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.
You haven't shown how what I said was fallacious - just that your value judgements mean that you disagree with it.
However you have a point in that we need to import people who increase GDP per head, not just GDP in aggregate.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
I'm not sure there will be many people still waiting in July.
It's a good policy to get people to take it before a night out, Israel did it at bars and pubs. I tho k we should do the same. Text everyone in the country their NHS number and then do the 18-29 year olds in any setting possible.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
I still don't see how a 92% undeveloped country can be described as overpopulated, as far as land use is concerned.
And Malta is in my experience very pleasant. While the coast is built up I didn't feel any claustrophobia in the interior.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
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?
Just had my vax appointment through in Wales this morning. 47 here and first jab in just under 2 weeks time.
I think the roll-out to over 40s continues apace here and I think it's anticipated all will be done by end of April/early May.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
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?
It's an offence under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, sec 36.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
I've noticed Covid-19 denialists get very upset when you say
'What's happening in Sweden these days, normally you used to post about them non stop during the early phase of the pandemic, I mean who can forget all those amazing Alistair Hames graphs and the trendlines that drew in the gullible.
Also what happened to all those FALSE POSITIVES you were banging on 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.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
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?
It's an offence under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, sec 36.
Couldn't you also have some fun with Misconduct In A Public Office?
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.
An ecumenical demonstration by Irish persons waving saltires, chanting 'snakes out', would be a welcome development.
A controversial though factual way of looking at it is to say that Covid-19 has saved the lives of a lot of children, because flu kills children and Covid-19 doesn't. On the other hand, it may mean that children haven't been developing the usual immunity to flu and colds that they normally would.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
I've noticed Covid-19 denialists get very upset when you say
'What's happening in Sweden these days, normally you used to post about them non stop during the early phase of the pandemic, I mean who can forget all those amazing Alistair Hames graphs and the trendlines that drew in the gullible.
Also what happened to all those FALSE POSITIVES you were banging on about?'
On a more serious note, maybe we ought to empathise a bit more with them (me, especially). Usually the reason for out-and-out denialism is that the reality being denied is just so horrifying or unacceptable or frightning that the mind has to create a refuge. It looks like that was what kicked it off for the Ur-Lockdown-Skeptic himself, Toby Young:
And then he started going on about how only people at death's door were vulnerable, or it was just killing the same people who were dying of flu normally, or it wasn't killing anyone, or the REAL IFR was [insert-absurd-discredited-estimate], and only the really old or those who were already pretty much dying of something else need to be frightened. (And not me, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me).
And yes, when pandemics stalk the land, there's a real cause of fear. If not for oneself (and for pretty much everyone posting here, the chance of being so ill as to be hospitalised is non-trivial, even if we would be highly unlikely to die - and Long Covid really is a thing), but for one's loved ones - or even everyone else we bump into from day to day.
And then there's the massive disruption to our lives necessitated by restrictions to prevent the infection rate from totally oversaturating our hospitals (and even then, in the latest peak, we went that far and further). Wouldn't it be wonderful if they weren't necessary and could just go away? They're horrible. Really, massively, intrusively horrible - it's not surprising some people simply can't accept them and need to find some way to rationalise that they don't even need to exist.
It's frustrating, certainly, to see the same obviously bogus lines being trotted out by the grifters and fools like Toby, JHB, Paton, Claire Craig, and others - not just because they've been discredited so often and yet, somehow, the same people swallow it every time. Because they're being fed something they simply have to swallow.
But I do need to be more empathetic. Yes, I'll know they're not the right people to rely on in a crisis, but maybe the right crisis might be better for them. Then again, let's hope not to ever see such a horrific crisis ever again, anyway.
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?
Just had my vax appointment through in Wales this morning. 47 here and first jab in just under 2 weeks time.
I think the roll-out to over 40s continues apace here and I think it's anticipated all will be done by end of April/early May.
It's nice to hear that things are going well where you are. I recently got advanced into cohort 6 (although I had to ring up the GP surgery and tell them what the latest rules were in order to do it,) but I'm still waiting for an appointment. I bet I don't get one all of next week either, and I then end up having to ring up and nag them to try to get things shifting. Although it's still preferable to waiting my turn solely on the basis of age, because the mood music is obviously that everyone under 50 in England is going to be kept waiting and waiting and waiting until some unspecified point in May.
Quite where Wales and Northern Ireland are magicking the extra doses from is beyond me. It's hardly as if they have a separate procurement program. You do wonder if the English NHS is dicking about trying to persuade all our refuseniks to change their minds rather than getting on with the next group down (and we are bound to have a higher percentage of such people, because hesitancy is so strongly correlated with ethnicity.)
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
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?
It's an offence under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, sec 36.
Couldn't you also have some fun with Misconduct In A Public Office?
I think Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon have taken out a duopoly on that,
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
Add the Philippines to that list of lock downs
God, Ferguson and SAGE are getting everywhere these days.
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.
It is an altogether odd view to think that private companies on your territory are wrong to sell their products to outside countries who book in advance, pay in advance and in the case of the UK, even pay for the production facility to be built..in advance. The level of 'wrongthink' is staggering.
Here’s a graph to ponder. Why is South Africa Red Listed but not France? I don’t know how or why but things have improved immeasurably in SA this last month or so and FB friends down there have been posting shots of them happily cavorting in bars...
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
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?
Just had my vax appointment through in Wales this morning. 47 here and first jab in just under 2 weeks time.
I think the roll-out to over 40s continues apace here and I think it's anticipated all will be done by end of April/early May.
It's nice to hear that things are going well where you are. I recently got advanced into cohort 6 (although I had to ring up the GP surgery and tell them what the latest rules were in order to do it,) but I'm still waiting for an appointment. I bet I don't get one all of next week either, and I then end up having to ring up and nag them to try to get things shifting. Although it's still preferable to waiting my turn solely on the basis of age, because the mood music is obviously that everyone under 50 in England is going to be kept waiting and waiting and waiting until some unspecified point in May.
Quite where Wales and Northern Ireland are magicking the extra doses from is beyond me. It's hardly as if they have a separate procurement program. You do wonder if the English NHS is dicking about trying to persuade all our refuseniks to change their minds rather than getting on with the next group down (and we are bound to have a higher percentage of such people, because hesitancy is so strongly correlated with ethnicity.)
1st / 2nd doses as % of over 18s
UK 59.66% / 9.88%
Wales 58.37% / 18.37% Northern Ireland 53.15% / 11.03% Scotland 57.19% / 9.81% England 60.20% / 9.37%
Wales far too short vaccination gap on 2nd doses has meant we're some 280,000 first doses behind where we could have been.
Here’s a graph to ponder. Why is South Africa Red Listed but not France? I don’t know how or why but things have improved immeasurably in SA this last month or so and FB friends down there have been posting shots of them happily cavorting in bars...
Probably because if we started to red list the neighbours then there would be very inconvenient questions about why the Channel ports haven't been closed, and the Government thinks it would cause too much disruption to stop the flow of truckers.
As I've said at various points during all of this, we would do well to get as much of our trade as possible off lorries and onto containers. The ability, when dealing with a situation like this, to cut off the flow of people from continental Europe without crippling commerce and risking food shortages would be invaluable.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
Netherlands 423 per sq km England 432 per sq km
Netherlands is 500+ according to most sources.
Maybe it depends whether you include overseas territories like St Martin, Aruba, etc.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
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?
Just had my vax appointment through in Wales this morning. 47 here and first jab in just under 2 weeks time.
I think the roll-out to over 40s continues apace here and I think it's anticipated all will be done by end of April/early May.
It's nice to hear that things are going well where you are. I recently got advanced into cohort 6 (although I had to ring up the GP surgery and tell them what the latest rules were in order to do it,) but I'm still waiting for an appointment. I bet I don't get one all of next week either, and I then end up having to ring up and nag them to try to get things shifting. Although it's still preferable to waiting my turn solely on the basis of age, because the mood music is obviously that everyone under 50 in England is going to be kept waiting and waiting and waiting until some unspecified point in May.
Quite where Wales and Northern Ireland are magicking the extra doses from is beyond me. It's hardly as if they have a separate procurement program. You do wonder if the English NHS is dicking about trying to persuade all our refuseniks to change their minds rather than getting on with the next group down (and we are bound to have a higher percentage of such people, because hesitancy is so strongly correlated with ethnicity.)
1st / 2nd doses as % of over 18s
UK 59.66% / 9.88%
Wales 58.37% / 18.37% Northern Ireland 53.15% / 11.03% Scotland 57.19% / 9.81% England 60.20% / 9.37%
Then what on Earth is happening? I mean, I'm relying on anecdata with respect to the Welsh situation, but we know that the lower age limit in Northern Ireland has already been dropped from 50 to 45 by the Executive. As well as being irritating it's very strange.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
Wage stagnation since the crash?
plus im willing to bet most of those shiny motors are on PCP.
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?
Just had my vax appointment through in Wales this morning. 47 here and first jab in just under 2 weeks time.
I think the roll-out to over 40s continues apace here and I think it's anticipated all will be done by end of April/early May.
It's nice to hear that things are going well where you are. I recently got advanced into cohort 6 (although I had to ring up the GP surgery and tell them what the latest rules were in order to do it,) but I'm still waiting for an appointment. I bet I don't get one all of next week either, and I then end up having to ring up and nag them to try to get things shifting. Although it's still preferable to waiting my turn solely on the basis of age, because the mood music is obviously that everyone under 50 in England is going to be kept waiting and waiting and waiting until some unspecified point in May.
Quite where Wales and Northern Ireland are magicking the extra doses from is beyond me. It's hardly as if they have a separate procurement program. You do wonder if the English NHS is dicking about trying to persuade all our refuseniks to change their minds rather than getting on with the next group down (and we are bound to have a higher percentage of such people, because hesitancy is so strongly correlated with ethnicity.)
1st / 2nd doses as % of over 18s
UK 59.66% / 9.88%
Wales 58.37% / 18.37% Northern Ireland 53.15% / 11.03% Scotland 57.19% / 9.81% England 60.20% / 9.37%
Then what on Earth is happening? I mean, I'm relying on anecdata with respect to the Welsh situation, but we know that the lower age limit in Northern Ireland has already been dropped from 50 to 45 by the Executive. As well as being irritating it's very strange.
My surgery area is doing 40 - 49 (England). Alas I'm slightly too young by about 3 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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
Netherlands 423 per sq km England 432 per sq km
Netherlands is 500+ according to most sources.
Maybe it depends whether you include overseas territories like St Martin, Aruba, etc.
The ~420 figures includes a couple of tiny (<1% of the area of the Netherlands, so likely a negligible effect) islands in the Caribbean, but not the ones you list which are separate countries in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
A controversial though factual way of looking at it is to say that Covid-19 has saved the lives of a lot of children, because flu kills children and Covid-19 doesn't. On the other hand, it may mean that children haven't been developing the usual immunity to flu and colds that they normally would.
“Just the flu” misses the point, Influenza can be a very very nasty disease and novel strains can be worse than Covid - as 1918-20 proved. The 1889-90 “flu” pandemic (which may have actually been a coronavirus) killed 125000 in the U.K., equivalent to 250000 or so deaths today. Now we are going to have a generation with some degree of immunity to Covid, to a greater or lesser extent perhaps, but significantly reduced immunity to influenza. While it’s understandable to worry about SARS-COV2 variants, there are four or five other coronaviruses out there that cause common colds, presumably have a similar mutation rate, and we don’t spend much time worrying about them. I’m more worried about influenza in the next few years than our current preoccupation.
Here’s a graph to ponder. Why is South Africa Red Listed but not France? I don’t know how or why but things have improved immeasurably in SA this last month or so and FB friends down there have been posting shots of them happily cavorting in bars...
Populism don't you know. SA must be on the Red List cus it has a variant named after it.
Similarly UK still persona non grata, even with countries which have stacks of UK variant, despite our very low levels of infection.
Here’s a graph to ponder. Why is South Africa Red Listed but not France? I don’t know how or why but things have improved immeasurably in SA this last month or so and FB friends down there have been posting shots of them happily cavorting in bars...
Probably because if we started to red list the neighbours then there would be very inconvenient questions about why the Channel ports haven't been closed, and the Government thinks it would cause too much disruption to stop the flow of truckers.
As I've said at various points during all of this, we would do well to get as much of our trade as possible off lorries and onto containers. The ability, when dealing with a situation like this, to cut off the flow of people from continental Europe without crippling commerce and risking food shortages would be invaluable.
I understand that completely. There’s chance there will be (home) fans at Lions tests in SA this summer. Which would be incredible. I don’t know how to explain it. Perhaps their third wave is coming.
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.
It is an altogether odd view to think that private companies on your territory are wrong to sell their products to outside countries who book in advance, pay in advance and in the case of the UK, even pay for the production facility to be built..in advance. The level of 'wrongthink' is staggering.
The basics of the law of contract are not difficult to understand. One can only assume that Dave Keating & co are wilfully misunderstanding 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.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
Netherlands 423 per sq km England 432 per sq km
So about the same then.
Meanwhile, out east:
South Korea 515 per sq. km Taiwan 650 per sq. km
These figures are rather useless when you consider London's population density is around 5,700/km2
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.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
It's surprising there isn't agreement on the numbers.
It is surprising. I've noticed it before, the different figures.
I’d hazard it might be that the higher density is calculated without including the area of the most recently reclaimed polders which IIRC were only considered sufficiently dried out to be counted as land relatively recently.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
Add the Philippines to that list of lock downs
God, Ferguson and SAGE are getting everywhere these days.
Does that mean we can indict the bastards for breach of lockdown?
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.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
I've noticed Covid-19 denialists get very upset when you say
'What's happening in Sweden these days, normally you used to post about them non stop during the early phase of the pandemic, I mean who can forget all those amazing Alistair Hames graphs and the trendlines that drew in the gullible.
Also what happened to all those FALSE POSITIVES you were banging on about?'
On a more serious note, maybe we ought to empathise a bit more with them (me, especially). Usually the reason for out-and-out denialism is that the reality being denied is just so horrifying or unacceptable or frightning that the mind has to create a refuge. It looks like that was what kicked it off for the Ur-Lockdown-Skeptic himself, Toby Young:
And then he started going on about how only people at death's door were vulnerable, or it was just killing the same people who were dying of flu normally, or it wasn't killing anyone, or the REAL IFR was [insert-absurd-discredited-estimate], and only the really old or those who were already pretty much dying of something else need to be frightened. (And not me, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me).
And yes, when pandemics stalk the land, there's a real cause of fear. If not for oneself (and for pretty much everyone posting here, the chance of being so ill as to be hospitalised is non-trivial, even if we would be highly unlikely to die - and Long Covid really is a thing), but for one's loved ones - or even everyone else we bump into from day to day.
And then there's the massive disruption to our lives necessitated by restrictions to prevent the infection rate from totally oversaturating our hospitals (and even then, in the latest peak, we went that far and further). Wouldn't it be wonderful if they weren't necessary and could just go away? They're horrible. Really, massively, intrusively horrible - it's not surprising some people simply can't accept them and need to find some way to rationalise that they don't even need to exist.
It's frustrating, certainly, to see the same obviously bogus lines being trotted out by the grifters and fools like Toby, JHB, Paton, Claire Craig, and others - not just because they've been discredited so often and yet, somehow, the same people swallow it every time. Because they're being fed something they simply have to swallow.
But I do need to be more empathetic. Yes, I'll know they're not the right people to rely on in a crisis, but maybe the right crisis might be better for them. Then again, let's hope not to ever see such a horrific crisis ever again, anyway.
I think there's a distinction between someone who psychologically cannot accept the truth and so swallows the lies of the grifters, and someone who repeats those lies. We can and should have empathy for both, but the second needs calling out firmly when they lie, so that the damage does not propagate as much. If one has the energy (I normally don't) then correcting a lie can be done both firmly and with empathy.
Some of the liars, though, are just trolls.
(I'm not just thinking of covid deniers, but also conspiracy theorists. Some recent PB discussion about vaccine passports has not been edifying and I have not wished to contribute.)
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
Wage stagnation since the crash?
plus im willing to bet most of those shiny motors are on PCP.
LOL. I am clearly losing my Britisihness - or not changing with what that means. My last two and current odometers: 350,000 miles (transmission blew); 250,000 miles (engine blew); 175,000 miles and going strong.
I'm very sorry for bullying poor old Sir Keir with facts - it won't happen again. To be fair to him, I think he actually does look like a Prime Minister in Waiting, in the sense that he seems like someone who'll be waiting an awfully long time to become PM...
On topic, environmental awareness is an area whose time has finally come after a number of false dawns.
As others have argued, pursuing a programme based on eco-authoritarianism is going to get you nowhere slowly - that doesn't mean people don't care, conversely, more people do care and indeed care passionately but they want a solution which is a respectable compromise between tackling the problem and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater (and that's not good environmentally).
The "environment" as an issue, rather like housing, has a number of aspects. For some, it's all about climate change, for others it's about carbon footprints while others look at, for example, pollution and air quality and that's an issue which resonates in London and elsewhere.
I think a Party campaigning strongly on improving air quality is always going to get a sympathetic hearing - there's general awareness of the role of pollution in causing asthma and other respiratory issues among children.
The response to the problem, however, has to be innovative in all senses - utilising the same scientific ingenuity which has been brought to bear on coronavirus. While the banning of wood-burning ovens has caused enough ructions, there would be less controversy around prioritising R&D investment into areas such as improving air quality.
A lot has been done - the pledges on de-carbonisation are a start, though tentative and not really recognising the seriousness of the issue. Having plundered the planet's resources to provide a standard of living for most of the population far beyond anything experienced in human history, the West is on sticky ground trying to argue the rest of the world doesn't have the same right. We should and indeed are leading the way by showing prosperity and economic growth needn't cost the earth (in every sense).
The technologies developed in the West should be exported to China, India, Africa and elsewhere - we want (or should want) the same prosperity for the world that so many of us enjoy and perhaps take for granted but that requires not a new economic model but a revised ingenuity.
The huge switch to renewable energy in the UK has been a largely unknown story but it shows what is possible.
Somebody spoke earlier of the need for a centre-right environmental party - I'm not sure labels like "centre" and "right" apply on this - most of it is a combination of practical politics and a recognition of the potential for human ingenuity and the need to do all we can to empower that ingenuity.
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.
It is an altogether odd view to think that private companies on your territory are wrong to sell their products to outside countries who book in advance, pay in advance and in the case of the UK, even pay for the production facility to be built..in advance. The level of 'wrongthink' is staggering.
The basics of the law of contract are not difficult to understand. One can only assume that Dave Keating & co are wilfully misunderstanding them.
It's an Excession moment. What's that line about all societies are three meals from....
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
I've noticed Covid-19 denialists get very upset when you say
'What's happening in Sweden these days, normally you used to post about them non stop during the early phase of the pandemic, I mean who can forget all those amazing Alistair Hames graphs and the trendlines that drew in the gullible.
Also what happened to all those FALSE POSITIVES you were banging on about?'
On a more serious note, maybe we ought to empathise a bit more with them (me, especially). Usually the reason for out-and-out denialism is that the reality being denied is just so horrifying or unacceptable or frightning that the mind has to create a refuge. It looks like that was what kicked it off for the Ur-Lockdown-Skeptic himself, Toby Young:
And then he started going on about how only people at death's door were vulnerable, or it was just killing the same people who were dying of flu normally, or it wasn't killing anyone, or the REAL IFR was [insert-absurd-discredited-estimate], and only the really old or those who were already pretty much dying of something else need to be frightened. (And not me, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me).
And yes, when pandemics stalk the land, there's a real cause of fear. If not for oneself (and for pretty much everyone posting here, the chance of being so ill as to be hospitalised is non-trivial, even if we would be highly unlikely to die - and Long Covid really is a thing), but for one's loved ones - or even everyone else we bump into from day to day.
And then there's the massive disruption to our lives necessitated by restrictions to prevent the infection rate from totally oversaturating our hospitals (and even then, in the latest peak, we went that far and further). Wouldn't it be wonderful if they weren't necessary and could just go away? They're horrible. Really, massively, intrusively horrible - it's not surprising some people simply can't accept them and need to find some way to rationalise that they don't even need to exist.
It's frustrating, certainly, to see the same obviously bogus lines being trotted out by the grifters and fools like Toby, JHB, Paton, Claire Craig, and others - not just because they've been discredited so often and yet, somehow, the same people swallow it every time. Because they're being fed something they simply have to swallow.
But I do need to be more empathetic. Yes, I'll know they're not the right people to rely on in a crisis, but maybe the right crisis might be better for them. Then again, let's hope not to ever see such a horrific crisis ever again, anyway.
I think there's a distinction between someone who psychologically cannot accept the truth and so swallows the lies of the grifters, and someone who repeats those lies. We can and should have empathy for both, but the second needs calling out firmly when they lie, so that the damage does not propagate as much. If one has the energy (I normally don't) then correcting a lie can be done both firmly and with empathy.
Some of the liars, though, are just trolls.
(I'm not just thinking of covid deniers, but also conspiracy theorists. Some recent PB discussion about vaccine passports has not been edifying and I have not wished to contribute.)
--AS
I think calling people out as liars is generally unhelpful. Sure, there are some out and out charlatans out there who somehow gain from creating lies, but they are in a small minority and, of themselves, are not a problem on the grand scale of things. Most people propagating falsehoods do not see themselves as liars, and they believe what they are saying to a greater or lesser extent.
Reflecting on what psychological states might lead them to believe what seems patently false to ourselves is a good start. But beliefs, particularly strong ones, usually take form within an existing world view or narrative. If we are to change what they believe, we have to understand their world view, and see what we can do to start changing that, so that they can even hear what we are saying about the falsehoods. If we just say you are wrong - let alone 'you are lying' - our message won't even be heard, let alone received and have an impact.
The most important and impactful thing to do is to get the correct facts and explanations out first, so that there is no information void for the charlatans or the misinformed to fill.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
I'm not trying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but I always feel like things haven't changed that much since the year 2000 apart from the one or two obvious examples. I think things changed far more between 1990 and 2000 and between 1980 and 1990.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
It does have aux port which I can assume would have been quite a rare option back in 2007 for that level of car. I can only thank the foresight of the person who bought it new.
On topic, environmental awareness is an area whose time has finally come after a number of false dawns.
As others have argued, pursuing a programme based on eco-authoritarianism is going to get you nowhere slowly - that doesn't mean people don't care, conversely, more people do care and indeed care passionately but they want a solution which is a respectable compromise between tackling the problem and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater (and that's not good environmentally).
The "environment" as an issue, rather like housing, has a number of aspects. For some, it's all about climate change, for others it's about carbon footprints while others look at, for example, pollution and air quality and that's an issue which resonates in London and elsewhere.
I think a Party campaigning strongly on improving air quality is always going to get a sympathetic hearing - there's general awareness of the role of pollution in causing asthma and other respiratory issues among children.
The response to the problem, however, has to be innovative in all senses - utilising the same scientific ingenuity which has been brought to bear on coronavirus. While the banning of wood-burning ovens has caused enough ructions, there would be less controversy around prioritising R&D investment into areas such as improving air quality.
A lot has been done - the pledges on de-carbonisation are a start, though tentative and not really recognising the seriousness of the issue. Having plundered the planet's resources to provide a standard of living for most of the population far beyond anything experienced in human history, the West is on sticky ground trying to argue the rest of the world doesn't have the same right. We should and indeed are leading the way by showing prosperity and economic growth needn't cost the earth (in every sense).
The technologies developed in the West should be exported to China, India, Africa and elsewhere - we want (or should want) the same prosperity for the world that so many of us enjoy and perhaps take for granted but that requires not a new economic model but a revised ingenuity.
The huge switch to renewable energy in the UK has been a largely unknown story but it shows what is possible.
Somebody spoke earlier of the need for a centre-right environmental party - I'm not sure labels like "centre" and "right" apply on this - most of it is a combination of practical politics and a recognition of the potential for human ingenuity and the need to do all we can to empower that ingenuity.
There's always a clamour for more, but the reality is that air quality has improved so dramatically over the last half century its really now just diminishing returns.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
I've noticed Covid-19 denialists get very upset when you say
'What's happening in Sweden these days, normally you used to post about them non stop during the early phase of the pandemic, I mean who can forget all those amazing Alistair Hames graphs and the trendlines that drew in the gullible.
Also what happened to all those FALSE POSITIVES you were banging on about?'
On a more serious note, maybe we ought to empathise a bit more with them (me, especially). Usually the reason for out-and-out denialism is that the reality being denied is just so horrifying or unacceptable or frightning that the mind has to create a refuge. It looks like that was what kicked it off for the Ur-Lockdown-Skeptic himself, Toby Young:
And then he started going on about how only people at death's door were vulnerable, or it was just killing the same people who were dying of flu normally, or it wasn't killing anyone, or the REAL IFR was [insert-absurd-discredited-estimate], and only the really old or those who were already pretty much dying of something else need to be frightened. (And not me, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me).
And yes, when pandemics stalk the land, there's a real cause of fear. If not for oneself (and for pretty much everyone posting here, the chance of being so ill as to be hospitalised is non-trivial, even if we would be highly unlikely to die - and Long Covid really is a thing), but for one's loved ones - or even everyone else we bump into from day to day.
And then there's the massive disruption to our lives necessitated by restrictions to prevent the infection rate from totally oversaturating our hospitals (and even then, in the latest peak, we went that far and further). Wouldn't it be wonderful if they weren't necessary and could just go away? They're horrible. Really, massively, intrusively horrible - it's not surprising some people simply can't accept them and need to find some way to rationalise that they don't even need to exist.
It's frustrating, certainly, to see the same obviously bogus lines being trotted out by the grifters and fools like Toby, JHB, Paton, Claire Craig, and others - not just because they've been discredited so often and yet, somehow, the same people swallow it every time. Because they're being fed something they simply have to swallow.
But I do need to be more empathetic. Yes, I'll know they're not the right people to rely on in a crisis, but maybe the right crisis might be better for them. Then again, let's hope not to ever see such a horrific crisis ever again, anyway.
I think there's a distinction between someone who psychologically cannot accept the truth and so swallows the lies of the grifters, and someone who repeats those lies. We can and should have empathy for both, but the second needs calling out firmly when they lie, so that the damage does not propagate as much. If one has the energy (I normally don't) then correcting a lie can be done both firmly and with empathy.
Some of the liars, though, are just trolls.
(I'm not just thinking of covid deniers, but also conspiracy theorists. Some recent PB discussion about vaccine passports has not been edifying and I have not wished to contribute.)
--AS
I think calling people out as liars is generally unhelpful. Sure, there are some out and out charlatans out there who somehow gain from creating lies, but they are in a small minority and, of themselves, are not a problem on the grand scale of things. Most people propagating falsehoods do not see themselves as liars, and they believe what they are saying to a greater or lesser extent.
Reflecting on what psychological states might lead them to believe what seems patently false to ourselves is a good start. But beliefs, particularly strong ones, usually take form within an existing world view or narrative. If we are to change what they believe, we have to understand their world view, and see what we can do to start changing that, so that they can even hear what we are saying about the falsehoods. If we just say you are wrong - let alone 'you are lying' - our message won't even be heard, let alone received and have an impact.
The most important and impactful thing to do is to get the correct facts and explanations out first, so that there is no information void for the charlatans or the misinformed to fill.
Yes, I understand exactly what you mean. But there is both a sender and a recipient of a lie, often several of the latter, and I'm more concerned for them.
If someone comes here and, through (say) selective quoting of death rates, tries falsely to imply that (say) covid is not dangerous, then I doubt that anything said here can change their mind. There's no harm in trying, but if they are sufficiently committed to compile the information and post it, then I doubt it would work. But more important are the dozens who might read it and, eventually, be convinced of the lie. They could go on to repeat it to many others. They need to see the rebuttal.
I have a low tolerance for untruth, and I don't apologize for 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.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
I'm not trying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but I always feel like things haven't changed that much since the year 2000 apart from the one or two obvious examples. I think things changed far more between 1990 and 2000 and between 1980 and 1990.
I think that might be just a case of recency bias. It is hard to imagine that what seemed like yesterday wasnt. We were poorer than now.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
Wage stagnation since the crash?
plus im willing to bet most of those shiny motors are on PCP.
LOL. I am clearly losing my Britisihness - or not changing with what that means. My last two and current odometers: 350,000 miles (transmission blew); 250,000 miles (engine blew); 175,000 miles and going strong.
My car is about 15 years old, but it only has about 45,000 miles on it and passed its last MOT with no problems, so I'm in no hurry to replace it. I expect it to be the last ICE car I buy so I'm happy to wait for the electrical recharging network to become a bit more widespread before replacing it.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
I've noticed Covid-19 denialists get very upset when you say
'What's happening in Sweden these days, normally you used to post about them non stop during the early phase of the pandemic, I mean who can forget all those amazing Alistair Hames graphs and the trendlines that drew in the gullible.
Also what happened to all those FALSE POSITIVES you were banging on about?'
On a more serious note, maybe we ought to empathise a bit more with them (me, especially). Usually the reason for out-and-out denialism is that the reality being denied is just so horrifying or unacceptable or frightning that the mind has to create a refuge. It looks like that was what kicked it off for the Ur-Lockdown-Skeptic himself, Toby Young:
And then he started going on about how only people at death's door were vulnerable, or it was just killing the same people who were dying of flu normally, or it wasn't killing anyone, or the REAL IFR was [insert-absurd-discredited-estimate], and only the really old or those who were already pretty much dying of something else need to be frightened. (And not me, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me).
And yes, when pandemics stalk the land, there's a real cause of fear. If not for oneself (and for pretty much everyone posting here, the chance of being so ill as to be hospitalised is non-trivial, even if we would be highly unlikely to die - and Long Covid really is a thing), but for one's loved ones - or even everyone else we bump into from day to day.
And then there's the massive disruption to our lives necessitated by restrictions to prevent the infection rate from totally oversaturating our hospitals (and even then, in the latest peak, we went that far and further). Wouldn't it be wonderful if they weren't necessary and could just go away? They're horrible. Really, massively, intrusively horrible - it's not surprising some people simply can't accept them and need to find some way to rationalise that they don't even need to exist.
It's frustrating, certainly, to see the same obviously bogus lines being trotted out by the grifters and fools like Toby, JHB, Paton, Claire Craig, and others - not just because they've been discredited so often and yet, somehow, the same people swallow it every time. Because they're being fed something they simply have to swallow.
But I do need to be more empathetic. Yes, I'll know they're not the right people to rely on in a crisis, but maybe the right crisis might be better for them. Then again, let's hope not to ever see such a horrific crisis ever again, anyway.
I think there's a distinction between someone who psychologically cannot accept the truth and so swallows the lies of the grifters, and someone who repeats those lies. We can and should have empathy for both, but the second needs calling out firmly when they lie, so that the damage does not propagate as much. If one has the energy (I normally don't) then correcting a lie can be done both firmly and with empathy.
Some of the liars, though, are just trolls.
(I'm not just thinking of covid deniers, but also conspiracy theorists. Some recent PB discussion about vaccine passports has not been edifying and I have not wished to contribute.)
--AS
I think calling people out as liars is generally unhelpful. Sure, there are some out and out charlatans out there who somehow gain from creating lies, but they are in a small minority and, of themselves, are not a problem on the grand scale of things. Most people propagating falsehoods do not see themselves as liars, and they believe what they are saying to a greater or lesser extent.
Reflecting on what psychological states might lead them to believe what seems patently false to ourselves is a good start. But beliefs, particularly strong ones, usually take form within an existing world view or narrative. If we are to change what they believe, we have to understand their world view, and see what we can do to start changing that, so that they can even hear what we are saying about the falsehoods. If we just say you are wrong - let alone 'you are lying' - our message won't even be heard, let alone received and have an impact.
The most important and impactful thing to do is to get the correct facts and explanations out first, so that there is no information void for the charlatans or the misinformed to fill.
Yes, I understand exactly what you mean. But there is both a sender and a recipient of a lie, often several of the latter, and I'm more concerned for them.
If someone comes here and, through (say) selective quoting of death rates, tries falsely to imply that (say) covid is not dangerous, then I doubt that anything said here can change their mind. There's no harm in trying, but if they are sufficiently committed to compile the information and post it, then I doubt it would work. But more important are the dozens who might read it and, eventually, be convinced of the lie. They could go on to repeat it to many others. They need to see the rebuttal.
I have a low tolerance for untruth, and I don't apologize for that.
--AS
Agreed. Can't let there be an information void, and false or misleading information needs to be countered.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
I'm not trying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but I always feel like things haven't changed that much since the year 2000 apart from the one or two obvious examples. I think things changed far more between 1990 and 2000 and between 1980 and 1990.
What has changed beyond all recognition is the extent to which we now live our lives online. If you get on a train or a bus how many people are reading a book or a newspaper as opposed to looking at their phones?
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
You agree with anti-Keynesian George M Humphrey* then, that you can't spend yourself rich.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
Plus nobody tries to crash for cash.
When I had my sixteen year old Octavia, I could see a few people think about trying it and then thinking better of it.
There's always a clamour for more, but the reality is that air quality has improved so dramatically over the last half century its really now just diminishing returns.
I wish that were true but our knowledge of pollution and its effects has also improved. The role of Particulate Matter and especially that smaller than 2.5 micrometers, which can be absorbed into the lower respiratory system and bloodstream and cause many well-documented problems.
Now, as you say, much as been done - more still needs to be done especially in the developing world with expanding car ownership a real issue.
Even in London, there are air quality stations - one near me in the Barking Road - which specifically measure Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide and particulate levels and on a number of occasions these have breached acceptable levels.
As an example, prolonged exposure to levels of N2 particulates greater than 35 micrometres per cubic metre of air causes a 10-15% decrease in mortality.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
I'm not trying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but I always feel like things haven't changed that much since the year 2000 apart from the one or two obvious examples. I think things changed far more between 1990 and 2000 and between 1980 and 1990.
What has changed beyond all recognition is the extent to which we now live our lives online. If you get on a train or a bus how many people are reading a book or a newspaper as opposed to looking at their phones?
And that phenomena is even newer. Say probably only dating back to 2011/12/13. There was an earlier comment about wage stagnation. What is interesting about that is actually.... The introduction of the national living wage and its ramping up, the lib dem policy of dramatically increasing the tax free allowance and combined with sustained council tax freezes for a number of years, those at the bottom really got quite a sizable increase in their take home income.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
Plus nobody tries to crash for cash.
When I had my sixteen year old Octavia, I could see a few people think about trying it and then thinking better of it.
With my much newer Rapid, I’m a lot more careful.
I hope @Dura_Ace isn't around with all you guys fessing up to these car choices.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
You agree with anti-Keynesian George M Humphrey* then, that you can't spend yourself rich.
* Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury
Think there might be a difference at the micro and macro levels. Speed of money and multiplier effects hardly apply at the individual level; investment, of course, applies at both levels.
There's always a clamour for more, but the reality is that air quality has improved so dramatically over the last half century its really now just diminishing returns.
I wish that were true but our knowledge of pollution and its effects has also improved. The role of Particulate Matter and especially that smaller than 2.5 micrometers, which can be absorbed into the lower respiratory system and bloodstream and cause many well-documented problems.
Now, as you say, much as been done - more still needs to be done especially in the developing world with expanding car ownership a real issue.
Even in London, there are air quality stations - one near me in the Barking Road - which specifically measure Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide and particulate levels and on a number of occasions these have breached acceptable levels.
As an example, prolonged exposure to levels of N2 particulates greater than 35 micrometres per cubic metre of air causes a 10-15% decrease in mortality.
Are those "diminishing returns" ?
Is that a typo, or do we need to increase the level of particulates?
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
I'm not trying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but I always feel like things haven't changed that much since the year 2000 apart from the one or two obvious examples. I think things changed far more between 1990 and 2000 and between 1980 and 1990.
What has changed beyond all recognition is the extent to which we now live our lives online. If you get on a train or a bus how many people are reading a book or a newspaper as opposed to looking at their phones?
I was already spending a lot of time online by 1995, but I'm being a bit me-centric I suppose. Most people weren't.
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.
It must be a really weird world right now for a covid-denialist. France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy? Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real. 150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
I've noticed Covid-19 denialists get very upset when you say
'What's happening in Sweden these days, normally you used to post about them non stop during the early phase of the pandemic, I mean who can forget all those amazing Alistair Hames graphs and the trendlines that drew in the gullible.
Also what happened to all those FALSE POSITIVES you were banging on about?'
On a more serious note, maybe we ought to empathise a bit more with them (me, especially). Usually the reason for out-and-out denialism is that the reality being denied is just so horrifying or unacceptable or frightning that the mind has to create a refuge. It looks like that was what kicked it off for the Ur-Lockdown-Skeptic himself, Toby Young:
And then he started going on about how only people at death's door were vulnerable, or it was just killing the same people who were dying of flu normally, or it wasn't killing anyone, or the REAL IFR was [insert-absurd-discredited-estimate], and only the really old or those who were already pretty much dying of something else need to be frightened. (And not me, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me).
And yes, when pandemics stalk the land, there's a real cause of fear. If not for oneself (and for pretty much everyone posting here, the chance of being so ill as to be hospitalised is non-trivial, even if we would be highly unlikely to die - and Long Covid really is a thing), but for one's loved ones - or even everyone else we bump into from day to day.
And then there's the massive disruption to our lives necessitated by restrictions to prevent the infection rate from totally oversaturating our hospitals (and even then, in the latest peak, we went that far and further). Wouldn't it be wonderful if they weren't necessary and could just go away? They're horrible. Really, massively, intrusively horrible - it's not surprising some people simply can't accept them and need to find some way to rationalise that they don't even need to exist.
It's frustrating, certainly, to see the same obviously bogus lines being trotted out by the grifters and fools like Toby, JHB, Paton, Claire Craig, and others - not just because they've been discredited so often and yet, somehow, the same people swallow it every time. Because they're being fed something they simply have to swallow.
But I do need to be more empathetic. Yes, I'll know they're not the right people to rely on in a crisis, but maybe the right crisis might be better for them. Then again, let's hope not to ever see such a horrific crisis ever again, anyway.
I think there's a distinction between someone who psychologically cannot accept the truth and so swallows the lies of the grifters, and someone who repeats those lies. We can and should have empathy for both, but the second needs calling out firmly when they lie, so that the damage does not propagate as much. If one has the energy (I normally don't) then correcting a lie can be done both firmly and with empathy.
Some of the liars, though, are just trolls.
(I'm not just thinking of covid deniers, but also conspiracy theorists. Some recent PB discussion about vaccine passports has not been edifying and I have not wished to contribute.)
--AS
That's true. An inability to accept the harsh reality doesn't require Toby Young to set up a website to try to "prove" to others that it's not real/not dangerous to him. Nor does it require him to go antivaxxer to secure interest and income (despite people who say they know him claiming that he's not really antivax. To which I'm thinking: that's not better. Pushing a dangerous line you know is false is worse) And Ioaniddas is now known to have pushed Trump early on to do nothing because he decided it couldn't be real/dangerous/whatever. Of course, it's Trump we're talking about, so he may well not have needed much pushing, but still - Ioaniddas could well have a lot of blood on his hands. No wonder he can't entertain the possibility he could have been wrong.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
You agree with anti-Keynesian George M Humphrey* then, that you can't spend yourself rich.
* Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury
Think there might be a difference at the micro and macro levels. Speed of money and multiplier effects hardly apply at the individual level; investment, of course, applies at both levels.
Then there's Reagan's twist: "you can't spend yourself rich any more than you can drink yourself sober." Not a Keynesian either - a sound money man. That's for the birds - inflation is something kids nowadays only hear about as a myth from the distant past.
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
I'm not trying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but I always feel like things haven't changed that much since the year 2000 apart from the one or two obvious examples. I think things changed far more between 1990 and 2000 and between 1980 and 1990.
What has changed beyond all recognition is the extent to which we now live our lives online. If you get on a train or a bus how many people are reading a book or a newspaper as opposed to looking at their phones?
I was already spending a lot of time online by 1995, but I'm being a bit me-centric I suppose. Most people weren't.
You probably were not doing it while on the bus though.
I remember doing a speed test just after I got my first 4G phone and realised I needed to do something about my broadband speed as it was lower than I was getting on the top floor of a 139 bus...
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.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
Plus nobody tries to crash for cash.
When I had my sixteen year old Octavia, I could see a few people think about trying it and then thinking better of it.
With my much newer Rapid, I’m a lot more careful.
I hope @Dura_Ace isn't around with all you guys fessing up to these car choices.
Could be worse, we could be talking about brands of bike.
There's always a clamour for more, but the reality is that air quality has improved so dramatically over the last half century its really now just diminishing returns.
I wish that were true but our knowledge of pollution and its effects has also improved. The role of Particulate Matter and especially that smaller than 2.5 micrometers, which can be absorbed into the lower respiratory system and bloodstream and cause many well-documented problems.
Now, as you say, much as been done - more still needs to be done especially in the developing world with expanding car ownership a real issue.
Even in London, there are air quality stations - one near me in the Barking Road - which specifically measure Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide and particulate levels and on a number of occasions these have breached acceptable levels.
As an example, prolonged exposure to levels of N2 particulates greater than 35 micrometres per cubic metre of air causes a 10-15% decrease in mortality.
Are those "diminishing returns" ?
The "acceptable levels" have very low tolerance to air pollution. As with everything, more can be done, but when youve reduced air pollutants by 95% plus over half a century, its misleading to claim its still a massive problem. Great regulatory progress has come about around diesel engines which is filtering (to use a pun) through with new vehicles and ultra low emissions requirements.
Those mortality data tables are rotten to the core, it's data dredging claiming that air quality takes so many days off the life of someone then adding these days up to represent full lives. It's just grim charlatan nonsense. It doesnt get called out because who's against improving air quality?
There's always a clamour for more, but the reality is that air quality has improved so dramatically over the last half century its really now just diminishing returns.
I wish that were true but our knowledge of pollution and its effects has also improved. The role of Particulate Matter and especially that smaller than 2.5 micrometers, which can be absorbed into the lower respiratory system and bloodstream and cause many well-documented problems.
Now, as you say, much as been done - more still needs to be done especially in the developing world with expanding car ownership a real issue.
Even in London, there are air quality stations - one near me in the Barking Road - which specifically measure Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide and particulate levels and on a number of occasions these have breached acceptable levels.
As an example, prolonged exposure to levels of N2 particulates greater than 35 micrometres per cubic metre of air causes a 10-15% decrease in mortality.
On topic, environmental awareness is an area whose time has finally come after a number of false dawns.
As others have argued, pursuing a programme based on eco-authoritarianism is going to get you nowhere slowly - that doesn't mean people don't care, conversely, more people do care and indeed care passionately but they want a solution which is a respectable compromise between tackling the problem and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater (and that's not good environmentally).
The "environment" as an issue, rather like housing, has a number of aspects. For some, it's all about climate change, for others it's about carbon footprints while others look at, for example, pollution and air quality and that's an issue which resonates in London and elsewhere.
I think a Party campaigning strongly on improving air quality is always going to get a sympathetic hearing - there's general awareness of the role of pollution in causing asthma and other respiratory issues among children.
The response to the problem, however, has to be innovative in all senses - utilising the same scientific ingenuity which has been brought to bear on coronavirus. While the banning of wood-burning ovens has caused enough ructions, there would be less controversy around prioritising R&D investment into areas such as improving air quality.
A lot has been done - the pledges on de-carbonisation are a start, though tentative and not really recognising the seriousness of the issue. Having plundered the planet's resources to provide a standard of living for most of the population far beyond anything experienced in human history, the West is on sticky ground trying to argue the rest of the world doesn't have the same right. We should and indeed are leading the way by showing prosperity and economic growth needn't cost the earth (in every sense).
The technologies developed in the West should be exported to China, India, Africa and elsewhere - we want (or should want) the same prosperity for the world that so many of us enjoy and perhaps take for granted but that requires not a new economic model but a revised ingenuity.
The huge switch to renewable energy in the UK has been a largely unknown story but it shows what is possible.
Somebody spoke earlier of the need for a centre-right environmental party - I'm not sure labels like "centre" and "right" apply on this - most of it is a combination of practical politics and a recognition of the potential for human ingenuity and the need to do all we can to empower that ingenuity.
The nearest thing you are actually going to get with the two attributes of being centre right and committed to carbon reduction environmental policies is one called the Conservative party.
The real choice is between parties committed to a gradualist and better technology based set of policies; and those based on idealism, virtue signalling, futile gestures and bits of back to nature.
It may be that both would work. Maybe both will help destroy humanity. Both may be completely unnecessary. Maybe one would work and the other not. I have not got a clue, and nor has anyone else. But I am pretty sure which one the UK voters will opt for; and pretty sure which one the Chinese government and USA voters will go for. So I hope it works because that is what you are going to get.
At the moment the Tory version of it is more worked out and coherent than the Labour version, but that isn't saying much.
The daily numbers have updated. Today's Covid deaths: 10. The average for the last week is now down to 36 per day. There's still about 3,500 in hospital but we are definitely getting there.
Comments
That would be a pretty odd thing to think.
However you have a point in that we need to import people who increase GDP per head, not just GDP in aggregate.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163445313003733
Mortality in children under 15 years was low with around 12 influenza-attributable deaths in hospital per year in England.
I guess there could be definitional issues but I reckon we might be better than the US on this.
And Malta is in my experience very pleasant. While the coast is built up I didn't feel any claustrophobia in the interior.
France goes into an unpopular lockdown because of - well, Ferguson? SAGE? An international conspiracy?
Skyrocketing infections and deaths in Brazil, Chile, Mexico... in Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria... because of - what? Never mind. All made up. Isn't real. Can't be real.
150,000 deaths of covid. Ah, but they were deaths "with" covid. Disregard the fact that getting a covid positive makes you incredibly more likely to die within 28 days than those without a covid diagnosis. Just coincidence. A hundred and fifty thousand times a coincidence.
Ah, but the excess deaths (um - they're showing a big spike)... ah, okay, 'age-adjusted total deaths' or something. Deaths well up, but if we look back to when heart disease and cancer were each killing people at twice the rate of today, we can handwave something-something-something.
And - yeah, we didn't follow the influenza pandemic plan, apart from right at the start when everything looked different, until they realised covid was totally different from influenza. But we should have followed the influenza pandemic plan because my life would have been less disrupted if it HAD been like influenza, so I can go to Lockdown Sceptics and read things from people who have been wrong again and again and again and again but keep saying things I like. After all, someone's got to give money to Ivor Cummins.
Gee, I wonder why Bangladesh is starting a new lockdown. Must be listening to Ferguson or something.
It is, however, a small country.
https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1378322895680720899
https://twitter.com/ue2ger/status/1378327174390935552
https://twitter.com/ue2ger/status/1378327891184877569
I think the roll-out to over 40s continues apace here and I think it's anticipated all will be done by end of April/early May.
https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1378322884834304002
https://twitter.com/HTScotPol/status/1378323093245071364?s=20
https://twitter.com/HTScotPol/status/1378323778346872832?s=20
'What's happening in Sweden these days, normally you used to post about them non stop during the early phase of the pandemic, I mean who can forget all those amazing Alistair Hames graphs and the trendlines that drew in the gullible.
Also what happened to all those FALSE POSITIVES you were banging on about?'
England 432 per sq km
https://twitter.com/Pulpstar/status/1378335257389318146
It looks like that was what kicked it off for the Ur-Lockdown-Skeptic himself, Toby Young:
And then he started going on about how only people at death's door were vulnerable, or it was just killing the same people who were dying of flu normally, or it wasn't killing anyone, or the REAL IFR was [insert-absurd-discredited-estimate], and only the really old or those who were already pretty much dying of something else need to be frightened.
(And not me, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me).
And yes, when pandemics stalk the land, there's a real cause of fear. If not for oneself (and for pretty much everyone posting here, the chance of being so ill as to be hospitalised is non-trivial, even if we would be highly unlikely to die - and Long Covid really is a thing), but for one's loved ones - or even everyone else we bump into from day to day.
And then there's the massive disruption to our lives necessitated by restrictions to prevent the infection rate from totally oversaturating our hospitals (and even then, in the latest peak, we went that far and further). Wouldn't it be wonderful if they weren't necessary and could just go away? They're horrible. Really, massively, intrusively horrible - it's not surprising some people simply can't accept them and need to find some way to rationalise that they don't even need to exist.
It's frustrating, certainly, to see the same obviously bogus lines being trotted out by the grifters and fools like Toby, JHB, Paton, Claire Craig, and others - not just because they've been discredited so often and yet, somehow, the same people swallow it every time. Because they're being fed something they simply have to swallow.
But I do need to be more empathetic. Yes, I'll know they're not the right people to rely on in a crisis, but maybe the right crisis might be better for them. Then again, let's hope not to ever see such a horrific crisis ever again, anyway.
Quite where Wales and Northern Ireland are magicking the extra doses from is beyond me. It's hardly as if they have a separate procurement program. You do wonder if the English NHS is dicking about trying to persuade all our refuseniks to change their minds rather than getting on with the next group down (and we are bound to have a higher percentage of such people, because hesitancy is so strongly correlated with ethnicity.)
West Brom 4
86 mins
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
https://twitter.com/leavedavidalone/status/1378334317047377920?s=19
UK 59.66% / 9.88%
Wales 58.37% / 18.37%
Northern Ireland 53.15% / 11.03%
Scotland 57.19% / 9.81%
England 60.20% / 9.37%
Wales far too short vaccination gap on 2nd doses has meant we're some 280,000 first doses behind where we could have been.
As I've said at various points during all of this, we would do well to get as much of our trade as possible off lorries and onto containers. The ability, when dealing with a situation like this, to cut off the flow of people from continental Europe without crippling commerce and risking food shortages would be invaluable.
It's surprising there isn't agreement on the numbers.
plus im willing to bet most of those shiny motors are on PCP.
Similarly UK still persona non grata, even with countries which have stacks of UK variant, despite our very low levels of infection.
Meanwhile, out east:
South Korea 515 per sq. km
Taiwan 650 per sq. km
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1378316423714455553?s=19
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1378316414906417156
Hmmm ...
https://unherd.com/thepost/neil-ferguson-interview-china-changed-what-was-possible/
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/world-financial-leaders-want-to-adopt-chinas-nefarious-system-to-determine-credit-using-a-persons-internet-history
Some of the liars, though, are just trolls.
(I'm not just thinking of covid deniers, but also conspiracy theorists. Some recent PB discussion about vaccine passports has not been edifying and I have not wished to contribute.)
--AS
On topic, environmental awareness is an area whose time has finally come after a number of false dawns.
As others have argued, pursuing a programme based on eco-authoritarianism is going to get you nowhere slowly - that doesn't mean people don't care, conversely, more people do care and indeed care passionately but they want a solution which is a respectable compromise between tackling the problem and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater (and that's not good environmentally).
The "environment" as an issue, rather like housing, has a number of aspects. For some, it's all about climate change, for others it's about carbon footprints while others look at, for example, pollution and air quality and that's an issue which resonates in London and elsewhere.
I think a Party campaigning strongly on improving air quality is always going to get a sympathetic hearing - there's general awareness of the role of pollution in causing asthma and other respiratory issues among children.
The response to the problem, however, has to be innovative in all senses - utilising the same scientific ingenuity which has been brought to bear on coronavirus. While the banning of wood-burning ovens has caused enough ructions, there would be less controversy around prioritising R&D investment into areas such as improving air quality.
A lot has been done - the pledges on de-carbonisation are a start, though tentative and not really recognising the seriousness of the issue. Having plundered the planet's resources to provide a standard of living for most of the population far beyond anything experienced in human history, the West is on sticky ground trying to argue the rest of the world doesn't have the same right. We should and indeed are leading the way by showing prosperity and economic growth needn't cost the earth (in every sense).
The technologies developed in the West should be exported to China, India, Africa and elsewhere - we want (or should want) the same prosperity for the world that so many of us enjoy and perhaps take for granted but that requires not a new economic model but a revised ingenuity.
The huge switch to renewable energy in the UK has been a largely unknown story but it shows what is possible.
Somebody spoke earlier of the need for a centre-right environmental party - I'm not sure labels like "centre" and "right" apply on this - most of it is a combination of practical politics and a recognition of the potential for human ingenuity and the need to do all we can to empower that ingenuity.
Reflecting on what psychological states might lead them to believe what seems patently false to ourselves is a good start. But beliefs, particularly strong ones, usually take form within an existing world view or narrative. If we are to change what they believe, we have to understand their world view, and see what we can do to start changing that, so that they can even hear what we are saying about the falsehoods. If we just say you are wrong - let alone 'you are lying' - our message won't even be heard, let alone received and have an impact.
The most important and impactful thing to do is to get the correct facts and explanations out first, so that there is no information void for the charlatans or the misinformed to fill.
Just as Labour thought the same of William Hague.
Albeit Starmer is a much better leader than either of those.
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
If someone comes here and, through (say) selective quoting of death rates, tries falsely to imply that (say) covid is not dangerous, then I doubt that anything said here can change their mind. There's no harm in trying, but if they are sufficiently committed to compile the information and post it, then I doubt it would work. But more important are the dozens who might read it and, eventually, be convinced of the lie. They could go on to repeat it to many others. They need to see the rebuttal.
I have a low tolerance for untruth, and I don't apologize for that.
--AS
If you get on a train or a bus how many people are reading a book or a newspaper as opposed to looking at their phones?
* Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury
When I had my sixteen year old Octavia, I could see a few people think about trying it and then thinking better of it.
With my much newer Rapid, I’m a lot more careful.
Now, as you say, much as been done - more still needs to be done especially in the developing world with expanding car ownership a real issue.
Even in London, there are air quality stations - one near me in the Barking Road - which specifically measure Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide and particulate levels and on a number of occasions these have breached acceptable levels.
As an example, prolonged exposure to levels of N2 particulates greater than 35 micrometres per cubic metre of air causes a 10-15% decrease in mortality.
Are those "diminishing returns" ?
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1378360346180718593?s=19
An inability to accept the harsh reality doesn't require Toby Young to set up a website to try to "prove" to others that it's not real/not dangerous to him. Nor does it require him to go antivaxxer to secure interest and income (despite people who say they know him claiming that he's not really antivax. To which I'm thinking: that's not better. Pushing a dangerous line you know is false is worse)
And Ioaniddas is now known to have pushed Trump early on to do nothing because he decided it couldn't be real/dangerous/whatever. Of course, it's Trump we're talking about, so he may well not have needed much pushing, but still - Ioaniddas could well have a lot of blood on his hands. No wonder he can't entertain the possibility he could have been wrong.
That's for the birds - inflation is something kids nowadays only hear about as a myth from the distant past.
I remember doing a speed test just after I got my first 4G phone and realised I needed to do something about my broadband speed as it was lower than I was getting on the top floor of a 139 bus...
Those mortality data tables are rotten to the core, it's data dredging claiming that air quality takes so many days off the life of someone then adding these days up to represent full lives. It's just grim charlatan nonsense. It doesnt get called out because who's against improving air quality?
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1377977021452668930?s=19
https://twitter.com/PhillipsBarrie/status/1378105597955088392?s=19
The real choice is between parties committed to a gradualist and better technology based set of policies; and those based on idealism, virtue signalling, futile gestures and bits of back to nature.
It may be that both would work. Maybe both will help destroy humanity. Both may be completely unnecessary. Maybe one would work and the other not. I have not got a clue, and nor has anyone else. But I am pretty sure which one the UK voters will opt for; and pretty sure which one the Chinese government and USA voters will go for. So I hope it works because that is what you are going to get.
At the moment the Tory version of it is more worked out and coherent than the Labour version, but that isn't saying much.