Re the Greensill "scandal" or "affair" if you will ... it seems to me that lobbying / conflict of interest is a distinction without a difference. Everyone knows lobbying is well dodgy. I can't see this as anything more than a media bubble story. Joe Public doesn't care. It's priced in.
I defer to no-one in my disdain for politicians of all parties. In my view they are all (or at least the vast, vast majority) useless and self serving - for them, getting elected as an MP and then being appointed as a minister is like winning the lottery. I'm amazed any of them find gainful employment in the private sector. The fact that many do is down to only one reason of course - contacts within government and potential influence (OK, two reasons technically).
If we want to stop ex-ministers or civil servants topping up their already generous pensions in this way, either pass a law or put it in their contract of employment. Until we do that, there is is nothing to see here - Cameron made contact and was rebuffed, right?
Everything else is just politicians doing what politicians do (not to mention our increasingly useless journalists) ... while the rest of us go mad with frustration about continuing lock-down despite no justification.
And on that subject ...
If we want to have an inquiry into something that matters, how about we investigate the influence of "behavioural scientists" who seem to be all-powerful in manipulating public opinion in support of this government's authoritarianism. Johnson's comments yesterday about lockdown being the cause of the decline in COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths cannot have been off-the-cuff. He is preparing the ground for lockdowns to become a permanent feature of our future, waiting in the wings to be deployed whenever the government of the day chooses, under the cover of a SAGE advisor. This is not good.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I'm not particularly bothered to go to the pub. There are no particularly great pubs in my neighbourhood. And I'm disinclined to sit outside in the cold. And table service isn't a pub. And I object to leaving my details or using an app on my phone. So basically I'm finding reasons not to engage. I have become sullen, detached. I think big for me will be when the restrictions to being in other people's houses go. That's when life will change.
You're actually following the rules re: being in other people's houses!?
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
Key to this I think will be the Labour / Lib Dem dynamic. There is a long term demographic drift away from the conservatives in areas that have historically been quite good for the Lib Dems but where they were way behind the Tories (particularly in Hampshire, Surrey, Bucks etc). There's a chance the opposition split the anti-Tory vote there which just increases the asymmetry between Tory gains in the post-industrial North where they are the single beneficiary, and anti-Tory gains in the home counties where there's more than one beneficiary - including potentially the Greens too.
For Labour to stand a chance in say 7 years there needs to be very efficient tactical voting including a resurgence of the yellows in parts of the South that Labour can't reach.
On the flip side there's a risk to conservatives in relying increasingly on CDE2/3 voters who don't turn out to vote as reliably as more affluent voters (though they do get the older age group who are more reliable). There's also the possible demographic shift out of inner cities to suburbs making the Labour vote more efficient.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The Greensill/Cameron affair world-beating vaccine rollout and easing of restrictions comes as postal vote are about to go out for the May 6th elections...
And that's the thread!
On a point of detail, the FT reported that the pro-Tory is swing is (unsurprisingly because of the microchips) larger in those who have been vaccinated. Given that, if vaccinated older groups also feel more free to vote in person than the unvaccinated young, could we see a slightly exaggerated pro-Government turnout on that basis? Just an idea.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
What if after a substantial majority of the population has been vaccinated talk then (as it already has) turns to variants and needing booster vaccinations and locking down until a substantial majority of the population has had booster vaccinations. Rinse and repeat.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
That is a misreading - he pointed out its inadequacies, but did not say that he 'didn't believe it'.
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation. A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert: https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
It could have been a mixture of both, the initial seed coming from an improperly secured lab sample (and knowing Chinese standards on clean rooms and biosecurity, this is well within the realms of possibility) leading to spread and mutation to other live animals at the wet market by an infected person from the lab and subsequent spread from those animals such as pangolins to other humans of a newly mutated virus that was capable of human to human transmission.
I wouldn't rule anything out and the above scenario is plausible, IMO.
And yet the serology from the lab does tend to rule out an infected person for the lab spreading it, unless it was faked.
The issue in China is that last sentence. A lab leak would be hugely embarrassing for the CCP, faking it and blaming it on some natural incidence would be very much something they would want to do.
Of course. But the reason such things are a bit implausible is that they require quite a large number of people to keep quiet, and even in China's repressive regime, that is far from a given. And. of course, labs have extensive paper trails. that means a great deal of work to cover stuff up consistently.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
Good posts - I agree as you know - and I detect from a few of your posts lately that you have moved slightly in the liberty direction?
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
Key to this I think will be the Labour / Lib Dem dynamic. There is a long term demographic drift away from the conservatives in areas that have historically been quite good for the Lib Dems but where they were way behind the Tories (particularly in Hampshire, Surrey, Bucks etc). There's a chance the opposition split the anti-Tory vote there which just increases the asymmetry between Tory gains in the post-industrial North where they are the single beneficiary, and anti-Tory gains in the home counties where there's more than one beneficiary - including potentially the Greens too.
For Labour to stand a chance in say 7 years there needs to be very efficient tactical voting including a resurgence of the yellows in parts of the South that Labour can't reach.
On the flip side there's a risk to conservatives in relying increasingly on CDE2/3 voters who don't turn out to vote as reliably as more affluent voters (though they do get the older age group who are more reliable). There's also the possible demographic shift out of inner cities to suburbs making the Labour vote more efficient.
Indeed. Without some sort of Lib-Dem/Labour/Green pact in the shared target seats mentioned, very much echoing the Tory and Brexit Parties' pact last time round, I think the Tories may just be all clear to come through again, however Labour does in the Red Wall.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Yes, I understand. It was just the phrase "locked up". Not keen. No big deal.
I'm with you on this. Clearly we are still a long way from normal, but I am about to take the dog for a walk, then pop into town to go to the bakery. if I wanted i could sit in the sun with a pint in a pub rather than do what I should be doing (writing a lecture...) Emotive times bring forth emotive language, but its not always helpful.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
What if after a substantial majority of the population has been vaccinated talk then (as it already has) turns to variants and needing booster vaccinations and locking down until a substantial majority of the population has had booster vaccinations. Rinse and repeat.
Won't happen. Whatever the SAGE lot might want, we can't afford it.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
I think it's like rcs1000 has said: the media love a dramatic story that gets the clicks and attention. Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one. Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
You love a strawman Andy.
All the media is doing is reporting the latest pronouncement from Chairman Johnson.
And the latest pronouncement is the experimental vaccine that you have so willingly taken will not set you free.
That was a very concerning comment from Johnson yesterday - that it is the lockdown not the vaccines that is responsible for dramatic drop in Covid stats. How to explain our success versus other nations then?
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
What if after a substantial majority of the population has been vaccinated talk then (as it already has) turns to variants and needing booster vaccinations and locking down until a substantial majority of the population has had booster vaccinations. Rinse and repeat.
Won't happen. Whatever the SAGE lot might want, we can't afford it.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
My reading of that chart is for Boris to lose his majority, all other things being equal, Labour need to win down to Wycombe which requires a 3.85% swing (since gaining 2 off the SNP doesn't affect the Tories). Given Sinn Fein etc you are probably more looking at Don Valley which requires a 3.99% swing to definitely get them out of office, given the lack of viable coalition partners..
That's a pretty chunky swing but there is nothing outrageous about it. Some of the Tory triumphalism on here of late seems a bit overdone to me.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
I think it's like rcs1000 has said: the media love a dramatic story that gets the clicks and attention. Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one. Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
You love a strawman Andy.
All the media is doing is reporting the latest pronouncement from Chairman Johnson.
And the latest pronouncement is the experimental vaccine that you have so willingly taken will not set you free.
That was a very concerning comment from Johnson yesterday - that it is the lockdown not the vaccines that is responsible for dramatic drop in Covid stats. How to explain our success versus other nations then?
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
That assumes that the LDs stay as dead as a dodo. Probably the most remainery south east counties are Oxfordshire and Surrey
In 2019 in Oxfordshire there was a direct 10% Lab -> LD swing (Lab 29.4 to 20.8, LD 18.1 to 29.4, Con -1.8%). The 2019 Oxfordshire LD result is their high water mark since 1944(!), above even 2001-2010.
As for Surrey, there was a 12% Lab -> LD swing.
Consequently of the 15 Con held seats in those constituencies, Labour are second in only 4, 2 of which they're 0.1% and 2% away from 3rd.
Labour cannot escape pasokification. If it goes left, the LDs will seize the centre. If it goes right the Greens will leak votes.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
I think it's like rcs1000 has said: the media love a dramatic story that gets the clicks and attention. Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one. Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
You love a strawman Andy.
All the media is doing is reporting the latest pronouncement from Chairman Johnson.
And the latest pronouncement is the experimental vaccine that you have so willingly taken will not set you free.
That was a very concerning comment from Johnson yesterday - that it is the lockdown not the vaccines that is responsible for dramatic drop in Covid stats. How to explain our success versus other nations then?
That was a moronic mishandled intervention from Johnson. He needs to engage brain before opening mouth.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
Good posts - I agree as you know - and I detect from a few of your posts lately that you have moved slightly in the liberty direction?
No, not slightly. 100% except for the border as we've discussed. Quarantine people coming and going until other nations catch up with us and lift domestic restrictions.
But I was never against liberty. I understood the virus was serious and I was against lies like "false positives" or Covid-denialism, but removing liberties for a virus was never comfortable for me. It is only remotely justifiable as an absolute last resort if 100% necessary - and it frankly isn't necessary anymore. So my default position of liberty has no challenge anymore.
Domestic restrictions should be over already. At the very least 17 May or 4 July 2020 lifting of restrictions should have been done by now in full.
"That was a moronic mishandled intervention from Johnson. He needs to engage brain before opening mouth"... That will probably be on his gravestone.. not the first or last time we'll hear that.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
I think it's like rcs1000 has said: the media love a dramatic story that gets the clicks and attention. Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one. Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
You love a strawman Andy.
All the media is doing is reporting the latest pronouncement from Chairman Johnson.
And the latest pronouncement is the experimental vaccine that you have so willingly taken will not set you free.
That was a very concerning comment from Johnson yesterday - that it is the lockdown not the vaccines that is responsible for dramatic drop in Covid stats. How to explain our success versus other nations then?
Why concerning?
and similar, tell us that this is correct. That the reduction in cases, admissions, and deaths in a large part due to restrictions. What the vaccinations have done so far, is to increase the rate of descent for some groups.
hence this
and
The question is where getting all the over 50s vaccinated gets us to when the restrictions are (further) released.
1. Wuhan is a densely populated city of 11 million people (slightly bigger than London) and a major national and international transport hub through which many tens of thousands of people from China and SE Asia pass or passed every day. 2. it has been estimated 1–7 million people in Southeast Asia live or work in proximity to bats and are infected each year with bat coronaviruses ( https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/841729646/virus-researchers-cast-doubt-on-theory-of-coronavirus-lab-accident?t=1618395969464 ) whereas, at most, only a couple of dozen at the lab would have been involved in close proximity to them. 3. "Lab Leak" is a theory that has been put forward before as the source of other pandemics ( https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/did-leak-from-a-laboratory-cause-swine-flu-pandemic-1724448.html ) so it is not novel. It has been the subject of fiction (e.g. 'The Stand', 'The Satan Bug') and, as a result, was a conspiracy trope in circulation well prior to Covid-19.
Speaking as a lawyer, I'd put my chances of winning a civil case (balance of probabilities) against the Wuhan Lab higher than a criminal case (beyond resonable doubt) - 40% to 60% roughly?
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
I think it's like rcs1000 has said: the media love a dramatic story that gets the clicks and attention. Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one. Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
You love a strawman Andy.
All the media is doing is reporting the latest pronouncement from Chairman Johnson.
And the latest pronouncement is the experimental vaccine that you have so willingly taken will not set you free.
That was a very concerning comment from Johnson yesterday - that it is the lockdown not the vaccines that is responsible for dramatic drop in Covid stats. How to explain our success versus other nations then?
We were in a harder lockdown than other countries, we had one of the worlds toughest lockdowns combined with the vaccines. EG France have been in a longer partial lockdown with restaurants etc closed since October last year but they're only now going into full lockdown with schools closed as we had until relatively recently.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I'm not particularly bothered to go to the pub. There are no particularly great pubs in my neighbourhood. And I'm disinclined to sit outside in the cold. And table service isn't a pub. And I object to leaving my details or using an app on my phone. So basically I'm finding reasons not to engage. I have become sullen, detached. I think big for me will be when the restrictions to being in other people's houses go. That's when life will change.
Yes, that will be a biggie, end of visiting restrictions. Not tempted to preempt it?
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
What’s up with you recently? You accused me of channelling Laurence Fox last night. I did nothing of the sort. I’m not a Covid Denier and have reluctantly supported most lockdown measures. You seem to endlessly antagonistic these past few days, which isn’t like you at all.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Yes, I understand. It was just the phrase "locked up". Not keen. No big deal.
I'm with you on this. Clearly we are still a long way from normal, but I am about to take the dog for a walk, then pop into town to go to the bakery. if I wanted i could sit in the sun with a pint in a pub rather than do what I should be doing (writing a lecture...) Emotive times bring forth emotive language, but its not always helpful.
Me too. I'm shortly going to have a round of golf with my son, followed by a couple of pints in a beer garden. I've already done the shopping and the dog walk. The joys of retirement.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I think Stroud and Finchley famously flipped to New Labour in 1997.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Yes, I understand. It was just the phrase "locked up". Not keen. No big deal.
I'm with you on this. Clearly we are still a long way from normal, but I am about to take the dog for a walk, then pop into town to go to the bakery. if I wanted i could sit in the sun with a pint in a pub rather than do what I should be doing (writing a lecture...) Emotive times bring forth emotive language, but its not always helpful.
Me too. I'm shortly going to have a round of golf with my son, followed by a couple of pints in a beer garden. I've already done the shopping and the dog walk.
It's not really "locked up", is it?
Yes it is.
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home. I am forbidden by law to go into a pub. I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant. I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone. To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal".
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I think you're being disingenuous here kinbalu. We're all at different points on the scale of where we strike the balance between liberty and security. Those of us up the liberty end fear we've been losing the argument over the past year. It's natural we'd want to shout a bit louder.
Based on what we know the “lab” theory has a probability of considerably less than 50% but as to whether that is 10% or 1%, you’d have to take a deep dive into it (which I haven’t) in order to opine.
With these sorts of things what I do is first ask myself if there’s any good reason to doubt the simplest and most likely explanation. If I answer with “no” that’s pretty much it. On we go. Great news because going into things in detail takes time and effort. But if it’s a “yes”, then I have to gird up and start grinding (if I’m sufficiently interested). I have to start checking out possible alternative realities.
An example was with the JFK assassination. That it could have been just one guy, acting totally alone, seemed to me to be sufficiently doubtful to justify getting right into it. Which I did. Over a period of about 5 years I read books on this subject, articles, watched every available film and documentary, even Oliver Stone’s, and studied the Zapruder footage over and over.
Upshot. A very firm conclusion. It was one guy acting alone. Oswald.
So was that 5 wasted years? It was really. But also it wasn’t, because it had to be done.
I will not be doing this for “lab vs bat”. There's no need.
"@DarrenGBNews BREAK: Denmark to STOP using #AstraZeneca vaccine entirely following its possible link to very rare cases of blood clots - Danish media reporting, announcement 1300BST
The decision expected to delay Denmark’s vaccine roll-out by a few weeks"
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
Thanks. I think we can meet in the middle there. I'm not convinced about Welwyn Hatfield though. but I think it emphasises Labour's difficulties: Their traditional ground is under attack; 'remain' will continue to be an unsure weapon - there are plenty of leavers around, and anyway we have left; and critically, the Tories are occupying the old centre left territory while also having complete command of the rural seats, (including in the south east).
Most of all, they seem to have no idea what retail offer they can make to out spend or outdo the Tories.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
Lots of formerly very safe Con seats in remainery SE England are drifting away from the Conservatives, just not to Labour.
Mr Hunt has seen a majority of 49.8% in 2015 fall to 14% (LD at 39%, Lab 8%) Raab has gone from a majority of 50.2% in 2015 fall to 4% (LD at 45%, Lab lost deposit) Guildford is similar: 42% -> 5.7%, LD @ 39%, Lab @ 8%
While there are some areas where Labour do stand a chance of bringing seats in, such as Bucks, notwithstanding boundary changes, in many others they are reduced to a distant third choice.
On a side note - looking at all this does underline how ridiculously efficient the Con vote share is getting. They've effectively lopped 20% off their vote in their ultra-safe seats and replaced it with 20% in, now formerly, Lab-leaning marginals.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I'm not particularly bothered to go to the pub. There are no particularly great pubs in my neighbourhood. And I'm disinclined to sit outside in the cold. And table service isn't a pub. And I object to leaving my details or using an app on my phone. So basically I'm finding reasons not to engage. I have become sullen, detached. I think big for me will be when the restrictions to being in other people's houses go. That's when life will change.
Yes, that will be a biggie, end of visiting restrictions. Not tempted to preempt it?
Well it's not a unilateral decision, is it? Personally I'd be quite happy to. But putting other people in a position where you're asking them to break the law is a little unfair - you have to be very sure they're on the same page as you. Not everyone is, and that's fair enough.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home. I am forbidden by law to go into a pub. I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant. I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone. To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal".
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Yes, I understand. It was just the phrase "locked up". Not keen. No big deal.
I'm with you on this. Clearly we are still a long way from normal, but I am about to take the dog for a walk, then pop into town to go to the bakery. if I wanted i could sit in the sun with a pint in a pub rather than do what I should be doing (writing a lecture...) Emotive times bring forth emotive language, but its not always helpful.
Me too. I'm shortly going to have a round of golf with my son, followed by a couple of pints in a beer garden. I've already done the shopping and the dog walk.
It's not really "locked up", is it?
Yes it is.
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home. I am forbidden by law to go into a pub. I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant. I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone. To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal".
This, this, this ... the normalization of the abnormal as acceptable to many, many people is deeply concerning.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Another poor decision. Particularly, a premature decision.
REUTERS: "The European Commission, in agreement with the leaders of many (EU) countries, has decided that the contracts with the companies that produce (viral vector) vaccines that are valid for the current year will not be renewed at their expiry,” the newspaper reported.
It added that Brussels would rather focus on COVID-19 vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, such as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s.
A spokesman for the EU Commission said it was keeping all options open to be prepared for the next stages of the pandemic, for 2022 and beyond."
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I think you're being disingenuous here kinbalu. We're all at different points on the scale of where we strike the balance between liberty and security. Those of us up the liberty end fear we've been losing the argument over the past year. It's natural we'd want to shout a bit louder.
It was mainly triggered by Philip. He has the knack. But in general it's a matter of tone. Some of these "gimme liberty or gimme death!" posts on here I can read and they don't irritate me at all. Some even get me nodding along. Because I'm a little bit that way inclined myself. The ones which can irritate me are when I detect that the author is telegraphing that they're just a great big rugged freedom lovin' individual and can't believe what a bunch of cowering pussies everyone else is. You know what I mean. Course, it's perfectly ok to irritate me. It's even a goal for some.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I'm not particularly bothered to go to the pub. There are no particularly great pubs in my neighbourhood. And I'm disinclined to sit outside in the cold. And table service isn't a pub. And I object to leaving my details or using an app on my phone. So basically I'm finding reasons not to engage. I have become sullen, detached. I think big for me will be when the restrictions to being in other people's houses go. That's when life will change.
Yes, that will be a biggie, end of visiting restrictions. Not tempted to preempt it?
Well it's not a unilateral decision, is it? Personally I'd be quite happy to. But putting other people in a position where you're asking them to break the law is a little unfair - you have to be very sure they're on the same page as you. Not everyone is, and that's fair enough.
Actually, I am feeling pretty good about the reopening of indoor gyms. Not something I do, but big news for my daughters. Two have been able to restart gymnastics this week; two will be restarting climbing next week. (One daughter falls into both categories - I only have three of them, not four.) The joy on the faces of the gymnasts being able to actually do something again.
If I'm to be grumpy about it I'd say that I should expect this sort of thing as the norm, I shouldn't feel grateful for it. But it did feel good.
Another poor decision. Particularly, a premature decision.
REUTERS: "The European Commission, in agreement with the leaders of many (EU) countries, has decided that the contracts with the companies that produce (viral vector) vaccines that are valid for the current year will not be renewed at their expiry,” the newspaper reported.
It added that Brussels would rather focus on COVID-19 vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, such as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s.
A spokesman for the EU Commission said it was keeping all options open to be prepared for the next stages of the pandemic, for 2022 and beyond."
The phrase cows arse and banjo springs to mind with SKS. I don't think Boris will mind too much about Greensill. At worst for him it might cost the Tories a point in the polls but at best for him it might finally sink Cameron and win Boris the war.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
Very good summary of the current situation. We need to move as fast as is safe but no faster.
Goodness knows how most other European countries are feeling right now.
The phrase cows arse and banjo springs to mind with SKS. I don't think Boris will mind too much about Greensill. At worst for him it might cost the Tories a point in the polls but at best for him it might finally sink Cameron and win Boris the war.
BoZo is counting on the same access being available when he wants it
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
I think, rationally, I know we can't unlock completely, yet. But I think a lot of the restrictions which remain in place are massively disproportionate to their effectiveness in suppressing R.
Edit @Andy_Cooke - I'd heard (Telegraph) that we passed herd immunity on Monday, although not much appeared to be made of it and it was mentioned almost in passing - is that not right?
The phrase cows arse and banjo springs to mind with SKS. I don't think Boris will mind too much about Greensill. At worst for him it might cost the Tories a point in the polls but at best for him it might finally sink Cameron and win Boris the war.
BoZo is counting on the same access being available when he wants it
This is a disaster for him personally.
Well if you say it's a disaster then it must be the opposite. Worth considering the main loser of the Greensill story is the man Boris would prefer to see fail more than SKS - Cameron. Boris couldn't move quickly enough at the prospect of an enquiry, meanwhile his mate Rishi releases his texts and comes out smelling of roses.
After that PMQs cannot help but think about the lobbying Public Inquiry episode in the final season of The Thick Of It. This snowball is now rolling and could engulf politicians past and present of all parties and could make expenses scandal seem small... https://twitter.com/VinnyMcAv/status/1382293420446777344/photo/1
"@DarrenGBNews BREAK: Denmark to STOP using #AstraZeneca vaccine entirely following its possible link to very rare cases of blood clots - Danish media reporting, announcement 1300BST
The decision expected to delay Denmark’s vaccine roll-out by a few weeks"
Denmark's Covid death rate is comparatively low, but still in excess of ours, and their vaccination rate is roughly in line with the EU average. Delaying the vaccination campaign is therefore liable to kill more people than binning AZ will save. Basic scientific illiteracy.
@MrHarryCole: Barn door here for Keir and he’s hitting it repeatedly.
More like the barn door is hitting him:
Johnson says Starmer is being advised by Lord Mandelson.
“Perhaps in the interest in full transparency, Lord Mandelson can be encouraged to disclose his other clients, Mr Speaker,” he said.
Ouch!
Sick burn m8
Thanks, but I didn't come up with it. I'd have gone with the Labour politicans who were arrested as part of a police investigation into allegations of - and I quote, from the BBC - 'fraud, bribery, corruption, misconduct in public office, and witness intimidation at Liverpool City Council'...
The phrase cows arse and banjo springs to mind with SKS. I don't think Boris will mind too much about Greensill. At worst for him it might cost the Tories a point in the polls but at best for him it might finally sink Cameron and win Boris the war.
BoZo is counting on the same access being available when he wants it
This is a disaster for him personally.
Why is he?
Boris will just go on the lecture circuit, write articles and go a few other things.
He doesn't need to join a middle tier dodgy finance firm to make money...
Ol’ Dishface has made the Eye at least. I wonder if there will be a point when BJ drops Cameron into whatever fate awaits him? It would go very much against his credo of personal loyalty, but..
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
I think, rationally, I know we can't unlock completely, yet. But I think a lot of the restrictions which remain in place are massively disproportionate to their effectiveness in suppressing R.
There, I fully agree! The outside restrictions were always of minimal benefit against their cost; we could easily have dropped those on the 29th of March (in my opinion, anyway).
One problem, though, is the scotch-egging tendency: people just try to pick holes in rules as if they argue enough, the virus ignores them. Whenever they allow one thing, it's always "Ah, why can't we do this other thing as well!?!?"
That said, I would be shocked if we couldn't release some other restrictions a bit more and stay in the safety zone. As long as people didn't take the piss too much, anyway. I'd guess going Tier 2 or even Tier 1 nationwide (as against last year's Tiers) would either keep infections down or at least have them increase slowly enough that we'll be able to complete the vaccination rollout without getting close to swamped.
Not surprising that they're a bit overcautious, though, having listened to the siren call of reducing restrictions too far too fast before and run up a hell of a butchers bill for doing so.
"@DarrenGBNews BREAK: Denmark to STOP using #AstraZeneca vaccine entirely following its possible link to very rare cases of blood clots - Danish media reporting, announcement 1300BST
The decision expected to delay Denmark’s vaccine roll-out by a few weeks"
Denmark's Covid death rate is comparatively low, but still in excess of ours, and their vaccination rate is roughly in line with the EU average. Delaying the vaccination campaign is therefore liable to kill more people than binning AZ will save. Basic scientific illiteracy.
Averaging what 10 deaths a week? but even at that level clearly it makes sense to continue with AZ if they dont have a supply of alternatives. Strange decision.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
Very good summary of the current situation. We need to move as fast as is safe but no faster.
Goodness knows how most other European countries are feeling right now.
Your statement is nonsensical. Safe does not exist, there are different risks with every strategy, in none of them are we safe. We have to choose what level of risk we are willing to accept, it is inevitable there will be differences in both risk appetite and risk assessments.
"@DarrenGBNews BREAK: Denmark to STOP using #AstraZeneca vaccine entirely following its possible link to very rare cases of blood clots - Danish media reporting, announcement 1300BST
The decision expected to delay Denmark’s vaccine roll-out by a few weeks"
Denmark's Covid death rate is comparatively low, but still in excess of ours, and their vaccination rate is roughly in line with the EU average. Delaying the vaccination campaign is therefore liable to kill more people than binning AZ will save. Basic scientific illiteracy.
I can't start to describe how angry I am about this - Søren Bronstrøm and all the other tits at the SSI don't seem to have any grasp of basic risk management - utterly disastrous decision in general and the rollout has already been delayed by many weeks so this just adds to it.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Yes, I understand. It was just the phrase "locked up". Not keen. No big deal.
I'm with you on this. Clearly we are still a long way from normal, but I am about to take the dog for a walk, then pop into town to go to the bakery. if I wanted i could sit in the sun with a pint in a pub rather than do what I should be doing (writing a lecture...) Emotive times bring forth emotive language, but its not always helpful.
Me too. I'm shortly going to have a round of golf with my son, followed by a couple of pints in a beer garden. I've already done the shopping and the dog walk.
It's not really "locked up", is it?
Yes it is.
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home. I am forbidden by law to go into a pub. I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant. I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone. To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal".
It isn't normal and I doubt many think it is. It's the fag end (in the UK) of a massive episode that has dominated the last 14 months.
Just checked my vaccine appointment for Sunday and there is a warning that you will need to wait 15 minutes after taking the vaccine. I suspect that means I (and everyone else under 50) is getting Moderna as I think that has the same adverse reaction checks that pfizer needs.
R is a function of restrictions, vaccinations and prior infections. JCVI/MHRA must estimate that at May 17th the vaccination/prior infection 'wall' is sufficient to cancel out easing restrictions and again at June 20th. By June 20th I think the hope is that we will be past the critical vaccination threshold ( pc = 1 − (1/R0) )
There's also an asymmetric risk in moving out of lockdown too early. After the christmas debacle it's no wonder Johnson is erring on the side of caution.
The phrase cows arse and banjo springs to mind with SKS. I don't think Boris will mind too much about Greensill. At worst for him it might cost the Tories a point in the polls but at best for him it might finally sink Cameron and win Boris the war.
BoZo is counting on the same access being available when he wants it
This is a disaster for him personally.
Why is he?
Boris will just go on the lecture circuit, write articles and go a few other things.
He doesn't need to join a middle tier dodgy finance firm to make money...
He's also not that good at taking advantage of slightly dubious opportunities which will enrich him financially. Didn't Ken Livingstone once challenge him to publish his taxes - and it became apparent that he was paying far more tax than he needed to? Lucrative speaking gigs are more his style.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I'd add Wycombe to that list, and then two which aren't obvious from the 'Labour target' list but to be aware of next time...
Beaconsfield (where Grieve standing in 2019 totally confuses the picture) Uxbridge (this suggestion doesn't count if Boris still the candidate and PM - but post Boris I think that this seat goes the same way as Croydon South long term)
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
1: Apart from maybe Contrarian I don't think anyone is proposing an immediate abandoning of all restrictions, but that doesn't justify the snail's pace of today. 17 May or 4 July 2020 restrictions, so we could legally meet people in homes and eat in indoor restaurants is not the same as abandoning all restrictions. We'd still have nightclubs etc closed and we'd still have quarantines in the border.
2: Not easily, no. We didn't overwhelm hospitals in July 2020 and that was pre-vaccine. Yes we've got the Kent variation now, but we've also got the vaccine to cancel that.
3: Brazil don't have our vaccine rollout, our low cases or anything else comparable.
4: We've already done the first stage. That's enough for now.
5: Then do that if it comes to it. I'd rather a potential 2 week circuit break in a few months time if needed than continuing lockdown unnecessarily for a couple of months - which may not prevent that happening anyway.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
I think, rationally, I know we can't unlock completely, yet. But I think a lot of the restrictions which remain in place are massively disproportionate to their effectiveness in suppressing R.
Edit @Andy_Cooke - I'd heard (Telegraph) that we passed herd immunity on Monday, although not much appeared to be made of it and it was mentioned almost in passing - is that not right?
There were a number of issues with the Friston model.
First was his definition of herd immunity, which seemed to be simply "R is currently below 1". He added and emphasised that if we reduced restrictions "the herd immunity threshold would rise." Which was a bit of a daft way to put his modelling in the first place.
Second was that his earlier modelling was always far too optimistic, anyway; he's predicted the same thing before a few times and been wrong.
Third was the simple sanity check: if we're at herd immunity against zero restrictions, then with restrictions currently applied that bring R down by a factor of two or three, then R can not be above 0.3-0.5 at the very worst, and infections would be dropping by more than half every week (not just cases). And the latest ONS surveys showed that as of the week ending the 3rd of April, we were at around R=1. Unless something has changed to hurtle it down by a factor of 2-3 in just ten days, it can't be true.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I'd add Wycombe to that list, and then two which aren't obvious from the 'Labour target' list but to be aware of next time...
Beaconsfield (where Grieve standing in 2019 totally confuses the picture) Uxbridge (this suggestion doesn't count if Boris still the candidate and PM - but post Boris I think that this seat goes the same way as Croydon South long term)
Yes, agree with all those - thanks for going beyond my basic 'look through a list' analysis!
Another poor decision. Particularly, a premature decision.
REUTERS: "The European Commission, in agreement with the leaders of many (EU) countries, has decided that the contracts with the companies that produce (viral vector) vaccines that are valid for the current year will not be renewed at their expiry,” the newspaper reported.
It added that Brussels would rather focus on COVID-19 vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, such as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s.
A spokesman for the EU Commission said it was keeping all options open to be prepared for the next stages of the pandemic, for 2022 and beyond."
Also comes at the same time as many of them have bought, or are scrambling to buy, Sputnik V. Which uses the same technology. Go figure.
As I said to Robert yesterday, they will contrive to fuck up and so it has come to pass. I think the EU will not reach herd immunity until late this year now as mRNA capacity will not be enough to get them there. The larger part of the Pfizer and Moderna orders for the EU are dated for Q4 this year or even next year.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
I think, rationally, I know we can't unlock completely, yet. But I think a lot of the restrictions which remain in place are massively disproportionate to their effectiveness in suppressing R.
Edit @Andy_Cooke - I'd heard (Telegraph) that we passed herd immunity on Monday, although not much appeared to be made of it and it was mentioned almost in passing - is that not right?
Sounds like they are going on a ration of total jabs to adults population of 70%.
It is the next big scandal waiting to happen. It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.
I’m talking about lobbying – and we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism. We believe in market economics, not crony capitalism. So we must be the party that sorts all this out.
Now, I want to be clear: it’s not just big business that gets involved in lobbying. Charities and other organisations, including trade unions, do it too. What’s more, when it's open and transparent, when people know who is meeting who, for what reason and with what outcome, lobbying is perfectly reasonable.
It’s important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard. And indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation. But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control.
Today it is a £2 billion industry that has a huge presence in Parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over one hundred times a week by lobbyists. Much of the time this happens covertly.
We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence. This isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests - not to mention government contracts - worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.
I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works, with money buying power, power fishing for money and a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest.
We can’t go on like this. I believe it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.
Just checked my vaccine appointment for Sunday and there is a warning that you will need to wait 15 minutes after taking the vaccine. I suspect that means I (and everyone else under 50) is getting Moderna as I think that has the same adverse reaction checks that pfizer needs.
There's another reason to switch to Moderna over Astra even at the expense of some time for under 50s over and above clos and so forth. We think it's got a slightly higher transmission efficacy particularly "soon" after the jab so contributes a bit more to the vaccination threshold part of the equation we wish to reach before June 20th and particularly the Autumn.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
This is why a lot of us are indeed willing to put up with the Government's slow unlocking timetable. The concern is, of course, that excuses are found to leave a lot of the restrictions in place beyond June 21st and to invent some new ones on top of that.
It's fair enough to argue that the vaccination programme is insufficient to bin all the rules now, or in the near future - but what if the Government and the scientists start insisting that it will *never* be sufficient, regardless of how complete the level of coverage is that it provides?
After everything that has happened over the past year, who'd be prepared to trust them not to treat us like that? I certainly wouldn't.
"@DarrenGBNews BREAK: Denmark to STOP using #AstraZeneca vaccine entirely following its possible link to very rare cases of blood clots - Danish media reporting, announcement 1300BST
The decision expected to delay Denmark’s vaccine roll-out by a few weeks"
Denmark's Covid death rate is comparatively low, but still in excess of ours, and their vaccination rate is roughly in line with the EU average. Delaying the vaccination campaign is therefore liable to kill more people than binning AZ will save. Basic scientific illiteracy.
Seems pretty daft, as opposed to not using for women under 50, for example.
Might explain why they're now testing 8% of their population (mainly rapid antigen tests) every day. (Which will also, of course, do quite a bit to limit the spread of infection.)
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home. I am forbidden by law to go into a pub. I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant. I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone. To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal".
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Yes, I understand. It was just the phrase "locked up". Not keen. No big deal.
I'm with you on this. Clearly we are still a long way from normal, but I am about to take the dog for a walk, then pop into town to go to the bakery. if I wanted i could sit in the sun with a pint in a pub rather than do what I should be doing (writing a lecture...) Emotive times bring forth emotive language, but its not always helpful.
Me too. I'm shortly going to have a round of golf with my son, followed by a couple of pints in a beer garden. I've already done the shopping and the dog walk.
It's not really "locked up", is it?
Yes it is.
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home. I am forbidden by law to go into a pub. I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant. I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone. To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal".
This, this, this ... the normalization of the abnormal as acceptable to many, many people is deeply concerning.
I'm happy enough to tolerate the government's roadmap. We might argue whether it's too slow (possibly) but I'd rather err on the side of caution to ensure we never have to go through the whole performance all over again. The end of lockdown for me means 'normal' weekend
* I can go to the pub after choir practice on a Friday and we can all sit together round the same table without booking, wearing masks or showing ID (unless we appear under 21!) * Parkrun takes place on Saturday morning (hopefully in June) * I can go to watch football or cricket on a whim or play at my recorder consort on a Saturday afternoon * The full choir can sit in our normal places on Sunday morning and the congregation in a full (well, as full as normal) church can join in with the hymns * I can invite who I damn well please to join me and my family for Sunday lunch
I fully expect that barring something weird and unexpected happening, after June 21 I will be able to do all these things.
The only restrictions I consider justified would be some degree of mask wearing if in continuous face to face contact (e.g. beauticians, dentists) and I am happy for the border to be closed for all non-essential travel (and strict and enforced quarantine for everybody) until the rest of the world has caught us up. I would like a holiday in the sun more than anything else in my weekend list but I would rather wait until 2022 if that is necessary to allow 'normal' life to resume here.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
I think, rationally, I know we can't unlock completely, yet. But I think a lot of the restrictions which remain in place are massively disproportionate to their effectiveness in suppressing R.
There, I fully agree! The outside restrictions were always of minimal benefit against their cost; we could easily have dropped those on the 29th of March (in my opinion, anyway).
One problem, though, is the scotch-egging tendency: people just try to pick holes in rules as if they argue enough, the virus ignores them. Whenever they allow one thing, it's always "Ah, why can't we do this other thing as well!?!?"
That said, I would be shocked if we couldn't release some other restrictions a bit more and stay in the safety zone. As long as people didn't take the piss too much, anyway. I'd guess going Tier 2 or even Tier 1 nationwide (as against last year's Tiers) would either keep infections down or at least have them increase slowly enough that we'll be able to complete the vaccination rollout without getting close to swamped.
Not surprising that they're a bit overcautious, though, having listened to the siren call of reducing restrictions too far too fast before and run up a hell of a butchers bill for doing so.
Yes, if we had rules which everyone stuck to the rules could be a lot more lax. The law abiding are being punished for the actions of the rule-flouting.
I think another reason for the 'unlock totally now' tendency is that it's difficult to trust that we will ever unlock. We've been let down before. Freedom is always a few months away; commitment to ending restrictions always seems couched and conditional. It would be a lot easier to count down to June 21st if we believed that was really going to be it.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I'd add Wycombe to that list, and then two which aren't obvious from the 'Labour target' list but to be aware of next time...
Beaconsfield (where Grieve standing in 2019 totally confuses the picture) Uxbridge (this suggestion doesn't count if Boris still the candidate and PM - but post Boris I think that this seat goes the same way as Croydon South long term)
If Beaconsfield is close to turning Red then the Chesham and Amersham by-election should be a lot closer than it will be.
Beaconsfield is basically the rich parts of Wycombe and other (even richer) areas.
Chesham's population profile very much matches High Wycombe's. Amersham and Great Missenden matches the Beaconsfield's profile.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
1: Apart from maybe Contrarian I don't think anyone is proposing an immediate abandoning of all restrictions, but that doesn't justify the snail's pace of today. 17 May or 4 July 2020 restrictions, so we could legally meet people in homes and eat in indoor restaurants is not the same as abandoning all restrictions. We'd still have nightclubs etc closed and we'd still have quarantines in the border.
2: Not easily, no. We didn't overwhelm hospitals in July 2020 and that was pre-vaccine. Yes we've got the Kent variation now, but we've also got the vaccine to cancel that.
3: Brazil don't have our vaccine rollout, our low cases or anything else comparable.
4: We've already done the first stage. That's enough for now.
5: Then do that if it comes to it. I'd rather a potential 2 week circuit break in a few months time if needed than continuing lockdown unnecessarily for a couple of months - which may not prevent that happening anyway.
"2: Not easily, no. We didn't overwhelm hospitals in July 2020 and that was pre-vaccine. Yes we've got the Kent variation now, but we've also got the vaccine to cancel that." Exponential growth. Make it twice as hard to do something and you buy just one doubling period. Four times as hard and you buy two doubling periods; eight times as hard and you buy three doubling periods.
"3: Brazil don't have our vaccine rollout, our low cases or anything else comparable." If we let infections soar, we wouldn't have our low cases, either. And the under-forties are the group least protected by vaccination.
"4: We've already done the first stage. That's enough for now." It's enough for the current scope of unlocking and maybe a small amount more. Or maybe not.
And, on five, I think if we reversed direction (or even needed to), the mental and emotional damage to many would be colossal.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
I don't think anyone is saying we drop "all restrictions" already, but going to Stage 3 restrictions is where we should be already based on data not dates.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
I think, rationally, I know we can't unlock completely, yet. But I think a lot of the restrictions which remain in place are massively disproportionate to their effectiveness in suppressing R.
Edit @Andy_Cooke - I'd heard (Telegraph) that we passed herd immunity on Monday, although not much appeared to be made of it and it was mentioned almost in passing - is that not right?
Sounds like they are going on a ration of total jabs to adults population of 70%.
Which is not the same thing.
I thought it was based on ONS survey data, and took into account efficacy and also antibodies from prior infection.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
Hmm, really? You have been consistently and thoughtfully supportive (as I have) of the government's use of "lockdown" as a core tool to control the pandemic. Also supportive (as I have) of the roadmap back to domestic normality.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I think Stroud and Finchley famously flipped to New Labour in 1997.
As did Welwyn Hatfield and Hendon, Regents Park and Kensington North on the previous boundaries was Labour too.
Seats like Chingford, Altrincham and Sale West and Croydon South though, yes, are vulnerable even though they stayed Tory from 1997-2005.
The only current Labour or LD seat which was Tory in 1997, 2001 and 2005 is Canterbury because of the special circumstances of the high student vote there
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
Hmm, really? You have been consistently and thoughtfully supportive (as I have) of the government's use of "lockdown" as a core tool to control the pandemic. Also supportive (as I have) of the roadmap back to domestic normality.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It just doesn't scan.
You're a phony, Philip.
Actually for the past year in discussions with Stocky and TOPPING etc I have said I was philosophically against restrictions and their necessity was uncomfortable for me.
They're not necessary now. They were deemed necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, but now they're not. So yes it is a scandal.
It isn't acceptable to take away civil liberties unnecessarily.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Yes, I understand. It was just the phrase "locked up". Not keen. No big deal.
I'm with you on this. Clearly we are still a long way from normal, but I am about to take the dog for a walk, then pop into town to go to the bakery. if I wanted i could sit in the sun with a pint in a pub rather than do what I should be doing (writing a lecture...) Emotive times bring forth emotive language, but its not always helpful.
Me too. I'm shortly going to have a round of golf with my son, followed by a couple of pints in a beer garden. I've already done the shopping and the dog walk.
It's not really "locked up", is it?
Yes it is.
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home. I am forbidden by law to go into a pub. I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant. I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone. To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal".
I didn't say it was normal - it's not. I didn't say I like it - I don't. I'm merely pointing out that it's hyperbolic to keep using the expression "locked up". That's all.
Personally I think there's a large swathe of more vulnerable younger people left - anyone with a waistline > half height or higher blood pressure. Unless they have another comorbidity (Diabetes is somewhat correlated but doesn't match up completely) they won't be vaccinated yet.
Comments
I defer to no-one in my disdain for politicians of all parties. In my view they are all (or at least the vast, vast majority) useless and self serving - for them, getting elected as an MP and then being appointed as a minister is like winning the lottery. I'm amazed any of them find gainful employment in the private sector. The fact that many do is down to only one reason of course - contacts within government and potential influence (OK, two reasons technically).
If we want to stop ex-ministers or civil servants topping up their already generous pensions in this way, either pass a law or put it in their contract of employment. Until we do that, there is is nothing to see here - Cameron made contact and was rebuffed, right?
Everything else is just politicians doing what politicians do (not to mention our increasingly useless journalists) ... while the rest of us go mad with frustration about continuing lock-down despite no justification.
And on that subject ...
If we want to have an inquiry into something that matters, how about we investigate the influence of "behavioural scientists" who seem to be all-powerful in manipulating public opinion in support of this government's authoritarianism. Johnson's comments yesterday about lockdown being the cause of the decline in COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths cannot have been off-the-cuff. He is preparing the ground for lockdowns to become a permanent feature of our future, waiting in the wings to be deployed whenever the government of the day chooses, under the cover of a SAGE advisor. This is not good.
http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/labour
For Labour to stand a chance in say 7 years there needs to be very efficient tactical voting including a resurgence of the yellows in parts of the South that Labour can't reach.
On the flip side there's a risk to conservatives in relying increasingly on CDE2/3 voters who don't turn out to vote as reliably as more affluent voters (though they do get the older age group who are more reliable). There's also the possible demographic shift out of inner cities to suburbs making the Labour vote more efficient.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
On a point of detail, the FT reported that the pro-Tory is swing is (unsurprisingly because of the microchips) larger in those who have been vaccinated. Given that, if vaccinated older groups also feel more free to vote in person than the unvaccinated young, could we see a slightly exaggerated pro-Government turnout on that basis? Just an idea.
But the reason such things are a bit implausible is that they require quite a large number of people to keep quiet, and even in China's repressive regime, that is far from a given.
And. of course, labs have extensive paper trails. that means a great deal of work to cover stuff up consistently.
If you read down the (very long) sequence of posts by Andersen, you get some idea of the uncertainties.
The market identified was very probably the initial epicentre of the outbreak, but even that is not certain.
https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1377813908157652992
https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1377813911760642048
etc.
As for lab leak, rather than natural origins...
https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1377826266850553857
https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1377840867180863489
https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1377840868481146880
etc
Whatever the SAGE lot might want, we can't afford it.
That's a pretty chunky swing but there is nothing outrageous about it. Some of the Tory triumphalism on here of late seems a bit overdone to me.
See:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/European_Parliament_election,_2019_(United_Kingdom)_area_results.svg/800px-European_Parliament_election,_2019_(United_Kingdom)_area_results.svg.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/United_Kingdom_EU_referendum_2016_area_results.svg/1024px-United_Kingdom_EU_referendum_2016_area_results.svg.png
In 2019 in Oxfordshire there was a direct 10% Lab -> LD swing (Lab 29.4 to 20.8, LD 18.1 to 29.4, Con -1.8%). The 2019 Oxfordshire LD result is their high water mark since 1944(!), above even 2001-2010.
As for Surrey, there was a 12% Lab -> LD swing.
Consequently of the 15 Con held seats in those constituencies, Labour are second in only 4, 2 of which they're 0.1% and 2% away from 3rd.
Labour cannot escape pasokification. If it goes left, the LDs will seize the centre. If it goes right the Greens will leak votes.
A former senator and two former U.S. deputy secretaries of state will meet Taiwan’s president as China steps up military intimidation
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-sends-unofficial-delegation-to-taiwan-as-beijing-ramps-up-pressure-11618384940
But I was never against liberty. I understood the virus was serious and I was against lies like "false positives" or Covid-denialism, but removing liberties for a virus was never comfortable for me. It is only remotely justifiable as an absolute last resort if 100% necessary - and it frankly isn't necessary anymore. So my default position of liberty has no challenge anymore.
Domestic restrictions should be over already. At the very least 17 May or 4 July 2020 lifting of restrictions should have been done by now in full.
That will probably be on his gravestone.. not the first or last time we'll hear that.
And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man.
Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
and similar, tell us that this is correct. That the reduction in cases, admissions, and deaths in a large part due to restrictions. What the vaccinations have done so far, is to increase the rate of descent for some groups.
hence this
and
The question is where getting all the over 50s vaccinated gets us to when the restrictions are (further) released.
FOR -
1. the pandemic started in Wuhan, China.
2. the only laboratory in China experimenting with deadly pathogens is in Wuhan and it is well known they were dealing with coronaviruses in an attempt to study SARS - https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487
3. scientists in China - and elsewhere, including the UK- have for decades experimented with deadly viruses and lab accidents do happen (e.g.https://janetparker.birminghamlive.co.uk/ & https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa032565 ) .
AGAINST -
1. Wuhan is a densely populated city of 11 million people (slightly bigger than London) and a major national and international transport hub through which many tens of thousands of people from China and SE Asia pass or passed every day.
2. it has been estimated 1–7 million people in Southeast Asia live or work in proximity to bats and are infected each year with bat coronaviruses ( https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/841729646/virus-researchers-cast-doubt-on-theory-of-coronavirus-lab-accident?t=1618395969464 ) whereas, at most, only a couple of dozen at the lab would have been involved in close proximity to them.
3. "Lab Leak" is a theory that has been put forward before as the source of other pandemics ( https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/did-leak-from-a-laboratory-cause-swine-flu-pandemic-1724448.html ) so it is not novel. It has been the subject of fiction (e.g. 'The Stand', 'The Satan Bug') and, as a result, was a conspiracy trope in circulation well prior to Covid-19.
Speaking as a lawyer, I'd put my chances of winning a civil case (balance of probabilities) against the Wuhan Lab higher than a criminal case (beyond resonable doubt) - 40% to 60% roughly?
Kensington (again)
Chipping Barnet
Chingford and Wood Green
Stroud
Hendon
Filton and Bradley Stoke
Altrincham and Sale West
Cities of London and Westminster
Finchley and Golders Green
Croydon South
Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
It's not really "locked up", is it?
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home.
I am forbidden by law to go into a pub.
I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant.
I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone.
To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal".
We're all at different points on the scale of where we strike the balance between liberty and security. Those of us up the liberty end fear we've been losing the argument over the past year. It's natural we'd want to shout a bit louder.
Based on what we know the “lab” theory has a probability of considerably less than 50% but as to whether that is 10% or 1%, you’d have to take a deep dive into it (which I haven’t) in order to opine.
With these sorts of things what I do is first ask myself if there’s any good reason to doubt the simplest and most likely explanation. If I answer with “no” that’s pretty much it. On we go. Great news because going into things in detail takes time and effort. But if it’s a “yes”, then I have to gird up and start grinding (if I’m sufficiently interested). I have to start checking out possible alternative realities.
An example was with the JFK assassination. That it could have been just one guy, acting totally alone, seemed to me to be sufficiently doubtful to justify getting right into it. Which I did. Over a period of about 5 years I read books on this subject, articles, watched every available film and documentary, even Oliver Stone’s, and studied the Zapruder footage over and over.
Upshot. A very firm conclusion. It was one guy acting alone. Oswald.
So was that 5 wasted years? It was really. But also it wasn’t, because it had to be done.
I will not be doing this for “lab vs bat”. There's no need.
BREAK: Denmark to STOP using #AstraZeneca vaccine entirely following its possible link to very rare cases of blood clots - Danish media reporting, announcement 1300BST
The decision expected to delay Denmark’s vaccine roll-out by a few weeks"
Most of all, they seem to have no idea what retail offer they can make to out spend or outdo the Tories.
Mr Hunt has seen a majority of 49.8% in 2015 fall to 14% (LD at 39%, Lab 8%)
Raab has gone from a majority of 50.2% in 2015 fall to 4% (LD at 45%, Lab lost deposit)
Guildford is similar: 42% -> 5.7%, LD @ 39%, Lab @ 8%
While there are some areas where Labour do stand a chance of bringing seats in, such as Bucks, notwithstanding boundary changes, in many others they are reduced to a distant third choice.
On a side note - looking at all this does underline how ridiculously efficient the Con vote share is getting. They've effectively lopped 20% off their vote in their ultra-safe seats and replaced it with 20% in, now formerly, Lab-leaning marginals.
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
Yes it is.
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home.
I am forbidden by law to go into a pub.
I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant.
I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone.
To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal". This, this, this ... the normalization of the abnormal as acceptable to many, many people is deeply concerning.
Have they all fled to the country to eat @Cyclefree's daffodils?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
REUTERS:
"The European Commission, in agreement with the leaders of many (EU) countries, has decided that the contracts with the companies that produce (viral vector) vaccines that are valid for the current year will not be renewed at their expiry,” the newspaper reported.
It added that Brussels would rather focus on COVID-19 vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, such as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s.
A spokesman for the EU Commission said it was keeping all options open to be prepared for the next stages of the pandemic, for 2022 and beyond."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronovirus-eu-vaccines-idUSKBN2C10MU
Johnson says Starmer is being advised by Lord Mandelson.
“Perhaps in the interest in full transparency, Lord Mandelson can be encouraged to disclose his other clients, Mr Speaker,” he said.
Ouch!
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
If I'm to be grumpy about it I'd say that I should expect this sort of thing as the norm, I shouldn't feel grateful for it. But it did feel good.
Goodness knows how most other European countries are feeling right now.
This is a disaster for him personally.
https://twitter.com/twlldun/status/1382251675549896709?s=21
@BorisJohnson wrongfooted there by @RuthCadbury
Edit @Andy_Cooke - I'd heard (Telegraph) that we passed herd immunity on Monday, although not much appeared to be made of it and it was mentioned almost in passing - is that not right?
Boris will just go on the lecture circuit, write articles and go a few other things.
He doesn't need to join a middle tier dodgy finance firm to make money...
https://twitter.com/privateeyenews/status/1382225257541537793?s=21
The outside restrictions were always of minimal benefit against their cost; we could easily have dropped those on the 29th of March (in my opinion, anyway).
One problem, though, is the scotch-egging tendency: people just try to pick holes in rules as if they argue enough, the virus ignores them. Whenever they allow one thing, it's always "Ah, why can't we do this other thing as well!?!?"
That said, I would be shocked if we couldn't release some other restrictions a bit more and stay in the safety zone. As long as people didn't take the piss too much, anyway. I'd guess going Tier 2 or even Tier 1 nationwide (as against last year's Tiers) would either keep infections down or at least have them increase slowly enough that we'll be able to complete the vaccination rollout without getting close to swamped.
Not surprising that they're a bit overcautious, though, having listened to the siren call of reducing restrictions too far too fast before and run up a hell of a butchers bill for doing so.
JCVI/MHRA must estimate that at May 17th the vaccination/prior infection 'wall' is sufficient to cancel out easing restrictions and again at June 20th. By June 20th I think the hope is that we will be past the critical vaccination threshold ( pc = 1 − (1/R0) )
There's also an asymmetric risk in moving out of lockdown too early. After the christmas debacle it's no wonder Johnson is erring on the side of caution.
Lucrative speaking gigs are more his style.
Beaconsfield (where Grieve standing in 2019 totally confuses the picture)
Uxbridge (this suggestion doesn't count if Boris still the candidate and PM - but post Boris I think that this seat goes the same way as Croydon South long term)
https://twitter.com/jamesarchie98/status/1382252016571924480?s=21
2: Not easily, no. We didn't overwhelm hospitals in July 2020 and that was pre-vaccine. Yes we've got the Kent variation now, but we've also got the vaccine to cancel that.
3: Brazil don't have our vaccine rollout, our low cases or anything else comparable.
4: We've already done the first stage. That's enough for now.
5: Then do that if it comes to it. I'd rather a potential 2 week circuit break in a few months time if needed than continuing lockdown unnecessarily for a couple of months - which may not prevent that happening anyway.
First was his definition of herd immunity, which seemed to be simply "R is currently below 1". He added and emphasised that if we reduced restrictions "the herd immunity threshold would rise." Which was a bit of a daft way to put his modelling in the first place.
Second was that his earlier modelling was always far too optimistic, anyway; he's predicted the same thing before a few times and been wrong.
Third was the simple sanity check: if we're at herd immunity against zero restrictions, then with restrictions currently applied that bring R down by a factor of two or three, then R can not be above 0.3-0.5 at the very worst, and infections would be dropping by more than half every week (not just cases). And the latest ONS surveys showed that as of the week ending the 3rd of April, we were at around R=1.
Unless something has changed to hurtle it down by a factor of 2-3 in just ten days, it can't be true.
Which is not the same thing.
It's fair enough to argue that the vaccination programme is insufficient to bin all the rules now, or in the near future - but what if the Government and the scientists start insisting that it will *never* be sufficient, regardless of how complete the level of coverage is that it provides?
After everything that has happened over the past year, who'd be prepared to trust them not to treat us like that? I certainly wouldn't.
Might explain why they're now testing 8% of their population (mainly rapid antigen tests) every day.
(Which will also, of course, do quite a bit to limit the spread of infection.)
I am forbidden by law to go into a relatives home.
I am forbidden by law to go into a pub.
I am forbidden by law from having a meal in a restaurant.
I am forbidden by law from going to a football ground.
Because of a virus that isn't killing anyone.
To protect an NHS that has negligible hospitalisations.
It is locked up. Don't let this be considered "normal". This, this, this ... the normalization of the abnormal as acceptable to many, many people is deeply concerning.
I'm happy enough to tolerate the government's roadmap. We might argue whether it's too slow (possibly) but I'd rather err on the side of caution to ensure we never have to go through the whole performance all over again. The end of lockdown for me means 'normal' weekend
* I can go to the pub after choir practice on a Friday and we can all sit together round the same table without booking, wearing masks or showing ID (unless we appear under 21!)
* Parkrun takes place on Saturday morning (hopefully in June)
* I can go to watch football or cricket on a whim or play at my recorder consort on a Saturday afternoon
* The full choir can sit in our normal places on Sunday morning and the congregation in a full (well, as full as normal) church can join in with the hymns
* I can invite who I damn well please to join me and my family for Sunday lunch
I fully expect that barring something weird and unexpected happening, after June 21 I will be able to do all these things.
The only restrictions I consider justified would be some degree of mask wearing if in continuous face to face contact (e.g. beauticians, dentists) and I am happy for the border to be closed for all non-essential travel (and strict and enforced quarantine for everybody) until the rest of the world has caught us up. I would like a holiday in the sun more than anything else in my weekend list but I would rather wait until 2022 if that is necessary to allow 'normal' life to resume here.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
I think another reason for the 'unlock totally now' tendency is that it's difficult to trust that we will ever unlock. We've been let down before. Freedom is always a few months away; commitment to ending restrictions always seems couched and conditional. It would be a lot easier to count down to June 21st if we believed that was really going to be it.
Beaconsfield is basically the rich parts of Wycombe and other (even richer) areas.
Chesham's population profile very much matches High Wycombe's. Amersham and Great Missenden matches the Beaconsfield's profile.
And I suspect the Tories will completely walk it.
Exponential growth. Make it twice as hard to do something and you buy just one doubling period. Four times as hard and you buy two doubling periods; eight times as hard and you buy three doubling periods.
"3: Brazil don't have our vaccine rollout, our low cases or anything else comparable."
If we let infections soar, we wouldn't have our low cases, either. And the under-forties are the group least protected by vaccination.
"4: We've already done the first stage. That's enough for now."
It's enough for the current scope of unlocking and maybe a small amount more. Or maybe not.
And, on five, I think if we reversed direction (or even needed to), the mental and emotional damage to many would be colossal.
In Normal Britain, maybe. In Covid Britain, Nah.
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
I don't think anyone is saying we drop "all restrictions" already, but going to Stage 3 restrictions is where we should be already based on data not dates.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It just doesn't scan.
You're a phony, Philip.
Seats like Chingford, Altrincham and Sale West and Croydon South though, yes, are vulnerable even though they stayed Tory from 1997-2005.
The only current Labour or LD seat which was Tory in 1997, 2001 and 2005 is Canterbury because of the special circumstances of the high student vote there
They're not necessary now. They were deemed necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, but now they're not. So yes it is a scandal.
It isn't acceptable to take away civil liberties unnecessarily.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
I didn't say I like it - I don't.
I'm merely pointing out that it's hyperbolic to keep using the expression "locked up".
That's all.