Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
I once worked on an R107 SL and the quality of the materials was amazingly high. I'd be amazed if MB made a profit selling it. It did drive like dog shit though. You can pretty much tell the exact moment MB gave up on quality as the defining brand value with the launch of the W211 E class.
That sounds right. She likes the way it drives but I reckon it’s crap; it meanders all over the road, which doesn’t appear to be her driving, and is uncomfortable cornering as well as having limited headroom such that I can’t sit up straight in it. But it does look good and the tech on it is amazing for its age. When you lift the bonnet it’s full of stuff, like a modern car, whereas my old sunbeam you could almost climb into the space around the engine.
She said she had a problem with the idle speed and I said I’d come take a look, thinking it would be a mechanical cord running from the pedal to the fuel intake and you just had to fiddle with the nut, but it wasn’t. How it works I didn’t manage to fathom.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
The European Coal & Steel Communicty, the EEC, the EC and the EU's currencies were linked to each other throughout the entire histories of the organisations, in an attempt to avoid the competitive devaluations of the 1930.
Until the early 1970s, this was via the Bretton Woods agreement, then it was "The Snake", which evolved into the ERM.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
East of England. 96% London. 86.7% Midlands. 95.5% NE&Yorks. 95.7% North West. 94.9% South East. 96% South West. 96.9%
England. 94.8%
Denominator ONS19 I think
Londoners. Letting the side down again.
Question is which nominator do the Londoners hiding out into the provinces go into? Some of the local numbers for the provinces are so high as to suggest fleeing city types getting their vacs in the country aren’t being reckoned back into the London stats
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
Latest PHE vaccine data is out. As of Sunday, 94.8% of over 50s have received at least one dose. Just extraordinary. Even when vaccines are not supply constrained, that’s a figure that will be the envy of almost everywhere in the world.
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
Not from one dose, unfortunately. As well as the SIREN studies
The Israelis have confirmed the above in real life results.
(NB - the second dose hospitalisation figure has massive confidence intervals due to the low numbers involved; it is perfectly feasible that your statement could still be true for second-dose-plus-14 days).
But 1 dose and 3-5 weeks gives: - infections down 60% - Hospitalisations down 80% - Deaths down 85%
Which is fantastic, but shouldn't be oversold.
I'm slightly sceptical of these numbers because - with J&J and AZ - immunity builds over a relatively long period of time. (Pfizer is different, but then given the small gaps between doses there, how much one dose history is there?)
Given the limited amount of time people have had any these vaccines, it means a lot more of the data is for people who have been vaccinated for small periods of time, which means that hospitisation rates are overstated.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
I once worked on an R107 SL and the quality of the materials was amazingly high. I'd be amazed if MB made a profit selling it. It did drive like dog shit though. You can pretty much tell the exact moment MB gave up on quality as the defining brand value with the launch of the W211 E class.
Mine's just an auto saloon. Nothing special - but it is to me. So many years and virtually no trouble, that means something. I impute the quality of loyalty to it as if it were a dog I'd had for ages.
But as regards the innards I'm the anti-you. I barely know the cylinder head gasket from the spare tyre.
Surely given the number of humans on the planet we must produce quite a bit too. How long before this will be the latest green trend to reduce flatulence?
If we ate a diet exclusively of grass then I imagine our methane emissions might rival those of cattle. As we don't, then we don't.
Germany did over 700k vaccinations again yesterday. They've picked things up significantly.
I think they made rule changes to remove the bureaucracy as we did at the beginning. It allows any medical type person to do the vaccinations rather than only specific people. I think I remember kamski saying that they were also shifting to a JiT dosing strategy as well to ensure maximum utilisation of vaccines.
You can use it to back out vaccine inventories by type and by country.
The big take away that I see is that Moderna is ramping up more quickly in the EU than I'd expected.
Yes, that's good for us too as we're due 17m of them which will cover 8.5m under 50s. Novavax is the big question marks I've heard their data came in slower than expected due to crashing incidence rates in the UK but their final submission to the MHRA and FDA has now been made and approval is expected imminently, deliveries to follow about two weeks later for the UK and about four weeks later for the US.
If I didn't have a day job, I'd download the spreadsheet myself and run some analysis. It has refusals by country by vaccine type as well in there, so you could pull out some really interesting stuff there.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
I’m sitting in Barts now, and the nurse tells me they have a significant backlog but can’t begin clearing it because so many patients still aren’t willing to physically come here. The place feels less than half busy compared to pre-pandemic.
Given Barts specialises in a range of serious conditions, you’d get treated here now if you were willing to come.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
Latest PHE vaccine data is out. As of Sunday, 94.8% of over 50s have received at least one dose. Just extraordinary. Even when vaccines are not supply constrained, that’s a figure that will be the envy of almost everywhere in the world.
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
Not from one dose, unfortunately. As well as the SIREN studies
The Israelis have confirmed the above in real life results.
(NB - the second dose hospitalisation figure has massive confidence intervals due to the low numbers involved; it is perfectly feasible that your statement could still be true for second-dose-plus-14 days).
But 1 dose and 3-5 weeks gives: - infections down 60% - Hospitalisations down 80% - Deaths down 85%
Which is fantastic, but shouldn't be oversold.
I'm slightly sceptical of these numbers because - with J&J and AZ - immunity builds over a relatively long period of time. (Pfizer is different, but then given the small gaps between doses there, how much one dose history is there?)
Given the limited amount of time people have had any these vaccines, it means a lot more of the data is for people who have been vaccinated for small periods of time, which means that hospitisation rates are overstated.
They also don't take into account vaccines reducing the incidence rate, the cumulative effect is probably a lot higher than 80% and 85% because the risk of being infected is significantly lower when only 1/1000 people are active spreaders vs 1 in 25 as we had in January.
Surely given the number of humans on the planet we must produce quite a bit too. How long before this will be the latest green trend to reduce flatulence?
Interestingly (if you're interested in that sort of thing) the cow is the only animal on earth that exceeds the human for biomass. (With the possible exception of Antarctic krill, depending on how you classify it). So assuming that volume of methane produced is roughly proportional to biomass, the cow produces the most. No doubt diet has a large part to do with it too.
I was awaiting judgment at Stratford today and went around Westfield.
Only three parts of the site were busy:
1. The Covid vaccination centre 2. Primark 3. Apple
Quite the range of price points! Although if we're being cynical, I think Apple quite like the idea of people queuing out the door.
Apple have behaved rather well in this epidemic - closed stores early and brought in well organised queuing etc when they reopened.
I've used the Westfield one twice in the past year - fixing the children's devices. They even had rules on the types of mask - and would offer you a decent disposable, if yours didn't meet their standards.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
That’s odd, because her SL is way ahead of its time in terms of tech. Not compared with nowadays, of course, but it must have been very advanced when it was made in the 70s, compared to my old sunbeam made in Derby during the dying days of the UK car industry. When the same body parts turned to rust having been replaced once, I knew its time was up.
She reckons her car is worth £35,000. I advertised mine for £50 for parts or free for restoration, and gave it to a guy down in Margate who did an amazing job restoring it to good as new. But he was the sort of guy who would be driving it twice a year at thirty miles an hour to an exhibition, whereas I had taken it onto the beach at the Med and over to the west coast of Ireland, and kept it on the street along the Archway Road.
I'm like you in that sense. No kid gloves for a car. Use it and don't worry about it. To me, they look better as they get a bit 'lived in', a bit battered even. Like leather jackets and tweed caps.
Speaking of "lived in", I did once live in a BMW 318i for 6 days, a company car, but that's another tale.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
I once worked on an R107 SL and the quality of the materials was amazingly high. I'd be amazed if MB made a profit selling it. It did drive like dog shit though. You can pretty much tell the exact moment MB gave up on quality as the defining brand value with the launch of the W211 E class.
Mine's just an auto saloon. Nothing special - but it is to me. So many years and virtually no trouble, that means something. I impute the quality of loyalty to it as if it were a dog I'd had for ages.
But as regards the innards I'm the anti-you. I barely know the cylinder head gasket from the spare tyre.
If there’s a loud bang and the visibility suddenly goes poor, you just need to work out whether it’s smoke or steam.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
Blimpish comment.
Your post may contain a colonel of truth - you're keen as Mustard today.
Over the last few days we have received election leaflets from all the main parties except the conservatives.
However, at lunch time we each received two personalised letters by post.
The first from Andrew RT Davies, Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, appealed for our vote with various promises
However, the second communication came from the 'Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party' personally endorsing our local conservative candidate by name for the Senedd, affirming the Welsh Conservative Party manifesto and interestingly stating that
'I am ready to help the Welsh Conservatives put their plans into action'
He concludes by saying
'Lets defeat this virus, and deliver the jobs, hospitals, and schools that Wales needs'
Yours sincerely,
Boris Johnson Prime Minister
No hesitation at all in promoting 'Boris', defeating the virus and 22 years of labour government in Wales
And of course both communications were bi lingual as required
The declaration at the bottom states your name and address was obtained from the Register of Electors
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
That’s odd, because her SL is way ahead of its time in terms of tech. Not compared with nowadays, of course, but it must have been very advanced when it was made in the 70s, compared to my old sunbeam made in Derby during the dying days of the UK car industry. When the same body parts turned to rust having been replaced once, I knew its time was up.
She reckons her car is worth £35,000. I advertised mine for £50 for parts or free for restoration, and gave it to a guy down in Margate who did an amazing job restoring it to good as new. But he was the sort of guy who would be driving it twice a year at thirty miles an hour to an exhibition, whereas I had taken it onto the beach at the Med and over to the west coast of Ireland, and kept it on the street along the Archway Road.
I'm like you in that sense. No kid gloves for a car. Use it and don't worry about it. To me, they look better as they get a bit 'lived in', a bit battered even. Like leather jackets and tweed caps.
Speaking of "lived in", I did once live in a BMW 318i for 6 days, a company car, but that's another tale.
With hindsight I was young and foolish; had some hard to find part failed on the continent, it would have been seriously inconvenient and seriously expensive. And I did worry about it; it always ran hot, and in the south of France during most of the day it was only safe to drive it downhill.
It broke down lots of times, but always on the M1, normally near Luton. Being so old it was, I guess, set in its ways.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
Blimpish comment.
Your post may contain a colonel of truth - you're keen as Mustard today.
As a pun topic, it's a real coup for a Greek specialist.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
I was awaiting judgment at Stratford today and went around Westfield.
Only three parts of the site were busy:
1. The Covid vaccination centre 2. Primark 3. Apple
Quite the range of price points! Although if we're being cynical, I think Apple quite like the idea of people queuing out the door.
Apple have behaved rather well in this epidemic - closed stores early and brought in well organised queuing etc when they reopened.
I've used the Westfield one twice in the past year - fixing the children's devices. They even had rules on the types of mask - and would offer you a decent disposable, if yours didn't meet their standards.
This is true but with regards to Apple, yes they have fewer staff on purpose to make the stores busier.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
Blimpish comment.
Your post may contain a colonel of truth - you're keen as Mustard today.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
AND (most importantly) they also help prevent its spread.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
Not sure people grasp this though. Did you see Nick Palmer’s post earlier?
Latest PHE vaccine data is out. As of Sunday, 94.8% of over 50s have received at least one dose. Just extraordinary. Even when vaccines are not supply constrained, that’s a figure that will be the envy of almost everywhere in the world.
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
Not from one dose, unfortunately. As well as the SIREN studies
The Israelis have confirmed the above in real life results.
(NB - the second dose hospitalisation figure has massive confidence intervals due to the low numbers involved; it is perfectly feasible that your statement could still be true for second-dose-plus-14 days).
But 1 dose and 3-5 weeks gives: - infections down 60% - Hospitalisations down 80% - Deaths down 85%
Which is fantastic, but shouldn't be oversold.
I'm slightly sceptical of these numbers because - with J&J and AZ - immunity builds over a relatively long period of time. (Pfizer is different, but then given the small gaps between doses there, how much one dose history is there?)
Given the limited amount of time people have had any these vaccines, it means a lot more of the data is for people who have been vaccinated for small periods of time, which means that hospitisation rates are overstated.
They also don't take into account vaccines reducing the incidence rate, the cumulative effect is probably a lot higher than 80% and 85% because the risk of being infected is significantly lower when only 1/1000 people are active spreaders vs 1 in 25 as we had in January.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
The European Coal & Steel Communicty, the EEC, the EC and the EU's currencies were linked to each other throughout the entire histories of the organisations, in an attempt to avoid the competitive devaluations of the 1930.
They were economically illiterate in doing so, since the "competitive devaluations" actually amounted to a large worldwide easing of monetary conditions, enabling the world economy to start to recover from 1932-3. If major countries had been committed to hard currencies throughout the 1930s, the depression would have lasted even longer.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
I agree but I'd close the border with anywhere not at our level of cases/vaccinations (and so all of Europe).
The way I see it is that even if the vaccine is 90% effective - if you're travelling to places with more than 10x our case rate then effectively its like you're here unvaccinated.
France has a case rate 27x higher than the UK's per 100k - and their positivity rate of tests is 8.8% so they're likely wildly underestimating their true number of cases, the UK's is 0.2%.
So its frankly ridiculous to me that France etc aren't on the red list.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
It’s frustrating that first doses have slowed down so much because we’re tantalisingly close to the same level of coverage Israel has reached.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
You still don't get it do you?
It's about presentation. Andy, TLG and I have all suggested ways he could have presented it better.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has not been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Was his opening gambit. The qualification was added as an afterthought:
First rule of PR: If you are explaining, you are losing.
Well we'll see. I think the public are more intelligent than you give them credit for.
You seem to have been reduced to arguing that the message was correct but the spin was not good. I have no intention to argue against that.
Lets see if there's any actual polling or other evidence to show a decline in vaccine take-up after those remarks. If there isn't, its all much ado about nothing.
But, Philip, half of the country remains terrified when there is no reason for it. It's not a question of intelligence but many people do listen to what government (via the media) says and take it at face value.
These are people that we will need to "unterrify" to have any chance of getting back to normal. Rather than doubling down on the negativity, at this stage in the pandemic the government needs to shift to a communications strategy that underpins rather than undermines the recovery. Boris had a glorious opportunity to signal a change in messaging but he failed to do that. I assume it was deliberate because the government remains in thrall to SAGE (whose models and assumptions are questionable to say the least).
But he did change the messaging.
The whole point of his message, as its been for months now, is that even if cases rise then do not panic. That the link between cases and deaths/hospitalisations has been broken. That is a good message to get out there, or do you think that message shouldn't be made?
I agree - that is a great message. Why is it not being heard? Lots of reasons:
His delivery sucks Government media management sucks It's being drowned out by contradictory messaging (e.g. the radio ads) It's being undermined by government action (e.g. one-way ratchet on ending lockdown, dates not data)
You seem to be saying that the government messaging is positive. Frankly, that's laughable. The messaging needs to be negative to keep us locked down until June 21st no matter the data and I find that inexcusable.
The underlying rationale, as I understand it from @Andy_Cooke's very helpful posts yesterday, is that our current ability to suppress R through immunity (the R impairment rate) comes in at about a factor of 2 right now. By mid-May, it'll rise to 2.5, then shoot up after that point until late June, which is when it hits the 4.5 or so that we need to suppress transmission without restrictions.
If anyone wants to amend that analysis with their own data, please go ahead. But as it stands, it seems to back up the existing timetable quite closely.
Surprisingly I don't have my own COVID model so I can't play with it to change the desired output and create alternative scenarios. That's what's missing here from SAGE ... transparency about the alternate scenarios. You never know, there might be an alternative set of assumptions and outputs that are acceptable from a risk perspective and mean we can end lockdown much earlier.
There's a long time between now and the end of June ... are we going to slavishly follow a model that never seems to get updated real time to reflect the current reality? And even if it did get updated and the data showed we could ease restrictions sooner the timeline can't be brought forward anyway. Sorry, that's bullshit.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
Yes, a great deal of data is accumulating which shows that some of those vaccinated do get reinfected, and even go on to get severe disease and die. But not that many.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
The European Coal & Steel Communicty, the EEC, the EC and the EU's currencies were linked to each other throughout the entire histories of the organisations, in an attempt to avoid the competitive devaluations of the 1930.
They were economically illiterate in doing so, since the "competitive devaluations" actually amounted to a large worldwide easing of monetary conditions, enabling the world economy to start to recover from 1932-3. If major countries had been committed to hard currencies throughout the 1930s, the depression would have lasted even longer.
Hang on: let's do a thought experiment here.
Imagine there was a world with two countries: France and England.
If France competitively devalues against England, how does that result in worldwide easing of monetary conditions?
The easing of monetary conditions you are referring to refers only to repayment of debts, which occurred as countries gave up on the Gold Standard.
But the competitive devaluations that happened in the 1930s when countries in Europe attempted to boost exports to each other by following the China model of fixing their currencies at below market rates to each other.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
It's a rank to watch out for. Either they plunge into the heart of darkness, grievously exploit enormous mid 20th century pop stars, or make billions selling very salty, hot greasy chicken pieces.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
It's a rank to watch out for. Either they plunge into the heart of darkness, grievously exploit enormous mid 20th century pop stars, or make billions selling very salty, hot greasy chicken pieces.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
All the best colonels develop a bit of a Kurtz manner...
It's a rank to watch out for. Either they plunge into the heart of darkness, grievously exploit enormous mid 20th century pop stars, or make billions selling very salty, hot greasy chicken pieces.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Is the roadmap not already pointed at a full unlockdown in June?
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
The European Coal & Steel Communicty, the EEC, the EC and the EU's currencies were linked to each other throughout the entire histories of the organisations, in an attempt to avoid the competitive devaluations of the 1930.
They were economically illiterate in doing so, since the "competitive devaluations" actually amounted to a large worldwide easing of monetary conditions, enabling the world economy to start to recover from 1932-3. If major countries had been committed to hard currencies throughout the 1930s, the depression would have lasted even longer.
Hang on: let's do a thought experiment here.
Imagine there was a world with two countries: France and England.
If France competitively devalues against England, how does that result in worldwide easing of monetary conditions?
Obviously it does not. It eases monetary conditions for France. But if England devalues, then France does, then England does, then worldwide monetary conditions are eased substantially.
The alternative is ruinously high real interest rates and a catastrophic contraction in the world economy.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
According to the Zoe map, the only really worrying spots right now are County Durham, Walsall, Aberdeen, Anglesey, Dundee, Oldham, Moray, and parts of south Essex. With a few more minor hotspots in South Yorkshire, Northants, and South Wales. Otherwise most of the UK looks very good.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
It’s frustrating that first doses have slowed down so much because we’re tantalisingly close to the same level of coverage Israel has reached.
It's not going to be long now, in two weeks everyone will be wondering what the slowdown was. Remember when the government said the government were saying no new first doses at all from March 29th onwards and no new age groups to be added in April. Yet here we are with probably 4-6m first doses for April and 45-49 year olds becoming eligible with 40-44 year olds waiting in the wings.
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
It’s frustrating that first doses have slowed down so much because we’re tantalisingly close to the same level of coverage Israel has reached.
It's not going to be long now, in two weeks everyone will be wondering what the slowdown was. Remember when the government said the government were saying no new first doses at all from March 29th onwards and no new age groups to be added in April. Yet here we are with probably 4-6m first doses for April and 45-49 year olds becoming eligible with 40-44 year olds waiting in the wings.
I know it won't take long but its a shame we're so close to the threshold of 50% of the population being vaccinated, which would be a nice psychological landmark.
At prior rates it would have taken less than a week to get there. Oh well, won't be long but it will be nice to do so.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Sky have been wrong a lot on this though. Maybe it would be better not to spend all day watching Sky News.
On the map, the colour blue is now extinct - at Upper Tier AND Lower Tier. You have to burrow all the way down to MSOA level to get sufficient clumping to see blues. There's one solitary purple holdout at that level, from an outbreak of forty people in West Bridlington sending the incidence up in a population not much over 8,000.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
You are sneering the other way with "To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk."
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
I am only the messenger so not sure who you want to .................?
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
The European Coal & Steel Communicty, the EEC, the EC and the EU's currencies were linked to each other throughout the entire histories of the organisations, in an attempt to avoid the competitive devaluations of the 1930.
They were economically illiterate in doing so, since the "competitive devaluations" actually amounted to a large worldwide easing of monetary conditions, enabling the world economy to start to recover from 1932-3. If major countries had been committed to hard currencies throughout the 1930s, the depression would have lasted even longer.
Hang on: let's do a thought experiment here.
Imagine there was a world with two countries: France and England.
If France competitively devalues against England, how does that result in worldwide easing of monetary conditions?
Obviously it does not. It eases monetary conditions for France. But if England devalues, then France does, then England does, then worldwide monetary conditions are eased substantially.
The alternative is ruinously high real interest rates and a catastrophic contraction in the world economy.
Right. So if France devalues against the UK, and then the UK devalues against France, then France devalues against the UK, then you get (pretending it's Pound-Franc):
10 5 10 5 10 5
In what way is that resulting in easing of monetary conditions?
No, was answering Max who was saying fearties wouldn't be bothered because they were vaccinated. There's still a non-trivial risk of illness, just a smaller one plus a negligible risk of death. How much that bothers you is individual.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
I am only the messenger so not sure who you want to .................?
The SAGE guy quoted.
Anyone suggesting that can go f**k themselves with a rusty implement as far as I'm concerned. We're done domestically - if you want to control the variant then control the border and if you can't be arsed to do that then no more complaints.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Sky have been wrong a lot on this though. Maybe it would be better not to spend all day watching Sky News.
Actually I was not watching Sky news
I was reading BBC and Sky online and extracted this comment as interesting in view of some PB posters comments
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
It’s frustrating that first doses have slowed down so much because we’re tantalisingly close to the same level of coverage Israel has reached.
It's not going to be long now, in two weeks everyone will be wondering what the slowdown was. Remember when the government said the government were saying no new first doses at all from March 29th onwards and no new age groups to be added in April. Yet here we are with probably 4-6m first doses for April and 45-49 year olds becoming eligible with 40-44 year olds waiting in the wings.
I know it won't take long but its a shame we're so close to the threshold of 50% of the population being vaccinated, which would be a nice psychological landmark.
At prior rates it would have taken less than a week to get there. Oh well, won't be long but it will be nice to do so.
At current rates, if the rates over the last week are sustained, we'll get there on the 24th of April. Or thereabouts. If Moderna ramps up faster, it should be a day or two sooner.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
The European Coal & Steel Communicty, the EEC, the EC and the EU's currencies were linked to each other throughout the entire histories of the organisations, in an attempt to avoid the competitive devaluations of the 1930.
They were economically illiterate in doing so, since the "competitive devaluations" actually amounted to a large worldwide easing of monetary conditions, enabling the world economy to start to recover from 1932-3. If major countries had been committed to hard currencies throughout the 1930s, the depression would have lasted even longer.
Hang on: let's do a thought experiment here.
Imagine there was a world with two countries: France and England.
If France competitively devalues against England, how does that result in worldwide easing of monetary conditions?
Obviously it does not. It eases monetary conditions for France. But if England devalues, then France does, then England does, then worldwide monetary conditions are eased substantially.
The alternative is ruinously high real interest rates and a catastrophic contraction in the world economy.
Right. So if France devalues against the UK, and then the UK devalues against France, then France devalues against the UK, then you get (pretending it's Pound-Franc):
10 5 10 5 10 5
In what way is that resulting in easing of monetary conditions?
Did you read the paper? Explains it very well.
But if you can't be bothered, here is Barry Eichengreen:
"In the 1930s, it is true, with one country after another depreciating its currency, no one ended up gaining competitiveness relative to anyone else. ... But this was not what mattered. What mattered was that one country after another moved to loosen monetary policy because it no longer had to worry about defending the exchange rate. And this monetary stimulus, felt worldwide, was probably the single most important factor initiating and sustaining economic recovery."
The fetish for targeting the external, not the internal, value of currencies was probably the most harmful economic mistake of the last century.
Tiny number of infections among fully vaccinated people revealed by US health officials
Just 5,800 cases of COVID-19 infection have been reported among the 66 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the US, officials have revealed.
The Center for Disease Control and Infection say the number of cases – which equates to a rate of 0.008% of those who have completed a full course of jabs - is in line with expectations.
Of the 5,800 cases, 396 (7%) required hospital treatment and 74 people died.
The figures reflect what health authorities have consistently said about vaccination – that it does not offer complete protection against death and disease.
And the CDC said in a statement to CNN: "To date, no unexpected patterns have been identified in case demographics or vaccine characteristics."
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Sky have been wrong a lot on this though. Maybe it would be better not to spend all day watching Sky News.
Actually I was not watching Sky news
I was reading BBC and Sky online and extracted this comment as interesting in view of some PB posters comments
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
So I take it you are backing out of your proposed bet. No shame in that. We'll leave it there.
We can but we don't have to.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
£1,000 that I wasn't a full colonel.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
Hang on, you already know the answer! That sounds like I very likely end up a grand in the hole.
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM Gen Lt Gen Maj Gen Brig Colonel Lt Col Maj Capt Lt 2Lt OCdt
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
I am only the messenger so not sure who you want to .................?
The SAGE guy quoted.
Anyone suggesting that can go f**k themselves with a rusty implement as far as I'm concerned. We're done domestically - if you want to control the variant then control the border and if you can't be arsed to do that then no more complaints.
Thanks Philip
I know it was not me you were showing your frustrations at
No, was answering Max who was saying fearties wouldn't be bothered because they were vaccinated. There's still a non-trivial risk of illness, just a smaller one plus a negligible risk of death. How much that bothers you is individual.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Edmunds is kite flying again!
More zero COVID foolishness. It's not going to happen. We're going to unlockdown on schedule and the vaccines will result in herd immunity by around mid May.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Edmunds is kite flying again!
No way back for local restrictions. They don't work.
I'm sure the surge testing will secure satisfactory control. Latest figures suggest very few cases overall in these areas.
The EMA is putting in some solid effort in working out what gives with the AZN vaccine. The idea that they have simply abandoned it is erroneous.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00940-0 ...The EMA is also supporting studies by two academic consortia centred in the Netherlands, one led by Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam and the other by investigators at Utrecht University and the University Medical Center Utrecht.
Their project list is ambitious. One of the consortia, co-chaired by virologist Eric C. M. van Gorp at Erasmus, consists of 22 hospitals that have been working together to study the effects of coronavirus on blood coagulation. The team will look for potential cases of HIT among people who developed blood clots following vaccination with the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine or other COVID-19 vaccines. It will also conduct lab studies to look for signs that the already-small risk could be cut further by reducing the amount of vaccine administered in each dose.
The EMA expects to obtain some results from the projects within the next two months, said Peter Arlett, head of the agency’s Data Analytics and Methods task force. The team will also try to tease apart whether this problem is restricted to certain populations. “What we find in Western Europe will not automatically be true in South America or other populations,” says van Gorp. “This is a worldwide problem; everyone is concerned.”
And, crucially, van Gorp and his colleagues will try to further evaluate whether the “probable” association between the vaccine and the syndrome is real...
Anyone suggesting that can go f**k themselves with a rusty implement as far as I'm concerned. We're done domestically - if you want to control the variant then control the border and if you can't be arsed to do that then no more complaints.
Indeed. I'm done with this. I'll follow the roadmap restrictions in accordance with the current timetable, as I've followed restrictions to date but I'm at the point where if we went back into lockdown or releases are delayed I would vote for Farage (a man that I despise on every level) if his was the only party opposing it.
In other news, I have a brisket in the oven that I'm trying to slow cook for 8 hours. I'm hoping it's going to turn out amazing.
I am sure it will - a slow cooker is an invaluable (and very small) investment if you're into that sort of thing. Especially one with a metal casserole dish insert (as opposed to ceramic) because then you can fry off the meat to seal it before leaving it to slow cook and forgetting about it.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Edmunds is kite flying again!
More zero COVID foolishness. It's not going to happen. We're going to unlockdown on schedule and the vaccines will result in herd immunity by around mid May.
I just wish someone would put the likes of this fella back in his box. Sky have been one of the big villains of the last 12 months.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Edmunds is kite flying again!
More zero COVID foolishness. It's not going to happen. We're going to unlockdown on schedule and the vaccines will result in herd immunity by around mid May.
I just wish someone would put the likes of this fella back in his box. Sky have been one of the big villains of the last 12 months.
And they were actually quoting Robert Peston !!!!!!
@TimSpector Despite “fears” around SA variants in London the rates of new cases dropped even further today on ZOË app - showing that we should be far less gloomy and vaccines are working - thanks for logging !
Absolutely right and both the Pfizer and AZ vaccines provide very good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation risk from the SA and Brazilian variants. The variant panic is completely unnecessary. Though I'd still completey close the border to Africa and South America until we're at herd immunity and have gen 2 vaccines being delivered.
It’s frustrating that first doses have slowed down so much because we’re tantalisingly close to the same level of coverage Israel has reached.
It's not going to be long now, in two weeks everyone will be wondering what the slowdown was. Remember when the government said the government were saying no new first doses at all from March 29th onwards and no new age groups to be added in April. Yet here we are with probably 4-6m first doses for April and 45-49 year olds becoming eligible with 40-44 year olds waiting in the wings.
I know it won't take long but its a shame we're so close to the threshold of 50% of the population being vaccinated, which would be a nice psychological landmark.
At prior rates it would have taken less than a week to get there. Oh well, won't be long but it will be nice to do so.
We've got an artificial asymptotic peak right now at about 50% due to need for 2nd doses.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Edmunds is kite flying again!
More zero COVID foolishness. It's not going to happen. We're going to unlockdown on schedule and the vaccines will result in herd immunity by around mid May.
I just wish someone would put the likes of this fella back in his box. Sky have been one of the big villains of the last 12 months.
Wasn't as bad when they took Death Rigby etc off the air.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Edmunds is kite flying again!
More zero COVID foolishness. It's not going to happen. We're going to unlockdown on schedule and the vaccines will result in herd immunity by around mid May.
I just wish someone would put the likes of this fella back in his box. Sky have been one of the big villains of the last 12 months.
Yup and the people who hang on every bit of negative news that Sky love to signal boost for ratings. The nation would be hugely improved if Ofcom made 24h news channels impossible to run.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Why would fearties be bothered anyway? They themselves will be vaccinated.
My fear all the way through has been that I caught another illness, or had a road accident or something, which proved impossible to get treatment for in hospital due to them being totally pre-occupied with treated Covid cases. That remains a concern even after my low risk of suffering from the disease itself is reduced to almost zero by the vaccine.
My understanding - including a brief visit myself for some tests - is that other departments in hospitals have been working fairly normally. Some wards were dedicated totally to Covid and leave was cancelled but there was never a point at which they actually turned people away - perhaps partly because people were very reluctant to go in except in dire emergency.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
Do you mean UNvaccinated people?
I really do not want to upset you but Sky are now reporting
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
Oh f**k off no more restrictions domestically.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
It's not going to happen, Sky have consistently been wrong on this stuff. The government has specifically said no more regional lockdowns or tiers becuase they don't work very well. They're just projecting their own alarmist stance on to the reporting of news, it's why they're wrong a lot.
Edmunds is kite flying again!
More zero COVID foolishness. It's not going to happen. We're going to unlockdown on schedule and the vaccines will result in herd immunity by around mid May.
I just wish someone would put the likes of this fella back in his box. Sky have been one of the big villains of the last 12 months.
Yup and the people who hang on every bit of negative news that Sky love to signal boost for ratings. The nation would be hugely improved if Ofcom made 24h news channels impossible to run.
I've been saying that for years - 24h news means they need to create news to feed a vacuum..
In other news, I have a brisket in the oven that I'm trying to slow cook for 8 hours. I'm hoping it's going to turn out amazing.
I am sure it will - a slow cooker is an invaluable (and very small) investment if you're into that sort of thing. Especially one with a metal casserole dish insert (as opposed to ceramic) because then you can fry off the meat to seal it before leaving it to slow cook and forgetting about it.
Yummmm. To both.
Though there is a lot to be said of the traditional Scottish dish of lamb shank simmered for hours in an [edit] deep pan such as a pressure cooker sans pressure, with fairly large chunks of swede (of course) and potato, and lots of grated carrot. Eat as soup as course 1, add meat and more soup and eat with bread for course 2.
Brings back memories of my granny. Who also cooked boiled sheep's head (for the dog, actually, though that is also a traditional recipe for humans).
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
That’s odd, because her SL is way ahead of its time in terms of tech. Not compared with nowadays, of course, but it must have been very advanced when it was made in the 70s, compared to my old sunbeam made in Derby during the dying days of the UK car industry. When the same body parts turned to rust having been replaced once, I knew its time was up.
She reckons her car is worth £35,000. I advertised mine for £50 for parts or free for restoration, and gave it to a guy down in Margate who did an amazing job restoring it to good as new. But he was the sort of guy who would be driving it twice a year at thirty miles an hour to an exhibition, whereas I had taken it onto the beach at the Med and over to the west coast of Ireland, and kept it on the street along the Archway Road.
I'm like you in that sense. No kid gloves for a car. Use it and don't worry about it. To me, they look better as they get a bit 'lived in', a bit battered even. Like leather jackets and tweed caps.
Speaking of "lived in", I did once live in a BMW 318i for 6 days, a company car, but that's another tale.
With hindsight I was young and foolish; had some hard to find part failed on the continent, it would have been seriously inconvenient and seriously expensive. And I did worry about it; it always ran hot, and in the south of France during most of the day it was only safe to drive it downhill.
It broke down lots of times, but always on the M1, normally near Luton. Being so old it was, I guess, set in its ways.
Full of personality then, that old sunbeam of yours. A charismatic "borissy" sort of car.. No, totally agree, we can do without that. That is not my merc. It's very Sir Ed Davey.
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
That's all true. But I don't think the ERM and Maastricht are as much Major's fault - they were messes dropped on his lap by Lawson and Howe respectively, and the other pro-European Big Beasts of the Conservative Party. Given where the Party and the country were around 1989-90, it would not have been realistic to expect him to be even a Hague-style eurosceptic, let alone a Faragiste. Major's opponents in the leadership election were Heseltine and Hurd, after all, both even more europhile than he was.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
Like Johnson, Major was good at leaving the various factions thinking he sympathised with them, but whereas Johnson achieves this by telling everyone what they want to hear, Major did so by remaining cagey. Appearing to be the least pro-EU of the serious contenders cleverly got him the top job, but he went on to disappoint the sceptics, and his comments during and after the referendum suggest that he has been skilled at keeping his own views hidden when it suited.
I think that's undoubtedly true. Major wasn't quite the ideology vacuum that say Johnson or Blair are. But he had a great poker face. And it's also certainly true that the Conservative Party was much more europhilic in 1990 than it was in 2016, let alone today.
Comments
She said she had a problem with the idle speed and I said I’d come take a look, thinking it would be a mechanical cord running from the pedal to the fuel intake and you just had to fiddle with the nut, but it wasn’t. How it works I didn’t manage to fathom.
Until the early 1970s, this was via the Bretton Woods agreement, then it was "The Snake", which evolved into the ERM.
Given the limited amount of time people have had any these vaccines, it means a lot more of the data is for people who have been vaccinated for small periods of time, which means that hospitisation rates are overstated.
But as regards the innards I'm the anti-you. I barely know the cylinder head gasket from the spare tyre.
Only three parts of the site were busy:
1. The Covid vaccination centre
2. Primark
3. Apple
Quite the range of price points! Although if we're being cynical, I think Apple quite like the idea of people queuing out the door.
Given Barts specialises in a range of serious conditions, you’d get treated here now if you were willing to come.
No doubt diet has a large part to do with it too.
I've used the Westfield one twice in the past year - fixing the children's devices. They even had rules on the types of mask - and would offer you a decent disposable, if yours didn't meet their standards.
Speaking of "lived in", I did once live in a BMW 318i for 6 days, a company car, but that's another tale.
However, at lunch time we each received two personalised letters by post.
The first from Andrew RT Davies, Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, appealed for our vote with various promises
However, the second communication came from the 'Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party' personally endorsing our local conservative candidate by name for the Senedd, affirming the Welsh Conservative Party manifesto and interestingly stating that
'I am ready to help the Welsh Conservatives put their plans into action'
He concludes by saying
'Lets defeat this virus, and deliver the jobs, hospitals, and schools that Wales needs'
Yours sincerely,
Boris Johnson
Prime Minister
No hesitation at all in promoting 'Boris', defeating the virus and 22 years of labour government in Wales
And of course both communications were bi lingual as required
The declaration at the bottom states your name and address was obtained from the Register of Electors
Interesting
Hospitalisations dropping.
Positive tests dropping.
Testing rising.
Four star!
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
It broke down lots of times, but always on the M1, normally near Luton. Being so old it was, I guess, set in its ways.
I was unfair to him this morning.
Explanation is that I was very grumpy due to the vax knocking the stuffing out of me.
If instead of just repeatedly barking "how much?" you were to frame the bet (around your army rank) you're thinking off, we can do it for a modest sum if we both like the look of it.
It needs to come from you because it's about your personal info and I don't want to be striking the wrong note. I like the old banter but I also like to be sensitive to people.
Bought from.my local butcher 6-7 hrs slow cook. Not all butchers are the same and Supermarket meat is generally ugh....and expensive.
If I was I pay you £1,000; if I wasn't you pay me £1,000.
The reason vaccinated people will be bothered is that they don't want to get seriously ill, even if they are no longer at much risk of dying. To risk long Covid merely so you can see a movie in a cinema instead of on screen doesn't seem a reasonable risk. When it becomes rare to encounter anyone who's got the bug, that concern will go away, in the same way that nobody in the UK hesitates to go out for fear of catching Ebola.
It's all a more or less rational balancing of perceived risk with expected pleasure and very individual. We shouldn't sneer at each other ("fearties") for making those choices.
I know my wife and I were shattered the day after, and my daughter had to go to bed for 36 hours before recovering
And well done you
The way I see it is that even if the vaccine is 90% effective - if you're travelling to places with more than 10x our case rate then effectively its like you're here unvaccinated.
France has a case rate 27x higher than the UK's per 100k - and their positivity rate of tests is 8.8% so they're likely wildly underestimating their true number of cases, the UK's is 0.2%.
So its frankly ridiculous to me that France etc aren't on the red list.
There's a long time between now and the end of June ... are we going to slavishly follow a model that never seems to get updated real time to reflect the current reality? And even if it did get updated and the data showed we could ease restrictions sooner the timeline can't be brought forward anyway. Sorry, that's bullshit.
Many millions have been vaccinated against the coronavirus; 396 were later hospitalized with Covid-19
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/14/health/breakthrough-infections-covid-vaccines-cdc/index.html
Imagine there was a world with two countries: France and England.
If France competitively devalues against England, how does that result in worldwide easing of monetary conditions?
The easing of monetary conditions you are referring to refers only to repayment of debts, which occurred as countries gave up on the Gold Standard.
But the competitive devaluations that happened in the 1930s when countries in Europe attempted to boost exports to each other by following the China model of fixing their currencies at below market rates to each other.
But his clinging to the shattered corpse of our EU membership today, when even Lawson has given that up, is less explicable..
The alternative is ruinously high real interest rates and a catastrophic contraction in the world economy.
See e.g. here
https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/luekhi/0211.html
At prior rates it would have taken less than a week to get there. Oh well, won't be long but it will be nice to do so.
London may face local restrictions after South African variant cases detected, expert says
As reported yesterday, surge testing is taking place in the capital after cases of the worrying South African variant were discovered.
The strain is of concern due to its apparent ability to evade existing vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, said he hoped mass testing would keep the number of cases low.
But, he warned, if those efforts were not as successful as hoped, rules may need to be tightened in some areas.
"What we are looking at in south London is an example of what we’ll see now in the coming months, as we try our best to keep that variant out or at as low a level as we possibly can, because if these mass testing events don’t work that well, and we don’t know yet, I mean we’ll have to evaluate this one very carefully, then it’s possible that we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it,"
You have to burrow all the way down to MSOA level to get sufficient clumping to see blues. There's one solitary purple holdout at that level, from an outbreak of forty people in West Bridlington sending the incidence up in a population not much over 8,000.
If you want to prevent variants arriving then close the f***ing border.
10
5
10
5
10
5
In what way is that resulting in easing of monetary conditions?
Anyone suggesting that can go f**k themselves with a rusty implement as far as I'm concerned. We're done domestically - if you want to control the variant then control the border and if you can't be arsed to do that then no more complaints.
I was reading BBC and Sky online and extracted this comment as interesting in view of some PB posters comments
And Sky are quoting Robert Peston apparently
Or thereabouts.
If Moderna ramps up faster, it should be a day or two sooner.
But if you can't be bothered, here is Barry Eichengreen:
"In the 1930s, it is true, with one country after another depreciating its currency, no one ended up gaining competitiveness relative to anyone else. ... But this was not what mattered. What mattered was that one country after another moved to loosen monetary policy because it no longer had to worry about defending the exchange rate. And this monetary stimulus, felt worldwide, was probably the single most important factor initiating and sustaining economic recovery."
The fetish for targeting the external, not the internal, value of currencies was probably the most harmful economic mistake of the last century.
15:03
Tiny number of infections among fully vaccinated people revealed by US health officials
Just 5,800 cases of COVID-19 infection have been reported among the 66 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the US, officials have revealed.
The Center for Disease Control and Infection say the number of cases – which equates to a rate of 0.008% of those who have completed a full course of jabs - is in line with expectations.
Of the 5,800 cases, 396 (7%) required hospital treatment and 74 people died.
The figures reflect what health authorities have consistently said about vaccination – that it does not offer complete protection against death and disease.
And the CDC said in a statement to CNN: "To date, no unexpected patterns have been identified in case demographics or vaccine characteristics."
Edmunds is kite flying again!
We can do something fairer and more interesting and for less money. A spread bet.
FM
Gen
Lt Gen
Maj Gen
Brig
Colonel
Lt Col
Maj
Capt
Lt
2Lt
OCdt
I "buy" you at Colonel for £1 a rank.
Profit or loss to site funds.
Yes?
I know it was not me you were showing your frustrations at
The data (I posted above) suggests the contrary.
I'm sure the surge testing will secure satisfactory control. Latest figures suggest very few cases overall in these areas.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00940-0
...The EMA is also supporting studies by two academic consortia centred in the Netherlands, one led by Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam and the other by investigators at Utrecht University and the University Medical Center Utrecht.
Their project list is ambitious. One of the consortia, co-chaired by virologist Eric C. M. van Gorp at Erasmus, consists of 22 hospitals that have been working together to study the effects of coronavirus on blood coagulation. The team will look for potential cases of HIT among people who developed blood clots following vaccination with the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine or other COVID-19 vaccines. It will also conduct lab studies to look for signs that the already-small risk could be cut further by reducing the amount of vaccine administered in each dose.
The EMA expects to obtain some results from the projects within the next two months, said Peter Arlett, head of the agency’s Data Analytics and Methods task force. The team will also try to tease apart whether this problem is restricted to certain populations. “What we find in Western Europe will not automatically be true in South America or other populations,” says van Gorp. “This is a worldwide problem; everyone is concerned.”
And, crucially, van Gorp and his colleagues will try to further evaluate whether the “probable” association between the vaccine and the syndrome is real...
According to the CDC the risk of hospitalisation for the twice-vaccinated is 396 in 66,000,000.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56760714
Sky have been one of the big villains of the last 12 months.
Though there is a lot to be said of the traditional Scottish dish of lamb shank simmered for hours in an [edit] deep pan such as a pressure cooker sans pressure, with fairly large chunks of swede (of course) and potato, and lots of grated carrot. Eat as soup as course 1, add meat and more soup and eat with bread for course 2.
Brings back memories of my granny. Who also cooked boiled sheep's head (for the dog, actually, though that is also a traditional recipe for humans).