The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
Sure, just don't put it in your one big official tweet, that has now been retweeted several thousand times. Madness. Can they not see how it looks? Are they just dim? This is basic PR
By all means inform the public of some very rare, possible, unproven, but scary-sounding risks in a dense Pdf in your hard-to-find website. Not on bloody Twitter.
I do wonder if there is still a faint agenda to smear AZ, in favour of the others, who, of course, make a profit
Their tweet is highly congruent with Whitty in the press conference:
"Professor Chris Whitty said "all of medicine is about the potential risks of a treatment" and says the key question is "are the benefits big enough to justify that".
With the vaccine, there is an "incredibly small potential risk" against "the really very substantial protections these vaccines give".
In order to reassure, you have to stick to the truth.
Don't, ever, get a job in PR. You'd be terrible
Public Health communications is not PR. PR can be a one-off. Public health communications is about enduring trust. Telling the brutal truth is a part of that process, particularly when public anxiety is at its highest. This is, in part, why Trump's downplaying of the pandemic at the outset was so damaging.
I'm with Foxy on this one. You have to give the bad news straight, but then provide the reassurance in the form of what you are doing about it, and what Joe Public can do themselves to help mitigate their personal risk and the risks to their loved ones.
Utter bollocks, PR is PR. When you are reassuring the world about the safety and efficacy of a vaccine, you don't say, in the same tweet, the RISKS of this vaccine are STILL outweighed by the benefits (reaction: RISKS? WHAT RISKS? THERE ARE RISKS???), nor, in the same breath, do you say: but we do know you can get BLOOD CLOTS.
This is why doctors and scientists should never do PR. And, generally, they don't. Wheel them in to make a prepared reassuring statement, then get them back to their stupid labs.
Total and utter bollocks. You have to admit the risks are real where they are. I don't know the particulars in this case, but you never deny real risks. So glad you are not in charge of public messaging for health issues.
You're a geek. You don't understand. It's OK
LOL I have been a spokesman for an international organization that was regularly at the centre of international crises and was its voice and face on prime time TV, and I have been a paid talking head on the BBC, ABC, Rai Uno and Fox News. But then, what would I know about the media, messaging and PR.
Well, if you think that was an appropriate tweet by the EMA, you know nothing
I was not reacting to the EMA tweet, but to your post.
OK, I'll talk you through it, gently, one more time
We are managing global public opinion - which is faced by a pandemic which is killing millions. We also know that vaccine skepticism is a huge problem, across the world, but especially in Europe, where the virus is rampant, right now.
We ALSO know that we have a cheap, excellent, easily used vaccine, made not for profit, which is safe and effective, and will save thousands of lives and millions of hospitalisations. This vaccine has been the subject of almost-farcical smearing (by senior and stupid European politicians - eg president of France E Macron saying it is "quasi ineffective in the old").
Our job is to reassure the people that this vaccine is SAFE and EFFECTIVE (which all the data says it IS), but without lying, because lying would be bad.
The only question mark over this vaccine is about 30 cases of a not-that-fatal thrombosis out of SEVENTEEN MILLION INJECTIONS
The equation is clear. You tell the anxious, waiting people that this vaccine is safe, and effective. That's all. You don't lie. You just give the bald truth.
For those that are deeply anxious you provide a link where, if they want, they can read about the minuscule risks of thrombosis, 30 out of 17 million. Few will bother. The vast majority will be reassured.
What you don't do is say there are RISKS of BLOODCLOTS in your single most important tweet, thus alarming half the planet and fuelling all the antivaxxers in existence. Utterly stupid.
Here endeth your lesson.
Blimey. Aren’t you the guy who complains about over prolix headers ?
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
It certainly came into its own during the Plague, especially for my shielding husband (who, if this had all kicked off in 2010 rather than 2020, would've been marooned in Haringey, quite possibly with fatal consequences.)
London is - or, at any rate, was - a nice place to visit occasionally to do stuff. Why you'd actually want to live there (and pay an enormous premium for the privilege, at that,) is quite beyond me.
For many, work ties them to be in or near a city, and so people cling to a self-justification and can reel off the advantages of being near theatres and galleries and the rest, skipping over the minor detail that they hardly ever go there. I loved my time in London, but as you say have got just as much out if it going back as an occasional visitor, and would never want to go back and live there even if it were an economically neutral decision, which it most definitely isn’t.
Now that WFH has (or offers a chance that it might) freed many people from their geographical captivity, it is remarkable how for many of the middle aged the first thing they have done is flee the capital.
It will, of course, be interesting to see how home working develops long term once all the restrictions are gone. Quite apart from the fact that some jobs are bound to become fully remote and could therefore be done from anywhere, the hybrid model should also have another important effect: emptying out the trains enough to make commuting a lot more bearable. If you combine people working from home a couple of days a week and more flexible hours (so that those still travelling in and out of London and other cities don't all have to do so at the same time) then it's quite possible that everyone will be able to have a seat.
Nothing can improve the hot and filthy horror that is the Tube, but at least the railways should be more pleasant to use.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
It certainly came into its own during the Plague, especially for my shielding husband (who, if this had all kicked off in 2010 rather than 2020, would've been marooned in Haringey, quite possibly with fatal consequences.)
London is - or, at any rate, was - a nice place to visit occasionally to do stuff. Why you'd actually want to live there (and pay an enormous premium for the privilege, at that,) is quite beyond me.
For many, work ties them to be in or near a city, and so people cling to a self-justification and can reel off the advantages of being near theatres and galleries and the rest, skipping over the minor detail that they hardly ever go there. I loved my time in London, but as you say have got just as much out if it going back as an occasional visitor, and would never want to go back and live there even if it were an economically neutral decision, which it most definitely isn’t.
Now that WFH has (or offers a chance that it might) freed many people from their geographical captivity, it is remarkable how for many of the middle aged the first thing they have done is flee the capital.
It will, of course, be interesting to see how home working develops long term once all the restrictions are gone. Quite apart from the fact that some jobs are bound to become fully remote and could therefore be done from anywhere, the hybrid model should also have another important effect: emptying out the trains enough to make commuting a lot more bearable. If you combine people working from home a couple of days a week and more flexible hours (so that those still travelling in and out of London and other cities don't all have to do so at the same time) then it's quite possible that everyone will be able to have a seat.
Nothing can improve the hot and filthy horror that is the Tube, but at least the railways should be more pleasant to use.
After you’ve paid the hefty fare increase to cover the lost revenue?
CNN) The coronavirus pandemic almost didn't happen, a new study shows.
Researchers working to show when and how the virus first emerged in China calculate that it probably did not infect the first human being until October 2019 at the very earliest. And their models showed something else: It almost didn't make it as a pandemic virus.
Only bad luck and the packed conditions of the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan -- the place the pandemic appears to have begun -- gave the virus the edge it needed to explode around the globe, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
"It was a perfect storm -- we know now that it had to catch a lucky break or two to actually firmly become established," Michael Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who worked on the study, told CNN. "If things had been just a tiny bit different, if that first person who brought that into the Huanan market had decided to not go that day, or even was too ill to go and just stayed at home, that or other early super-spreading events might not have occurred. We may never have even known about it."
The team employed molecular dating, using the rate of ongoing mutations to calculate how long the virus has been around. They also ran computer models to show when and how it could have spread, and how it did spread.
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
A front line worker who is “in despair” about a politician claiming credit for a notable success probably has some underlying issues.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
"still outweighs" - like there is an ongoing live debate and hmm, we shall see. Then the word "risks". So there ARE risks. And why even mention "blood clots". Those are the two words that scream out. This jab gives you BLOOD CLOTS
Fuckin eejits. Just say "We have decided it is a safe and effective vaccine". Tuck all the other stuff away, which really is trivial in comparison, on some obscure website
Though our own press conference did cover the same ground, with 5 cases of of CVST and DIC in 11 million vaccines. It may well prove to be a very rare side effect, and is certainly needing further surveillance. Whether there are any other risk factors in the cases remains to be seen. Best carry on for now but be vigilant.
Sure, just don't put it in your one big official tweet, that has now been retweeted several thousand times. Madness. Can they not see how it looks? Are they just dim? This is basic PR
By all means inform the public of some very rare, possible, unproven, but scary-sounding risks in a dense Pdf in your hard-to-find website. Not on bloody Twitter.
I do wonder if there is still a faint agenda to smear AZ, in favour of the others, who, of course, make a profit
Their tweet is highly congruent with Whitty in the press conference:
"Professor Chris Whitty said "all of medicine is about the potential risks of a treatment" and says the key question is "are the benefits big enough to justify that".
With the vaccine, there is an "incredibly small potential risk" against "the really very substantial protections these vaccines give".
In order to reassure, you have to stick to the truth.
Don't, ever, get a job in PR. You'd be terrible
Public Health communications is not PR. PR can be a one-off. Public health communications is about enduring trust. Telling the brutal truth is a part of that process, particularly when public anxiety is at its highest. This is, in part, why Trump's downplaying of the pandemic at the outset was so damaging.
I'm with Foxy on this one. You have to give the bad news straight, but then provide the reassurance in the form of what you are doing about it, and what Joe Public can do themselves to help mitigate their personal risk and the risks to their loved ones.
Utter bollocks, PR is PR. When you are reassuring the world about the safety and efficacy of a vaccine, you don't say, in the same tweet, the RISKS of this vaccine are STILL outweighed by the benefits (reaction: RISKS? WHAT RISKS? THERE ARE RISKS???), nor, in the same breath, do you say: but we do know you can get BLOOD CLOTS.
This is why doctors and scientists should never do PR. And, generally, they don't. Wheel them in to make a prepared reassuring statement, then get them back to their stupid labs.
Total and utter bollocks. You have to admit the risks are real where they are. I don't know the particulars in this case, but you never deny real risks. So glad you are not in charge of public messaging for health issues.
You're a geek. You don't understand. It's OK
LOL I have been a spokesman for an international organization that was regularly at the centre of international crises and was its voice and face on prime time TV, and I have been a paid talking head on the BBC, ABC, Rai Uno and Fox News. But then, what would I know about the media, messaging and PR.
Well, if you think that was an appropriate tweet by the EMA, you know nothing
I was not reacting to the EMA tweet, but to your post.
OK, I'll talk you through it, gently, one more time
We are managing global public opinion - which is faced by a pandemic which is killing millions. We also know that vaccine skepticism is a huge problem, across the world, but especially in Europe, where the virus is rampant, right now.
We ALSO know that we have a cheap, excellent, easily used vaccine, made not for profit, which is safe and effective, and will save thousands of lives and millions of hospitalisations. This vaccine has been the subject of almost-farcical smearing (by senior and stupid European politicians - eg president of France E Macron saying it is "quasi ineffective in the old").
Our job is to reassure the people that this vaccine is SAFE and EFFECTIVE (which all the data says it IS), but without lying, because lying would be bad.
The only question mark over this vaccine is about 30 cases of a not-that-fatal thrombosis out of SEVENTEEN MILLION INJECTIONS
The equation is clear. You tell the anxious, waiting people that this vaccine is safe, and effective. That's all. You don't lie. You just give the bald truth.
For those that are deeply anxious you provide a link where, if they want, they can read about the minuscule risks of thrombosis, 30 out of 17 million. Few will bother. The vast majority will be reassured.
What you don't do is say there are RISKS of BLOODCLOTS in your single most important tweet, thus alarming half the planet and fuelling all the antivaxxers in existence. Utterly stupid.
Here endeth your lesson.
Blimey. Aren’t you the guy who complains about over prolix headers ?
I’d add, briefly, that it is simply not the function of regulatory agencies to do PR for medical treatments. It’s governments and health authorities who have failed, massively, on that score.
CNN) The coronavirus pandemic almost didn't happen, a new study shows.
Researchers working to show when and how the virus first emerged in China calculate that it probably did not infect the first human being until October 2019 at the very earliest. And their models showed something else: It almost didn't make it as a pandemic virus.
Only bad luck and the packed conditions of the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan -- the place the pandemic appears to have begun -- gave the virus the edge it needed to explode around the globe, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
"It was a perfect storm -- we know now that it had to catch a lucky break or two to actually firmly become established," Michael Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who worked on the study, told CNN. "If things had been just a tiny bit different, if that first person who brought that into the Huanan market had decided to not go that day, or even was too ill to go and just stayed at home, that or other early super-spreading events might not have occurred. We may never have even known about it."
The team employed molecular dating, using the rate of ongoing mutations to calculate how long the virus has been around. They also ran computer models to show when and how it could have spread, and how it did spread.
The takeaway from that, though, is that every year there are multiple possible pandemics which don’t quite build critical mass. The vast majority won’t. It’s far from a unique occurrence - though in this case the particular virus had better odds than most.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
Fair enough and each to their own. I live on the edge of a small Wiltshire town. I can walk to Waitrose in 15 minutes. I can be in the woods in 5. For me this is heaven.
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
A front line worker who is “in despair” about a politician claiming credit for a notable success probably has some underlying issues.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
Whether the report is right or not I don't agree with your analysis. I would have thought it was a common scenario of bosses taking credit for work done by employees and consequently depressing employees was a well known trait of a bad boss and not a flaw of the employee.
It really is disgusting that under some rather dubious circumstances, China inflicts the Bastard Bug on the planet. And then goes into battle to demolish the vaccines that will save the planet from their Bastard Bug. Because they want a sales pitch for their own vaccines against their Bastard Bug.
Grotesque.
Mindset. Where some see a problem, others see an opportunity.
CNN) The coronavirus pandemic almost didn't happen, a new study shows.
Researchers working to show when and how the virus first emerged in China calculate that it probably did not infect the first human being until October 2019 at the very earliest. And their models showed something else: It almost didn't make it as a pandemic virus.
Only bad luck and the packed conditions of the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan -- the place the pandemic appears to have begun -- gave the virus the edge it needed to explode around the globe, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
"It was a perfect storm -- we know now that it had to catch a lucky break or two to actually firmly become established," Michael Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who worked on the study, told CNN. "If things had been just a tiny bit different, if that first person who brought that into the Huanan market had decided to not go that day, or even was too ill to go and just stayed at home, that or other early super-spreading events might not have occurred. We may never have even known about it."
The team employed molecular dating, using the rate of ongoing mutations to calculate how long the virus has been around. They also ran computer models to show when and how it could have spread, and how it did spread.
That almost reads to me like we are lucky this hasn’t happened before. Of course it has, with SARS and even the 1918 flu pandemic, and there’s nothing here that says to me that this or something like it would not have happened (again) almost inevitably.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
Fair enough and each to their own. I live on the edge of a small Wiltshire town. I can walk to Waitrose in 15 minutes. I can be in the woods in 5. For me this is heaven.
Good morning everyone. Really looks like Spring this morning.
And Mr TT we retired to a similar sort of place in Essex almost 20 years ago and it was one of the best things we've ever done.
I wish we had family a bit nearer, but everyone local is very friendly and, as we get older, supportive.
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
A front line worker who is “in despair” about a politician claiming credit for a notable success probably has some underlying issues.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
Whether the report is right or not I don't agree with your analysis. I would have thought it was a common scenario of bosses taking credit for work done by employees and consequently depressing employees was a well known trait of a bad boss and not a flaw of the employee.
Except that's not the case here, the government have repeatedly thanked the NHS and said its a team effort (Hancock literally uses that phrase every time) but also the Guardian's grievance seeker is being illogical too.
They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
The NHS is responsible for the success, while the main barrier to success is outside the control of the NHS? Wouldn't that mean that the people who are responsible for addressing the main barrier deserve some credit? 🤔
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
A front line worker who is “in despair” about a politician claiming credit for a notable success probably has some underlying issues.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
Whether the report is right or not I don't agree with your analysis. I would have thought it was a common scenario of bosses taking credit for work done by employees and consequently depressing employees was a well known trait of a bad boss and not a flaw of the employee.
Frustrating, irritating, depressing - all reasonable words.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
Honestly, more and more I keep wondering where this reputation for competency that Germany has got comes from.
It's the trains. I was always amazed that despite trains travelling across the continent they were almost never late. I was once waiting for a delayed(!) train that came between 1 and 2 minutes late and people were looking at watches and staring in disbelief after about 30 seconds it was the most German thing I saw whilst living there.
Take a look at the recent reliability stats for DB; it’s a myth nowadays that they always run on time. I had a significant delay on an ICE in 2019 and the looks of the travellers during the announcement were of the same resigned ‘not againness’ that you’d find inside any tube carriage.
To be fair I was talking about the late 1990s so it may have still been true at that stage. I talked to some of my colleagues about it and they struggled with my question about how the trains that ran across a continent were always on time. It was as if they always had done. My other overwhelming feeling when I was there was how similar the Germans are to us - I have been to France many times and it still feels kind of exotic. The strange foodstuffs, everyone going home for lunch, the real shop local bakery vibe, in contrast I felt the Germans were just like us!
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
Honestly, more and more I keep wondering where this reputation for competency that Germany has got comes from.
It's the trains. I was always amazed that despite trains travelling across the continent they were almost never late. I was once waiting for a delayed(!) train that came between 1 and 2 minutes late and people were looking at watches and staring in disbelief after about 30 seconds it was the most German thing I saw whilst living there.
Take a look at the recent reliability stats for DB; it’s a myth nowadays that they always run on time. I had a significant delay on an ICE in 2019 and the looks of the travellers during the announcement were of the same resigned ‘not againness’ that you’d find inside any tube carriage.
To be fair I was talking about the late 1990s so it may have still been true at that stage. I talked to some of my colleagues about it and they struggled with my question about how the trains that ran across a continent were always on time. It was as if they always had done. My other overwhelming feeling when I was there was how similar the Germans are to us - I have been to France many times and it still feels kind of exotic. The strange foodstuffs, everyone going home for lunch, the real shop local bakery vibe, in contrast I felt the Germans were just like us!
My experience of German trains a decade ago was not impressive. Not punctual and quite chaotic at times.
CNN) The coronavirus pandemic almost didn't happen, a new study shows.
Researchers working to show when and how the virus first emerged in China calculate that it probably did not infect the first human being until October 2019 at the very earliest. And their models showed something else: It almost didn't make it as a pandemic virus.
Only bad luck and the packed conditions of the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan -- the place the pandemic appears to have begun -- gave the virus the edge it needed to explode around the globe, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
"It was a perfect storm -- we know now that it had to catch a lucky break or two to actually firmly become established," Michael Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who worked on the study, told CNN. "If things had been just a tiny bit different, if that first person who brought that into the Huanan market had decided to not go that day, or even was too ill to go and just stayed at home, that or other early super-spreading events might not have occurred. We may never have even known about it."
The team employed molecular dating, using the rate of ongoing mutations to calculate how long the virus has been around. They also ran computer models to show when and how it could have spread, and how it did spread.
That almost reads to me like we are lucky this hasn’t happened before. Of course it has, with SARS and even the 1918 flu pandemic, and there’s nothing here that says to me that this or something like it would not have happened (again) almost inevitably.
Yes, luck comes into it and I guess species-jump viruses with pandemic potential die out all the time, often without anyone noticing. COVID was bursty but spread well enough that after a relatively small number of superspreader events the die was cast - whilst we were still on the normality bias that "flu kills many more" last January (guilty, but this will be right again, quite probably as soon as the next disease crisis), the experts privately alreafy had an inkling that the ease of spread in Wuhan meant we were likely on a wholly different path to SARS.
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
The piece is a 1000 words of salad complaining about nothing.
Worth noting: if Sturgeon goes that isn't necessarily bad for the SNP in May.
Can't agree on that one. A good number of SNP voters I've talked to do so primarily because they like and trust Sturgeon. Losing her will be a major blow to the SNP. A leadership contest is also likely to drown the SNP is a sea of bitter in-fighting.
But I think she'll try to tough it out by claiming to have just made a mistake, no sir, no lies, conspiracy or perjury here. Just a moment of fuzzy brain syndrome. And she may get away with it unless the Hamilton inquiry also finds against her. That would probably be the end.
Hard to believe a QC could not come to a clearer decision than the amateurs of the committee. She will brass neck it for sure but all she is doing now is stuffing the SNP and killing off any chance of a referendum in near future, not that she will hold one if she survives.
Well in theory the QE will be reversed in time, but nobody really believes that.
All parties believe in just printing money now. There is no limit to how much we can debase the currency, though that has never been a good predictor of economic success.
There’s an overwhelming body of pre pandemic literature pointing out that what we are facing now was almost inevitable. From 2007 -
“The prospect of a superbug that could wipe out much of the human race sounds like the stuff of science-fiction novels, Hollywood movies or doomsday prophets. However, such a global pandemic might not be as unlikely as it seems—some would even go so far as to say that it is a certainty, with the only uncertainties being what pathogen will cause it, when it will happen and how well the world will cope. Although vaccinations and antibiotics have eliminated some of mankind's greatest foes and lulled society into believing that great plagues are a thing of the past, plenty of pathogens remain that are able to evade all known therapies”
“... the next strike could come from any direction, as shown by an epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002–2003, which was caused by a hitherto largely unknown and benign coronavirus.”
The last (large) city I was in was Munich, the concept of the EU makes plenty of sense when you're at the train station looking at the departure board there. It seemed a very liveable city too though these things are always hard to judge when you're a tourist there.
CNN) The coronavirus pandemic almost didn't happen, a new study shows.
Researchers working to show when and how the virus first emerged in China calculate that it probably did not infect the first human being until October 2019 at the very earliest. And their models showed something else: It almost didn't make it as a pandemic virus.
Only bad luck and the packed conditions of the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan -- the place the pandemic appears to have begun -- gave the virus the edge it needed to explode around the globe, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
"It was a perfect storm -- we know now that it had to catch a lucky break or two to actually firmly become established," Michael Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who worked on the study, told CNN. "If things had been just a tiny bit different, if that first person who brought that into the Huanan market had decided to not go that day, or even was too ill to go and just stayed at home, that or other early super-spreading events might not have occurred. We may never have even known about it."
The team employed molecular dating, using the rate of ongoing mutations to calculate how long the virus has been around. They also ran computer models to show when and how it could have spread, and how it did spread.
That almost reads to me like we are lucky this hasn’t happened before. Of course it has, with SARS and even the 1918 flu pandemic, and there’s nothing here that says to me that this or something like it would not have happened (again) almost inevitably.
Yes, luck comes into it and I guess species-jump viruses with pandemic potential die out all the time, often without anyone noticing. COVID was bursty but spread well enough that after a relatively small number of superspreader events the die was cast - whilst we were still on the normality bias that "flu kills many more" last January (guilty, but this will be right again, quite probably as soon as the next disease crisis), the experts privately alreafy had an inkling that the ease of spread in Wuhan meant we were likely on a wholly different path to SARS.
The odds were higher than I think the CNN piece suggests. With nearly 8 billion people on the planet a virus only has to get lucky with one of them.
The last (large) city I was in was Munich, the concept of the EU makes plenty of sense when you're at the train station looking at the departure board there. It seemed a very liveable city too though these things are always hard to judge when you're a tourist there.
I like Munich. The old town is great and has some good eating and drinking spots. The 'English Gardens' aren't very English, not least because they reputedly turn a blind eye to nude sunbathing there, although with the broken glass about I doubt it's that common there.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
Honestly, more and more I keep wondering where this reputation for competency that Germany has got comes from.
It's the trains. I was always amazed that despite trains travelling across the continent they were almost never late. I was once waiting for a delayed(!) train that came between 1 and 2 minutes late and people were looking at watches and staring in disbelief after about 30 seconds it was the most German thing I saw whilst living there.
Take a look at the recent reliability stats for DB; it’s a myth nowadays that they always run on time. I had a significant delay on an ICE in 2019 and the looks of the travellers during the announcement were of the same resigned ‘not againness’ that you’d find inside any tube carriage.
To be fair I was talking about the late 1990s so it may have still been true at that stage. I talked to some of my colleagues about it and they struggled with my question about how the trains that ran across a continent were always on time. It was as if they always had done. My other overwhelming feeling when I was there was how similar the Germans are to us - I have been to France many times and it still feels kind of exotic. The strange foodstuffs, everyone going home for lunch, the real shop local bakery vibe, in contrast I felt the Germans were just like us!
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
Honestly, more and more I keep wondering where this reputation for competency that Germany has got comes from.
It's the trains. I was always amazed that despite trains travelling across the continent they were almost never late. I was once waiting for a delayed(!) train that came between 1 and 2 minutes late and people were looking at watches and staring in disbelief after about 30 seconds it was the most German thing I saw whilst living there.
Take a look at the recent reliability stats for DB; it’s a myth nowadays that they always run on time. I had a significant delay on an ICE in 2019 and the looks of the travellers during the announcement were of the same resigned ‘not againness’ that you’d find inside any tube carriage.
To be fair I was talking about the late 1990s so it may have still been true at that stage. I talked to some of my colleagues about it and they struggled with my question about how the trains that ran across a continent were always on time. It was as if they always had done. My other overwhelming feeling when I was there was how similar the Germans are to us - I have been to France many times and it still feels kind of exotic. The strange foodstuffs, everyone going home for lunch, the real shop local bakery vibe, in contrast I felt the Germans were just like us!
My experience of German trains a decade ago was not impressive. Not punctual and quite chaotic at times.
When I first moved to Denmark I had imagined the trains were always on time - partly because the Copenhagen metro is usually pretty good - when I started commuting i quickly discovered the trains were rubbish - worse than when I used to commute into London. Like many things, some British people seem to imagine everyone else does stuff better than the UK - having lived in Belgium, Austria and now Denmark that has not been my experience of public transport.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
Honestly, more and more I keep wondering where this reputation for competency that Germany has got comes from.
It's the trains. I was always amazed that despite trains travelling across the continent they were almost never late. I was once waiting for a delayed(!) train that came between 1 and 2 minutes late and people were looking at watches and staring in disbelief after about 30 seconds it was the most German thing I saw whilst living there.
Take a look at the recent reliability stats for DB; it’s a myth nowadays that they always run on time. I had a significant delay on an ICE in 2019 and the looks of the travellers during the announcement were of the same resigned ‘not againness’ that you’d find inside any tube carriage.
To be fair I was talking about the late 1990s so it may have still been true at that stage. I talked to some of my colleagues about it and they struggled with my question about how the trains that ran across a continent were always on time. It was as if they always had done. My other overwhelming feeling when I was there was how similar the Germans are to us - I have been to France many times and it still feels kind of exotic. The strange foodstuffs, everyone going home for lunch, the real shop local bakery vibe, in contrast I felt the Germans were just like us!
My experience of German trains a decade ago was not impressive. Not punctual and quite chaotic at times.
The electronic booking system is efficient, but produces chaos as on the high speed trains booking isn't required, but is very sensible. Someone buying a ticket at the station at the last minute gets a seat reserved at the same time, the details transmitted automatically to the train and coming up on the LED display beside the seat. So you can be sitting in an unreserved seat that suddenly turns reserved seconds before someone turns up wanting it. One British couple on my train who hadn't reserved had to move seats three times and only got to sit together once.
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
A front line worker who is “in despair” about a politician claiming credit for a notable success probably has some underlying issues.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
Whether the report is right or not I don't agree with your analysis. I would have thought it was a common scenario of bosses taking credit for work done by employees and consequently depressing employees was a well known trait of a bad boss and not a flaw of the employee.
I haven't seen a lot of ministers taking credit although I watch a limited amount of TV nowadays. To be honest it hardly needs anything to be said as the joyous recipient s of the vaccine go around being happy and positive about it.
This is a typical guardian piece. The argument seemingly that the Government is not allowing for supply issues, but had hoped to be ahead of schedule, and now the supply issues will mean they are back on schedule. I can't see how that isn't them allowing for supply issues.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
Fair enough and each to their own. I live on the edge of a small Wiltshire town. I can walk to Waitrose in 15 minutes. I can be in the woods in 5. For me this is heaven.
I've moved to a largeish village in Aberdeenshire from Teesside suburbia. Although we live on a main road (A950) it is very quiet - I can step out of a lunchtime and see no people and no vehicles.
A few yards to my right is the "woody", a wooded area around a burn that leads out to open countryside.
I go into my (rather large) garden and there's half a dozen kinds of birds tweeting and sqwarking away. The coast you can see off in the distance if you walk 2 minutes up the hill, we have the rugged and craggy north coast or the flat beaches and dunes of the east coast 15 minutes away. As well as cairns, ruined castles, the cliff-nestled Local Hero village of Pennan all on our doorstep. It's warmer and drier than average. It's *bliss*.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
Honestly, more and more I keep wondering where this reputation for competency that Germany has got comes from.
It's the trains. I was always amazed that despite trains travelling across the continent they were almost never late. I was once waiting for a delayed(!) train that came between 1 and 2 minutes late and people were looking at watches and staring in disbelief after about 30 seconds it was the most German thing I saw whilst living there.
Take a look at the recent reliability stats for DB; it’s a myth nowadays that they always run on time. I had a significant delay on an ICE in 2019 and the looks of the travellers during the announcement were of the same resigned ‘not againness’ that you’d find inside any tube carriage.
To be fair I was talking about the late 1990s so it may have still been true at that stage. I talked to some of my colleagues about it and they struggled with my question about how the trains that ran across a continent were always on time. It was as if they always had done. My other overwhelming feeling when I was there was how similar the Germans are to us - I have been to France many times and it still feels kind of exotic. The strange foodstuffs, everyone going home for lunch, the real shop local bakery vibe, in contrast I felt the Germans were just like us!
My experience of German trains a decade ago was not impressive. Not punctual and quite chaotic at times.
The last EU compare-Europe figures are a few years old from 2014 - UK punctuality (within 5 minutes) was 90%, France was 91%, Germany was 93%.
According to the latest evaluation I have seen we are about 7-8th out of 25 systems, similar to the Netherlands - which is the decent sized continental country closest to UK in pop density etc. We are relatively weak on freight usage and fare levels. Top on safety.
I'm always amazed by still people furiously dissing UK railways. It seems to be based on unchecked assumptions.
2011. Does that pass the statute of limitations test? You know, like the one where posters defend Johnson because the Guppy conspiracy was thirty years ago.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
It certainly came into its own during the Plague, especially for my shielding husband (who, if this had all kicked off in 2010 rather than 2020, would've been marooned in Haringey, quite possibly with fatal consequences.)
London is - or, at any rate, was - a nice place to visit occasionally to do stuff. Why you'd actually want to live there (and pay an enormous premium for the privilege, at that,) is quite beyond me.
For many, work ties them to be in or near a city, and so people cling to a self-justification and can reel off the advantages of being near theatres and galleries and the rest, skipping over the minor detail that they hardly ever go there. I loved my time in London, but as you say have got just as much out if it going back as an occasional visitor, and would never want to go back and live there even if it were an economically neutral decision, which it most definitely isn’t.
Now that WFH has (or offers a chance that it might) freed many people from their geographical captivity, it is remarkable how for many of the middle aged the first thing they have done is flee the capital.
It will, of course, be interesting to see how home working develops long term once all the restrictions are gone. Quite apart from the fact that some jobs are bound to become fully remote and could therefore be done from anywhere, the hybrid model should also have another important effect: emptying out the trains enough to make commuting a lot more bearable. If you combine people working from home a couple of days a week and more flexible hours (so that those still travelling in and out of London and other cities don't all have to do so at the same time) then it's quite possible that everyone will be able to have a seat.
Nothing can improve the hot and filthy horror that is the Tube, but at least the railways should be more pleasant to use.
My organisation (100 staff) is genuinely unsure what we'll do - current vague guess is that we'll return to partial work on site "not before September", and I suppose there will then be talk of another winter spike so it might be next spring. What then? The lease runs another couple of years, so there's a big office standing more or less empty. But 80% of staff are comfortable wfh and relish the absence of commutes, not because Surrey trains are horrible but simply the difference of an hour or two of their lives every day. They want to end lockdown so they can meet friends etc., but almost nobody is pining to get back to the office. The hybrid idea of working in the office 1-2 days a week is seen as reasonable, but nobody has really worked out how that will work in practice - all on the same days (creating a crowd) or scattered over the week (missing the supposed advantages of having everyone at hand)?
In the absence of certainty, residential plans are hard to make. If we knew that we were wfh permanently, lots would be off like a shot to their favourite environment, potentially saving a fortune in rent (I pay exactly double what I paid for a virtually identical place in Nottingham). But if you do that and then find you need to go to work 1-2 days a week...
I'm not attached to the districts, but I am to the counties.
I'd only support it if, say, Hampshire County Council became the unitary.
Problem is it is fair that some counties, in themselves, probably are too big for single unitaries, but then you get into weird divisions of untiaries. Wiltshire and Swindon(Wiltshire) makes pretty decent sense, but others somewhat less so.
I'm attachhed to the counties too. But I don't necessarily see why counties should have to equal locak government units. What I really want is a sub-unit of the country that is consistent over time so that I can ask a question like 'list all the clubs who have ever been in the football leage whose home ground was in Cheshire' without having to go on a lengthy explanation of what I mean by Cheshire. This is not as trivial as it sounds.
The original plan back before 1974 was to completely scrap the administrative counties for local government, and have a single system of unitary authorities across England which would not map very closely at all to the old counties. The traditional counties would have been retained for geographical and ceremonial purposes but would have had no adminstrative rôle at all. That ended up being dropped as too radical, so we ended up with the fudged system of in many cases greatly altered counties that no-one has been happy with.
Ted Heath was never forgiven., in Herefordshire, for uniting Herefordshire and Worcestershire, under Worcester. Two ancient, proud but significantly different counties: Worcester much more urban, touching Brum, a bit boring but quite pretty, suburban - whereas Herefordshire was (and is) profoundly rural, poorer, very beautiful, bordering Wales
Stupidity in spades. Heath was such a tin-eared DICK
Emotional attachments to Counties have been on the decline since we stopped conscripting young men to county-based regiments to fight and die alongside each other in wars.
Quite wrong, and depends where you are.
Middlesex? sure. No one cares, it has disappeared. But Cornwall. Herefordshire, Lancs, Yorks, Cumbria, Northumberland, the Scottish border counties, Pembrokeshire, definitely. A real allegiance. Possibly also Sussex, Dorset, Kent, even Essex. Also Norfolk and Suffolk. And Lincs. People feel it. THIS IS MY COUNTY
Highland Scots feel VERY different from Glasgow and Edinburgh. Likewise Hebrideans, Orcadians, Shetlanders
It's not about which county, it's about which people.
By that I mean some people have a strong sense of attachment to their locality; others, not so much.
I have lived in Sussex, Bucks, Oxfordshire, Yorkshire and Dorset, each for periods of between 5 and 20 years. I liked living in all of them, but I can't say I feel strongly enough to protest if any of them were abolished as administrative areas. It's not as if the Weald, the Dales, or the Jurassic coast would disappear if the counties went.
Don't think Yorkshire has ever been a single administrative area. But it certainly has a regional identity.
They fear the power of a united Yorkshire! (We'd have our own Sturge, might even get our own Salmond in too so we can start up a soap opera...)
- Cornwall has overtaken London in frequency of property searches - "garage" is now the most popular search term
Idly house hunting at the moment and a trend that has amused/bemused me is the retention of built-in 'garages' in houses. Most of the garage has been converted to another room, but a 1-1.5m long bit is left at the front with a garage door and still described as a garage. I know very few people keep cars in garages nowadays, but 'cupboard' is a more appropriate name.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
Interesting graphic from the FT. If you really like megacities, then Europe is not the place to be:
Personally, While I enjoy country life, a commute of less than half an hour to the city is fine. I want to live near a University city when I retire, it adds so much culturally and intellectually to life.
When I first moved to Denmark I had imagined the trains were always on time - partly because the Copenhagen metro is usually pretty good - when I started commuting i quickly discovered the trains were rubbish - worse than when I used to commute into London. Like many things, some British people seem to imagine everyone else does stuff better than the UK - having lived in Belgium, Austria and now Denmark that has not been my experience of public transport.
Swiss public transport really is as good as its reputation - not just trains but also trams and buses. If the tram was more than 2 minutes late you would start thinking about possible accidents.
But we all judge public transport by a different standard to private cars for some reason. If I get held up in traffic and arrive at a meeting 20 minutes late, everyone thinks that's just part of life, but if a train is 10 minutes late everyone fumes. And yet in a car one has the (false) perception that it's more under our control. 'Tis odd.
The first sentence of the German health ministry's message to reassure people about AstraZeneca says that the EMA will "publish a warning about it" but recommend to continue its use. They argue that stopping and starting vaccinations shows people that they should trust it.
Honestly, more and more I keep wondering where this reputation for competency that Germany has got comes from.
It's the trains. I was always amazed that despite trains travelling across the continent they were almost never late. I was once waiting for a delayed(!) train that came between 1 and 2 minutes late and people were looking at watches and staring in disbelief after about 30 seconds it was the most German thing I saw whilst living there.
Take a look at the recent reliability stats for DB; it’s a myth nowadays that they always run on time. I had a significant delay on an ICE in 2019 and the looks of the travellers during the announcement were of the same resigned ‘not againness’ that you’d find inside any tube carriage.
To be fair I was talking about the late 1990s so it may have still been true at that stage. I talked to some of my colleagues about it and they struggled with my question about how the trains that ran across a continent were always on time. It was as if they always had done. My other overwhelming feeling when I was there was how similar the Germans are to us - I have been to France many times and it still feels kind of exotic. The strange foodstuffs, everyone going home for lunch, the real shop local bakery vibe, in contrast I felt the Germans were just like us!
My experience of German trains a decade ago was not impressive. Not punctual and quite chaotic at times.
When I first moved to Denmark I had imagined the trains were always on time - partly because the Copenhagen metro is usually pretty good - when I started commuting i quickly discovered the trains were rubbish - worse than when I used to commute into London. Like many things, some British people seem to imagine everyone else does stuff better than the UK - having lived in Belgium, Austria and now Denmark that has not been my experience of public transport.
Whenever I go near French transport system there always seems to be a massive strike.
I don't know whether this is correlation or causation.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
It certainly came into its own during the Plague, especially for my shielding husband (who, if this had all kicked off in 2010 rather than 2020, would've been marooned in Haringey, quite possibly with fatal consequences.)
London is - or, at any rate, was - a nice place to visit occasionally to do stuff. Why you'd actually want to live there (and pay an enormous premium for the privilege, at that,) is quite beyond me.
For many, work ties them to be in or near a city, and so people cling to a self-justification and can reel off the advantages of being near theatres and galleries and the rest, skipping over the minor detail that they hardly ever go there. I loved my time in London, but as you say have got just as much out if it going back as an occasional visitor, and would never want to go back and live there even if it were an economically neutral decision, which it most definitely isn’t.
Now that WFH has (or offers a chance that it might) freed many people from their geographical captivity, it is remarkable how for many of the middle aged the first thing they have done is flee the capital.
It will, of course, be interesting to see how home working develops long term once all the restrictions are gone. Quite apart from the fact that some jobs are bound to become fully remote and could therefore be done from anywhere, the hybrid model should also have another important effect: emptying out the trains enough to make commuting a lot more bearable. If you combine people working from home a couple of days a week and more flexible hours (so that those still travelling in and out of London and other cities don't all have to do so at the same time) then it's quite possible that everyone will be able to have a seat.
Nothing can improve the hot and filthy horror that is the Tube, but at least the railways should be more pleasant to use.
My organisation (100 staff) is genuinely unsure what we'll do - current vague guess is that we'll return to partial work on site "not before September", and I suppose there will then be talk of another winter spike so it might be next spring. What then? The lease runs another couple of years, so there's a big office standing more or less empty. But 80% of staff are comfortable wfh and relish the absence of commutes, not because Surrey trains are horrible but simply the difference of an hour or two of their lives every day. They want to end lockdown so they can meet friends etc., but almost nobody is pining to get back to the office. The hybrid idea of working in the office 1-2 days a week is seen as reasonable, but nobody has really worked out how that will work in practice - all on the same days (creating a crowd) or scattered over the week (missing the supposed advantages of having everyone at hand)?
In the absence of certainty, residential plans are hard to make. If we knew that we were wfh permanently, lots would be off like a shot to their favourite environment, potentially saving a fortune in rent (I pay exactly double what I paid for a virtually identical place in Nottingham). But if you do that and then find you need to go to work 1-2 days a week...
Could the HQ perhaps move somewhere outside the South-East?
(Sorry for previous post wording - I seem Yoda to be channelling.)
FTTP plan has been announced, looks okay. It's been significantly watered down compared to what Johnson originally announced, can't say I am surprised by that
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
FTTP plan has been announced, looks okay. It's been significantly watered down compared to what Johnson originally announced, can't say I am surprised by that
This news item seems to have had far less traction that it should. Major move forward for UK. We are running late on broadband and need to catch up.
Am I alone in thinking thank God Paul Dacre hasn't yet taken over at OfCom? What would he have decided on fibre? Does he know the first thing about this new invention 'The Internet'?
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
When was the last time you went to a nightclub?
You like cities because of their sociopolitical vibe. Not because you go clubbing: you play board games for fun.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
It certainly came into its own during the Plague, especially for my shielding husband (who, if this had all kicked off in 2010 rather than 2020, would've been marooned in Haringey, quite possibly with fatal consequences.)
London is - or, at any rate, was - a nice place to visit occasionally to do stuff. Why you'd actually want to live there (and pay an enormous premium for the privilege, at that,) is quite beyond me.
For many, work ties them to be in or near a city, and so people cling to a self-justification and can reel off the advantages of being near theatres and galleries and the rest, skipping over the minor detail that they hardly ever go there. I loved my time in London, but as you say have got just as much out if it going back as an occasional visitor, and would never want to go back and live there even if it were an economically neutral decision, which it most definitely isn’t.
Now that WFH has (or offers a chance that it might) freed many people from their geographical captivity, it is remarkable how for many of the middle aged the first thing they have done is flee the capital.
It will, of course, be interesting to see how home working develops long term once all the restrictions are gone. Quite apart from the fact that some jobs are bound to become fully remote and could therefore be done from anywhere, the hybrid model should also have another important effect: emptying out the trains enough to make commuting a lot more bearable. If you combine people working from home a couple of days a week and more flexible hours (so that those still travelling in and out of London and other cities don't all have to do so at the same time) then it's quite possible that everyone will be able to have a seat.
Nothing can improve the hot and filthy horror that is the Tube, but at least the railways should be more pleasant to use.
My organisation (100 staff) is genuinely unsure what we'll do - current vague guess is that we'll return to partial work on site "not before September", and I suppose there will then be talk of another winter spike so it might be next spring. What then? The lease runs another couple of years, so there's a big office standing more or less empty. But 80% of staff are comfortable wfh and relish the absence of commutes, not because Surrey trains are horrible but simply the difference of an hour or two of their lives every day. They want to end lockdown so they can meet friends etc., but almost nobody is pining to get back to the office. The hybrid idea of working in the office 1-2 days a week is seen as reasonable, but nobody has really worked out how that will work in practice - all on the same days (creating a crowd) or scattered over the week (missing the supposed advantages of having everyone at hand)?
In the absence of certainty, residential plans are hard to make. If we knew that we were wfh permanently, lots would be off like a shot to their favourite environment, potentially saving a fortune in rent (I pay exactly double what I paid for a virtually identical place in Nottingham). But if you do that and then find you need to go to work 1-2 days a week...
What everyone I talk to is agreed on is this - remove working is more efficient that office working when you need to meet with people from other companies. Instead of a day travelling for a single meeting you can have several meetings with people in different places and get other work done as well.
Face-to-face is important - I'll have a week long road trip getting round our various partners and contractors once we're unlocked to finally meet them. But there's no need to do face to face by default any more. Its just too bloody slow compared to getting everyone together on a screen.
I've got eight cars, enough bits to make another eight, twenty bikes, enough bits to make another twenty and two motorbikes so unless I come into oligarch money it's country living for me - split between Zumerzet and Bretagne.
I would like an apartment on La Canebière in Marseille but Mrs DA does not share my deep and abiding love of la cité phocéenne.
FTTP plan has been announced, looks okay. It's been significantly watered down compared to what Johnson originally announced, can't say I am surprised by that
This news item seems to have had far less traction that it should. Major move forward for UK. We are running late on broadband and need to catch up.
Am I alone in thinking thank God Paul Dacre hasn't yet taken over at OfCom? What would he have decided on fibre? Does he know the first thing about this new invention 'The Internet'?
FTTP plan has been announced, looks okay. It's been significantly watered down compared to what Johnson originally announced, can't say I am surprised by that
This news item seems to have had far less traction that it should. Major move forward for UK. We are running late on broadband and need to catch up.
Am I alone in thinking thank God Paul Dacre hasn't yet taken over at OfCom? What would he have decided on fibre? Does he know the first thing about this new invention 'The Internet'?
Agree re Dacre.
It's a big step forward, there's a decent change of widespread FTTP coverage by 2024, albeit not universal.
But glad to see counties like Hampshire covered early on. Lots of rural properties who would benefit from a decent connection.
I'm not attached to the districts, but I am to the counties.
I'd only support it if, say, Hampshire County Council became the unitary.
Problem is it is fair that some counties, in themselves, probably are too big for single unitaries, but then you get into weird divisions of untiaries. Wiltshire and Swindon(Wiltshire) makes pretty decent sense, but others somewhat less so.
I'm attachhed to the counties too. But I don't necessarily see why counties should have to equal locak government units. What I really want is a sub-unit of the country that is consistent over time so that I can ask a question like 'list all the clubs who have ever been in the football leage whose home ground was in Cheshire' without having to go on a lengthy explanation of what I mean by Cheshire. This is not as trivial as it sounds.
The original plan back before 1974 was to completely scrap the administrative counties for local government, and have a single system of unitary authorities across England which would not map very closely at all to the old counties. The traditional counties would have been retained for geographical and ceremonial purposes but would have had no adminstrative rôle at all. That ended up being dropped as too radical, so we ended up with the fudged system of in many cases greatly altered counties that no-one has been happy with.
Ted Heath was never forgiven., in Herefordshire, for uniting Herefordshire and Worcestershire, under Worcester. Two ancient, proud but significantly different counties: Worcester much more urban, touching Brum, a bit boring but quite pretty, suburban - whereas Herefordshire was (and is) profoundly rural, poorer, very beautiful, bordering Wales
Stupidity in spades. Heath was such a tin-eared DICK
Emotional attachments to Counties have been on the decline since we stopped conscripting young men to county-based regiments to fight and die alongside each other in wars.
Notts is Nottingham City plus other Councils of around 100k each. Certainly here - North Notts - I get the impression that there is very much a local loyalty.
I would *detest* being run from Nottingham, 20 miles away - because I would be surprised if they gave a toss about us. They are horribly incompetent for some things, and barmy, self-obsessed control freaks in many areas - wasting 10s of millions.
Some strategic stuff - yes. But daily life - God, no. I'd take part in a Civil War to prevent that.
Suspect Derbyshire is similar. Running the Peaks from Derby, or Derby City from Matlock would be bizarre.
Meanwhile- good news from France. The latest Great Vaccines Farago hasn't harmed public confidence in the AZ vaccine (though it's still not great)- if anything, it's improved matters a bit.
So those in counties like Hampshire (I use them as it's an area I know well) will be prioritised if they are not covered by existing FTTP plans and/or commercial, so there's a non-zero chance some areas with currently slower connections get FTTP before the currently faster areas. That is the right approach IMHO.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
Not monoculture bungalow here either. Wide mix of age ranges; toddler playground just behind our house, Montessori nursery down the road. Wide mix of people in the pubs. Couple of very classy restuarants, plus two 'ethnic' ones and a chippy. Two bright young women run a pop-ip cinema once a month. Don't go to any clubs though; there's only a Conservative one!
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
I've been pondering whether my present home is OK for my later years, so have been looking at various options.
I simply could not bear one of these retirement complexes, surrounded only by oldish people. I like younger people around me.
FWIW, my town has a gallery, a museum, a cinema, restaurants of all cuisines (Turkish, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Italian etc), and a theatre. It also has a steam railway. It has Jane Austen's House. It has lovely country pubs, fantastic outside forests, adventure parks, rivers, ponds, biking trails, castles, old forts, stately homes, stunning landscapes all around it - I can explore our rich heritage at leisure - and I can get to beaches and the sea easily. I can do outside adventure sports. I can sit on a hill or beach by myself, and just think. Most of all I have space, peace and freedom.
If I wanted to do the Natural History museum, "see a show" or go clubbing (pushing 40 with kids, that's difficult) I'll simply get a train into London for the evening - or for a weekend mini break - as I would for any other big city.
Doesn't mean I'd want to live in the ghastly place.
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
A front line worker who is “in despair” about a politician claiming credit for a notable success probably has some underlying issues.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
Whether the report is right or not I don't agree with your analysis. I would have thought it was a common scenario of bosses taking credit for work done by employees and consequently depressing employees was a well known trait of a bad boss and not a flaw of the employee.
Except that's not the case here, the government have repeatedly thanked the NHS and said its a team effort (Hancock literally uses that phrase every time) but also the Guardian's grievance seeker is being illogical too.
They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
The NHS is responsible for the success, while the main barrier to success is outside the control of the NHS? Wouldn't that mean that the people who are responsible for addressing the main barrier deserve some credit? 🤔
Never said it was. I even made that point 'Whether the report is right or not'. I have no idea. Just commenting on Charles's point. It is not uncommon for staff to get depressed by Bosses taking all the credit. Often it is unjustified of the staff because they have no idea what the boss has been doing. It is a natural human reaction so I thought Charles's comment that there must be something wrong with the staff as unfair.
I was in London for a few years, in a few places - Clapham, City, Walthamstow, Gospel Oak, Chiswick Park, Chiswick Central, and it was always a surprise how relatively few people from the 'burbs ever spent time there.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
The idea that small towns and the countryside is "monocultural" is complete bollocks. It's a pompous superiority that's simply asserted by the sneering Mets.
My town is surrounded by nurseries, schools and colleges, with children of all ages. The community is mixed and of all ages and, yes, classes too. There are vibrant, dynamic and modern rural businesses all around us in the fields, and start ups in the towns. People are proud of their town, and rightly so.
Stay in your Labour addled cities, filled with decay and sullen noisy filthy urbanity. We don't want you here.
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
A front line worker who is “in despair” about a politician claiming credit for a notable success probably has some underlying issues.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
Whether the report is right or not I don't agree with your analysis. I would have thought it was a common scenario of bosses taking credit for work done by employees and consequently depressing employees was a well known trait of a bad boss and not a flaw of the employee.
Frustrating, irritating, depressing - all reasonable words.
“In despair” is not. It’s a poor use of language.
That is just dancing on a pin head. It is the word being used at the time and people who are fed up (whether justifiable or not) tend to exaggerate.
I've got eight cars, enough bits to make another eight, twenty bikes, enough bits to make another twenty and two motorbikes so unless I come into oligarch money it's country living for me - split between Zumerzet and Bretagne.
I would like an apartment on La Canebière in Marseille but Mrs DA does not share my deep and abiding love of la cité phocéenne.
Genuine question: how do you accommodate (still less afford) all of that?
Meanwhile, senior health service figures told the Guardian that staff delivering the vaccines were “demoralised” and “in despair”, with ministers “constantly moving the goalposts” by briefing that immunisation targets would be brought forward, while underplaying the risk of supply disruptions.
There was also “huge frustration” among family doctors running GP-led vaccination sites and bosses of hospitals managing mass vaccination centres that ministers were wrongly trying to claim credit for the success of the programme.
But personnel who are centrally involved in organising the vaccination drive are annoyed about media stories promising that people of a particular age will have their first dose ahead of previous expectations and that ministers have not been open with them or the public about the risk of interruptions to vaccine supply, such as the one that emerged this week.
Previously hidden tensions between the NHS and the government over the speed of the deployment and who deserves recognition have emerged in the wake of the dose shortage. The month-long slowdown has dashed government hopes of hitting the next milestone – immunising all the over-50s – well before the mid-April deadline ministers set themselves publicly.
One senior NHS leader said: “There is frustration that the politicians are very focused on political boasting about the success of the vaccine rollout and who’s going to get jabbed when, without taking into account the operational complexity of what that means. The risk is that these political boasting messages will create undue expectation over who can get their jab when, which risks overwhelming NHS staff who are already going as fast as they can. Staff are annoyed that the government seems obsessed with how things will play politically and in the media, but has no sense of the public health impact of such statements.”
Another senior NHS official said: “Frontline staff want ministers to stop over-promising and be more measured and more realistic, and just stick to the original plan of which groups would be vaccinated by when – all adults by the end of July, which would still be some achievement.
“Staff doing the vaccinations are demoralised and in despair about all this. They feel like they’re being set up to fail. They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
Guardian report critical of the government - in other news reports of bears defacating in woods and rumours of the Pope's Catholicity continue to grow.......
A front line worker who is “in despair” about a politician claiming credit for a notable success probably has some underlying issues.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
Whether the report is right or not I don't agree with your analysis. I would have thought it was a common scenario of bosses taking credit for work done by employees and consequently depressing employees was a well known trait of a bad boss and not a flaw of the employee.
I haven't seen a lot of ministers taking credit although I watch a limited amount of TV nowadays. To be honest it hardly needs anything to be said as the joyous recipient s of the vaccine go around being happy and positive about it.
This is a typical guardian piece. The argument seemingly that the Government is not allowing for supply issues, but had hoped to be ahead of schedule, and now the supply issues will mean they are back on schedule. I can't see how that isn't them allowing for supply issues.
See my reply to Philip. I wasn't commenting on the article or ministers or this event, but Charles's comment that there must be something wrong with these individuals. I thought that unfair as it is a normal human reaction whether justifiable or not.
When I first moved to Denmark I had imagined the trains were always on time - partly because the Copenhagen metro is usually pretty good - when I started commuting i quickly discovered the trains were rubbish - worse than when I used to commute into London. Like many things, some British people seem to imagine everyone else does stuff better than the UK - having lived in Belgium, Austria and now Denmark that has not been my experience of public transport.
Swiss public transport really is as good as its reputation - not just trains but also trams and buses. If the tram was more than 2 minutes late you would start thinking about possible accidents.
But we all judge public transport by a different standard to private cars for some reason. If I get held up in traffic and arrive at a meeting 20 minutes late, everyone thinks that's just part of life, but if a train is 10 minutes late everyone fumes. And yet in a car one has the (false) perception that it's more under our control. 'Tis odd.
It's not odd. Railways are a totally regulated and timetabled system that is centrally controlled on an entirely autonomous network.
Cars are a free for all on a road (admittedly with rules) but where everyone can pick a different type and make their own decisions.
You have more of a point with trams but most of those are grade separated these days.
I suspect, from what I know of Cameron, it was the jobs he was keen to save.
(Yes, I know, I would be considerably less apologetic on behalf of Johnson, had it been his name in the frame).
Has this broken any rules?
I think this looks whiffy in an old boys network sort of way, but I would expect Mr Cameron to be scrupulous in following rules about time periods between resignation and using old contacts etc, as he is a smooth operator.
And they seem to have reached the correct decision.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
It certainly came into its own during the Plague, especially for my shielding husband (who, if this had all kicked off in 2010 rather than 2020, would've been marooned in Haringey, quite possibly with fatal consequences.)
London is - or, at any rate, was - a nice place to visit occasionally to do stuff. Why you'd actually want to live there (and pay an enormous premium for the privilege, at that,) is quite beyond me.
For many, work ties them to be in or near a city, and so people cling to a self-justification and can reel off the advantages of being near theatres and galleries and the rest, skipping over the minor detail that they hardly ever go there. I loved my time in London, but as you say have got just as much out if it going back as an occasional visitor, and would never want to go back and live there even if it were an economically neutral decision, which it most definitely isn’t.
Now that WFH has (or offers a chance that it might) freed many people from their geographical captivity, it is remarkable how for many of the middle aged the first thing they have done is flee the capital.
It will, of course, be interesting to see how home working develops long term once all the restrictions are gone. Quite apart from the fact that some jobs are bound to become fully remote and could therefore be done from anywhere, the hybrid model should also have another important effect: emptying out the trains enough to make commuting a lot more bearable. If you combine people working from home a couple of days a week and more flexible hours (so that those still travelling in and out of London and other cities don't all have to do so at the same time) then it's quite possible that everyone will be able to have a seat.
Nothing can improve the hot and filthy horror that is the Tube, but at least the railways should be more pleasant to use.
My organisation (100 staff) is genuinely unsure what we'll do - current vague guess is that we'll return to partial work on site "not before September", and I suppose there will then be talk of another winter spike so it might be next spring. What then? The lease runs another couple of years, so there's a big office standing more or less empty. But 80% of staff are comfortable wfh and relish the absence of commutes, not because Surrey trains are horrible but simply the difference of an hour or two of their lives every day. They want to end lockdown so they can meet friends etc., but almost nobody is pining to get back to the office. The hybrid idea of working in the office 1-2 days a week is seen as reasonable, but nobody has really worked out how that will work in practice - all on the same days (creating a crowd) or scattered over the week (missing the supposed advantages of having everyone at hand)?
In the absence of certainty, residential plans are hard to make. If we knew that we were wfh permanently, lots would be off like a shot to their favourite environment, potentially saving a fortune in rent (I pay exactly double what I paid for a virtually identical place in Nottingham). But if you do that and then find you need to go to work 1-2 days a week...
Coupled with the crisis on the high street, commercial property is a sell right now.
- Cornwall has overtaken London in frequency of property searches - "garage" is now the most popular search term
Idly house hunting at the moment and a trend that has amused/bemused me is the retention of built-in 'garages' in houses. Most of the garage has been converted to another room, but a 1-1.5m long bit is left at the front with a garage door and still described as a garage. I know very few people keep cars in garages nowadays, but 'cupboard' is a more appropriate name.
The BBC suggested that people might be wanting garages in order to convert them into home offices.
I've got eight cars, enough bits to make another eight, twenty bikes, enough bits to make another twenty and two motorbikes so unless I come into oligarch money it's country living for me - split between Zumerzet and Bretagne.
I would like an apartment on La Canebière in Marseille but Mrs DA does not share my deep and abiding love of la cité phocéenne.
You need a mobile home somewhere, with the land about scattered with slowly rotting vehicles.
I'm not attached to the districts, but I am to the counties.
I'd only support it if, say, Hampshire County Council became the unitary.
Problem is it is fair that some counties, in themselves, probably are too big for single unitaries, but then you get into weird divisions of untiaries. Wiltshire and Swindon(Wiltshire) makes pretty decent sense, but others somewhat less so.
I'm attachhed to the counties too. But I don't necessarily see why counties should have to equal locak government units. What I really want is a sub-unit of the country that is consistent over time so that I can ask a question like 'list all the clubs who have ever been in the football leage whose home ground was in Cheshire' without having to go on a lengthy explanation of what I mean by Cheshire. This is not as trivial as it sounds.
The original plan back before 1974 was to completely scrap the administrative counties for local government, and have a single system of unitary authorities across England which would not map very closely at all to the old counties. The traditional counties would have been retained for geographical and ceremonial purposes but would have had no adminstrative rôle at all. That ended up being dropped as too radical, so we ended up with the fudged system of in many cases greatly altered counties that no-one has been happy with.
Ted Heath was never forgiven., in Herefordshire, for uniting Herefordshire and Worcestershire, under Worcester. Two ancient, proud but significantly different counties: Worcester much more urban, touching Brum, a bit boring but quite pretty, suburban - whereas Herefordshire was (and is) profoundly rural, poorer, very beautiful, bordering Wales
Stupidity in spades. Heath was such a tin-eared DICK
Emotional attachments to Counties have been on the decline since we stopped conscripting young men to county-based regiments to fight and die alongside each other in wars.
Notts is Nottingham City plus other Councils of around 100k each. Certainly here - North Notts - I get the impression that there is very much a local loyalty.
I would *detest* being run from Nottingham, 20 miles away - because I would be surprised if they gave a toss about us. They are horribly incompetent for some things, and barmy, self-obsessed control freaks in many areas - wasting 10s of millions.
Some strategic stuff - yes. But daily life - God, no. I'd take part in a Civil War to prevent that.
Suspect Derbyshire is similar. Running the Peaks from Derby, or Derby City from Matlock would be bizarre.
At a pinch you could split into maybe 3 areas.
Mansfield as a North Notts administrive centre would make sense. Not Newark, it's smaller than Worksop. What you'd do with Rushcliffe or Broxtowe I'm not sure, everywhere else fits in mind.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
The idea that small towns and the countryside is "monocultural" is complete bollocks. It's a pompous superiority that's simply asserted by the sneering Mets.
My town is surrounded by nurseries, schools and colleges, with children of all ages. The community is mixed and of all ages and, yes, classes too. There are vibrant, dynamic and modern rural businesses all around us in the fields, and start ups in the towns. People are proud of their town, and rightly so.
Stay in your Labour addled cities, filled with decay and sullen noisy filthy urbanity. We don't want you here.
Your prejudice is showing. I made no mention of ethnicity, though you did of ethnic restaurants. I also mentioned that I enjoy country life. I own a field and my neighbours are sheep!
My preference is for mixed communities of ages, interests and classes, I like both arts cinema and football, for example. For me the ideal place to live has people like me and lots of people unlike me. I don't like segregation.
I was watching Youtube yesterday when an ad came on I watched, not because it was good but because it was political and pretty awful so I thought it might be of interest to some here.
Because of the focus (American-style attack ad) on Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan I correctly guessed it was Brian Rose for mayor of London. Quite funny watching two minutes of him slagging them off for the COVID-19 response and relentlessly negativity then to hear him say he wouldn't use fear as a weapon.
I suspect it'll fall flat, but was slightly surprised to see such an ad.
I watched it through.
I thought he came across as a spiv from an Ealing Comedy with an added American-ish accent.
Sort of a cross between Arthur Daley and Paul Raymond.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
I've been pondering whether my present home is OK for my later years, so have been looking at various options.
I simply could not bear one of these retirement complexes, surrounded only by oldish people. I like younger people around me.
Just make sure you have space for one of these, when the stairs become too much:
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
The idea that small towns and the countryside is "monocultural" is complete bollocks. It's a pompous superiority that's simply asserted by the sneering Mets.
My town is surrounded by nurseries, schools and colleges, with children of all ages. The community is mixed and of all ages and, yes, classes too. There are vibrant, dynamic and modern rural businesses all around us in the fields, and start ups in the towns. People are proud of their town, and rightly so.
Stay in your Labour addled cities, filled with decay and sullen noisy filthy urbanity. We don't want you here.
Your prejudice is showing. I made no mention of ethnicity, though you did of ethnic restaurants.
My preference is for mixed communities of ages, interests and classes, I like both arts cinema and football, for example. For me the ideal place to live has people like me and lots of people unlike me. I don't like segregation.
I was responding to Nick Palmer saying there were no ethnic restaurants, dipstick. Not you.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
In all honesty, while I love the countryside and small towns, it's an idealised countryside and small towns that I love. Windermere. Clitheroe. Delamere Forest. If I had to live where most people in the small towns and villages live - Winsford, Burscough, Longtown - I expect I would feel very different. That doesn't change what I said about the loyalty being to the county rather than the city though.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
The idea that small towns and the countryside is "monocultural" is complete bollocks. It's a pompous superiority that's simply asserted by the sneering Mets.
My town is surrounded by nurseries, schools and colleges, with children of all ages. The community is mixed and of all ages and, yes, classes too. There are vibrant, dynamic and modern rural businesses all around us in the fields, and start ups in the towns. People are proud of their town, and rightly so.
Stay in your Labour addled cities, filled with decay and sullen noisy filthy urbanity. We don't want you here.
Your prejudice is showing. I made no mention of ethnicity, though you did of ethnic restaurants. I also mentioned that I enjoy country life. I own a field and my neighbours are sheep!
My preference is for mixed communities of ages, interests and classes, I like both arts cinema and football, for example. For me the ideal place to live has people like me and lots of people unlike me. I don't like segregation.
We have a semi=pro football team and a good standard cricket club. And both have a bar. Both friendly places.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
The idea that small towns and the countryside is "monocultural" is complete bollocks. It's a pompous superiority that's simply asserted by the sneering Mets.
My town is surrounded by nurseries, schools and colleges, with children of all ages. The community is mixed and of all ages and, yes, classes too. There are vibrant, dynamic and modern rural businesses all around us in the fields, and start ups in the towns. People are proud of their town, and rightly so.
Stay in your Labour addled cities, filled with decay and sullen noisy filthy urbanity. We don't want you here.
Your prejudice is showing. I made no mention of ethnicity, though you did of ethnic restaurants.
My preference is for mixed communities of ages, interests and classes, I like both arts cinema and football, for example. For me the ideal place to live has people like me and lots of people unlike me. I don't like segregation.
I was responding to Nick Palmer saying there were no ethnic restaurants, dipstick. Not you.
That's your prejudice showing. Not mine.
How do you manage to be apoplectic so early in the morning?
No one seems to hate their countrymen as much as a supposed patriot.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
I've been pondering whether my present home is OK for my later years, so have been looking at various options.
I simply could not bear one of these retirement complexes, surrounded only by oldish people. I like younger people around me.
Just make sure you have space for one of these, when the stairs become too much:
That's one of my top 3 pieces of advice to self-builders. Provision for a lift or downstairs annex.
The other two are walk-in showers big enough to put a garden chair in.
And stairs that are 35 degrees not 42 degrees, which are surrepticiously relaxing and will give you an extra 5-10 years of getting upstairs when you are decrepit.
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
I have the precise opposite view to you.
I'm with rcs - for work reasons live in a quiet lane in Godalming, a small town which has supermarkets and estate agents as the most prominent businesses. There's nothing wrong with it but there was very little to do even pre-pandemic - no cinema, no night clubs, no galleries, few concerts, few ethnic restaurants, one amateur theatre. I miss Holloway a lot and hope to retire to a city in due course.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
How you septuagenarians cope without local night clubs is beyond my comprehension.
--AS
No monoculture bungalow heaven for me either. While I may never go to a nightclub again, living in a place with one does add vibrancy, and keeps the youngsters about. I like living in a mixed community of ages and classes
I've been pondering whether my present home is OK for my later years, so have been looking at various options.
I simply could not bear one of these retirement complexes, surrounded only by oldish people. I like younger people around me.
Just make sure you have space for one of these, when the stairs become too much:
I'd need two of them! I'm already joking about building a bridge between the north and south wings - there's a mid stairs landing then 3 stairs up to the north and 5 stairs up to the south...
As an aside, I loathe both the countryside and small towns.
I really can't see why anyone would want to live in a place with less than about half a million people.
It certainly came into its own during the Plague, especially for my shielding husband (who, if this had all kicked off in 2010 rather than 2020, would've been marooned in Haringey, quite possibly with fatal consequences.)
London is - or, at any rate, was - a nice place to visit occasionally to do stuff. Why you'd actually want to live there (and pay an enormous premium for the privilege, at that,) is quite beyond me.
For many, work ties them to be in or near a city, and so people cling to a self-justification and can reel off the advantages of being near theatres and galleries and the rest, skipping over the minor detail that they hardly ever go there. I loved my time in London, but as you say have got just as much out if it going back as an occasional visitor, and would never want to go back and live there even if it were an economically neutral decision, which it most definitely isn’t.
Now that WFH has (or offers a chance that it might) freed many people from their geographical captivity, it is remarkable how for many of the middle aged the first thing they have done is flee the capital.
It will, of course, be interesting to see how home working develops long term once all the restrictions are gone. Quite apart from the fact that some jobs are bound to become fully remote and could therefore be done from anywhere, the hybrid model should also have another important effect: emptying out the trains enough to make commuting a lot more bearable. If you combine people working from home a couple of days a week and more flexible hours (so that those still travelling in and out of London and other cities don't all have to do so at the same time) then it's quite possible that everyone will be able to have a seat.
Nothing can improve the hot and filthy horror that is the Tube, but at least the railways should be more pleasant to use.
My organisation (100 staff) is genuinely unsure what we'll do - current vague guess is that we'll return to partial work on site "not before September", and I suppose there will then be talk of another winter spike so it might be next spring. What then? The lease runs another couple of years, so there's a big office standing more or less empty. But 80% of staff are comfortable wfh and relish the absence of commutes, not because Surrey trains are horrible but simply the difference of an hour or two of their lives every day. They want to end lockdown so they can meet friends etc., but almost nobody is pining to get back to the office. The hybrid idea of working in the office 1-2 days a week is seen as reasonable, but nobody has really worked out how that will work in practice - all on the same days (creating a crowd) or scattered over the week (missing the supposed advantages of having everyone at hand)?
In the absence of certainty, residential plans are hard to make. If we knew that we were wfh permanently, lots would be off like a shot to their favourite environment, potentially saving a fortune in rent (I pay exactly double what I paid for a virtually identical place in Nottingham). But if you do that and then find you need to go to work 1-2 days a week...
What everyone I talk to is agreed on is this - remove working is more efficient that office working when you need to meet with people from other companies. Instead of a day travelling for a single meeting you can have several meetings with people in different places and get other work done as well.
Face-to-face is important - I'll have a week long road trip getting round our various partners and contractors once we're unlocked to finally meet them. But there's no need to do face to face by default any more. Its just too bloody slow compared to getting everyone together on a screen.
The biggest single advantave weve found is no longer having to book a meeting room. Which used to be nigh on impossible. Ideally (for me) we'll have two days a week in the office when we go back. Our team will designate (say) Monday and Tuesday as 'our' days; another team - ideally one we don't have to interact with much - will have Wednesday and Thursday. If people want to come into the office on other days, that's fine, but no expectation to. The biggest practical difficulty I can see is interaction where there is a mix between people physically present and people who are at home. The technology there doesn't seem to work that well yet. Even that though is going to have big changes for city centres.
It’s worth remembering at this stage that masks were strictly Not Allowed when reviewing patients, unless they had either tested positive or had symptoms, and had also recently returned from China, Italy or Iran. When we were assessing our Italian patient in A&E, we were told sternly to remove our masks, lest we “scare the patients and other staff”.
We called down to the hospital housekeeping department to try and at least arrange a deep clean of our office, but were told that hospital housekeeping teams are not responsible for doctors’ offices, since they are “non-clinical areas”, and that if we wanted it cleaned we’d have to do it ourselves, on top of 13-hour days on Covid wards.
This was a common theme in the early days: Get The Patients Out Of Hospital At Any Cost. It was the same thinking that led to tens of thousands of preventable deaths in care homes via infected hospital patients.
But when even those stocks began to run low, the guidance on mask requirement changed — it’s funny how masks are suddenly “required” in fewer situations when supplies run low. TV cameras were always directed at ICU, where PPE was prioritised, and whose teams ended up with the lowest infection rates as a result. We on the regular Covid wards were never shown on the news with our flimsy plastic aprons and surgical masks
We had the feeling that both staff and patients were being viewed as expendables, and the most important thing was to avoid headlines about ICUs overloading. This is why we discharged Covid-positive patients to care homes, and why we also handed out huge numbers of Do Not Resuscitate orders for older-but-healthy people, who once might have been given a fighting chance but who now risked overwhelming the system.
Comments
Nothing can improve the hot and filthy horror that is the Tube, but at least the railways should be more pleasant to use.
Researchers working to show when and how the virus first emerged in China calculate that it probably did not infect the first human being until October 2019 at the very earliest. And their models showed something else: It almost didn't make it as a pandemic virus.
Only bad luck and the packed conditions of the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan -- the place the pandemic appears to have begun -- gave the virus the edge it needed to explode around the globe, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
"It was a perfect storm -- we know now that it had to catch a lucky break or two to actually firmly become established," Michael Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who worked on the study, told CNN. "If things had been just a tiny bit different, if that first person who brought that into the Huanan market had decided to not go that day, or even was too ill to go and just stayed at home, that or other early super-spreading events might not have occurred. We may never have even known about it."
The team employed molecular dating, using the rate of ongoing mutations to calculate how long the virus has been around. They also ran computer models to show when and how it could have spread, and how it did spread.
That’s not a balanced response
Alternatively - more likely - it’s crappy journalism by someone with a limited vocabulary
It’s governments and health authorities who have failed, massively, on that score.
It’s far from a unique occurrence - though in this case the particular virus had better odds than most.
Or, never let a good crisis go to waste.
Good morning, everybody.
And Mr TT we retired to a similar sort of place in Essex almost 20 years ago and it was one of the best things we've ever done.
I wish we had family a bit nearer, but everyone local is very friendly and, as we get older, supportive.
- Cornwall has overtaken London in frequency of property searches
- "garage" is now the most popular search term
They resent people like Matt Hancock claiming credit for the rollout when it’s the NHS that’s responsible for its success. The main barrier to speeding up the rollout is vaccine supply, which is completely outside the control of GPs and the NHS.
The NHS is responsible for the success, while the main barrier to success is outside the control of the NHS? Wouldn't that mean that the people who are responsible for addressing the main barrier deserve some credit? 🤔
Morning all.
“In despair” is not. It’s a poor use of language.
https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1372805557803909120?s=19
£450 billion in Quantitative Easing this year.
So has there actually been any net borrowing?
All parties believe in just printing money now. There is no limit to how much we can debase the currency, though that has never been a good predictor of economic success.
“The prospect of a superbug that could wipe out much of the human race sounds like the stuff of science-fiction novels, Hollywood movies or doomsday prophets. However, such a global pandemic might not be as unlikely as it seems—some would even go so far as to say that it is a certainty, with the only uncertainties being what pathogen will cause it, when it will happen and how well the world will cope. Although vaccinations and antibiotics have eliminated some of mankind's greatest foes and lulled society into believing that great plagues are a thing of the past, plenty of pathogens remain that are able to evade all known therapies”
“... the next strike could come from any direction, as shown by an epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002–2003, which was caused by a hitherto largely unknown and benign coronavirus.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2002527/
The dramatic shift to private rented over the last couple of decades has changed London significantly.
It's just as well we don't all want to live in the same place, of course!
This is a typical guardian piece. The argument seemingly that the Government is not allowing for supply issues, but had hoped to be ahead of schedule, and now the supply issues will mean they are back on schedule. I can't see how that isn't them allowing for supply issues.
A few yards to my right is the "woody", a wooded area around a burn that leads out to open countryside.
I go into my (rather large) garden and there's half a dozen kinds of birds tweeting and sqwarking away. The coast you can see off in the distance if you walk 2 minutes up the hill, we have the rugged and craggy north coast or the flat beaches and dunes of the east coast 15 minutes away. As well as cairns, ruined castles, the cliff-nestled Local Hero village of Pennan all on our doorstep. It's warmer and drier than average. It's *bliss*.
According to the latest evaluation I have seen we are about 7-8th out of 25 systems, similar to the Netherlands - which is the decent sized continental country closest to UK in pop density etc. We are relatively weak on freight usage and fare levels. Top on safety.
I'm always amazed by still people furiously dissing UK railways. It seems to be based on unchecked assumptions.
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/transportation-travel-tourism-2017-european-railway-performance-index
In the absence of certainty, residential plans are hard to make. If we knew that we were wfh permanently, lots would be off like a shot to their favourite environment, potentially saving a fortune in rent (I pay exactly double what I paid for a virtually identical place in Nottingham). But if you do that and then find you need to go to work 1-2 days a week...
It would be interesting
--AS
Personally, While I enjoy country life, a commute of less than half an hour to the city is fine. I want to live near a University city when I retire, it adds so much culturally and intellectually to life.
But we all judge public transport by a different standard to private cars for some reason. If I get held up in traffic and arrive at a meeting 20 minutes late, everyone thinks that's just part of life, but if a train is 10 minutes late everyone fumes. And yet in a car one has the (false) perception that it's more under our control. 'Tis odd.
I don't know whether this is correlation or causation.
I was in London for 6 or 7 years n Could the HQ perhaps move somewhere outside the South-East?
(Sorry for previous post wording - I seem Yoda to be channelling.)
Am I alone in thinking thank God Paul Dacre hasn't yet taken over at OfCom? What would he have decided on fibre? Does he know the first thing about this new invention 'The Internet'?
(Yes, I know, I would be considerably less apologetic on behalf of Johnson, had it been his name in the frame).
You like cities because of their sociopolitical vibe. Not because you go clubbing: you play board games for fun.
Face-to-face is important - I'll have a week long road trip getting round our various partners and contractors once we're unlocked to finally meet them. But there's no need to do face to face by default any more. Its just too bloody slow compared to getting everyone together on a screen.
I would like an apartment on La Canebière in Marseille but Mrs DA does not share my deep and abiding love of la cité phocéenne.
It's a big step forward, there's a decent change of widespread FTTP coverage by 2024, albeit not universal.
But glad to see counties like Hampshire covered early on. Lots of rural properties who would benefit from a decent connection.
I would *detest* being run from Nottingham, 20 miles away - because I would be surprised if they gave a toss about us. They are horribly incompetent for some things, and barmy, self-obsessed control freaks in many areas - wasting 10s of millions.
Some strategic stuff - yes. But daily life - God, no. I'd take part in a Civil War to prevent that.
Suspect Derbyshire is similar. Running the Peaks from Derby, or Derby City from Matlock would be bizarre.
At a pinch you could split into maybe 3 areas.
https://twitter.com/harrisint_fr/status/1372679558995009538?s=20
and in particular,
https://twitter.com/harrisint_fr/status/1372679600959012865?s=20
Checking a potential problem properly reassures people? Whodathunkit.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/971088/Project_Gigabit__PHASE_ONE_DELIVERY_PLAN_v2.pdf
So those in counties like Hampshire (I use them as it's an area I know well) will be prioritised if they are not covered by existing FTTP plans and/or commercial, so there's a non-zero chance some areas with currently slower connections get FTTP before the currently faster areas. That is the right approach IMHO.
Two bright young women run a pop-ip cinema once a month.
Don't go to any clubs though; there's only a Conservative one!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9378407/Britain-secret-talks-AstraZeneca-jabs-India-track.html
I simply could not bear one of these retirement complexes, surrounded only by oldish people. I like younger people around me.
If I wanted to do the Natural History museum, "see a show" or go clubbing (pushing 40 with kids, that's difficult) I'll simply get a train into London for the evening - or for a weekend mini break - as I would for any other big city.
Doesn't mean I'd want to live in the ghastly place.
My town is surrounded by nurseries, schools and colleges, with children of all ages. The community is mixed and of all ages and, yes, classes too. There are vibrant, dynamic and modern rural businesses all around us in the fields, and start ups in the towns. People are proud of their town, and rightly so.
Stay in your Labour addled cities, filled with decay and sullen noisy filthy urbanity. We don't want you here.
How big is your house?
Cars are a free for all on a road (admittedly with rules) but where everyone can pick a different type and make their own decisions.
You have more of a point with trams but most of those are grade separated these days.
I think this looks whiffy in an old boys network sort of way, but I would expect Mr Cameron to be scrupulous in following rules about time periods between resignation and using old contacts etc, as he is a smooth operator.
And they seem to have reached the correct decision.
What you'd do with Rushcliffe or Broxtowe I'm not sure, everywhere else fits in mind.
My preference is for mixed communities of ages, interests and classes, I like both arts cinema and football, for example. For me the ideal place to live has people like me and lots of people unlike me. I don't like segregation.
I thought he came across as a spiv from an Ealing Comedy with an added American-ish accent.
Sort of a cross between Arthur Daley and Paul Raymond.
https://www.stiltz.co.uk/
That's your prejudice showing. Not mine.
https://twitter.com/foxinsoxuk/status/1372834650058543105?s=19
https://twitter.com/AmbColonna/status/1372827922705362944
No one seems to hate their countrymen as much as a supposed patriot.
The other two are walk-in showers big enough to put a garden chair in.
And stairs that are 35 degrees not 42 degrees, which are surrepticiously relaxing and will give you an extra 5-10 years of getting upstairs when you are decrepit.
Ideally (for me) we'll have two days a week in the office when we go back. Our team will designate (say) Monday and Tuesday as 'our' days; another team - ideally one we don't have to interact with much - will have Wednesday and Thursday. If people want to come into the office on other days, that's fine, but no expectation to.
The biggest practical difficulty I can see is interaction where there is a mix between people physically present and people who are at home. The technology there doesn't seem to work that well yet.
Even that though is going to have big changes for city centres.
We called down to the hospital housekeeping department to try and at least arrange a deep clean of our office, but were told that hospital housekeeping teams are not responsible for doctors’ offices, since they are “non-clinical areas”, and that if we wanted it cleaned we’d have to do it ourselves, on top of 13-hour days on Covid wards.
This was a common theme in the early days: Get The Patients Out Of Hospital At Any Cost. It was the same thinking that led to tens of thousands of preventable deaths in care homes via infected hospital patients.
But when even those stocks began to run low, the guidance on mask requirement changed — it’s funny how masks are suddenly “required” in fewer situations when supplies run low. TV cameras were always directed at ICU, where PPE was prioritised, and whose teams ended up with the lowest infection rates as a result. We on the regular Covid wards were never shown on the news with our flimsy plastic aprons and surgical masks
We had the feeling that both staff and patients were being viewed as expendables, and the most important thing was to avoid headlines about ICUs overloading. This is why we discharged Covid-positive patients to care homes, and why we also handed out huge numbers of Do Not Resuscitate orders for older-but-healthy people, who once might have been given a fighting chance but who now risked overwhelming the system.
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