisation of research is a separate issue. The problem is not so much that UK venture capital for science stuff doesn't exists - it does (for example, the IP Group) - it's that the size of our markets and willingness of UK investors to fund new manufacturing make it hard to build globally competitive entities.
The examples of TSMC or Samsung show that it's quite possible for economies smaller than ours, doing it in very different ways.
Government definitely has a role, but whether ours is up to it is another matter.
A big part of the problem is, as you say, the lack of willingness to invest in UK production. Or indeed productionisation of the idea/concept.
What a lot of UK venture capital seems to focus on is "Get this to the point where we can sell it to Silicon Valley big money and run away with a bag of money".
What's that you say Skip, Scotland in Union have released another of their self reassuring polls with a non standard question? And their last one in Sep 2020 had Leave at 44% and Remain at 56%? And what is it now?
Leave at 43% and Remain at 57% you say?
Golly, that Salmond stuff is really smashing into the issue in a MOE way.
Off topic but.. anyone in Scotland have a view about the David Davis intervention last night and the potential impact?
I must admit, I’m a tad lost..
Some new damaging material was made public for the first time - I’ve been following the case and inquiry closely, but the revelation of Sturgeon’s CoS “interfering “ as early as 6 Feb 2018 with the investigation is a shocker. Nicola’s position has always been she only knew of an investigation on 2 April ( or 29 March going by differing evidence). The idea her trusted CoS was running rogue at that point is laughable. Scotgovs
Immediate reaction seems to have hardened the division between Sturgeon loyalists and those who have disowned her and her coterie, with a small band in the middle acknowledging that whatever her misdeeds, the SNP are still the only game in town for the election and campaign for independence.
SNP no majority had previously shortened to 11/8 on Ladbrokes (was 11/4 in early Feb) and may reduce further, but Sturgeon seems less affected as odds on her being FM on 1 Jan 2022 are static.
If the Government does take Hartlepool it will be doing the almost impossible and gaining a seat from the Opposition in a by-election more than a decade after the party took Downing Street, has that ever happened before in modern times?
Though which will the London based media talk about more? This seat or the Mayor of London?
In fairness, the Mayor of London represents nine million people and has considerable executive power, while the MP for Hartlepool represents about 1% as many and can do the square root of fuck all.
There are plenty of examples of London-centrism in the media - not convinced that this would be one of them.
The MP for Hartlepool could in theory become Prime Minister whilst the Mayor of London can't.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
Hmm, I think he's probably right. There is definitely an unnecessary safety first approach, especially in the public sector.
Newton would be governor of the Bank of England, Einstein would be at Imperial or Cambridge, and Turing CTO of a startup recently acquired by Softbank.
Yes, and their discoveries and advancements would be lost to the UK economy and everything offshored.
Newton wouldn't be governor of the Bank of England - too much a techie. He'd be some kind of tame quant, probably heading their Research Dept.
Too much of a control freak to be a tame quant. He's want to be running the whole show.
Now I am imagining Newton + Twitter
The markets would be melting every other day......
"McKinsey: how private-sector technocracy took over The pandemic-driven surge in management consultants is a serious threat to democracy. Fraser Myers"
Wouldn’t be so bad if they were any good at their job. The vast waste of money on test and trace last year shows that all they are interested in is how much of it sticks to them.
It’s a little harsh to blame McKinsey for Purdue. They were asked how to increase sales and they gave an answer. It’s the directors of Purdue Frederick who are to blame for the choices they made.
(FWIW the Pharma industry was well aware of the risks that Purdue was running - they turned up their nose at the company on multiple occasions)
Sure, Charles. That’s why they paid several hundred million dollars in fines.
Of course the company was to blame, but so were McKinsey.
I’m aware of the history - of course McKinsey showed rather less qualms than the rest of the pharma industry.
Consultants are just guns for hire - don’t associate them with the industry.
But the settlement was just a classic US shakedown. I remember David Brennan telling me used to budget for $1bn a year in settlement payments
That is cynical almost beyond belief.
Just because your being paid to advise on how to push addictive drugs doesn’t absolve you of blame.
You said yourself the rest of the industry was aware of the company’s practices (as were informed members of the public) - how much more aware would be those intimately involved in the management of its affairs ? You’re effectively arguing that mercenaries bear no ethical responsibility for their actions.
No legal responsibility. Law and morals are not the same thing!
But ultimately in my view the directors should bear the blame
Good corporate responsibility applies to consulting companies, law firms, accountants etc. as much as it does to pharma companies (who despite attacks from lefties actually have very high corporate responsibility/moral and ethical codes). Not all consultants are a-moral, simply because they are a "hired gun".
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
Hmm, I think he's probably right. There is definitely an unnecessary safety first approach, especially in the public sector.
Newton would be governor of the Bank of England, Einstein would be at Imperial or Cambridge, and Turing CTO of a startup recently acquired by Softbank.
Yes, and their discoveries and advancements would be lost to the UK economy and everything offshored.
If this is about the UK DARPA, it's not its function to fund an Einstein or a Newton. That's really not what it's about at all.
Indeed, but I'm not sure that's the point he was making. I think the point is more that the UK fails to properly take advantage of its own world class scientific research base with commercialisation. I don't think UK advanced research lab particularly makes a difference here, there needs to be a culture change among scientists and universities as well as real tax incentives for keeping IP onshore and forcing foreign companies to invest their cash in the UK should they wish to monetise UK IP.
There's a whole chain of stuff needed.
DARPA works very well at what it does, and a UK version could certainly be part of that culture change among scientists and universities, if it has the right management and organisational structure. This is the best article on it I've seen: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/wddw
The ongoing commercialisation of research is a separate issue. The problem is not so much that UK venture capital for science stuff doesn't exists - it does (for example, the IP Group) - it's that the size of our markets and willingness of UK investors to fund new manufacturing make it hard to build globally competitive entities.
The examples of TSMC or Samsung show that it's quite possible for economies smaller than ours, doing it in very different ways.
Government definitely has a role, but whether ours is up to it is another matter.
Yes, I don't disagree with any of that and Dom is taking an overly simplistic view of the issue because he's neither in science nor is he in investment so probably doesn't really see the issues that exist further along the chain.
I don't think it's particularly difficult to build a globally relevant industrial industry in the UK, the incentives just don't exist here, the bankruptcy system is just far, far too punishing and listing rules are a joke for anyone looking to raise medium to high risk capital without going begging to VC.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
Hmm, I think he's probably right. There is definitely an unnecessary safety first approach, especially in the public sector.
Newton would be governor of the Bank of England, Einstein would be at Imperial or Cambridge, and Turing CTO of a startup recently acquired by Softbank.
Yes, and their discoveries and advancements would be lost to the UK economy and everything offshored.
Newton wouldn't be governor of the Bank of England - too much a techie. He'd be some kind of tame quant, probably heading their Research Dept.
Too much of a control freak to be a tame quant. He's want to be running the whole show.
Now I am imagining Newton + Twitter
The markets would be melting every other day......
Newton would be ranting about gold on ZeroHedge.
Given the...fringe beliefs that Newton was into, Gold and ZeroHedge would be the least of it....
Think crypto-currency multiplied by occult and biblical numerology. For a start.
The result here is going to be genuinely close, a lot will depend on the candidates chosen by the two main contenders, and any high-profile others such as Tice - as opposed to national political swings.
A great opportunity for the government to win a by-election gain, which doesn’t happen very often.
The pressure will be on Starmer if Labour lose the seat though, especially if they also lose control of Wales, overshadowing a successful night at the locals.
A comfortable win for Sadiq Khan could end up looking like the sole shining beacon of hope for Labour.
I think that makes him one to watch for future leader of the Labour Party.
Nah, the King of the North, Andy Burnham, is the one to watch.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
To an extent... in Einstein's wunderjahr, he was doing an undemanding job at the Patent Office, so he had time and headspace to think brilliant thoughts. As a theoretical physicist, that's pretty much all the funding he needed. It's not as if he needed to do any experiments.
Two observations on Dom's comments:
First, most science isn't like that any more. It's expensive, because most of it needs access to stuff. It also takes a long time to get close enough to the frontiers to know what is both interesting and doable.
Second, it's revealing of the "Great Man" theory that underpins a lot of Cumming's thinking. Identify the genius, give them what they want and minimal supervision and job done. The reality is much closer to the Richard Feynman line that no-one is that much smarter....
Which is why the UK government must stipulate in any agreement that the Scottish government must follow the advice of the Electoral Commission, not simply "take account" of it.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
To an extent... in Einstein's wunderjahr, he was doing an undemanding job at the Patent Office, so he had time and headspace to think brilliant thoughts. As a theoretical physicist, that's pretty much all the funding he needed. It's not as if he needed to do any experiments.
Two observations on Dom's comments:
First, most science isn't like that any more. It's expensive, because most of it needs access to stuff. It also takes a long time to get close enough to the frontiers to know what is both interesting and doable.
Second, it's revealing of the "Great Man" theory that underpins a lot of Cumming's thinking. Identify the genius, give them what they want and minimal supervision and job done. The reality is much closer to the Richard Feynman line that no-one is that much smarter.
Par for the course for an Oxbridge Humanities Bluffer.
I wonder if when he looks in the mirror he sees staring back at him a Great Man?
What's that you say Skip, Scotland in Union have released another of their self reassuring polls with a non standard question? And their last one in Sep 2020 had Leave at 44% and Remain at 56%? And what is it now?
Leave at 43% and Remain at 57% you say?
Golly, that Salmond stuff is really smashing into the issue in a MOE way.
Maybe your chauvinistic sarcasm won't wash on this. Maybe the Scots in general have woken up to the fact the the SNP are the real nasty party. The story regarding how Nat trolls treated Charlie Kennedy and the Salmond scandal have perhaps opened a few people's eyes to what Nationalism is all about. English nationalism, Scottish nationalism are two cheeks of the same foul smelling arse.
The 50% increase in transmissibility is what is panicking people (IMHO) in some countries, which don't have an immediate prospect of high vaccination levels.
What seems to be true from the UK is that a fairly hard lockdown can just about hold R below 1, for this variant.
It was about 2 and-a-half years ago that I visited Hartlepool station, but only in order to do the curve linking Stockton and Middlesbrough. Saw HMS Trincomalee in the distance from the train, but didn't see it up close. Anyway, the station was interesting enough with its retro-style railwway posters. This may come as a surprise to TSE, but I actually stayed overnight in 'Boro town centre and lived to tell the tale!
The following day I did the 'Boro to Whitby line. Managed to do it outbound, but in the afternoon, found to my shock that a failed steam train on the North Yorks Moors (which due to time constraints that day, I decided not to do) at Grosmont caused the line to be blocked, so had to get a bus back to 'Boro!
Everyone criticises Labour for taking their "heartlands" for granted however the same could very well happen to the Conservatives. All this attention on the "red wall" could very well lead, in the long run, to traditional Conservative seats thinking that the Party is now for urban town dwellers and not for them. Especially if Brexit ends up being a negative for agriculture etc.
Not something likely to happen in the near future but it's certainly a possibility in the long run. It's difficult juggling multiple competing priorities.
Absolutely. The LibDems will come back...
Because they forgot their coat on the way out?
The Tories have been losing their heartlands too. The suburban middle class have been drifting away from them for years. 40 years ago seats like Sheffield Hallam, Leeds North West, Birmingham Edgbaston would have been safely in the blue column.
There's a stickiness in these things which can disguise underlying movements. South of London the regional polling shows Lab and LibDems pretty much even, but in many areas each party holds on to tactical votes by a repeated cycle:
1. Vote for X, not Y, just this once as only we can beat the Tories. 2. X gets a decent result and Y does badly, thanks to tactical votes 3. Next election: Vote for X, look how far behind Y were last time.
With a long-term Tory government, loads of voters have no strong preference between LibDems and Labour and go with the perceived local flow. If that changes, they change too, quite suddenly.
The effect you are describing is unchanged but the voters involved might have strong preferences between the two, just that those are outweighed by pragmatic tactical voting.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
Hmm, I think he's probably right. There is definitely an unnecessary safety first approach, especially in the public sector.
Newton would be governor of the Bank of England, Einstein would be at Imperial or Cambridge, and Turing CTO of a startup recently acquired by Softbank.
Yes, and their discoveries and advancements would be lost to the UK economy and everything offshored.
If this is about the UK DARPA, it's not its function to fund an Einstein or a Newton. That's really not what it's about at all.
Indeed, but I'm not sure that's the point he was making. I think the point is more that the UK fails to properly take advantage of its own world class scientific research base with commercialisation. I don't think UK advanced research lab particularly makes a difference here, there needs to be a culture change among scientists and universities as well as real tax incentives for keeping IP onshore and forcing foreign companies to invest their cash in the UK should they wish to monetise UK IP.
There's a whole chain of stuff needed.
DARPA works very well at what it does, and a UK version could certainly be part of that culture change among scientists and universities, if it has the right management and organisational structure. This is the best article on it I've seen: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/wddw
The ongoing commercialisation of research is a separate issue. The problem is not so much that UK venture capital for science stuff doesn't exists - it does (for example, the IP Group) - it's that the size of our markets and willingness of UK investors to fund new manufacturing make it hard to build globally competitive entities.
The examples of TSMC or Samsung show that it's quite possible for economies smaller than ours, doing it in very different ways.
Government definitely has a role, but whether ours is up to it is another matter.
A big part of the problem is, as you say, the lack of willingness to invest in UK production. Or indeed productionisation of the idea/concept.
What a lot of UK venture capital seems to focus on is "Get this to the point where we can sell it to Silicon Valley big money and run away with a bag of money".
As I heard it, Cumming's point was that proposals all have to go through the same committee process and similar tests to proceed - and so things which do not fit the cookie-cooker criteria have zero chance of going anywhere.
It was really a call for alternative routes since not all proposals show benefits on the standard flowchart.
His example was being asked to fill in an "impact assessment" for a Pure Maths project.
"McKinsey: how private-sector technocracy took over The pandemic-driven surge in management consultants is a serious threat to democracy. Fraser Myers"
Wouldn’t be so bad if they were any good at their job. The vast waste of money on test and trace last year shows that all they are interested in is how much of it sticks to them.
It’s a little harsh to blame McKinsey for Purdue. They were asked how to increase sales and they gave an answer. It’s the directors of Purdue Frederick who are to blame for the choices they made.
(FWIW the Pharma industry was well aware of the risks that Purdue was running - they turned up their nose at the company on multiple occasions)
Sure, Charles. That’s why they paid several hundred million dollars in fines.
Of course the company was to blame, but so were McKinsey.
I’m aware of the history - of course McKinsey showed rather less qualms than the rest of the pharma industry.
Consultants are just guns for hire - don’t associate them with the industry.
But the settlement was just a classic US shakedown. I remember David Brennan telling me used to budget for $1bn a year in settlement payments
That is cynical almost beyond belief.
Just because your being paid to advise on how to push addictive drugs doesn’t absolve you of blame.
You said yourself the rest of the industry was aware of the company’s practices (as were informed members of the public) - how much more aware would be those intimately involved in the management of its affairs ? You’re effectively arguing that mercenaries bear no ethical responsibility for their actions.
No legal responsibility. Law and morals are not the same thing!
But ultimately in my view the directors should bear the blame
They paid nearly $600m to evade legal responsibility. ...The settlements come after lawsuits unearthed a trove of documents showing how McKinsey worked to drive sales of Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin painkiller amid an opioid crisis in the United States that has contributed to the deaths of more than 450,000 people over the past two decades.
McKinsey’s extensive work with Purdue included advising it to focus on selling lucrative high-dose pills, the records show, even after the drugmaker pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it had misled doctors and regulators about OxyContin’s risks. The firm also told Purdue that it could “band together” with other opioid makers to head off “strict treatment” by the Food and Drug Administration.
Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney general, said the investigation of the firm involved reviewing “thousands and thousands of documents and emails” that, taken together, told “the story of McKinsey’s wrongdoing.”
“Its always been about holding accountable those who created and profited off the opioid epidemic,” she said. Ms. Healey was the first state attorney general to investigate McKinsey’s business dealings with Purdue.
The consulting firm will not admit wrongdoing, according to the multistate settlement, but will agree to court-ordered restrictions on its work with some types of addictive narcotics...
Of course the Purdue directors are ultimately responsible (IMO should be locked up). But McKinsey's conduct was an utter disgrace.
While I appreciate this is something of a lagging indicator it may also explain why there is not perceived to be as much rush on the vaccine front as we suppose.
If the Government does take Hartlepool it will be doing the almost impossible and gaining a seat from the Opposition in a by-election more than a decade after the party took Downing Street, has that ever happened before in modern times?
Though which will the London based media talk about more? This seat or the Mayor of London?
In fairness, the Mayor of London represents nine million people and has considerable executive power, while the MP for Hartlepool represents about 1% as many and can do the square root of fuck all.
There are plenty of examples of London-centrism in the media - not convinced that this would be one of them.
The MP for Hartlepool could in theory become Prime Minister whilst the Mayor of London can't.
There’s no rule saying the PM has to be an MP...
And as relatively recent experience shows, you can be an MP while also being Mayor of London.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
That is literally the point he is making. Einstein was funded by the Patent Office. A 2021 Einstein would be told to get a job with Deliveroo.
Yes, I think it's a fair point to some degree, though the UK definitely remains a world leader in scientific research and I've got no doubt that Einstein would get funding for his research just as Stephen Hawking did for so many years.
The point is more that we don't properly monetise our research and a lot of that is because there's a serious lack of risk appetite within the state. It's something that needs to change.
Re RP's comment, the Patent Office only funded his research in the same way that Deliveroo might fund someone's research today. You have a job to pay the bills and do the stuff you want to do in your spare time.
I sit on some funding bodies and we do fund high risk stuff. Some of our funding is for stuff that has clear applicability, some of it is much more blue-sky. The latter is always much harder to decide, it helps if you have a track record (not necessarily in blue sky stuff) but there's a problem there, clearly, in that a lot of innovative thinking comes from younger, less experienced people. It is fairly easy to get relatively small grants to try something out and follow up if results look promising (my area is mostly in data crunching and occasionally small scale medical tech, so a high tens of thousands can be enough to get started).
I agree entirely about the follow up when valuable IP is produced. That's not in our remit and it's not really in anyone's remit in particular. The more switched on universities will find industrial partners and crack on, but a government backed venture capital type fund would make a lot of sense (particularly to help new UK companies grow, rather than universities just partnering with existing - often US - giants). There also tends to be a narrow view where getting an idea up and running in a small company and then selling out to a US giant is seen as success, when we could be more ambitious and grow the company into a UK giant instead.
There is a UK company that's been doing that for over a decade. They funded Oxford Nanopore, for example. https://www.ipgroupplc.com
One of the fundamental issues is what @Selebian mentioned and unfortunately it is cultural in the UK. Build the business, sell it to a US (or now Chinese) company at the earliest opportunity. In US it is not massively dissimilar, but there are still entrepreneurs who want to get big enough to be the buyer not the seller. In Germany companies have a culture of being family owned, which while often leads to different problems it tends to result in longer term thinking. As far as I am aware they do not have "entrepreneurs relief" in Germany (now massively curtailed from what it was in UK), so perhaps this has something to do with it. Better to keep your company in the family rather than flog it and use the proceeds to buy and estate in the country!
While I appreciate this is something of a lagging indicator it may also explain why there is not perceived to be as much rush on the vaccine front as we suppose.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
That is literally the point he is making. Einstein was funded by the Patent Office. A 2021 Einstein would be told to get a job with Deliveroo.
Yes, I think it's a fair point to some degree, though the UK definitely remains a world leader in scientific research and I've got no doubt that Einstein would get funding for his research just as Stephen Hawking did for so many years.
The point is more that we don't properly monetise our research and a lot of that is because there's a serious lack of risk appetite within the state. It's something that needs to change.
Re RP's comment, the Patent Office only funded his research in the same way that Deliveroo might fund someone's research today. You have a job to pay the bills and do the stuff you want to do in your spare time.
I sit on some funding bodies and we do fund high risk stuff. Some of our funding is for stuff that has clear applicability, some of it is much more blue-sky. The latter is always much harder to decide, it helps if you have a track record (not necessarily in blue sky stuff) but there's a problem there, clearly, in that a lot of innovative thinking comes from younger, less experienced people. It is fairly easy to get relatively small grants to try something out and follow up if results look promising (my area is mostly in data crunching and occasionally small scale medical tech, so a high tens of thousands can be enough to get started).
I agree entirely about the follow up when valuable IP is produced. That's not in our remit and it's not really in anyone's remit in particular. The more switched on universities will find industrial partners and crack on, but a government backed venture capital type fund would make a lot of sense (particularly to help new UK companies grow, rather than universities just partnering with existing - often US - giants). There also tends to be a narrow view where getting an idea up and running in a small company and then selling out to a US giant is seen as success, when we could be more ambitious and grow the company into a UK giant instead.
There is a UK company that's been doing that for over a decade. They funded Oxford Nanopore, for example. https://www.ipgroupplc.com
One of the fundamental issues is what @Selebian mentioned and unfortunately it is cultural in the UK. Build the business, sell it to a US (or now Chinese) company at the earliest opportunity. In US it is not massively dissimilar, but there are still entrepreneurs who want to get big enough to be the buyer not the seller. In Germany companies have a culture of being family owned, which while often leads to different problems it tends to result in longer term thinking. As far as I am aware they do not have "entrepreneurs relief" in Germany (now massively curtailed from what it was in UK), so perhaps this has something to do with it. Better to keep your company in the family rather than flog it and use the proceeds to buy and estate in the country!
I recall an interesting discussion after a private conference in an investment bank regarding Space and venture capital. I got in because I had an interest in the area and the organisers invited me....
A UK "expert" on the Space industry was practically spitting mad at the idea of (1) taking on the existing, big vendors (2) doing anything onshore....
Interesting that Marcus Söder has split with Merkel and the German government on the AZ pause. He's definitely lining himself up to be th Union candidate for chancellor. He does strike me as the only grown up in the room right now in Germany where this idiotic "precautionary principle" will cause more unnecessary deaths.
Scotland in Union have released another of their self reassuring polls with a non standard question?
The question that doesn't favour one of the answers - which may well be the question asked next time.
If there is a next time.
'We'll do everything in our power to stop a referendum but if there is one we choose the question' is an inspirational look. I assume regardless of the question you won't have a vote but will again be adopting the standard project fear modus from the sidelines.
Scotland in Union have released another of their self reassuring polls with a non standard question?
The question that doesn't favour one of the answers - which may well be the question asked next time.
If there is a next time.
I'm wondering what the extremities are that you can reach, only by changing the wording of the question.
How about: "Should Scotland stand with the rest of the United Kingdom, or abandon the rest of the United Kingdom?" And then compare it to: "Should Scotland win its freedom as an independent country, or remain subservient to a greater whole?"
I think that might shock all the twatterati who seem to think the Boris is akin to Mussolini.
What is interesting is we are seeing quite a big variation in Labour's number across recent polls, anywhere from low to high 30s. Where as Tories are firmly 42-45 range.
Possibly, but maybe they are collectively clever enough to start understanding the stupidity and pointlessness of damaging upheaval and change for the sake of change. I think that perhaps some are also realising what an unpleasant place Scotland is becoming under the divisive and corrosive influence of the SNP
Scotland in Union have released another of their self reassuring polls with a non standard question?
The question that doesn't favour one of the answers - which may well be the question asked next time.
If there is a next time.
I'm wondering what the extremities are that you can reach, only by changing the wording of the question.
How about: "Should Scotland stand with the rest of the United Kingdom, or abandon the rest of the United Kingdom?" And then compare it to: "Should Scotland win its freedom as an independent country, or remain subservient to a greater whole?"
Time to re-post the Yes Minister Perfect Balanced Sample clip again?
Everyone criticises Labour for taking their "heartlands" for granted however the same could very well happen to the Conservatives. All this attention on the "red wall" could very well lead, in the long run, to traditional Conservative seats thinking that the Party is now for urban town dwellers and not for them. Especially if Brexit ends up being a negative for agriculture etc.
Not something likely to happen in the near future but it's certainly a possibility in the long run. It's difficult juggling multiple competing priorities.
Absolutely. The LibDems will come back...
Because they forgot their coat on the way out?
The Tories have been losing their heartlands too. The suburban middle class have been drifting away from them for years. 40 years ago seats like Sheffield Hallam, Leeds North West, Birmingham Edgbaston would have been safely in the blue column.
A point which has been disguised by them being in the ascendancy. Former heartlands further out such as Altrincham, Macclesfield, Wycombe, etc would be competitive on an even national vote share. Part of the ebb and flow.
The Tory heartlands are in reasonable shape, as instanced by the fact that you can drive fairly easily from Land's End to the outskirts of Edinburgh without leaving Tory held seats. (The possible routes are an interesting tour of the country). You can't do this when Labour's heartlands are in reasonable shape!
Interesting that Marcus Söder has split with Merkel and the German government on the AZ pause. He's definitely lining himself up to be th Union candidate for chancellor. He does strike me as the only grown up in the room right now in Germany where this idiotic "precautionary principle" will cause more unnecessary deaths.
There's nothing wrong with the principle, just its incorrect application - the correct precaution to take is to continue vaccination.
Interesting that Marcus Söder has split with Merkel and the German government on the AZ pause. He's definitely lining himself up to be th Union candidate for chancellor. He does strike me as the only grown up in the room right now in Germany where this idiotic "precautionary principle" will cause more unnecessary deaths.
And yet. A poll today shows 54-39 in favour of suspending the AZ jabs in Germany. Yes, I know.
Everyone criticises Labour for taking their "heartlands" for granted however the same could very well happen to the Conservatives. All this attention on the "red wall" could very well lead, in the long run, to traditional Conservative seats thinking that the Party is now for urban town dwellers and not for them. Especially if Brexit ends up being a negative for agriculture etc.
Not something likely to happen in the near future but it's certainly a possibility in the long run. It's difficult juggling multiple competing priorities.
Absolutely. The LibDems will come back...
Because they forgot their coat on the way out?
The Tories have been losing their heartlands too. The suburban middle class have been drifting away from them for years. 40 years ago seats like Sheffield Hallam, Leeds North West, Birmingham Edgbaston would have been safely in the blue column.
A point which has been disguised by them being in the ascendancy. Former heartlands further out such as Altrincham, Macclesfield, Wycombe, etc would be competitive on an even national vote share. Part of the ebb and flow.
The Tory heartlands are in reasonable shape, as instanced by the fact that you can drive fairly easily from Land's End to the outskirts of Edinburgh without leaving Tory held seats. (The possible routes are an interesting tour of the country). You can't do this when Labour's heartlands are in reasonable shape!
But that's just a function of Labour seats being much smaller than Tory ones.
And you might not be able do that in the event of a hypothetical election which leaves Tory and Labour even in terms of votes and seats. Such an election might leave an unbroken chain of Labour seats from the Humber to the Mersey. (Actually, on second thoughts, Brigg and Goole would probably be the winning chink in the Tories chain there.) Maybe we should abandon FPTP and move to a Blockbusters-style approach to determining a winner.
Interesting that Marcus Söder has split with Merkel and the German government on the AZ pause. He's definitely lining himself up to be th Union candidate for chancellor. He does strike me as the only grown up in the room right now in Germany where this idiotic "precautionary principle" will cause more unnecessary deaths.
There's nothing wrong with the principle, just its incorrect application - the correct precaution to take is to continue vaccination.
I've been having a think about it and I think there is a great deal wrong with the precautionary principle, it's a risk elimination strategy and ultimately everything we do in life carries some amount of risk.
Interesting that Marcus Söder has split with Merkel and the German government on the AZ pause. He's definitely lining himself up to be th Union candidate for chancellor. He does strike me as the only grown up in the room right now in Germany where this idiotic "precautionary principle" will cause more unnecessary deaths.
The latest German polling has Green leader Habeck preferred to CDU leader Laschet as preferred Chancellor by 22% to 21%.
However CSU leader Soder is favoured by 36% of Germans as Chancellor to 20% for Habeck.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
That is literally the point he is making. Einstein was funded by the Patent Office. A 2021 Einstein would be told to get a job with Deliveroo.
Yes, I think it's a fair point to some degree, though the UK definitely remains a world leader in scientific research and I've got no doubt that Einstein would get funding for his research just as Stephen Hawking did for so many years.
The point is more that we don't properly monetise our research and a lot of that is because there's a serious lack of risk appetite within the state. It's something that needs to change.
Re RP's comment, the Patent Office only funded his research in the same way that Deliveroo might fund someone's research today. You have a job to pay the bills and do the stuff you want to do in your spare time.
I sit on some funding bodies and we do fund high risk stuff. Some of our funding is for stuff that has clear applicability, some of it is much more blue-sky. The latter is always much harder to decide, it helps if you have a track record (not necessarily in blue sky stuff) but there's a problem there, clearly, in that a lot of innovative thinking comes from younger, less experienced people. It is fairly easy to get relatively small grants to try something out and follow up if results look promising (my area is mostly in data crunching and occasionally small scale medical tech, so a high tens of thousands can be enough to get started).
I agree entirely about the follow up when valuable IP is produced. That's not in our remit and it's not really in anyone's remit in particular. The more switched on universities will find industrial partners and crack on, but a government backed venture capital type fund would make a lot of sense (particularly to help new UK companies grow, rather than universities just partnering with existing - often US - giants). There also tends to be a narrow view where getting an idea up and running in a small company and then selling out to a US giant is seen as success, when we could be more ambitious and grow the company into a UK giant instead.
There is a UK company that's been doing that for over a decade. They funded Oxford Nanopore, for example. https://www.ipgroupplc.com
One of the fundamental issues is what @Selebian mentioned and unfortunately it is cultural in the UK. Build the business, sell it to a US (or now Chinese) company at the earliest opportunity. In US it is not massively dissimilar, but there are still entrepreneurs who want to get big enough to be the buyer not the seller. In Germany companies have a culture of being family owned, which while often leads to different problems it tends to result in longer term thinking. As far as I am aware they do not have "entrepreneurs relief" in Germany (now massively curtailed from what it was in UK), so perhaps this has something to do with it. Better to keep your company in the family rather than flog it and use the proceeds to buy and estate in the country!
One of the IP Group's portfolio companies - Ceres Power - is worth well over £1bn. They've sold their remaining stake, and the manufacturing of the company's product (a combined heat and power fuel cell) is being done in Germany, by Bosch.
Cases are flat or going down in all groups apart from 0-14, from the England PHE data
I wonder whether the increase in 0-14s is a result of schools reopening, or a result of testing the bejeezus out of that particular demographic?
The later - if fact the increase is surprisingly low. The flattening in the other age groups may or may not be associated with this - a positive test for a child will trigger testing of the whole immediate family, which in turn will uncover more asymptomatic cases....
The result here is going to be genuinely close, a lot will depend on the candidates chosen by the two main contenders, and any high-profile others such as Tice - as opposed to national political swings.
A great opportunity for the government to win a by-election gain, which doesn’t happen very often.
The pressure will be on Starmer if Labour lose the seat though, especially if they also lose control of Wales, overshadowing a successful night at the locals.
A comfortable win for Sadiq Khan could end up looking like the sole shining beacon of hope for Labour.
I think that makes him one to watch for future leader of the Labour Party.
Nah, the King of the North, Andy Burnham, is the one to watch.
I didn’t know he was a Percy?
A friend sent me this as a Christmas present because he thought I'd love wearing a t shirt with the face of an Everton loving socialist on it.
The result here is going to be genuinely close, a lot will depend on the candidates chosen by the two main contenders, and any high-profile others such as Tice - as opposed to national political swings.
A great opportunity for the government to win a by-election gain, which doesn’t happen very often.
The pressure will be on Starmer if Labour lose the seat though, especially if they also lose control of Wales, overshadowing a successful night at the locals.
A comfortable win for Sadiq Khan could end up looking like the sole shining beacon of hope for Labour.
I think that makes him one to watch for future leader of the Labour Party.
Nah, the King of the North, Andy Burnham, is the one to watch.
I didn’t know he was a Percy?
A friend sent me this as a Christmas present because he thought I'd love wearing a t shirt with the face of an Everton loving socialist.
Mind you, with the SNP's record on Education.....no doubt praised to the heavens by the OECD report they refuse to publish.....
The thing is I remember back in 2013 the SNP used a non standard methodology in a poll that managed to get Yes ahead, at the time No was leading comfortably, I remember the SNP defended that poll.
Hoo boy it could be rough for the antivaxxers after England fully reopens on the 21st.
A hunch I have is that those that died a week after dose two look low enough to me to be people that died "with Covid" rather than "from Covid" i.e. the vaccine does not eliminate death
Cases are flat or going down in all groups apart from 0-14, from the England PHE data
I wonder whether the increase in 0-14s is a result of schools reopening, or a result of testing the bejeezus out of that particular demographic?
I think the latter rather than the former; we went from only testing them when they volunteered for testing after showing symptoms to testing more than half of the entire cohort three times within in a week.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
That is literally the point he is making. Einstein was funded by the Patent Office. A 2021 Einstein would be told to get a job with Deliveroo.
Yes, I think it's a fair point to some degree, though the UK definitely remains a world leader in scientific research and I've got no doubt that Einstein would get funding for his research just as Stephen Hawking did for so many years.
The point is more that we don't properly monetise our research and a lot of that is because there's a serious lack of risk appetite within the state. It's something that needs to change.
Re RP's comment, the Patent Office only funded his research in the same way that Deliveroo might fund someone's research today. You have a job to pay the bills and do the stuff you want to do in your spare time.
I sit on some funding bodies and we do fund high risk stuff. Some of our funding is for stuff that has clear applicability, some of it is much more blue-sky. The latter is always much harder to decide, it helps if you have a track record (not necessarily in blue sky stuff) but there's a problem there, clearly, in that a lot of innovative thinking comes from younger, less experienced people. It is fairly easy to get relatively small grants to try something out and follow up if results look promising (my area is mostly in data crunching and occasionally small scale medical tech, so a high tens of thousands can be enough to get started).
I agree entirely about the follow up when valuable IP is produced. That's not in our remit and it's not really in anyone's remit in particular. The more switched on universities will find industrial partners and crack on, but a government backed venture capital type fund would make a lot of sense (particularly to help new UK companies grow, rather than universities just partnering with existing - often US - giants). There also tends to be a narrow view where getting an idea up and running in a small company and then selling out to a US giant is seen as success, when we could be more ambitious and grow the company into a UK giant instead.
There is a UK company that's been doing that for over a decade. They funded Oxford Nanopore, for example. https://www.ipgroupplc.com
One of the fundamental issues is what @Selebian mentioned and unfortunately it is cultural in the UK. Build the business, sell it to a US (or now Chinese) company at the earliest opportunity. In US it is not massively dissimilar, but there are still entrepreneurs who want to get big enough to be the buyer not the seller. In Germany companies have a culture of being family owned, which while often leads to different problems it tends to result in longer term thinking. As far as I am aware they do not have "entrepreneurs relief" in Germany (now massively curtailed from what it was in UK), so perhaps this has something to do with it. Better to keep your company in the family rather than flog it and use the proceeds to buy and estate in the country!
One of the IP Group's portfolio companies - Ceres Power - is worth well over £1bn. They've sold their remaining stake, and the manufacturing of the company's product (a combined heat and power fuel cell) is being done in Germany, by Bosch.
Surely the obvious complaint there is why is it being manufactured in Germany (Yes I know it's probably unavoidable but it's an obvious question for the next project).
I think that might shock all the twatterati who seem to think the Boris is akin to Mussolini.
What is interesting is we are seeing quite a big variation in Labour's number across recent polls, anywhere from low to high 30s. Where as Tories are firmly 42-45 range.
I wonder what odds could you get on labour coming third in Hartlepool......behind Tory/Reform.......?
She was never a cabinet minister, she got as far as Sol Gen, which isn't a cabinet job.
I mean if you're going to chastise others for deceit or ignorance.....
Edit - Upon checking, she was retained as Victims' Commissioner by Boris Johnson, so it might be fair to say this government.
I mean he could have replaced her.
Ah ok yes, ‘a government minister’
The broader point is if they have such a great case that the Conservatives are some kind of rapists friend, why the need for sly tricks that mislead? This government never appointed her, and she was a Labour Minister not just some independent QC.
It makes their main claim seem like it could be just semantics as well, which would be a shame if they really do have a great point.
Good to get the Labour POV anyway, thanks!
Labour POV? I believe you've voted Labour more times than I ever have (which is none in a general election.)
Last night I condemned the approach of Labour and the Tories on this matter.
You must be dense or a troll, or just really embarrassed that I pointed you're doing exactly what you chastised Labour for doing.
I thought you preferred Starmer’s Labour to Conservatives at the moment? Sorry if that’s not the case
But no, I’m none of those things. I don’t really want to get involved in childish, petty tit for tat with you though, so try it on with someone else if you don’t mind.
Interesting that Marcus Söder has split with Merkel and the German government on the AZ pause. He's definitely lining himself up to be th Union candidate for chancellor. He does strike me as the only grown up in the room right now in Germany where this idiotic "precautionary principle" will cause more unnecessary deaths.
There's nothing wrong with the principle, just its incorrect application - the correct precaution to take is to continue vaccination.
I've been having a think about it and I think there is a great deal wrong with the precautionary principle, it's a risk elimination strategy and ultimately everything we do in life carries some amount of risk.
I think the precautionary principle is one of those things - a bit like political correctness - that often gets thrown around when it doesn't apply. It's used in a very conservative way to oppose change in a general sense.
In this instance we have a relatively good sense of the relative risks from the vaccine as from the disease - so we can make a fairly confident judgement on that basis. The uncertainty range doesn't include a situation where the vaccine is worse than the disease. The precautionary principle doesn't apply.
But we were correctly applying the precautionary principle by not doing mass vaccinations before we had the trial data on efficacy and safety.
What the Europeans are doing now is not justifiable by the precautionary principle.
Interesting that Marcus Söder has split with Merkel and the German government on the AZ pause. He's definitely lining himself up to be th Union candidate for chancellor. He does strike me as the only grown up in the room right now in Germany where this idiotic "precautionary principle" will cause more unnecessary deaths.
There's nothing wrong with the principle, just its incorrect application - the correct precaution to take is to continue vaccination.
I've been having a think about it and I think there is a great deal wrong with the precautionary principle, it's a risk elimination strategy and ultimately everything we do in life carries some amount of risk.
0-14 is i) Most tested ii) Tested with a higher fp chance (LFD vs PCR) than any other cohort iii) In a frequent mass gathering setting (Schools) iv) Completely unvaccinated. (Every other group has vaccinations in it including 15 - 44)
Positive test results were always going to rise in this group. But it's no need for alarm.
Hoo boy it could be rough for the antivaxxers after England fully reopens on the 21st.
A hunch I have is that those that died a week after dose two look low enough to me to be people that died "with Covid" rather than "from Covid" i.e. the vaccine does not eliminate death
Dammit, I was told the vaccines provided almost complete protection from serious illness and death!
Cases are flat or going down in all groups apart from 0-14, from the England PHE data
I wonder whether the increase in 0-14s is a result of schools reopening, or a result of testing the bejeezus out of that particular demographic?
Given that it starts going up exactly when testing went up, before schools even re-opened, let alone before there was any chance for someone to catch it in a school and progress the disease sufficiently to have given a positive test, the answer is blindingly obvious.
She was never a cabinet minister, she got as far as Sol Gen, which isn't a cabinet job.
I mean if you're going to chastise others for deceit or ignorance.....
Edit - Upon checking, she was retained as Victims' Commissioner by Boris Johnson, so it might be fair to say this government.
I mean he could have replaced her.
Ah ok yes, ‘a government minister’
The broader point is if they have such a great case that the Conservatives are some kind of rapists friend, why the need for sly tricks that mislead? This government never appointed her, and she was a Labour Minister not just some independent QC.
It makes their main claim seem like it could be just semantics as well, which would be a shame if they really do have a great point.
Good to get the Labour POV anyway, thanks!
Labour POV? I believe you've voted Labour more times than I ever have (which is none in a general election.)
Last night I condemned the approach of Labour and the Tories on this matter.
You must be dense or a troll, or just really embarrassed that I pointed you're doing exactly what you chastised Labour for doing.
I thought you preferred Starmer’s Labour to Conservatives at the moment? Sorry if that’s not the case
But no, I’m none of those things. I don’t really want to get involved in childish, petty tit for tat with you though, so try it on with someone else if you don’t mind.
No, I don't prefer Starmer's Labour to anyone, as things stand I'm not voting for anyone at the next general election.
Don't worry I won't engage in childish, petty tit for tat like writing an anonymous blog about you elsewhere.
She was never a cabinet minister, she got as far as Sol Gen, which isn't a cabinet job.
I mean if you're going to chastise others for deceit or ignorance.....
Edit - Upon checking, she was retained as Victims' Commissioner by Boris Johnson, so it might be fair to say this government.
I mean he could have replaced her.
Ah ok yes, ‘a government minister’
The broader point is if they have such a great case that the Conservatives are some kind of rapists friend, why the need for sly tricks that mislead? This government never appointed her, and she was a Labour Minister not just some independent QC.
It makes their main claim seem like it could be just semantics as well, which would be a shame if they really do have a great point.
Good to get the Labour POV anyway, thanks!
Labour POV? I believe you've voted Labour more times than I ever have (which is none in a general election.)
Last night I condemned the approach of Labour and the Tories on this matter.
You must be dense or a troll, or just really embarrassed that I pointed you're doing exactly what you chastised Labour for doing.
I thought you preferred Starmer’s Labour to Conservatives at the moment? Sorry if that’s not the case
But no, I’m none of those things. I don’t really want to get involved in childish, petty tit for tat with you though, so try it on with someone else if you don’t mind.
TSE has not voted Conservative at a general election since 2015, voting LD in 2017 and 2019.
As soon as working class Leave voting oiks started voting Tory TSE was off!
The 50% increase in transmissibility is what is panicking people (IMHO) in some countries, which don't have an immediate prospect of high vaccination levels.
What seems to be true from the UK is that a fairly hard lockdown can just about hold R below 1, for this variant.
yes - that was the worry in late Dec/ early Jan, that even a hard lockdown wouldn't stop it. Happily, it did, coupled probably with the reduction from those that had recovered from earlier infections.
Where to start on this historically illiterate comment? Who funded Einstein's early work? The Patent Office?
That is literally the point he is making. Einstein was funded by the Patent Office. A 2021 Einstein would be told to get a job with Deliveroo.
Yes, I think it's a fair point to some degree, though the UK definitely remains a world leader in scientific research and I've got no doubt that Einstein would get funding for his research just as Stephen Hawking did for so many years.
The point is more that we don't properly monetise our research and a lot of that is because there's a serious lack of risk appetite within the state. It's something that needs to change.
Re RP's comment, the Patent Office only funded his research in the same way that Deliveroo might fund someone's research today. You have a job to pay the bills and do the stuff you want to do in your spare time.
I sit on some funding bodies and we do fund high risk stuff. Some of our funding is for stuff that has clear applicability, some of it is much more blue-sky. The latter is always much harder to decide, it helps if you have a track record (not necessarily in blue sky stuff) but there's a problem there, clearly, in that a lot of innovative thinking comes from younger, less experienced people. It is fairly easy to get relatively small grants to try something out and follow up if results look promising (my area is mostly in data crunching and occasionally small scale medical tech, so a high tens of thousands can be enough to get started).
I agree entirely about the follow up when valuable IP is produced. That's not in our remit and it's not really in anyone's remit in particular. The more switched on universities will find industrial partners and crack on, but a government backed venture capital type fund would make a lot of sense (particularly to help new UK companies grow, rather than universities just partnering with existing - often US - giants). There also tends to be a narrow view where getting an idea up and running in a small company and then selling out to a US giant is seen as success, when we could be more ambitious and grow the company into a UK giant instead.
There is a UK company that's been doing that for over a decade. They funded Oxford Nanopore, for example. https://www.ipgroupplc.com
One of the fundamental issues is what @Selebian mentioned and unfortunately it is cultural in the UK. Build the business, sell it to a US (or now Chinese) company at the earliest opportunity. In US it is not massively dissimilar, but there are still entrepreneurs who want to get big enough to be the buyer not the seller. In Germany companies have a culture of being family owned, which while often leads to different problems it tends to result in longer term thinking. As far as I am aware they do not have "entrepreneurs relief" in Germany (now massively curtailed from what it was in UK), so perhaps this has something to do with it. Better to keep your company in the family rather than flog it and use the proceeds to buy and estate in the country!
One of the IP Group's portfolio companies - Ceres Power - is worth well over £1bn. They've sold their remaining stake, and the manufacturing of the company's product (a combined heat and power fuel cell) is being done in Germany, by Bosch.
Surely the obvious complaint there is why is it being manufactured in Germany (Yes I know it's probably unavoidable but it's an obvious question for the next project).
That was my point - for some things you need an existing industrial infrastructure (or a great deal more funding).
She was never a cabinet minister, she got as far as Sol Gen, which isn't a cabinet job.
I mean if you're going to chastise others for deceit or ignorance.....
Edit - Upon checking, she was retained as Victims' Commissioner by Boris Johnson, so it might be fair to say this government.
I mean he could have replaced her.
Ah ok yes, ‘a government minister’
The broader point is if they have such a great case that the Conservatives are some kind of rapists friend, why the need for sly tricks that mislead? This government never appointed her, and she was a Labour Minister not just some independent QC.
It makes their main claim seem like it could be just semantics as well, which would be a shame if they really do have a great point.
Good to get the Labour POV anyway, thanks!
Labour POV? I believe you've voted Labour more times than I ever have (which is none in a general election.)
Last night I condemned the approach of Labour and the Tories on this matter.
You must be dense or a troll, or just really embarrassed that I pointed you're doing exactly what you chastised Labour for doing.
I thought you preferred Starmer’s Labour to Conservatives at the moment? Sorry if that’s not the case
But no, I’m none of those things. I don’t really want to get involved in childish, petty tit for tat with you though, so try it on with someone else if you don’t mind.
TSE has not voted Conservative at a general election since 2015, voting LD in 2017 and 2019.
As soon as northern Leave voting oiks started voting Tory TSE was off!
No, when the Tory party started doing unConservative things I was off.
Remember I was at the Tory party conference fringe event in 2014 when Boris Johnson said raising corporation was extreme socialism.
I also remember him saying in 2012 that putting up trade barriers was the desire of socialists like Michael Foot.
The reality is much closer to the Richard Feynman line that no-one is that much smarter.
Feynman said that? Really? Where?
Every single story that Feynman ever told in his popular books made Feynman look a great genius and everyone else an idiot.
Like SeanT stories.
Feynman is SeanT for scientists.
I came across the line in James Gleick's biography of RPF, "Genius". It's in a section musing on the link between genius and discovery- someone had written to Feynman asking a "what if X hadn't lived and Y hadn't been discovered?" question. Feynman's reply was that that was an odd question; the individual isn't the key unit of scientific advance. When something becomes needed, someone from the largeish pool of sufficiently bright people will be on the case. His work on the atom bomb may have helped form that view. I guess the development of mRNA vaccines into something useful over the last year is a bit like that.
Complex character though- whoever came up with "all genius all buffoon" seems (to me) to have nailed it. Incredible integrity about the scientific process, even if it didn't spread much further.
The US and China have administered the highest number of doses, 107 million and 53 million respectively.
I am surprised China is so low. I fully expected them to rush through as many vaccine candidates as possible and then use their enormous state power to ramp up massive vaccine production and go around compelling whole towns to be vaccinated in a week.
The US and China have administered the highest number of doses, 107 million and 53 million respectively.
I am surprised China is so low. I fully expected them to rush through as many vaccine candidates as possible and then use their enormous state power to ramp up massive vaccine production and go around compelling whole towns to be vaccinated in a week.
The US and China have administered the highest number of doses, 107 million and 53 million respectively.
I am surprised China is so low. I fully expected them to rush through as many vaccine candidates as possible and then use their enormous state power to ramp up massive vaccine production and go around compelling whole towns to be vaccinated in a week.
Isn't China's relatively slow roll out down to them being very cautious that mass vaccination sites/rollouts don't become superspreader events?
The US and China have administered the highest number of doses, 107 million and 53 million respectively.
I am surprised China is so low. I fully expected them to rush through as many vaccine candidates as possible and then use their enormous state power to ramp up massive vaccine production and go around compelling whole towns to be vaccinated in a week.
Isn't China's relatively slow roll out down to them being very cautious that mass vaccination sites/rollouts don't become superspreader events?
They're also using their vaccine supplies as diplomatic tool so they export a huge proportion. Domestically manufactured doses in the US have effectively been bought at 100% of available capacity by the US government the same as we have done for our four domestically manufactured vaccines.
Comments
But ultimately in my view the directors should bear the blame
https://www.ipgroupplc.com
What a lot of UK venture capital seems to focus on is "Get this to the point where we can sell it to Silicon Valley big money and run away with a bag of money".
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1371964594613198854?s=20
Leave at 43% and Remain at 57% you say?
Golly, that Salmond stuff is really smashing into the issue in a MOE way.
Immediate reaction seems to have hardened the division between Sturgeon loyalists and those who have disowned her and her coterie, with a small band in the middle acknowledging that whatever her misdeeds, the SNP are still the only game in town for the election and campaign for independence.
SNP no majority had previously shortened to 11/8 on Ladbrokes (was 11/4 in early Feb) and may reduce further, but Sturgeon seems less affected as odds on her being FM on 1 Jan 2022 are static.
I don't think it's particularly difficult to build a globally relevant industrial industry in the UK, the incentives just don't exist here, the bankruptcy system is just far, far too punishing and listing rules are a joke for anyone looking to raise medium to high risk capital without going begging to VC.
Think crypto-currency multiplied by occult and biblical numerology. For a start.
https://twitter.com/curiouswavefn/status/1370546840353996803
Which is why the UK government must stipulate in any agreement that the Scottish government must follow the advice of the Electoral Commission, not simply "take account" of it.
What seems to be true from the UK is that a fairly hard lockdown can just about hold R below 1, for this variant.
The following day I did the 'Boro to Whitby line. Managed to do it outbound, but in the afternoon, found to my shock that a failed steam train on the North Yorks Moors (which due to time constraints that day, I decided not to do) at Grosmont caused the line to be blocked, so had to get a bus back to 'Boro!
If there is a next time.
It was really a call for alternative routes since not all proposals show benefits on the standard flowchart.
His example was being asked to fill in an "impact assessment" for a Pure Maths project.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1372144584634032128?s=20
...The settlements come after lawsuits unearthed a trove of documents showing how McKinsey worked to drive sales of Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin painkiller amid an opioid crisis in the United States that has contributed to the deaths of more than 450,000 people over the past two decades.
McKinsey’s extensive work with Purdue included advising it to focus on selling lucrative high-dose pills, the records show, even after the drugmaker pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it had misled doctors and regulators about OxyContin’s risks. The firm also told Purdue that it could “band together” with other opioid makers to head off “strict treatment” by the Food and Drug Administration.
Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney general, said the investigation of the firm involved reviewing “thousands and thousands of documents and emails” that, taken together, told “the story of McKinsey’s wrongdoing.”
“Its always been about holding accountable those who created and profited off the opioid epidemic,” she said. Ms. Healey was the first state attorney general to investigate McKinsey’s business dealings with Purdue.
The consulting firm will not admit wrongdoing, according to the multistate settlement, but will agree to court-ordered restrictions on its work with some types of addictive narcotics...
Of course the Purdue directors are ultimately responsible (IMO should be locked up). But McKinsey's conduct was an utter disgrace.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-56408889
Bumble way would have been much better.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=40..latest&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_cases_per_million&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~European+Union
Which means that in a week or 2....
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1372146453016117250?s=20
Mind you, with the SNP's record on Education.....no doubt praised to the heavens by the OECD report they refuse to publish.....
A UK "expert" on the Space industry was practically spitting mad at the idea of (1) taking on the existing, big vendors (2) doing anything onshore....
Jarvis is right that two weeks wouldn't have done it though (even at that point).
I assume regardless of the question you won't have a vote but will again be adopting the standard project fear modus from the sidelines.
How about:
"Should Scotland stand with the rest of the United Kingdom, or abandon the rest of the United Kingdom?"
And then compare it to:
"Should Scotland win its freedom as an independent country, or remain subservient to a greater whole?"
What is interesting is we are seeing quite a big variation in Labour's number across recent polls, anywhere from low to high 30s. Where as Tories are firmly 42-45 range.
A lesson Drakeford had to learn when he mistakenly went for a 2 week lockdown about six months later.
Must try harder: Harold Larwood has a crescent and a whole housing area named after him.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/16/boris-johnson-champion-liberty-rights-freedoms
https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1372147807931535363?s=20
Every single story that Feynman ever told in his popular books made Feynman look a great genius and everyone else an idiot.
Like SeanT stories.
Feynman is SeanT for scientists.
Yes, I know.
Hmmmmmm.....
And you might not be able do that in the event of a hypothetical election which leaves Tory and Labour even in terms of votes and seats. Such an election might leave an unbroken chain of Labour seats from the Humber to the Mersey. (Actually, on second thoughts, Brigg and Goole would probably be the winning chink in the Tories chain there.)
Maybe we should abandon FPTP and move to a Blockbusters-style approach to determining a winner.
However CSU leader Soder is favoured by 36% of Germans as Chancellor to 20% for Habeck.
Looks like the CSU leader could therefore be the chancellor candidate for the Union rather than the CDU leader for the first time since Stoiber in 2002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_polling_for_the_2021_German_federal_election
They've sold their remaining stake, and the manufacturing of the company's product (a combined heat and power fuel cell) is being done in Germany, by Bosch.
https://www.teepublic.com/en-gb/t-shirt/15269962-andy-burnham-king-of-the-north-funny
Curious.
But no, I’m none of those things. I don’t really want to get involved in childish, petty tit for tat with you though, so try it on with someone else if you don’t mind.
In this instance we have a relatively good sense of the relative risks from the vaccine as from the disease - so we can make a fairly confident judgement on that basis. The uncertainty range doesn't include a situation where the vaccine is worse than the disease. The precautionary principle doesn't apply.
But we were correctly applying the precautionary principle by not doing mass vaccinations before we had the trial data on efficacy and safety.
What the Europeans are doing now is not justifiable by the precautionary principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
I guess I've always believed in the 'weak' view of it.
But on either view, the European actions on the vaccine are still nonsense.
i) Most tested
ii) Tested with a higher fp chance (LFD vs PCR) than any other cohort
iii) In a frequent mass gathering setting (Schools)
iv) Completely unvaccinated. (Every other group has vaccinations in it including 15 - 44)
Positive test results were always going to rise in this group. But it's no need for alarm.
Don't worry I won't engage in childish, petty tit for tat like writing an anonymous blog about you elsewhere.
As soon as working class Leave voting oiks started voting Tory TSE was off!
Remember I was at the Tory party conference fringe event in 2014 when Boris Johnson said raising corporation was extreme socialism.
I also remember him saying in 2012 that putting up trade barriers was the desire of socialists like Michael Foot.
No political games going on at all.
Dawn Butler to Dom: "Do you consider Eugenics to be a science?"
Complex character though- whoever came up with "all genius all buffoon" seems (to me) to have nailed it. Incredible integrity about the scientific process, even if it didn't spread much further.
I am surprised China is so low. I fully expected them to rush through as many vaccine candidates as possible and then use their enormous state power to ramp up massive vaccine production and go around compelling whole towns to be vaccinated in a week.