I sense we’ll see an upswing in the Green vote. Once COVID is out of the way, climate will return to the agenda (and with some new case study data both about the effects and consequences of suspending economic activity especially travel, that we never expected to get).
There will be young people making the point that they have made sacrifices to protect the older generations from their emergency; now is the time for older people to step up and address the emergency they may face down the line. There will be Corbynites, and some LibDems, looking for a new home.
The problem I have with the UK Greens is that they are an authoritarian rather than a libertarian party, even in the way they (try to) run themselves before you get on to policy. On matters concerning the climate this is perhaps a consequence of their objectives, but I feel they’d have greater appeal if, beyond climate protection, they were stronger on freedom and and liberty. Caroline Lucas often said the right things, but behind her there are a lot of authoritarian socialists.
In the last council election they won a seat here, giving them a potential platform on the island, which after all is supposed to be a target of theirs. But when the new councillor realised that internal Green Party policy is that the local party has the right to direct how their representatives must vote on key issues, he promptly resigned and has sat as an Independent. It will be interesting to see if they do any better this time.
Good morning everyone. Round here the opposition on the District Council is "Green & Independent" and although we haven't by any means got the full list of candidates there are certainly some under that title. Which could turn out to be difficult, given Mr B2's scenario. There are several environmental issues locally which embarrass the ruling Conservatives, both at Distraict and County level. Interestingly I had occasion to speak to a local Cons. councillor the other day on a non-political matter and remarked that I was surprised to find them in; thought they'd have been canvassing and was told that yes they'd been leafletting; did I know if Labour were standing and volunteered that the Greens seemed to be active and it was pity they seemed all over the place on policies! I must admit I bit my tongue instead of saying something about a leader who was all over the place on everything; I had other things to do. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.
From an OKC with a sore arm from his second Pfizer vaccination! Bu who doesn't mind at all!
The other handicap they have is their clueless organisation. As my seat was one in which the LibDems stood down for the Greens in 2019, I thought it would be friendly to offer a bit of help so I turned up at the office they had rented in Newport to volunteer to deliver some leaflets. "I'm happy to deliver some leaflets", I said. "There are some in that box in the corner", the guys says, pointing across the room. Said box contained a mix of two different leaflets, loose and uncounted. "Which one are you delivering at the moment?", I ask. "Take some of each", says the guy, thereby breaking an election 101. "Where do you want me to deliver them?", I ask. He asks where I live. "Anywhere round there will be good, just do where you like". He looks away as if expecting me to go away. "Don't you want to know where I've done?", I ask. So he gives me an email, but he looked sufficiently mystified as to why I would need to report back. So I didn't bother.
There wasn't any election organisation that I could recognise as a LibDem, and I have been in a lot of election HQs both winnable and very unwinnable, so I know what an organised campaign should look like. If they were using a computer it wasn't obvious. There were no maps, no instructions for volunteers, not even any questions asked of a stranger who had basically walked off the street, to check that I was genuinely offering help rather than spying them out and stealing leaflets. They never checked afterwards that I had delivered anything; I had signed in and provided my contact details, but I have never heard from them again.
Bear in mind this was supposedly their number two target in the whole of the UK, into which the national Green Party had apparently directed money and help.
Oddly round my way the local Greens are notably highly organised and work hard between elections as well, certainly better at getting press albeit through aligned green groups than other parties.
Didn't do them any good last time despite quintupling their candidates, but I'll be very interested if the improved organisation helps.
To be fair, the Greens on the island are pretty good with the press, and have produced a professional looking manifesto for launch of this year's council campaign. One committed person is sufficient to get this done, however, and isn't really part of what I'd see as election organisation or the ground game.
Mr. Pulpstar, there has been recent warming, but the short scope of human history in geological terms does make it a limited sample. And we've seen warming during non-industrial periods (Caligula/Claudius' time, Henry VIII's reign).
I do support quite a lot of measures that those who believe such theories advocate, particularly around power generation (excepting wind, which is silly). Technological advancements in this area are no bad thing.
I just can’t converse seriously with people that deny science.
That is actually a problem for the Green Party, or at least the green movement: their ideological opposition to certain technologies, not just nuclear power but more worryingly GM crops under any circumstances. Their opposition to Golden Rice has been a particularly bad episode and removed any ability to use the “deny science” accusation.
The truth is we all pick the science we like and ignore the bits we don’t when it comes to making political arguments. Even highly respected scientists do it: Albert Einstein and Sir Fred Hoyle are particularly good examples here.
Opposition to GM always struck me as strange
I’m not a biologist in any way, but I think the C-19 vaccines were all made with GM technology; if I’m right it’s probably a good thing that most people don’t realise that.
To be a bit fair there were some early GM products that were more than a little problematic, involving crops that would not produce seed corn or that encouraged massive amounts of crop spraying, but the complete opposition to anything at all is seriously damaging.
Gene editing not genetic modification.
Very very important difference
Can you explain the difference in a way that a physics teacher (who did O-level biology in 1985 and hasn't had a formal lesson in it since) would understand?
Gene editing is basically using a pair of scissors to cut out part of the organisms DNA.
Gene modification is inserting a piece of foreign DNA into the mix.
In some respects, other than the size of the modification, that’s a distinction without a difference.
In some respects painting a wall green vs painting it blue is a distinction without a difference
The introduction of foreign DNA is a very significant difference - and risk - as a result of the potential for interplay between novel combinations.
If GE goes wrong the organism stops working. If GM goes wrong the organism mutates
Shock of the day. Isam posts a "Starmer is crap" graph under a thread header about the Green Party. There's a surprise.
Bye, bye.
Better prepare for more surprises then
Here's an entire thread by the estimable Keiran Pedley of Ipsos-MORI, discussing polling commissioned to mark the first anniversary of Starmer's leadership. It must have been omitted from yesterday's header by mistake ... or something:
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
Johnson now telling his backbenchers there will be a one year time limit on covid passport/tracking app.
Hopefully, they will be astute enough not to believe a bloody word he says on this.
One year will become two years will become "we can't live without this really useful app in our lives"...
Strangely the people on the media yesterday asked about the vaccine passport were very much in favour if it allows events to take place
I know there is considerable resistance on here, but again it looks like Boris is in tune with the public who remain very risk averse
We are discovering through the lesson of Covid exactly how much the public enjoys authoritarianism and being bossed about. @rottenborough is precisely correct: one year will become one decade will become forever.
Not sure but certainly with 126,000 plus deaths people remain very frightened
Which the Government can exploit very successfully. There are a lot of folk who would happily consent to having masks surgically implanted in their faces and being microchipped like dogs if the Government said it would protect them from the Plague - and would delight in having the same things forcibly imposed upon everybody else.
Enough. If some people are that scared then they can seal themselves up in their homes and sit there until they die. It's one thing to be made to put up with a biosecurity state when we're in the middle of the emergency. Once the emergency is over then the apparatus should be dismantled, not elaborated and made permanent.
I am with you 100% on your last sentence but the emergency is far from over with Europe and South America in crisis
You deal with that with international travel restrictions, not with showing your papers every time you walk into a shop.
Has that been suggested
Hospitals, supermarkets and GP surgeries may be excluded from any Covid vaccine passport scheme launched by the Government, it has been reported.
The use of vaccine passports is currently under review ahead of their expected use during the summer this year. They will allow access to certain venues, such as bars and restaurants, dependent on whether guests have had their vaccine or not.
Ministers are now said to be creating a list of ‘essential’ sites which will need to be exempt from the passport system, The Times reports. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to announce more details about the scheme on Monday.
If you're going to inflict these things on the population then it arguably makes sense to force people to produce them in as many locations as possible, including "non-essential" retail and elsewhere. Albeit that, if you're going to pick up Covid anywhere outside of an elderly care home, it's most likely to happen in a supermarket or (especially) a hospital - which rather gives the lie to the idea that this is anything other than a people control measure, rather than an infection control measure.
Again, the best way to deal with any remaining threat from variants is *NOT* to police the entire population indefinitely with papers and tracking apps - it's to police the borders closely and to forbid foreign holidays until other parts of the world have caught up with us. When we've completed our vaccination program and crushed the virus then air bridges can be opened with other countries that are in a similar situation.
If it didn’t have the inverted commas around ‘ “educated” ‘ it would have been fine
I dont think it would be but in any case it did have inverted commas so the sinister interpretation was clearly intended and benefit of the doubt need not be given.
Classic 'would party X defend this if their opponents suggested it?' Test failing.
That’s every post Charles ever makes. If you want the CCHQ answer you have it with him
I’ve no association with the Conservative party apart from casting a vote for them from time to time.
If you want to engage with my posts fine. But don’t try to dismiss them by association
My point was that you don't try and provide alternative "interpretations" for posts by Labour MPs. You only do it for Tory MPs, in a way to undermine the point I made and to make it seem like the Tory MP didn't make the point they obviously did.
@kle4 was right, if a Labour MP had said something, I don't know, that could be construed as offensive or racist, you would not be hear trying to interpret it. You would call it out.
I know this because when people have tried to add context to actions by Labour MPs in the past here, you and others have jumped down their throats.
You're a hypocrite - and it stinks.
Charming. I’d suggest you look up what “hypocrite” means as you seem to think it means something different to what it does.
As for the facts, I’d happily provide an interpretation of a Labour MPs post and defend them if I thought it was an interesting point.
My comment was entirely critical of Tom Hunt’s post. It was clear from his use of inverted comments that he meant something like “indoctrination” rather than “education”. Someone else pointed out the implied parallel with Chinese “education camps”
I’m sorry you couldn’t see that.
It wasn't entirely critical at all, you bent virtually parallel trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly. I was highlighting the one word that changed the meaning from something acceptable to something sinister
And I explained to you why doing that makes you look ridiculous. And how if I did that for a Labour MP you would shout me down, I expect.
Dishonest as well as a hypocrite.
And the hell did I personally attack you? I called out a point you made that clearly due to political bias, I didn't attack your character whatsoever.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Can you explain the difference [between Gene Editing and GM] in a way that a physics teacher (who did O-level biology in 1985 and hasn't had a formal lesson in it since) would understand?
Very rough summary:
GM=insertying gene from other species (plant,animal) in the hope that they will produce beneficial effects GE=modifying genes within the same species for the same purpose
GM is clearly more radical though not necessarily as wild as it sounds - the early reputation was damaged by irresponsible experiments. Nonetheless, the risk in both cases is that you produce unexpected side-effects that you couldn't have anticipated because that combination of genes hadn't occurred before. Also, if you are dealing with animals, the process of development may in itself cause significant suffering, as you try out different approaches and produce animals that suffer in unexpected ways. The case for doing it is that you can gain benefits that would take forever to develop spontaneously, or eliminate genes that cause vulnerability.
Miracle rice is a good example both ways - it undoubtedly helped massively in ending the famines that used to be common. It's also benefited rich farmers at the expense of poorer ones and caused significant environmental impacts.
The EU have ruled that GE and GM should be subject to the same, very difficult, precautionary tests. Britain clearly plans to reduce the hurdles for GE. This is welcomed by the agricultural industry but there are clearly some risks which green-leaning feel shouldn't be taken.
It’s something of an artificial distinction anyway, since CRISR editing technology can be used to insert long fragments of DNA into genomes. Nothing to stop you using it for inserting a ‘foreign’ gene other than regulation. Both things are genetic modification - and viruses have in any event been inserting genes into genomes pretty well since life began. The CRISR technology itself comes from bacteria....
The real difference is that what we now describe as gene editing is much more precise. The old style GM inserted genetic material in a semi random manner.
And i’d course, with rapid sequencing techniques, we can far more easily check that what we’ve done is what was intended. Which is also a great advance on old style GM.
Shock of the day. Isam posts a "Starmer is crap" graph under a thread header about the Green Party. There's a surprise.
Bye, bye.
Not keen on the right-wing rag that calls itself the Guardian? Isam provides a welcome counterbalance to the myriad of pro-Labour thread headers and the misinformation about current polling on both the Labour partry and its leader.
If it didn’t have the inverted commas around ‘ “educated” ‘ it would have been fine
I dont think it would be but in any case it did have inverted commas so the sinister interpretation was clearly intended and benefit of the doubt need not be given.
Classic 'would party X defend this if their opponents suggested it?' Test failing.
That’s every post Charles ever makes. If you want the CCHQ answer you have it with him
I’ve no association with the Conservative party apart from casting a vote for them from time to time.
If you want to engage with my posts fine. But don’t try to dismiss them by association
My point was that you don't try and provide alternative "interpretations" for posts by Labour MPs. You only do it for Tory MPs, in a way to undermine the point I made and to make it seem like the Tory MP didn't make the point they obviously did.
@kle4 was right, if a Labour MP had said something, I don't know, that could be construed as offensive or racist, you would not be hear trying to interpret it. You would call it out.
I know this because when people have tried to add context to actions by Labour MPs in the past here, you and others have jumped down their throats.
You're a hypocrite - and it stinks.
Charming. I’d suggest you look up what “hypocrite” means as you seem to think it means something different to what it does.
As for the facts, I’d happily provide an interpretation of a Labour MPs post and defend them if I thought it was an interesting point.
My comment was entirely critical of Tom Hunt’s post. It was clear from his use of inverted comments that he meant something like “indoctrination” rather than “education”. Someone else pointed out the implied parallel with Chinese “education camps”
I’m sorry you couldn’t see that.
It wasn't entirely critical at all, you bent virtually parallel trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly. I was highlighting the one word that changed the meaning from something acceptable to something sinister
And I explained to you why doing that makes you look ridiculous. And how if I did that for a Labour MP you would shout me down, I expect.
Dishonest as well as a hypocrite.
And the hell did I personally attack you? I called out a point you made that clearly due to political bias, I didn't attack your character whatsoever.
FFs just stop.
Why don't you just stop responding to my posts? You post a whole load of nothing in response to most of them, it would save us all of a lot of time and effort - I will ignore you.
I am not surprised you jumped to the defence of Charles though, if the tables were flipped you would not be jumping to mine - and we know why that is.
You can be added to the list of hypocrites - and with that, I will wish you a good day.
Johnson now telling his backbenchers there will be a one year time limit on covid passport/tracking app.
Hopefully, they will be astute enough not to believe a bloody word he says on this.
One year will become two years will become "we can't live without this really useful app in our lives"...
Labour must oppose this, they were onto something with it being "un-British"
I'm not convinced the polling on this will hold once the reality and the details start to become clear.
Buying a ticket for the big match next month? Please use your covid app status when doing the purchase. Oh, it doesn't work? Hmm. Must be the website. Try again or phone our call centre etc etc.
That's never mind the liberty issues.
The vax site works brilliantly. Our testing is now world class (it should be, we spent £20bn)
I suspect the app will work fine, most people will use it, and then, in a year, it will be retired as promised (tho kept ready for future use as in South Korea). And all your fears will turn out to be groundless
Johnson now telling his backbenchers there will be a one year time limit on covid passport/tracking app.
Hopefully, they will be astute enough not to believe a bloody word he says on this.
One year will become two years will become "we can't live without this really useful app in our lives"...
It was "three weeks to flatten the curve". Ha ha ha, utter liars. Possibly 80% of the population still don't realise they're being played.
L & R ceased to mean much after that. I'd vote for any party which would repeal the authoritarian legislation. The UK is now less free than Russia or Belarus apparently.
How do you know they were lying vs being badly wrong?
Developed countries that were/are part of 'the global club', except Sweden, Japan and Norway (last is a borderline case, PM later apologised to the people) nearly all tore up existing pandemic plans. The UK's dated from 2011. It correctly set out a modern version of the plans we followed for severe flu pandemics in 1957-58 and 1968-69.
The Chief Medical Officer occasionally strays 'off-script', e.g. he was uncannily truthful on 11 May 2020 about how respiratory viruses behave and the fact that this one would be little different. The Chief Scientist also told the truth in March 2020 before Ferguson's dodgy modelling came to the fore. Mmm, I wonder who funds Ferguson ...
I'd like to find some value in the betting market on this. Strangely bookies seem not to be taking COVID-related bets.
Johnson now telling his backbenchers there will be a one year time limit on covid passport/tracking app.
Hopefully, they will be astute enough not to believe a bloody word he says on this.
One year will become two years will become "we can't live without this really useful app in our lives"...
It was "three weeks to flatten the curve". Ha ha ha, utter liars. Possibly 80% of the population still don't realise they're being played.
L & R ceased to mean much after that. I'd vote for any party which would repeal the authoritarian legislation. The UK is now less free than Russia or Belarus apparently.
How do you know they were lying vs being badly wrong?
Developed countries that were/are part of 'the global club', except Sweden, Japan and Norway (last is a borderline case, PM later apologised to the people) nearly all tore up existing pandemic plans. The UK's dated from 2011. It correctly set out a modern version of the plans we followed for severe flu pandemics in 1957-58 and 1968-69.
The Chief Medical Officer occasionally strays 'off-script', e.g. he was uncannily truthful on 11 May 2020 about how respiratory viruses behave and the fact that this one would be little different. The Chief Scientist also told the truth in March 2020 before Ferguson's dodgy modelling came to the fore. Mmm, I wonder who funds Ferguson ...
I'd like to find some value in the betting market on this. Strangely bookies seem not to be taking COVID-related bets.
Ferguson predicted 500,000 dead if we did nothing to stop Covid. He was greeted with incredulity, here and elsewhere.
In the end we will have around 150,000 dead and that's WITH very severe containment measures and a successful bunch of vaccines
If it didn’t have the inverted commas around ‘ “educated” ‘ it would have been fine
I dont think it would be but in any case it did have inverted commas so the sinister interpretation was clearly intended and benefit of the doubt need not be given.
Classic 'would party X defend this if their opponents suggested it?' Test failing.
That’s every post Charles ever makes. If you want the CCHQ answer you have it with him
I’ve no association with the Conservative party apart from casting a vote for them from time to time.
If you want to engage with my posts fine. But don’t try to dismiss them by association
My point was that you don't try and provide alternative "interpretations" for posts by Labour MPs. You only do it for Tory MPs, in a way to undermine the point I made and to make it seem like the Tory MP didn't make the point they obviously did.
@kle4 was right, if a Labour MP had said something, I don't know, that could be construed as offensive or racist, you would not be hear trying to interpret it. You would call it out.
I know this because when people have tried to add context to actions by Labour MPs in the past here, you and others have jumped down their throats.
You're a hypocrite - and it stinks.
Charming. I’d suggest you look up what “hypocrite” means as you seem to think it means something different to what it does.
As for the facts, I’d happily provide an interpretation of a Labour MPs post and defend them if I thought it was an interesting point.
My comment was entirely critical of Tom Hunt’s post. It was clear from his use of inverted comments that he meant something like “indoctrination” rather than “education”. Someone else pointed out the implied parallel with Chinese “education camps”
I’m sorry you couldn’t see that.
It wasn't entirely critical at all, you bent virtually parallel trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly. I was highlighting the one word that changed the meaning from something acceptable to something sinister
And I explained to you why doing that makes you look ridiculous. And how if I did that for a Labour MP you would shout me down, I expect.
Dishonest as well as a hypocrite.
And the hell did I personally attack you? I called out a point you made that clearly due to political bias, I didn't attack your character whatsoever.
FFs just stop.
Why don't you just stop responding to my posts? You post a whole load of nothing in response to most of them, it would save us all of a lot of time and effort - I will ignore you.
I am not surprised you jumped to the defence of Charles though, if the tables were flipped you would not be jumping to mine - and we know why that is.
You can be added to the list of hypocrites - and with that, I will wish you a good day.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Johnson now telling his backbenchers there will be a one year time limit on covid passport/tracking app.
Hopefully, they will be astute enough not to believe a bloody word he says on this.
One year will become two years will become "we can't live without this really useful app in our lives"...
It was "three weeks to flatten the curve". Ha ha ha, utter liars. Possibly 80% of the population still don't realise they're being played.
L & R ceased to mean much after that. I'd vote for any party which would repeal the authoritarian legislation. The UK is now less free than Russia or Belarus apparently.
How do you know they were lying vs being badly wrong?
Developed countries that were/are part of 'the global club', except Sweden, Japan and Norway (last is a borderline case, PM later apologised to the people) nearly all tore up existing pandemic plans. The UK's dated from 2011. It correctly set out a modern version of the plans we followed for severe flu pandemics in 1957-58 and 1968-69.
The Chief Medical Officer occasionally strays 'off-script', e.g. he was uncannily truthful on 11 May 2020 about how respiratory viruses behave and the fact that this one would be little different. The Chief Scientist also told the truth in March 2020 before Ferguson's dodgy modelling came to the fore. Mmm, I wonder who funds Ferguson ...
I'd like to find some value in the betting market on this. Strangely bookies seem not to be taking COVID-related bets.
Ferguson predicted 500,000 dead if we did nothing to stop Covid. He was greeted with incredulity, here and elsewhere.
In the end we will have around 150,000 dead and that's WITH very severe containment measures and a successful bunch of vaccines
He was right
Can you believe there used to be an idiot on here predicting two million British deaths!?
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
You say "They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe" - but this is the problem - this language - Covid isn't going anywhere. It will never be safe. Safer yes but not safe.
Until people realise and accept this reality there will always be a powerful force in the government ear towards health-only policies. I think the 21 June date was added as a concession to backbenchers. Come the day there may not technically be legal restrictions but guasi-legal guidelines instead, with businesses erring on side of caution with an eye on their liability insurance policies. This is why I'd like to see the guidance from government post 21 June flipping towards liberties rather than health.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
When nature really really decides that it is time to move on from homo sapiens we will not be consulted and nature won't mess about.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
That would be lovely. But take care we don't want to be cheaply accused misanthropy! Hopefully it's not too pedantic to point out that the problem is the post agricultural revolution strain rather than the few remaining hunter-gatherer human tribes such as the Andaman Sentinelese, or the Guahibo of the Amazon, for example.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Look at the various examples of Japan, Italy and South Korea, and there’s no need for either thing.
Off topic, we registered for postal votes, and have now been sent 'Postal Polling Cards' telling us that our postal votes will be sent out in a couple of weeks.
Is this normal? What is the point? How much money does it waste?
As usual, we will have to negotiate a Labour-Green voting pact in our house. For the locals, last time the Green vote exceeded the Tory victory margin. A bit of cooperative standing aside would help, but doesn't happen.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Off topic, we registered for postal votes, and have now been sent 'Postal Polling Cards' telling us that our postal votes will be sent out in a couple of weeks.
Is this normal? What is the point? How much money does it waste?
As usual, we will have to negotiate a Labour-Green voting pact in our house. For the locals, last time the Green vote exceeded the Tory victory margin. A bit of cooperative standing aside would help, but doesn't happen.
Yes, it is normal. Everyone gets a polling card, whether you are registered to vote in person or by post.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
I'm thinking about writing a Header on this very point.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
Off topic, we registered for postal votes, and have now been sent 'Postal Polling Cards' telling us that our postal votes will be sent out in a couple of weeks.
Is this normal? What is the point? How much money does it waste?
As usual, we will have to negotiate a Labour-Green voting pact in our house. For the locals, last time the Green vote exceeded the Tory victory margin. A bit of cooperative standing aside would help, but doesn't happen.
It is normal - everyone should get a polling card. Postal voters it’s a bit of a waste of time but in person voters are supposed to take it when the vote.
Presumably it is easier to have a system that just sends a card to everyone vs some people not getting them (also it’s a fraud safety mechanism - if someone dies by known they have been registered for a PV).
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
The same reason that parents care if a bunch of children who aren't vaccinated for measles etc show up at day care/school......
As far as vacuous nationalistic populist posturing goes I don't see what Ross has done wrong.
You don't understand the separitist psyche, someone like Ross isn't actually Scottish to these people so it breaks their logic for him to be calling for supporters to be able to cheer the Scottish national team.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
The same reason that parents care if a bunch of children who aren't vaccinated for measles etc show up at day care/school......
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
You say "They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe" - but this is the problem - this language - Covid isn't going anywhere. It will never be safe. Safer yes but not safe.
Until people realise and accept this reality there will always be a powerful force in the government ear towards health-only policies. I think the 21 June date was added as a concession to backbenchers. Come the day there may not technically be legal restrictions but guasi-legal guidelines instead, with businesses erring on side of caution with an eye on their liability insurance policies. This is why I'd like to see the guidance from government post 21 June flipping towards liberties rather than health.
I completely agree. Yes there are puritans who would seek to control us forever. Yes there are fools who believe in zero Covid.
But I don’t see them at the top of the government. I see a government that wants to restart the economy ASAP, but they are being understandably cautious about unlockdown. Once bitten twice shy.
And they also see vaxports as a means of opening up industries like travel and hospitality quicker than would happen otherwise. Eminently sensible.
If the government starts acting like China I will happily call them out. So far I don’t perceive it, and the allergic reaction on here is overdone
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
The same reason that parents care if a bunch of children who aren't vaccinated for measles etc show up at day care/school......
So....
Why aren’t we taking a zero tolerance approach to dealing with MMR?
Johnson now telling his backbenchers there will be a one year time limit on covid passport/tracking app.
Hopefully, they will be astute enough not to believe a bloody word he says on this.
One year will become two years will become "we can't live without this really useful app in our lives"...
It was "three weeks to flatten the curve". Ha ha ha, utter liars. Possibly 80% of the population still don't realise they're being played.
L & R ceased to mean much after that. I'd vote for any party which would repeal the authoritarian legislation. The UK is now less free than Russia or Belarus apparently.
How do you know they were lying vs being badly wrong?
Developed countries that were/are part of 'the global club', except Sweden, Japan and Norway (last is a borderline case, PM later apologised to the people) nearly all tore up existing pandemic plans. The UK's dated from 2011. It correctly set out a modern version of the plans we followed for severe flu pandemics in 1957-58 and 1968-69.
The Chief Medical Officer occasionally strays 'off-script', e.g. he was uncannily truthful on 11 May 2020 about how respiratory viruses behave and the fact that this one would be little different. The Chief Scientist also told the truth in March 2020 before Ferguson's dodgy modelling came to the fore. Mmm, I wonder who funds Ferguson ...
I'd like to find some value in the betting market on this. Strangely bookies seem not to be taking COVID-related bets.
Ferguson predicted 500,000 dead if we did nothing to stop Covid. He was greeted with incredulity, here and elsewhere.
In the end we will have around 150,000 dead and that's WITH very severe containment measures and a successful bunch of vaccines
He was right
Sweden ignored him because they realised that he was wrong and had fewer excess deaths than the UK. UK age-adjusted total deaths in 2020 were the same as ... 2008.
Hint: Past govts gave reassuring messages if things really were problematic/dangerous. Keep calm and carry on, basically. It didn't subject the populace to a year of psy-ops.
Watch the 2 min clip. of Whitty's remarks on 11 May 2020 and read up on the difference between 'deaths from COVID' and 'deaths with COVID' and the WHO edict to include the latter in the statistics.
Look at the stats on Euromomo, although it helps to look back more than 3 years which is all their charts now allow.
Other than that, I'm afraid it takes longer to persuade people they've been conned than to con them and I don't have the time.
Off topic, we registered for postal votes, and have now been sent 'Postal Polling Cards' telling us that our postal votes will be sent out in a couple of weeks.
Is this normal? What is the point? How much money does it waste?
As usual, we will have to negotiate a Labour-Green voting pact in our house. For the locals, last time the Green vote exceeded the Tory victory margin. A bit of cooperative standing aside would help, but doesn't happen.
It is normal - everyone should get a polling card. Postal voters it’s a bit of a waste of time but in person voters are supposed to take it when the vote.
Presumably it is easier to have a system that just sends a card to everyone vs some people not getting them (also it’s a fraud safety mechanism - if someone dies by known they have been registered for a PV).
But is a different type of polling card. Specifically for postal voters. Just strikes me as a waste of time. We had already been notified that our applications for postal votes had been accepted.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
You say "They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe" - but this is the problem - this language - Covid isn't going anywhere. It will never be safe. Safer yes but not safe.
Until people realise and accept this reality there will always be a powerful force in the government ear towards health-only policies. I think the 21 June date was added as a concession to backbenchers. Come the day there may not technically be legal restrictions but guasi-legal guidelines instead, with businesses erring on side of caution with an eye on their liability insurance policies. This is why I'd like to see the guidance from government post 21 June flipping towards liberties rather than health.
I completely agree. Yes there are puritans who would seek to control us forever. Yes there are fools who believe in zero Covid.
But I don’t see them at the top of the government. I see a government that wants to restart the economy ASAP, but they are being understandably cautious about unlockdown. Once bitten twice shy.
And they also see vaxports as a means of opening up industries like travel and hospitality quicker than would happen otherwise. Eminently sensible.
If the government starts acting like China I will happily call them out. So far I don’t perceive it, and the allergic reaction on here is overdone
Mr. Pulpstar, there has been recent warming, but the short scope of human history in geological terms does make it a limited sample. And we've seen warming during non-industrial periods (Caligula/Claudius' time, Henry VIII's reign).
I do support quite a lot of measures that those who believe such theories advocate, particularly around power generation (excepting wind, which is silly). Technological advancements in this area are no bad thing.
I just can’t converse seriously with people that deny science.
That is actually a problem for the Green Party, or at least the green movement: their ideological opposition to certain technologies, not just nuclear power but more worryingly GM crops under any circumstances. Their opposition to Golden Rice has been a particularly bad episode and removed any ability to use the “deny science” accusation.
The truth is we all pick the science we like and ignore the bits we don’t when it comes to making political arguments. Even highly respected scientists do it: Albert Einstein and Sir Fred Hoyle are particularly good examples here.
Opposition to GM always struck me as strange
I’m not a biologist in any way, but I think the C-19 vaccines were all made with GM technology; if I’m right it’s probably a good thing that most people don’t realise that.
To be a bit fair there were some early GM products that were more than a little problematic, involving crops that would not produce seed corn or that encouraged massive amounts of crop spraying, but the complete opposition to anything at all is seriously damaging.
Gene editing not genetic modification.
Very very important difference
Can you explain the difference in a way that a physics teacher (who did O-level biology in 1985 and hasn't had a formal lesson in it since) would understand?
Gene editing is basically using a pair of scissors to cut out part of the organisms DNA.
Gene modification is inserting a piece of foreign DNA into the mix.
In some respects, other than the size of the modification, that’s a distinction without a difference.
In some respects painting a wall green vs painting it blue is a distinction without a difference
The introduction of foreign DNA is a very significant difference - and risk - as a result of the potential for interplay between novel combinations.
If GE goes wrong the organism stops working. If GM goes wrong the organism mutates
See my reply to @NickPalmer above. The distinction is regulatory, and to some extent PR, essentially.
But it works, and it works for a reason. There is little sympathy amongst the wider public for stroppy teens pulling down the flag and burning it. They don't come across as heroic anti-racism activists so much as anti-social vandals. It's not a good look.
Granted, but its the compulsory bit that will backfire on the Tories. The unrestrained urge to keep telling people what to do, whether flying flags or obeying lock down will lead to a backlash of some force. If the Tories keep bossing people about, they will- pretty soon- be told where to go.
This authoritarian style is something else Johnson has borrowed from Labour.
Many Tories must be grinding their teeth.
The only bit I disagree with there Barnesian is that I find Tories (with some notable exceptions eg @Philip_Thompson ) authoritarian. The only difference being that socialist believe in state intervention. The Tories don't but do it all the time but don't realise it.
Yep. Ironically I think there is an obvious role-reversal to point to. Labour are authoritarian in that they think directing people to give a shit about other people makes for a better society. The Tories seem to be authoritarian in that they want to direct people to do stuff because they dislike them giving a shit about other people.
The flag thing is brilliant stupidity. Massively winds up the type of person who doesn't like faux patriotism which just reinforces the prejudices of the type of people who love faux patriotism. There is not going to be a new practice of mandatory flag waving, they just want headlines.
As always from Shagger its tactically brilliant but strategically stupid. WIth Norniron thrown off the bus and even Unionists questioning whats the point in their fealty, and Scotland once again on the brink of asking The Question, twatting around with a flag for explicitly divisive purposes is stupid even for them.
On the flag thing, Northern Ireland does not currently have its own flag, other than the Union Flag - and that is still excites controversy in shared spaces.
The Ulster Banner went in the 1970s, and has not been replaced.
Personally, I'd quite like to see schools flying the flags of the 4 nations on the appropriate days; and a Union flag on certain days. No problem with that - except NI hasn't got one.
That would be far better than the current duologue of extremes. Let's marginalise both ends. And recover a civic space for civility.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Vaccinations do not offer 100% protection, and we still don’t know about transmission in the vaxxed
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
The same reason that parents care if a bunch of children who aren't vaccinated for measles etc show up at day care/school......
So....
Why aren’t we taking a zero tolerance approach to dealing with MMR?
Because of pussy footing around the belief that we are allowed to have "our own facts".
Johnson now telling his backbenchers there will be a one year time limit on covid passport/tracking app.
Hopefully, they will be astute enough not to believe a bloody word he says on this.
One year will become two years will become "we can't live without this really useful app in our lives"...
It was "three weeks to flatten the curve". Ha ha ha, utter liars. Possibly 80% of the population still don't realise they're being played.
L & R ceased to mean much after that. I'd vote for any party which would repeal the authoritarian legislation. The UK is now less free than Russia or Belarus apparently.
How do you know they were lying vs being badly wrong?
Developed countries that were/are part of 'the global club', except Sweden, Japan and Norway (last is a borderline case, PM later apologised to the people) nearly all tore up existing pandemic plans. The UK's dated from 2011. It correctly set out a modern version of the plans we followed for severe flu pandemics in 1957-58 and 1968-69.
The Chief Medical Officer occasionally strays 'off-script', e.g. he was uncannily truthful on 11 May 2020 about how respiratory viruses behave and the fact that this one would be little different. The Chief Scientist also told the truth in March 2020 before Ferguson's dodgy modelling came to the fore. Mmm, I wonder who funds Ferguson ...
I'd like to find some value in the betting market on this. Strangely bookies seem not to be taking COVID-related bets.
Ferguson predicted 500,000 dead if we did nothing to stop Covid. He was greeted with incredulity, here and elsewhere.
In the end we will have around 150,000 dead and that's WITH very severe containment measures and a successful bunch of vaccines
He was right
Sweden ignored him because they realised that he was wrong and had fewer excess deaths than the UK. UK age-adjusted total deaths in 2020 were the same as ... 2008.
Hint: Past govts gave reassuring messages if things really were problematic/dangerous. Keep calm and carry on, basically. It didn't subject the populace to a year of psy-ops.
Watch the 2 min clip. of Whitty's remarks on 11 May 2020 and read up on the difference between 'deaths from COVID' and 'deaths with COVID' and the WHO edict to include the latter in the statistics.
Look at the stats on Euromomo, although it helps to look back more than 3 years which is all their charts now allow.
Other than that, I'm afraid it takes longer to persuade people they've been conned than to con them and I don't have the time.
I’ve seen the videos of ICU covid wards at peak plague. This was not normal
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Vaccinations do not offer 100% protection, and we still don’t know about transmission in the vaxxed
Well, if we don’t know if vaccines stop transmission, why are we considering these measures?!
Off topic, we registered for postal votes, and have now been sent 'Postal Polling Cards' telling us that our postal votes will be sent out in a couple of weeks.
Is this normal? What is the point? How much money does it waste?
As usual, we will have to negotiate a Labour-Green voting pact in our house. For the locals, last time the Green vote exceeded the Tory victory margin. A bit of cooperative standing aside would help, but doesn't happen.
It is normal - everyone should get a polling card. Postal voters it’s a bit of a waste of time but in person voters are supposed to take it when the vote.
Presumably it is easier to have a system that just sends a card to everyone vs some people not getting them (also it’s a fraud safety mechanism - if someone dies by known they have been registered for a PV).
But is a different type of polling card. Specifically for postal voters. Just strikes me as a waste of time. We had already been notified that our applications for postal votes had been accepted.
The returning officer is required by the Representation of the Peoples Act to inform all registered voters when an election is taking place.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
You say "They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe" - but this is the problem - this language - Covid isn't going anywhere. It will never be safe. Safer yes but not safe.
Until people realise and accept this reality there will always be a powerful force in the government ear towards health-only policies. I think the 21 June date was added as a concession to backbenchers. Come the day there may not technically be legal restrictions but guasi-legal guidelines instead, with businesses erring on side of caution with an eye on their liability insurance policies. This is why I'd like to see the guidance from government post 21 June flipping towards liberties rather than health.
I completely agree. Yes there are puritans who would seek to control us forever. Yes there are fools who believe in zero Covid.
But I don’t see them at the top of the government. I see a government that wants to restart the economy ASAP, but they are being understandably cautious about unlockdown. Once bitten twice shy.
And they also see vaxports as a means of opening up industries like travel and hospitality quicker than would happen otherwise. Eminently sensible.
If the government starts acting like China I will happily call them out. So far I don’t perceive it, and the allergic reaction on here is overdone
Even Patel and Matty Hand Cock?
Have they expressed a desire for zero covid? I just hear scientists saying ‘we will learn to live with it, like flu’. Which is absolutely right
"The combination of a 3-4 month suspension of elective surgery, reduced availability of operating theatre space and reduced throughput on operating lists will greatly lengthen surgical and diagnostics waiting lists. I suspect this productivity will drop by 50% or more for the duration of the coronavirus, so likely to be for 12-24 months. Within a year patients waiting over a year for treatment in England and Scotland will be common, they are already in Northern Ireland and Wales. Within 2 years we will see some patients waiting 24 months. Non surgical specialities including mental health will be similarly affected, though these get less media attention."
I waited over 2 years for my bi lateral hernia surgery in Wales and long before covid was a issues
But this is Wales NHS under labour
Now gone nationwide. 2 year waiting lists will be the norm shortly, and the delays for priority 2 patients with cancer and heart disease alarming too.
It was 65 weeks from seeing the surgeon to the operation
About 10 years ago it was about 4 months from my first (bowel) cancer diagnosis to operation. And five years later it wasn't much longer from diagnosis of prostate cancer to conclusion of radiotherapyi
All NHS.
That is good news but to be fair mine was all NHS, but under Wales labour which has a terrible record on health
I had the impression that while organisations like Betsi Cadwallader were 'not very good' (ahem) services outside hospital were good.
We come under Betsi Cadwallader and it has been in special measures
However, our GP practice has greatly improved under covid as everything is done by telephone and if necessary a specific appointment time at the surgery where you wait in your car and are called straight into the consultation
I do not see a return to the old way at anytime in the future
I believe GP's as a whole are dissatisfied with telephone conversations and want to return to the 'old ways'. I must say I would have though that for many conditions FaceTime was useful; however, I understand it's not considered 'safe'.
I hope not
They need to expand into zoom and adopt the ways of the future
Certainly the new way at our practice is much better
My sister lives in the Channel Islands. She has complex health needs which require specialist consultants every so often. Those consultants regularly refuse to attend to her unless she flies over to the mainland. In extremis they will use ordinary telephones. According to my niece, her daughter, the NHS management adamantly refuses to consider any form of virtual consultation. My niece, works at quite a senior level for a Government department is 'quite' cross about it!
My GP was quite proactive about using virtual consultations - and has commented that some people in the health care system really, really don't like them.
I was a bit startled when she got me to take my mother-in-laws blood pressure for a re-prescription of a medicine. Even allowing for the fact that she was watching via the webcam, it seemed very un... NHS? to let the plebs do stuff.
My wife and I do our own blood pressure at home whenever the surgery wants readings
And have been for some years and neither of us have medical training
Is there any official guidance on this kind of thing?
It occurs to me that there are more and more medical equipment that is cheap and very easy to use - the oximeters come to mind - it will be interesting to see what adaptions the "system" makes to deal with it.
At my surgery it's routine for patients who need their BP monitored over a few days to be loaned a BP monitor if they don't possess one. DIY monitoring is really quite common, from what my wider contacts say.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Vaccinations do not offer 100% protection, and we still don’t know about transmission in the vaxxed
Well, if we don’t know if vaccines stop transmission, why are we considering these measures?!
We know they hinder transmission, we just don’t know how much.
This is another reason vaxports are a sensible TEMPORARY measure. In a year we will know so much more and then we can, god willing, ditch them
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Shock of the day. Isam posts a "Starmer is crap" graph under a thread header about the Green Party. There's a surprise.
Bye, bye.
I think your response to my pointing out bad polls, not my opinion, not "Bozo", not "Keith", not "Gordon Brittas", nothing personal against Sir Keir at all, just bad ratings, is one of the clearest examples of "Truth hurts" I have ever known
Shock of the day. Isam posts a "Starmer is crap" graph under a thread header about the Green Party. There's a surprise.
Bye, bye.
Better prepare for more surprises then
Here's an entire thread by the estimable Keiran Pedley of Ipsos-MORI, discussing polling commissioned to mark the first anniversary of Starmer's leadership. It must have been omitted from yesterday's header by mistake ... or something:
As far as vacuous nationalistic populist posturing goes I don't see what Ross has done wrong.
You don't understand the separitist psyche, someone like Ross isn't actually Scottish to these people so it breaks their logic for him to be calling for supporters to be able to cheer the Scottish national team.
'These people'
In one of the great demonstrations of PB Scotch expertise you couldn't even get Ross's name right a few days ago. Where BJ goes..
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
"Children of Men" suggests it wouldn't be a barrel of laughs.
A film set to be given classic status, I'd suggest.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
To be quite honest the culture war turns me off from politics and anyone in engaging in it just makes me switch off.
Even in London, supposedly the wokest place on Earth according to some, I rarely talk about these kinds of issues and nobody else does either. We’re tired of it all, just let people do what they want
Yet Labour keep walking into the garden rake of Woke-traps, doinging themselves in the face like a cartoon clown-cat. You can't blame the Tories for leaving more garden rakes lying around, in that case. It's human nature to torment the humourless Left
Culture wars don't suit the British character, which is based around trying to find common ground. It's very much something that is based on American puritanism IMO. The idea that there's a correct attitude to have towards everything and once you've found it you need to impose it on everyone.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Vaccinations do not offer 100% protection, and we still don’t know about transmission in the vaxxed
Well, if we don’t know if vaccines stop transmission, why are we considering these measures?!
Johnsons said yesterday that two people both vaccinated could not meet indoors because the vaccine is not 100%.
Yet we are to have an app which will allow groups of people to meet indoors in public places 'safe' in the knowledge that everyone present has been vaccinated.
To be quite honest the culture war turns me off from politics and anyone in engaging in it just makes me switch off.
Even in London, supposedly the wokest place on Earth according to some, I rarely talk about these kinds of issues and nobody else does either. We’re tired of it all, just let people do what they want
Yet Labour keep walking into the garden rake of Woke-traps, doinging themselves in the face like a cartoon clown-cat. You can't blame the Tories for leaving more garden rakes lying around, in that case. It's human nature to torment the humourless Left
Culture wars don't suit the British character, which is based around trying to find common ground. It's very much something that is based on American puritanism IMO. The idea that there's a correct attitude to have towards everything and once you've found it you need to impose it on everyone.
We exported the combatants in our culture wars to different parts what would become the US, around the seventeenth century. They’ve reaped the benefit ever since.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
South Korea is a country where the western concept of personal privacy doesn't really exist. Not just South Korea but also Taiwan, China, etc. I don't want to copy that aspect of their society, although that may be the reason why they've combated the virus so successfully.
I wouldn’t want to be that police officer when he finds out communal worship is permitted and that disrupting it is an offence under Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Vaccinations do not offer 100% protection, and we still don’t know about transmission in the vaxxed
They offer pretty much 100% protection against severe disease and by that metric you could simply catch COVID off another vaccinated person.
The fact is that vaccine passport or no vaccine passport everywhere you go 70%+ are going to be vaccinated. That's enough for herd immunity. That's enough for everything.
Vaccine passports are solving a problem that doesn't exist.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
You say "They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe" - but this is the problem - this language - Covid isn't going anywhere. It will never be safe. Safer yes but not safe.
Until people realise and accept this reality there will always be a powerful force in the government ear towards health-only policies. I think the 21 June date was added as a concession to backbenchers. Come the day there may not technically be legal restrictions but guasi-legal guidelines instead, with businesses erring on side of caution with an eye on their liability insurance policies. This is why I'd like to see the guidance from government post 21 June flipping towards liberties rather than health.
I completely agree. Yes there are puritans who would seek to control us forever. Yes there are fools who believe in zero Covid.
But I don’t see them at the top of the government. I see a government that wants to restart the economy ASAP, but they are being understandably cautious about unlockdown. Once bitten twice shy.
And they also see vaxports as a means of opening up industries like travel and hospitality quicker than would happen otherwise. Eminently sensible.
If the government starts acting like China I will happily call them out. So far I don’t perceive it, and the allergic reaction on here is overdone
The vax app does not open hospitality quicker.
By the time it is available (and bear in mind we have been told it wont be used until all adults have been offered a vaccine) hospitality will have been open for months.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
Plus the 'the country wont be properly developed until everything has been concreted over' mentality.
My aunt just pointed out that my mother’s grandfather’s grandfather was born in 1790.
Hence my mother knew someone who knew someone who’d met Napolean... funny old world
My grandfather was born in 1885. By the time he died aged 89 he'd seen the advent of motor cars, aeroplanes, trench warfare, telephones, cinema, radio, television, atom bombs, space rockets and moon buggies. He somehow managed to take it all in his stride. People sometimes mention the giddy rate of technological innovation in the present century but I'm not sure it was much less for the late Victorians.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
South Korea is a country where the western concept of personal privacy doesn't really exist. Not just South Korea but also Taiwan, China, etc. I don't want to copy that aspect of their society, although that may be the reason why they've combated the virus so successfully.
But it works, and it works for a reason. There is little sympathy amongst the wider public for stroppy teens pulling down the flag and burning it. They don't come across as heroic anti-racism activists so much as anti-social vandals. It's not a good look.
Granted, but its the compulsory bit that will backfire on the Tories. The unrestrained urge to keep telling people what to do, whether flying flags or obeying lock down will lead to a backlash of some force. If the Tories keep bossing people about, they will- pretty soon- be told where to go.
This authoritarian style is something else Johnson has borrowed from Labour.
Many Tories must be grinding their teeth.
The only bit I disagree with there Barnesian is that I find Tories (with some notable exceptions eg @Philip_Thompson ) authoritarian. The only difference being that socialist believe in state intervention. The Tories don't but do it all the time but don't realise it.
Yep. Ironically I think there is an obvious role-reversal to point to. Labour are authoritarian in that they think directing people to give a shit about other people makes for a better society. The Tories seem to be authoritarian in that they want to direct people to do stuff because they dislike them giving a shit about other people.
The flag thing is brilliant stupidity. Massively winds up the type of person who doesn't like faux patriotism which just reinforces the prejudices of the type of people who love faux patriotism. There is not going to be a new practice of mandatory flag waving, they just want headlines.
As always from Shagger its tactically brilliant but strategically stupid. WIth Norniron thrown off the bus and even Unionists questioning whats the point in their fealty, and Scotland once again on the brink of asking The Question, twatting around with a flag for explicitly divisive purposes is stupid even for them.
On the flag thing, Northern Ireland does not currently have its own flag, other than the Union Flag - and that is still excites controversy in shared spaces.
The Ulster Banner went in the 1970s, and has not been replaced.
Personally, I'd quite like to see schools flying the flags of the 4 nations on the appropriate days; and a Union flag on certain days. No problem with that - except NI hasn't got one.
That would be far better than the current duologue of extremes. Let's marginalise both ends. And recover a civic space for civility.
NI should use the St Patrick's saltire - after all, it's part of the Union flag.
I wouldn’t want to be that police officer when he finds out communal worship is permitted and that disrupting it is an offence under Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998.
Two years in clink is the maximum punishment, isn't in?
I wouldn’t want to be that police officer when he finds out communal worship is permitted and that disrupting it is an offence under Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998.
Two years in clink is the maximum punishment, isn't in?
Depends on what it’s prosecuted under. If it’s the Offences Against the Person Act, yes. If it’s the Human Rights Act I believe it’s an unlimited fine. But the latter would likely have to be the congregation suing.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Vaccinations do not offer 100% protection, and we still don’t know about transmission in the vaxxed
I'm trying to work out if you're just not getting it, or just trying to be provocative, or perhaps determined that we institute a 'papers please' sort of society here?
Because vaccinations lead to herd immunity.
This is why we don't have measles checks for getting into pubs, or football grounds.
Vaccine papers are unnecessary, unBritish, unworkable and unwanted - at least by people with a brain who understand science.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Vaccinations do not offer 100% protection, and we still don’t know about transmission in the vaxxed
I'm trying to work out if you're just not getting it, or just trying to be provocative, or perhaps determined that we institute a 'papers please' sort of society here?
Because vaccinations lead to herd immunity.
This is why we don't have measles checks for getting into pubs, or football grounds.
Vaccine papers are unnecessary, unBritish, unworkable and unwanted - at least by people with a brain who understand science.
But unfortunate that critieria lets out the government, their medical advisers and SAGE on the fly.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
How is that a fallacy? Just because you dislike an argument doesn't make it wrong.
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
We have to learn the lesson of Covid, in case it mutates, or we face a new pandemic. One or other is inevitable.
In either event, what advanced country do we want to copy, America, France, or South Korea?
South Korea of course. They defeated Covid with smartphone apps, tracking and tracing.
Then I'd rather be America or France. In a country where people are prosecuted for going for a walk with a coffee ('it counts as a picnic'), for having a cup of tea in a communal garden, for celebrating a childs birthday, I no longer trust the state to repsond proportionately. We need to oppose any extention of state power, as the state has showntime andtime again in cannot be trusted with the power it has. If South Korea has a state its people trust, bully for them. We do not. I say this as someone employed by the state.
I do not understand this histrionic reaction. No one will be prosecuted for "walking with a coffee", no one will be convicted and jailed for a picnic.
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The technology is being built and rolled out at the end of the epidemic, when it is no longer needed. By all means keep building it for use if and when there's a next time, but let's not bother to deploy it now.
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
Vaxports are coming anyway, we all agree on that - they will be used for international travel, so as to save the travel industry (and millions of jobs).
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
... but why?
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Vaccinations do not offer 100% protection, and we still don’t know about transmission in the vaxxed
Well, if we don’t know if vaccines stop transmission, why are we considering these measures?!
We know they hinder transmission, we just don’t know how much.
This is another reason vaxports are a sensible TEMPORARY measure. In a year we will know so much more and then we can, god willing, ditch them
Unless vaxports are the one exact measure that will turn the R value from > 1.00 to < 1.00, they are pointless.
The morning after; the night before pictures were posted yesterday IIRC (possibly by your good self.)
Anyway, I find it hard to get too upset at the exhausted, fed up, put upon young for gathering like this, albeit that it would be better if they went to a park and sat around in small relaxed groups rather than forming a huge melee. But the fact that they obviously can't be bothered to clear up their shit vexes me more.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
How is that a fallacy? Just because you dislike an argument doesn't make it wrong.
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
Premier League footballers and bankers, yes. The rest, not so much.
But it works, and it works for a reason. There is little sympathy amongst the wider public for stroppy teens pulling down the flag and burning it. They don't come across as heroic anti-racism activists so much as anti-social vandals. It's not a good look.
Granted, but its the compulsory bit that will backfire on the Tories. The unrestrained urge to keep telling people what to do, whether flying flags or obeying lock down will lead to a backlash of some force. If the Tories keep bossing people about, they will- pretty soon- be told where to go.
This authoritarian style is something else Johnson has borrowed from Labour.
Many Tories must be grinding their teeth.
The only bit I disagree with there Barnesian is that I find Tories (with some notable exceptions eg @Philip_Thompson ) authoritarian. The only difference being that socialist believe in state intervention. The Tories don't but do it all the time but don't realise it.
Yep. Ironically I think there is an obvious role-reversal to point to. Labour are authoritarian in that they think directing people to give a shit about other people makes for a better society. The Tories seem to be authoritarian in that they want to direct people to do stuff because they dislike them giving a shit about other people.
The flag thing is brilliant stupidity. Massively winds up the type of person who doesn't like faux patriotism which just reinforces the prejudices of the type of people who love faux patriotism. There is not going to be a new practice of mandatory flag waving, they just want headlines.
As always from Shagger its tactically brilliant but strategically stupid. WIth Norniron thrown off the bus and even Unionists questioning whats the point in their fealty, and Scotland once again on the brink of asking The Question, twatting around with a flag for explicitly divisive purposes is stupid even for them.
On the flag thing, Northern Ireland does not currently have its own flag, other than the Union Flag - and that is still excites controversy in shared spaces.
The Ulster Banner went in the 1970s, and has not been replaced.
Personally, I'd quite like to see schools flying the flags of the 4 nations on the appropriate days; and a Union flag on certain days. No problem with that - except NI hasn't got one.
That would be far better than the current duologue of extremes. Let's marginalise both ends. And recover a civic space for civility.
NI should use the St Patrick's saltire - after all, it's part of the Union flag.
That's my view, as the neatest way out available.
The (all Ireland) Church of Ireland have authorised only that or the Anglican Communion flag (Compass Rose on blue) since before the Millenium.
One of the problems with journos - not enough groundwork. Dave does not seem to appreciate well enough that COVAX has a self-financing facility for richer countries, or how if Serbia is poor enough for donations, COVAX run a 'fair' policy.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
How is that a fallacy? Just because you dislike an argument doesn't make it wrong.
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
If.
The fallacy is the belief that increasing GDP is always a good thing and that it should be the aim of the government.
In reality more people will lead to higher GDP even if the extra people do nothing but eat, sleep and shit.
And while higher GDP might allow politicians to strut about a bit more it is not the same as wealth creation or quality of life.
How come Wales haven't had cross over to doing more 2nd doses yet? Isn't a criticism, just interesting Wales either because of demographics or a slightly different strategy?
One of the problems with journos - not enough groundwork. Dave does not seem to appreciate well enough that COVAX has a self-financing facility for richer countries, or how if Serbia is poor enough for donations, COVAX run a 'fair' policy.
Comments
The introduction of foreign DNA is a very significant difference - and risk - as a result of the potential for interplay between novel combinations.
If GE goes wrong the organism stops working. If GM goes wrong the organism mutates
The government wants Covid to go away, like all of us, not least because it is killing our economy, and with it, potentially, their hopes of re-election
They will open up entirely as soon as they deem it safe, vaxports will only be around for as long as there is a perceived danger - that takes us into 2022, unfortunately, because there IS a risk of further mutations and re-imported bugs. Is it really worth the risk of a FOURTH wave and another lockdown, simply because you dislike having an app on your phone?
Insane.
The vaxports will be retired when the perceptible danger has gone (probably summer 2022, inshallah?). But they will be held in reserve, ready to roll-out, South Korea style, in case we have a re-match or a new plague. This is what Korea did after SARS. They learned the lesson, they built the tech. They applied it to Covid, which they got first outside China, and badly, with no warning.
They have had 100,000 cases, as against our 4 million, they have had 1,700 deaths, as against our 150,000. They have not crashed their economy, nor ruined a year of their kids' education. They have not spent many months in an open prison. They will not have to deal with the grim legacy of Long Covid.
We need to be them, next time
The use of vaccine passports is currently under review ahead of their expected use during the summer this year. They will allow access to certain venues, such as bars and restaurants, dependent on whether guests have had their vaccine or not.
Ministers are now said to be creating a list of ‘essential’ sites which will need to be exempt from the passport system, The Times reports. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to announce more details about the scheme on Monday.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/04/01/shops-hospitals-and-gps-to-be-exempt-from-vaccine-passport-scheme-14342169/
If you're going to inflict these things on the population then it arguably makes sense to force people to produce them in as many locations as possible, including "non-essential" retail and elsewhere. Albeit that, if you're going to pick up Covid anywhere outside of an elderly care home, it's most likely to happen in a supermarket or (especially) a hospital - which rather gives the lie to the idea that this is anything other than a people control measure, rather than an infection control measure.
Again, the best way to deal with any remaining threat from variants is *NOT* to police the entire population indefinitely with papers and tracking apps - it's to police the borders closely and to forbid foreign holidays until other parts of the world have caught up with us. When we've completed our vaccination program and crushed the virus then air bridges can be opened with other countries that are in a similar situation.
https://twitter.com/Douglas4Moray/status/1378284860498927616?s=20
Both things are genetic modification - and viruses have in any event been inserting genes into genomes pretty well since life began. The CRISR technology itself comes from bacteria....
The real difference is that what we now describe as gene editing is much more precise. The old style GM inserted genetic material in a semi random manner.
And i’d course, with rapid sequencing techniques, we can far more easily check that what we’ve done is what was intended. Which is also a great advance on old style GM.
I am not surprised you jumped to the defence of Charles though, if the tables were flipped you would not be jumping to mine - and we know why that is.
You can be added to the list of hypocrites - and with that, I will wish you a good day.
The Chief Medical Officer occasionally strays 'off-script', e.g. he was uncannily truthful on 11 May 2020 about how respiratory viruses behave and the fact that this one would be little different. The Chief Scientist also told the truth in March 2020 before Ferguson's dodgy modelling came to the fore. Mmm, I wonder who funds Ferguson ...
I'd like to find some value in the betting market on this. Strangely bookies seem not to be taking COVID-related bets.
In the end we will have around 150,000 dead and that's WITH very severe containment measures and a successful bunch of vaccines
He was right
Disease incidence is dropping like a stone, and a sophisticated, all-pervasive, intrusive tracking system like this will be of no value as a public health measure by the time it is ready to be deployed.
The only way now that we're getting a major fourth wave is if a variant - almost certainly imported rather than homegrown, given our plummeting disease prevalence - achieves complete vaccine escape, which is (a) unlikely and (b) best defended against at the border.
Remember also at this stage that Professor Whitty and many others have advised us that the virus is unlikely ever to be eradicated, and past experience suggests that they are right. If we accept the necessity of all these measures after the virus has been suppressed, because there is a theoretical possibility of our being visited by a nastier mutation in future, then we really are inviting the conclusion that the measures must be kept in place forever.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Until people realise and accept this reality there will always be a powerful force in the government ear towards health-only policies. I think the 21 June date was added as a concession to backbenchers. Come the day there may not technically be legal restrictions but guasi-legal guidelines instead, with businesses erring on side of caution with an eye on their liability insurance policies. This is why I'd like to see the guidance from government post 21 June flipping towards liberties rather than health.
Domestically, I would make them voluntary, sector by sector, maybe company by company. Pubs can do without if they want younger unvaxxed customers (until we are all jabbed), theatres will surely adopt them, to reassure an older clientele. Get exemption certs for people who can't have a jab for medical reasons. People who simply object to jabs will have to deal with the downside of their personal philosophy
If the govt makes them mandatory almost everywhere I would object to that quite strongly. Let the free market decide.
And then retire them in a year but keep them in reserve for Plague 2.0. Sorted
Is this normal? What is the point? How much money does it waste?
As usual, we will have to negotiate a Labour-Green voting pact in our house. For the locals, last time the Green vote exceeded the Tory victory margin. A bit of cooperative standing aside would help, but doesn't happen.
Why would an elderly person who has been vaccinated care if other people are unvaccinated in the vicinity?
Presumably it is easier to have a system that just sends a card to everyone vs some people not getting them (also it’s a fraud safety mechanism - if someone dies by known they have been registered for a PV).
But I don’t see them at the top of the government. I see a government that wants to restart the economy ASAP, but they are being understandably cautious about unlockdown. Once bitten twice shy.
And they also see vaxports as a means of opening up industries like travel and hospitality quicker than would happen otherwise. Eminently sensible.
If the government starts acting like China I will happily call them out. So far I don’t perceive it, and the allergic reaction on here is overdone
Hence my mother knew someone who knew someone who’d met Napolean... funny old world
Why aren’t we taking a zero tolerance approach to dealing with MMR?
Hint: Past govts gave reassuring messages if things really were problematic/dangerous. Keep calm and carry on, basically. It didn't subject the populace to a year of psy-ops.
Watch the 2 min clip. of Whitty's remarks on 11 May 2020 and read up on the difference between 'deaths from COVID' and 'deaths with COVID' and the WHO edict to include the latter in the statistics.
Look at the stats on Euromomo, although it helps to look back more than 3 years which is all their charts now allow.
Other than that, I'm afraid it takes longer to persuade people they've been conned than to con them and I don't have the time.
The distinction is regulatory, and to some extent PR, essentially.
The Ulster Banner went in the 1970s, and has not been replaced.
Personally, I'd quite like to see schools flying the flags of the 4 nations on the appropriate days; and a Union flag on certain days. No problem with that - except NI hasn't got one.
That would be far better than the current duologue of extremes. Let's marginalise both ends. And recover a civic space for civility.
This is another reason vaxports are a sensible TEMPORARY measure. In a year we will know so much more and then we can, god willing, ditch them
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Maybe we should all leave the poor victim Sir Keir alone in case his feelings are hurt
https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/1377608488998821892?s=20
In one of the great demonstrations of PB Scotch expertise you couldn't even get Ross's name right a few days ago. Where BJ goes..
A film set to be given classic status, I'd suggest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men
Yet we are to have an app which will allow groups of people to meet indoors in public places 'safe' in the knowledge that everyone present has been vaccinated.
Eh?
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
Bless.....
The fact is that vaccine passport or no vaccine passport everywhere you go 70%+ are going to be vaccinated. That's enough for herd immunity. That's enough for everything.
Vaccine passports are solving a problem that doesn't exist.
By the time it is available (and bear in mind we have been told it wont be used until all adults have been offered a vaccine) hospitality will have been open for months.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/04/03/millennials-offered-single-shot-johnson-johnson-covid-vaccine/
Plus the 'the country wont be properly developed until everything has been concreted over' mentality.
Time for a walk in the 92%.
They even have something akin to the GDPR, though clearly have a rather more... pragmatic interpretation of personal privacy.
https://www.mondaq.com/privacy-protection/898830/korea-introduces-major-amendments-to-data-privacy-laws
Because vaccinations lead to herd immunity.
This is why we don't have measles checks for getting into pubs, or football grounds.
Vaccine papers are unnecessary, unBritish, unworkable and unwanted - at least by people with a brain who understand science.
First dose 28,758
Second dose 13,907
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
Anyway, I find it hard to get too upset at the exhausted, fed up, put upon young for gathering like this, albeit that it would be better if they went to a park and sat around in small relaxed groups rather than forming a huge melee. But the fact that they obviously can't be bothered to clear up their shit vexes me more.
https://twitter.com/jeremyfaust/status/1378193939375792130
The (all Ireland) Church of Ireland have authorised only that or the Anglican Communion flag (Compass Rose on blue) since before the Millenium.
One of the problems with journos - not enough groundwork. Dave does not seem to appreciate well enough that COVAX has a self-financing facility for richer countries, or how if Serbia is poor enough for donations, COVAX run a 'fair' policy.
https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1378311777121865728
The fallacy is the belief that increasing GDP is always a good thing and that it should be the aim of the government.
In reality more people will lead to higher GDP even if the extra people do nothing but eat, sleep and shit.
And while higher GDP might allow politicians to strut about a bit more it is not the same as wealth creation or quality of life.
https://youtu.be/VajgBW2g9VY