Re: domestic vaccination passports. It seems to me absolutely astonishing (and scary) the seeming blithe acceptance by many of the inevitability of this idea. Labour's position even seems to be that it isn't fair to leave the decision to pubs etc, so it actually has to be made mandatory!
This would be the biggest imposition on civil liberties in UK history (and don't give me all this - "well if you don't want to go out in public, that's your choice nonsense"). The issue isn't even whether people should be de facto forced into getting vaccinated. What people are talking about is a digital passport which will, in effect, track you whenever you enter a crowded public space. This is beyond even the idea of (paper) ID cards, where at least there is no clear trail of where you've been. It is a severe curtailment of the rights of the vaccinated, as well of those who opt out. Just think what the authorities could do with this if they so wished...
And i really am struggling to understand what the supposed health benefit payoff is supposed to be. Either the vaccine works, in which case the vast majority of the population being vaccinated means they present no risk to others, and others pose no risk to them. And in the vaccinated numbers we are talking about there would be overwhelming herd immunity preventing any occasional transmission to or from unvaccinated people having no particular effect on public health as a whole. So for those who want to remain unvaccinated, it really is largely a personal choice.
Or alternatively (god forbid) the vaccines don't work as hoped. In which case the whole point supposed point of a vaccine passport is moot anyway. Is this that somebody has planted a seed in the politicians heads, and nobody lacks the ability to actually think through either the need or the implications.
If we need them to go abroad, well that's a decision for other countries that we can do little to influence. And that question really is only about the personal choice to get vaccinated, with no additional burden for those who do.
Friend of mine - male, 40s, no health issues, north London - has just been told he’s getting his first dose next week.
Intriguing. So they’re moving on to the 40s? At least here
V. intriguing. I thought doctors had been written to by the NHS and told NOT to vaccinate any more under 50s as the supplies now needed for second doses?
Friend of mine - male, 40s, no health issues, north London - has just been told he’s getting his first dose next week.
Intriguing. So they’re moving on to the 40s? At least here
V. intriguing. I thought doctors had been written to by the NHS and told NOT to vaccinate any more under 50s as the supplies now needed for second doses?
It may have been going to waste. Better to do a 49 year old than chuck it in the bin.
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
To me it seems well-meant, but dangerous. A step away from enabling white supremacism. ‘Whiteness is an important part of who I am, I am proud of being white’. Why shouldn’t someone say that in response? Perfectly legitimate. Yet not great?
I think you do appreciate the difference but just in case. It depends on whether one is speaking from the default majority dominant position. For example: A society of black police officers. Probably fine. A society of white police officers. Hmm. Maybe not.
To me, most of this "but what if a white person/man/trump/etc said that?" stuff is really quite palpably silly. Not always, just occasionally it makes a good point, but usually it is.
And it is here.
And just like that, the left's inability to resist overreaching themselves turned racism into a contingent instead of an absolute and universal evil. What's more, they thought this was an immensely clever thing to do, not realizing that they had just cut the moral foundations out from under their own feet.
Friend of mine - male, 40s, no health issues, north London - has just been told he’s getting his first dose next week.
Intriguing. So they’re moving on to the 40s? At least here
Thought they ordered a stop to doing folk in their 40's with no PEC's? In order to sweep up all the over 50's before the vaccine drought. Or did I dream that?
I've been lucky enough to visit the panama canal on a number of occasions, its quite something to see these massive vessels up close and the shear volume of them passing through every day.
The Suez Canal is strangely disappointing. A bit of dreary desert with a water channel
The Corinth canal, which was commenced 2,000 years ago, is magnificent
You can't really claim to have seen ship canals until you've seen the Manchester Ship Canal - oldest ship canal in the world (by characteristically Mancunian sleight-of-conditionality - basically the older ones don't count for various reasons). 100 years ago, Manchester was the third biggest port in the UK. (Well, Salford - again, you have to use Mancunian sleight of language here).
It didn't cut weeks off a sea route. But it got one over on Liverpool (who were massively overcharging for port facilities) - which is ultimately what matters.
I've seen that claim before about the success of the Manchester Ship Canal but is there any data to back it up ?
Wiki seems to cast doubt:
The canal was completed just as the Long Depression was coming to an end, but it was never the commercial success its sponsors had hoped for. At first gross revenue was less than a quarter of expected net revenue, and throughout at least the first nineteen years of the canal it was unable to make a profit or meet the interest payments to the Corporation of Manchester. Many ship owners were reluctant to dispatch ocean-going vessels along a "locked cul-de-sac" at a maximum speed of 6 knots (11 km/h; 6.9 mph). The Ship Canal Company found it difficult to attract a diversified export trade, which meant that ships frequently had to return down the canal loaded with ballast rather than freight. The only staple imports attracted to the Port of Manchester were lamp oil and bananas, the latter from 1902 until 1911. As the import trade in oil began to grow during the 20th century the balance of canal traffic switched to the west, from Salford to Stanlow, eventually culminating in the closure of the docks at Salford. Historian Thomas Stuart Willan has observed that "What may seem to require explanation is not the comparative failure of the Ship Canal but the unquenchable vitality of the myth of its success".
I've seen that claim before about the success of the Manchester Ship Canal but is there any data to back it up ?
Wiki seems to cast doubt:
The canal was completed just as the Long Depression was coming to an end, but it was never the commercial success its sponsors had hoped for. At first gross revenue was less than a quarter of expected net revenue, and throughout at least the first nineteen years of the canal it was unable to make a profit or meet the interest payments to the Corporation of Manchester. Many ship owners were reluctant to dispatch ocean-going vessels along a "locked cul-de-sac" at a maximum speed of 6 knots (11 km/h; 6.9 mph). The Ship Canal Company found it difficult to attract a diversified export trade, which meant that ships frequently had to return down the canal loaded with ballast rather than freight. The only staple imports attracted to the Port of Manchester were lamp oil and bananas, the latter from 1902 until 1911. As the import trade in oil began to grow during the 20th century the balance of canal traffic switched to the west, from Salford to Stanlow, eventually culminating in the closure of the docks at Salford. Historian Thomas Stuart Willan has observed that "What may seem to require explanation is not the comparative failure of the Ship Canal but the unquenchable vitality of the myth of its success".
I attended a conference more than a decade ago where a representative of the council was talking about infrastructure spend.
He repeated the story about the council investing in the ship canal to beat Liverpool.
He then said they invested in the airport to make the runway longer than Liverpool.
In each case he said they boosted business. And they were planning to invest in high speed networks throughout the city for the same reason
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
To me it seems well-meant, but dangerous. A step away from enabling white supremacism. ‘Whiteness is an important part of who I am, I am proud of being white’. Why shouldn’t someone say that in response? Perfectly legitimate. Yet not great?
I think you do appreciate the difference but just in case. It depends on whether one is speaking from the default majority dominant position. For example: A society of black police officers. Probably fine. A society of white police officers. Hmm. Maybe not.
To me, most of this "but what if a white person/man/trump/etc said that?" stuff is really quite palpably silly. Not always, just occasionally it makes a good point, but usually it is.
And it is here.
And just like that, the left's inability to resist overreaching themselves turned racism into a contingent instead of an absolute and universal evil. What's more, they thought this was an immensely clever thing to do, not realizing that they had just cut the moral foundations out from under their own feet.
Did the EU ask the UK? As far as I can see the UK has worked constructively with AZN throughout, while the EU has hectored, berated, traduced and tried to bully. If you were AZN, who would you want to help?
I've been lucky enough to visit the panama canal on a number of occasions, its quite something to see these massive vessels up close and the shear volume of them passing through every day.
The Suez Canal is strangely disappointing. A bit of dreary desert with a water channel
The Corinth canal, which was commenced 2,000 years ago, is magnificent
You can't really claim to have seen ship canals until you've seen the Manchester Ship Canal - oldest ship canal in the world (by characteristically Mancunian sleight-of-conditionality - basically the older ones don't count for various reasons). 100 years ago, Manchester was the third biggest port in the UK. (Well, Salford - again, you have to use Mancunian sleight of language here).
It didn't cut weeks off a sea route. But it got one over on Liverpool (who were massively overcharging for port facilities) - which is ultimately what matters.
I've seen that claim before about the success of the Manchester Ship Canal but is there any data to back it up ?
Wiki seems to cast doubt:
The canal was completed just as the Long Depression was coming to an end, but it was never the commercial success its sponsors had hoped for. At first gross revenue was less than a quarter of expected net revenue, and throughout at least the first nineteen years of the canal it was unable to make a profit or meet the interest payments to the Corporation of Manchester. Many ship owners were reluctant to dispatch ocean-going vessels along a "locked cul-de-sac" at a maximum speed of 6 knots (11 km/h; 6.9 mph). The Ship Canal Company found it difficult to attract a diversified export trade, which meant that ships frequently had to return down the canal loaded with ballast rather than freight. The only staple imports attracted to the Port of Manchester were lamp oil and bananas, the latter from 1902 until 1911. As the import trade in oil began to grow during the 20th century the balance of canal traffic switched to the west, from Salford to Stanlow, eventually culminating in the closure of the docks at Salford. Historian Thomas Stuart Willan has observed that "What may seem to require explanation is not the comparative failure of the Ship Canal but the unquenchable vitality of the myth of its success".
By claiming that criticism of published ideas and pedagogical models is harassment, and by creating institutional mechanisms that erect barriers to wholly appropriate critique, entire lines of scholarship become exempt from scrutiny.
It is worth noting that criticism is framed as harassment only by academicians working in certain domains of thought that are in Critical Theory’s orbit. Civil engineers are not claiming that criticism of truss bridge design is harassment. Physicists are not claiming they’re being persecuted when their contributions to quantum theory are criticized.
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
To me it seems well-meant, but dangerous. A step away from enabling white supremacism. ‘Whiteness is an important part of who I am, I am proud of being white’. Why shouldn’t someone say that in response? Perfectly legitimate. Yet not great?
I think you do appreciate the difference but just in case. It depends on whether one is speaking from the default majority dominant position. For example: A society of black police officers. Probably fine. A society of white police officers. Hmm. Maybe not.
To me, most of this "but what if a white person/man/trump/etc said that?" stuff is really quite palpably silly. Not always, just occasionally it makes a good point, but usually it is.
And it is here.
And just like that, the left's inability to resist overreaching themselves turned racism into a contingent instead of an absolute and universal evil. What's more, they thought this was an immensely clever thing to do, not realizing that they had just cut the moral foundations out from under their own feet.
Dim comment, I'm afraid. Just dim.
Or probably not - since I think you know it is.
I'm afraid it's your position that's the dim one, but you just don't realize how badly it's going to undercut the causes you believe in. People will - at a push - accept universal principles applied fairly. What they will not accept is - an ironic phrase given who normally likes to use it - one rule for one set of people, and one rule for another.
Well exactly. A company entering a deal with the EU to supply vaccines risks being slandered, raided, threatened, the contracts being ignored, and interference with their legitimate business with other states. Right now the EU would be the last customer I'd want if I had a vaccine in production, I'm quite confident there are many better customers and there is no lack of demand.
That's also a good reason why the UK should not respond directly in kind by itself disrupting vaccine supplies but should look to threaten an alternative smarter response that might really worry the EU.
I'm waiting for Johnson to start musing aloud in public of how he is particularly disappointed at the attitude of the French, German and Italian governments who are apparently pushing the hard line on vaccines, and making it very clear that their attitude won't be lost on UK consumers who aren't taking kindly to this either. And then saying that he could do absolutely nothing if those UK consumers decided to take their custom elsewhere. Perhaps reminding the EU that many of their products are readily identifiable to their country of origin (going on to list a few examples). Going on to say that there are obviously other products less readily identifiable to their country of production, that the UK government isn't currently thinking about any immediate measures to address that, but that it might so do in the future in the name of enabling consumer choice if the EU really did disrupt UK vaccine supply in a serious way. etc, etc.
The implicit message is very clear. We're not advocating a consumer boycott of French, German and Italian goods, but we're prepared to say things that might make a spontaneous one a reality anyway, and we might change our mind down the road. We'll reserve a special mention for EU countries that are pushing the hard line, so as to encourage those in particular to desist. Meanwhile, in contrast to the perfidious EU, we'll pass no new laws and allow UK firms to honour their contracts generally.
While the balance of trade in goods is so tilted in favour of the EU, they are really vulnerable to consumer-led boycotts.
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
To me it seems well-meant, but dangerous. A step away from enabling white supremacism. ‘Whiteness is an important part of who I am, I am proud of being white’. Why shouldn’t someone say that in response? Perfectly legitimate. Yet not great?
I think you do appreciate the difference but just in case. It depends on whether one is speaking from the default majority dominant position. For example: A society of black police officers. Probably fine. A society of white police officers. Hmm. Maybe not.
To me, most of this "but what if a white person/man/trump/etc said that?" stuff is really quite palpably silly. Not always, just occasionally it makes a good point, but usually it is.
And it is here.
And just like that, the left's inability to resist overreaching themselves turned racism into a contingent instead of an absolute and universal evil. What's more, they thought this was an immensely clever thing to do, not realizing that they had just cut the moral foundations out from under their own feet.
Dim comment, I'm afraid. Just dim.
Or probably not - since I think you know it is.
I'm afraid it's your position that's the dim one, but you just don't realize how badly it's going to undercut the causes you believe in. People will - at a push - accept universal principles applied fairly. What they will not accept is - an ironic phrase given who normally likes to use it - one rule for one set of people, and one rule for another.
This is nonsense. There is a clear and obvious difference between a black person in a white dominant society with a colonial history saying "proud to be black" and a white person in that same society saying "proud to be white".
C'mon. You know this. And I’m not interested in dumbing down the debate to appeal to people who don't. I'll leave that to Sir Keir.
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
To me it seems well-meant, but dangerous. A step away from enabling white supremacism. ‘Whiteness is an important part of who I am, I am proud of being white’. Why shouldn’t someone say that in response? Perfectly legitimate. Yet not great?
I think you do appreciate the difference but just in case. It depends on whether one is speaking from the default majority dominant position. For example: A society of black police officers. Probably fine. A society of white police officers. Hmm. Maybe not.
To me, most of this "but what if a white person/man/trump/etc said that?" stuff is really quite palpably silly. Not always, just occasionally it makes a good point, but usually it is.
And it is here.
And just like that, the left's inability to resist overreaching themselves turned racism into a contingent instead of an absolute and universal evil. What's more, they thought this was an immensely clever thing to do, not realizing that they had just cut the moral foundations out from under their own feet.
Comments
This would be the biggest imposition on civil liberties in UK history (and don't give me all this - "well if you don't want to go out in public, that's your choice nonsense"). The issue isn't even whether people should be de facto forced into getting vaccinated. What people are talking about is a digital passport which will, in effect, track you whenever you enter a crowded public space. This is beyond even the idea of (paper) ID cards, where at least there is no clear trail of where you've been. It is a severe curtailment of the rights of the vaccinated, as well of those who opt out. Just think what the authorities could do with this if they so wished...
And i really am struggling to understand what the supposed health benefit payoff is supposed to be. Either the vaccine works, in which case the vast majority of the population being vaccinated means they present no risk to others, and others pose no risk to them. And in the vaccinated numbers we are talking about there would be overwhelming herd immunity preventing any occasional transmission to or from unvaccinated people having no particular effect on public health as a whole. So for those who want to remain unvaccinated, it really is largely a personal choice.
Or alternatively (god forbid) the vaccines don't work as hoped. In which case the whole point supposed point of a vaccine passport is moot anyway. Is this that somebody has planted a seed in the politicians heads, and nobody lacks the ability to actually think through either the need or the implications.
If we need them to go abroad, well that's a decision for other countries that we can do little to influence. And that question really is only about the personal choice to get vaccinated, with no additional burden for those who do.
https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1363897168650768387
In order to sweep up all the over 50's before the vaccine drought.
Or did I dream that?
I wonder why?
London would certainly have been one and surely Liverpool the other.
So would Salford have been bigger than Glasgow, Bristol, Southampton or everywhere else ?
It would seem surprising to me.
He repeated the story about the council investing in the ship canal to beat Liverpool.
He then said they invested in the airport to make the runway longer than Liverpool.
In each case he said they boosted business. And they were planning to invest in high speed networks throughout the city for the same reason
Or probably not - since I think you know it is.
https://twitter.com/laurnorman/status/1375136120795758598?s=20
Did the EU ask the UK? As far as I can see the UK has worked constructively with AZN throughout, while the EU has hectored, berated, traduced and tried to bully. If you were AZN, who would you want to help?
^^^
not even part of the quays
By claiming that criticism of published ideas and pedagogical models is harassment, and by creating institutional mechanisms that erect barriers to wholly appropriate critique, entire lines of scholarship become exempt from scrutiny.
It is worth noting that criticism is framed as harassment only by academicians working in certain domains of thought that are in Critical Theory’s orbit. Civil engineers are not claiming that criticism of truss bridge design is harassment. Physicists are not claiming they’re being persecuted when their contributions to quantum theory are criticized.
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/letters/criticism-of-ideas-is-not-harassment
I'm waiting for Johnson to start musing aloud in public of how he is particularly disappointed at the attitude of the French, German and Italian governments who are apparently pushing the hard line on vaccines, and making it very clear that their attitude won't be lost on UK consumers who aren't taking kindly to this either. And then saying that he could do absolutely nothing if those UK consumers decided to take their custom elsewhere. Perhaps reminding the EU that many of their products are readily identifiable to their country of origin (going on to list a few examples). Going on to say that there are obviously other products less readily identifiable to their country of production, that the UK government isn't currently thinking about any immediate measures to address that, but that it might so do in the future in the name of enabling consumer choice if the EU really did disrupt UK vaccine supply in a serious way. etc, etc.
The implicit message is very clear. We're not advocating a consumer boycott of French, German and Italian goods, but we're prepared to say things that might make a spontaneous one a reality anyway, and we might change our mind down the road. We'll reserve a special mention for EU countries that are pushing the hard line, so as to encourage those in particular to desist. Meanwhile, in contrast to the perfidious EU, we'll pass no new laws and allow UK firms to honour their contracts generally.
While the balance of trade in goods is so tilted in favour of the EU, they are really vulnerable to consumer-led boycotts.
C'mon. You know this. And I’m not interested in dumbing down the debate to appeal to people who don't. I'll leave that to Sir Keir.