This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Wow, that last sentence boggles my mind, not something I was expecting to read.
I know Boris might choose to live across the pond after his current role, but still.....
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
Was he not gifted it ? I think the concern is rather that it was a firm controlled by close member of his family, and he had not previously declared that as an interest. The declaration only came about, belatedly, as a result of the gift.
OK so didn't know that. Not mentioned in the story I read so more complicated then. It did seem very bizarre.
I do find it strange how many don't seem to see the appearance of a conflict of interest even if very innocent. When I ran my business I made it point in my T&C to state there would be any financial relationship between myself and my clients suppliers. Often I ran conferences and my clients suppliers or potential suppliers would sponsor elements of the event. I always made sure no payment went through my books. I arranged for sponsor to pay directly the venue/speaker/bar/etc so that no money came to me that could be considered an influencing factor.
AFAIK, the relevant code requires that relevant close family interests be declared. Hancock ought to have listed his sister's control of such a company.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Anyone who is a global leader of their field would need their head examining to move to China. It’s a pretty unpleasant place to spend much time at all, much less the peak years of a career, where the nature of Chinese society would impede not just on your quality of life but also your professional output.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
He did not buy them
His sister is a director of the company and she gifted the shares to him after he had cleared it with the cabinet office and declared it
The recent contract was with Wales NHS that has nothing to do with him and as Labour in Wales awarded the contract what is the problem
Did not know that. See my other reply to Nigel on that topic so I appreciate it is probably not something he would have gone out and purchased. As I said it seemed bizarre.
However don't agree with the rest of your post because:
a) I don't care if he cleared it or declared it, he shouldn't own them. See my post on what I did in similar circumstances.
b) Again I don't care if the Wales contract had nothing to do with him. It is not a case of being corrupt, but a case of a potential conflict of interest arising.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
Yes, I think that true. Crying over decadence in our culture, and of crazy ideas in the young is as at least a century old, probably millennia.
There are opinions, some good, some silly, some pointlessly, painfully, otiosely obvious (like this) and then are hard facts. The hard facts say China is winning.
The hard facts say that China are progressing at the minute but only because they're still relatively poor per capita and have a lot of room to grow to catch up. The only reason China's economy is remotely close to America's is because for every one American there are 4 Chinese.
If we reverse the per capita ratios between America and China then China wouldn't be about the same size as America's economy it would be sixteen times bigger, so America and the west are still doing some things right don't you think?
It may be before your time but there used to be a poster here called @SeanT whose writings you might want to look up. He used to regale us with stories of his buxom young woke women that he would ahem spend time with. The young aren't as bad as you make out and will do what they've always done which is challenge those older than them, that's not a bad thing.
You might as well say ‘super rich’ Monaco is doing better than ‘quite rich’ France, and France only *seems* more powerful because it’s bigger.
As a westerner, I have no objection to China (and Asia, more widely) overtaking the west. Which they are clearly doing. Asia is huge by population (and sheer size), the rise of China means 500m have been lifted from dire poverty. Which is a wonderful thing for Homo sapiens
Empires rise and fall. Britain fell. America is obviously falling. China in time will fall, in 50 or 100 years, because of ageing or whatever
What concerns me is that, for the first time in 200 years, the world will have a global hegemon which does not even aspire to human liberty or greater freedom (and imperial Britain and America, for all their many many sins, did have those aspirations, most of the time). Instead the planet will be ruled by a power with ruthless pragmatic self-interest as its sole concern, a power harnessing modern technology in ways that have uncomfortable echoes of fascism
I guess we just have to hope a kinder China arises when Xi goes, as he will (unless the Chinese GPT4 can turn him into an immortal Xi-bot - not impossible)
All of that is fair enough and not in dispute but unless you have a way to "eliminate" a billion Chinese people to "even up the scales" there's really limited amounts we can do to prevent China ascending. Though its interesting that India is due to overtake China in population, potentially this year although Covid might postpone it for a couple of years. So if India per capita caught up with China then it would potentially overtake China economically. In one way we're fortunate that China for so long maintained the "one child policy" or the differential would be even greater by now.
None of that address your complaints about "woke" actions which are a complaint as old as time. It is our ability to evolve, to be challenged from within by the young that has allowed imperial Britain and America to progress and be so liberal and aspirational for the past half a millenium.
China's biggest flaw is its lack of "woke". Its lack of internal dissent and challenge. For now that masquerades as a strength but we've seen through history time and again that nations incapable of internal challenge do not progress in the same way as those who can.
Indeed, the way humans organize, and hence their potential to do greater things, cannot evolve unless concepts such as role of self and purpose etc... evolve. Evolution - indeed, all learning - requires challenge and dissent.
I think what this means for hegemony is that China will be great at copying and the 'filling in' type of science that Thomas Kuhn describes, rather than the great leaps forward (either scientific or societal), and thus might become the hegemon, but will be overtaken quickly by whichever empire makes that next great leap, because it won't be China as currently organized.
Every now and then I point to Frederick Laloux's book Reinventing Organisations. I really think anyone interested in how humans organize and work together for any purpose - economic, political, religious, military, scientific, learning - should read it.
Believing the Chinese are ‘incapable’ of *real* innovation is, basically, racist bullshit dressed up as disapproval of their regime.
They will innovate in ways that are different, but just as valid. For instance, they innovated the idea everyone should wear a damn mask to protect OTHERS, even as our brilliant individualistic scientists were saying MASKS ARE BAD
They also innovated, perhaps accidentally, a virus which curiously attacks western countries more than the East
Two nil to them, so far
What a load of utter bollocks. Innovated wearing masks - look at any pictorial depictions of the Black Death.
I suggest you try just a teensiest little bit to understand what other posters are saying, particularly when it disagrees with your own views.
To say that learning - particularly the paradigm breaking scientific leaps, such as relativity or quantum mechanics - requires dissent and challenge is not racist. It is simple fact.
Furthermore, I did not say China could not do such science: I said not as currently organized.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
He did not buy them
His sister is a director of the company and she gifted the shares to him after he had cleared it with the cabinet office and declared it
The recent contract was with Wales NHS that has nothing to do with him and as Labour in Wales awarded the contract what is the problem
He could have simply said 'no' to avoid any suggestion of a conflict of interest.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
He did not buy them
His sister is a director of the company and she gifted the shares to him after he had cleared it with the cabinet office and declared it
The recent contract was with Wales NHS that has nothing to do with him and as Labour in Wales awarded the contract what is the problem
This is the case with pretty much all of these accusations. You find there's no wrongdoing, everyone acted properly, but you cant deflect from claims of cronyism. Corruption is a criminal matter, and until plod gets involved taking interviews under caution it is hot air and nothing else.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
He did not buy them
His sister is a director of the company and she gifted the shares to him after he had cleared it with the cabinet office and declared it
The recent contract was with Wales NHS that has nothing to do with him and as Labour in Wales awarded the contract what is the problem
He could have simply said 'no' to avoid any suggestion of a conflict of interest.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
He did not buy them
His sister is a director of the company and she gifted the shares to him after he had cleared it with the cabinet office and declared it
The recent contract was with Wales NHS that has nothing to do with him and as Labour in Wales awarded the contract what is the problem
This is the case with pretty much all of these accusations. You find there's no wrongdoing, everyone acted properly, but you cant deflect from claims of cronyism. Corruption is a criminal matter, and until plod gets involved taking interviews under caution it is hot air and nothing else.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
“indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century“
Where does one begin with a statement like this?
China, population 1,400,000,000
America, population 330,000,000
For America to ‘overtake China in population by 2071’ the Chinese would have to stop having all babies tomorrow, and undertake the mass slaughter of maybe 300 million people with funny noses.
Meanwhile, America - an ageing society like China -
will suddenly have to stop ageing, have 40 kids per family, and encourage the immigration of 400 million people from El Salvador, not necessarily an election winner, but who knows
Seems like a good idea to help work through the backlog of cases that have been building up? Will probably be more use than the Nightingale Hospitals were.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
Yes, I think that true. Crying over decadence in our culture, and of crazy ideas in the young is as at least a century old, probably millennia.
There are opinions, some good, some silly, some pointlessly, painfully, otiosely obvious (like this) and then are hard facts. The hard facts say China is winning.
The hard facts say that China are progressing at the minute but only because they're still relatively poor per capita and have a lot of room to grow to catch up. The only reason China's economy is remotely close to America's is because for every one American there are 4 Chinese.
If we reverse the per capita ratios between America and China then China wouldn't be about the same size as America's economy it would be sixteen times bigger, so America and the west are still doing some things right don't you think?
It may be before your time but there used to be a poster here called @SeanT whose writings you might want to look up. He used to regale us with stories of his buxom young woke women that he would ahem spend time with. The young aren't as bad as you make out and will do what they've always done which is challenge those older than them, that's not a bad thing.
You might as well say ‘super rich’ Monaco is doing better than ‘quite rich’ France, and France only *seems* more powerful because it’s bigger.
As a westerner, I have no objection to China (and Asia, more widely) overtaking the west. Which they are clearly doing. Asia is huge by population (and sheer size), the rise of China means 500m have been lifted from dire poverty. Which is a wonderful thing for Homo sapiens
Empires rise and fall. Britain fell. America is obviously falling. China in time will fall, in 50 or 100 years, because of ageing or whatever
What concerns me is that, for the first time in 200 years, the world will have a global hegemon which does not even aspire to human liberty or greater freedom (and imperial Britain and America, for all their many many sins, did have those aspirations, most of the time). Instead the planet will be ruled by a power with ruthless pragmatic self-interest as its sole concern, a power harnessing modern technology in ways that have uncomfortable echoes of fascism
I guess we just have to hope a kinder China arises when Xi goes, as he will (unless the Chinese GPT4 can turn him into an immortal Xi-bot - not impossible)
All of that is fair enough and not in dispute but unless you have a way to "eliminate" a billion Chinese people to "even up the scales" there's really limited amounts we can do to prevent China ascending. Though its interesting that India is due to overtake China in population, potentially this year although Covid might postpone it for a couple of years. So if India per capita caught up with China then it would potentially overtake China economically. In one way we're fortunate that China for so long maintained the "one child policy" or the differential would be even greater by now.
None of that address your complaints about "woke" actions which are a complaint as old as time. It is our ability to evolve, to be challenged from within by the young that has allowed imperial Britain and America to progress and be so liberal and aspirational for the past half a millenium.
China's biggest flaw is its lack of "woke". Its lack of internal dissent and challenge. For now that masquerades as a strength but we've seen through history time and again that nations incapable of internal challenge do not progress in the same way as those who can.
Leon also misses the point that "Asia, more widely' is becoming less well disposed to China, rather than more. They've severely pissed off everyone in the region over their territorial claims, and might end up not dissimilar to the old USSR, encircled by potential enemies. That's a dangerous thing, but it doesn't make them any kind of incipient hegemon.
This is basically, laughably untrue on a factual level. Let alone everything else
Have they pissed off ‘everyone else in the region’? No
Look at their neighbours. Mongolia, a quickly enriching mineral producing state (wholly dependent on China). A loyal satellite state. Russia - happy in a broad anti-western alliance. Laos, a satellite state. Hong Kong, overrun and conquered. Bhutan, doesn’t want trouble, insignificant. Nepal, the same. Cambodia, another satellite. North Korea, an eccentric protectorate. Myanmar, loyal. Thailand, doesn’t want trouble, relies on Chinese trade and tourists. Pakistan, desperate for Chinese trade and continued investment. Bangladesh, ditto
The same goes even for potential Asian foes of China. Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Philippines. They occasionally squeal about Chinese overbearance, BUT their economies are now entirely enmeshed with, and dependent on, the biggest trading power in the world. China. If China topples they implode.
The only Asian country that might one day resist is India, because of sheer size. But that’s a story for the 2nd half of the century
This is the huge, fundamental difference between the USSR (as an opponent) and China. The USSR was only ever a military superpower. Never a trading or technological superpower. China is all three. It is the biggest trading power on earth (bigger than the USA) which means it has enormous grasp over near and distant nations
"even potential Asian foes of China. Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Philippines...", along with Indonesia, just happen to be the significant economies in the region.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
Was he not gifted it ? I think the concern is rather that it was a firm controlled by close member of his family, and he had not previously declared that as an interest. The declaration only came about, belatedly, as a result of the gift.
OK so didn't know that. Not mentioned in the story I read so more complicated then. It did seem very bizarre.
I do find it strange how many don't seem to see the appearance of a conflict of interest even if very innocent. When I ran my business I made it point in my T&C to state there would be any financial relationship between myself and my clients suppliers. Often I ran conferences and my clients suppliers or potential suppliers would sponsor elements of the event. I always made sure no payment went through my books. I arranged for sponsor to pay directly the venue/speaker/bar/etc so that no money came to me that could be considered an influencing factor.
I understood the contract is with the Welsh NHS.
"Topwood Ltd of Wrexham, a document-shredding firm, was awarded a three-year contract - worth £150,000 - by NHS Wales."
Hancock's remit is only the English NHS.
So it is a 150 k contract over 3 years to shred documents for the Welsh NHS ... presumably won in open tender.
It looks to me like a complete non-story (at least if the facts reported in the press are correct).
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
“indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century“
Where does one begin with a statement like this?
China, population 1,400,000,000
America, population 330,000,000
For America to ‘overtake China in population by 2071’ the Chinese would have to stop having all babies tomorrow, and undertake the mass slaughter of maybe 300 million people with funny noses.
Meanwhile, America - an ageing society like China -
will suddenly have to stop ageing, have 40 kids per family, and encourage the immigration of 400 million people from El Salvador, not necessarily an election winner, but who knows
Traffic looks forecast to be bad in downtown Lagos by 2100.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
“indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century“
Where does one begin with a statement like this?...
If you think the Tories are 14 points ahead, you need your head examining.
BUT if the outlier is 14 points head, the truth could easily be 11, less easily 8, and unlikely to be less than that.
I believe 14 is, regretfully, possible.
We have a government led by a charismatic leader who is following what the majority want by putting populism way ahead of principle/ideology. It is almost impossible to unhinge them from power in this scenario.
I think it's very troubling and I wouldn't rule out - you heard it here first - a four-term Johnson PM (currently only age 56).
That's a tough read, Stocky. But it's good to frame the "worst realistic case" - like that Imperial College virus modelling which turned out to be none too shabby.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Latest from the Zoe app: prof Spector suggesting that the vaccinated plus the previously infected is taking us close now to a degree of herd immunity.
The App data suggests the risk of getting the virus is now:
For the unvaccinated - one in 1100 For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100 For those with two doses (ditto) - one in 15000
He implies there has been one case of rare blood clotting from the 500,000 vaccinated AZN people in his database.
157 double-vaccinated people in his database have gone on to catch the virus, all with mild cases, compared to 18,000 in the same period among the unvaccinated.
He reckons case rates will stabilise around the current level for a few weeks as the focus now is on second doses so there will still be a degree of spread among younger people during the progressive unlocking.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
Yes, I think that true. Crying over decadence in our culture, and of crazy ideas in the young is as at least a century old, probably millennia.
There are opinions, some good, some silly, some pointlessly, painfully, otiosely obvious (like this) and then are hard facts. The hard facts say China is winning.
The hard facts say that China are progressing at the minute but only because they're still relatively poor per capita and have a lot of room to grow to catch up. The only reason China's economy is remotely close to America's is because for every one American there are 4 Chinese.
If we reverse the per capita ratios between America and China then China wouldn't be about the same size as America's economy it would be sixteen times bigger, so America and the west are still doing some things right don't you think?
It may be before your time but there used to be a poster here called @SeanT whose writings you might want to look up. He used to regale us with stories of his buxom young woke women that he would ahem spend time with. The young aren't as bad as you make out and will do what they've always done which is challenge those older than them, that's not a bad thing.
You might as well say ‘super rich’ Monaco is doing better than ‘quite rich’ France, and France only *seems* more powerful because it’s bigger.
As a westerner, I have no objection to China (and Asia, more widely) overtaking the west. Which they are clearly doing. Asia is huge by population (and sheer size), the rise of China means 500m have been lifted from dire poverty. Which is a wonderful thing for Homo sapiens
Empires rise and fall. Britain fell. America is obviously falling. China in time will fall, in 50 or 100 years, because of ageing or whatever
What concerns me is that, for the first time in 200 years, the world will have a global hegemon which does not even aspire to human liberty or greater freedom (and imperial Britain and America, for all their many many sins, did have those aspirations, most of the time). Instead the planet will be ruled by a power with ruthless pragmatic self-interest as its sole concern, a power harnessing modern technology in ways that have uncomfortable echoes of fascism
I guess we just have to hope a kinder China arises when Xi goes, as he will (unless the Chinese GPT4 can turn him into an immortal Xi-bot - not impossible)
All of that is fair enough and not in dispute but unless you have a way to "eliminate" a billion Chinese people to "even up the scales" there's really limited amounts we can do to prevent China ascending. Though its interesting that India is due to overtake China in population, potentially this year although Covid might postpone it for a couple of years. So if India per capita caught up with China then it would potentially overtake China economically. In one way we're fortunate that China for so long maintained the "one child policy" or the differential would be even greater by now.
None of that address your complaints about "woke" actions which are a complaint as old as time. It is our ability to evolve, to be challenged from within by the young that has allowed imperial Britain and America to progress and be so liberal and aspirational for the past half a millenium.
China's biggest flaw is its lack of "woke". Its lack of internal dissent and challenge. For now that masquerades as a strength but we've seen through history time and again that nations incapable of internal challenge do not progress in the same way as those who can.
Leon also misses the point that "Asia, more widely' is becoming less well disposed to China, rather than more. They've severely pissed off everyone in the region over their territorial claims, and might end up not dissimilar to the old USSR, encircled by potential enemies. That's a dangerous thing, but it doesn't make them any kind of incipient hegemon.
This is basically, laughably untrue on a factual level. Let alone everything else
Have they pissed off ‘everyone else in the region’? No
Look at their neighbours. Mongolia, a quickly enriching mineral producing state (wholly dependent on China). A loyal satellite state. Russia - happy in a broad anti-western alliance. Laos, a satellite state. Hong Kong, overrun and conquered. Bhutan, doesn’t want trouble, insignificant. Nepal, the same. Cambodia, another satellite. North Korea, an eccentric protectorate. Myanmar, loyal. Thailand, doesn’t want trouble, relies on Chinese trade and tourists. Pakistan, desperate for Chinese trade and continued investment. Bangladesh, ditto
The same goes even for potential Asian foes of China. Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Philippines. They occasionally squeal about Chinese overbearance, BUT their economies are now entirely enmeshed with, and dependent on, the biggest trading power in the world. China. If China topples they implode.
The only Asian country that might one day resist is India, because of sheer size. But that’s a story for the 2nd half of the century
This is the huge, fundamental difference between the USSR (as an opponent) and China. The USSR was only ever a military superpower. Never a trading or technological superpower. China is all three. It is the biggest trading power on earth (bigger than the USA) which means it has enormous grasp over near and distant nations
"even potential Asian foes of China. Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Philippines...", along with Indonesia, just happen to be the significant economies in the region.
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
He did not buy them
His sister is a director of the company and she gifted the shares to him after he had cleared it with the cabinet office and declared it
The recent contract was with Wales NHS that has nothing to do with him and as Labour in Wales awarded the contract what is the problem
He could have simply said 'no' to avoid any suggestion of a conflict of interest.
Of course, that would be madness.
Steady on. You'll be suggesting Johnson should pay for his own holidays or wallpaper next.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
Was he not gifted it ? I think the concern is rather that it was a firm controlled by close member of his family, and he had not previously declared that as an interest. The declaration only came about, belatedly, as a result of the gift.
OK so didn't know that. Not mentioned in the story I read so more complicated then. It did seem very bizarre.
I do find it strange how many don't seem to see the appearance of a conflict of interest even if very innocent. When I ran my business I made it point in my T&C to state there would be any financial relationship between myself and my clients suppliers. Often I ran conferences and my clients suppliers or potential suppliers would sponsor elements of the event. I always made sure no payment went through my books. I arranged for sponsor to pay directly the venue/speaker/bar/etc so that no money came to me that could be considered an influencing factor.
I understood the contract is with the Welsh NHS.
"Topwood Ltd of Wrexham, a document-shredding firm, was awarded a three-year contract - worth £150,000 - by NHS Wales."
Hancock's remit is only the English NHS.
So it is a 150 k contract over 3 years to shred documents for the Welsh NHS ... presumably won in open tender.
It looks to me like a complete non-story (at least if the facts reported in the press are correct).
As I have it (open to correction) Hancock is completely above board here.
1 - Gifted shares in a family company. 2 - Checks with Civil Service before receiving gift. 3 - Declares it as required. 4 - Does not manage company. 5 - Is not responsible for procurement, and the alleged infraction occurred in a Health System in a different country.
and yet we have is Clare-of-Little-Brain Rayner going off like a broken foghorn on a sunny day.
When Cameron's huge pink elephant is standing in the corner.
She's going to get herself into the same trouble that Rosina Allin-Khan did when she falsely accused Nadhim Zahawi of jumping the vaccine queue.
Can the Opposition please get some leaders who are not so useless?
I left Kent for only the second time in 13 months yesterday - to get vaccinated in East Sussex.
There be dragons in East Sussex - actually I find it interestingly undeveloped, quiet and slow compared to other counties. A kind of central backwater, with some nice views over the Downs towards nowhere in particular.
Latest from the Zoe app: prof Spector suggesting that the vaccinated plus the previously infected is taking us close now to a degree of herd immunity.
The App data suggests the risk of getting the virus is now:
For the unvaccinated - one in 1100 For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100 For those with two doses (ditto) - one in 15000
He implies there has been one case of rare blood clotting from the 500,000 vaccinated AZN people in his database.
157 double-vaccinated people in his database have gone on to catch the virus, all with mild cases, compared to 18,000 in the same period among the unvaccinated.
He reckons case rates will stabilise around the current level for a few weeks as the focus now is on second doses so there will still be a degree of spread among younger people during the progressive unlocking.
Sars-cov2 - the virus Covid-19 - the health condition
The link is pretty much broken in this country, probably forever even with the “mutants” that someone on the radio was just blathering about.
Still far too much interchangeability between the two things going on. Even with a blunt focus on looking for the virus rather than the health condition, the outlook is still very benign.
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
The timetable may be spot on. If it is that can only be due to data in place when the timetable was drawn up, not recent data. Ignoring real life data for five week blocks at a time (and for the June restrictions we cant consider this data for another ten weeks), when we are learning more and more on a daily basis is simply negligent.
Pfizer has shown the best resilience against variants so far in terms of antibody binding efficiency against the P1 Brazilian variant and the SA variant. That's in comparison to all other vaccines. AZ does very well in generating a very wide t-cell based immunity which could be which could lead to good long term immunity from severe symptoms against a very wide variety of variants but we can't say for sure just yet.
I heard one of the team who did that study on the radio last night. It did seem to be implied that mRNA vaccines like Pfizer might prove to be inferior for long term immunity compared to AZ.
Seems like a good idea to help work through the backlog of cases that have been building up? Will probably be more use than the Nightingale Hospitals were.
Member of the legal community here (although I don't do criminal law). Extra court space to increase resources and deal with social distancing sounds like a great idea, the delays and resource shortages are appalling. However, only if they're doing things properly. I'd hope they are and have no reason to think they're not.
However, Nightingale Courts would fit right in as the name for some kangaroo court in a teen dystopia novel.
Latest from the Zoe app: prof Spector suggesting that the vaccinated plus the previously infected is taking us close now to a degree of herd immunity.
The App data suggests the risk of getting the virus is now:
For the unvaccinated - one in 1100 For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100 For those with two doses (ditto) - one in 15000
He implies there has been one case of rare blood clotting from the 500,000 vaccinated AZN people in his database.
157 double-vaccinated people in his database have gone on to catch the virus, all with mild cases, compared to 18,000 in the same period among the unvaccinated.
He reckons case rates will stabilise around the current level for a few weeks as the focus now is on second doses so there will still be a degree of spread among younger people during the progressive unlocking.
I left Kent for only the second time in 13 months yesterday - to get vaccinated in East Sussex.
There be dragons in East Sussex - actually I find it interestingly undeveloped and quiet compared to other counties. A kind of central backwater, with some nice views over the Downs towards nowhere in particular.
You say that, but actually it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes China’s in the next half century. Just think about that. And how it could easily happen, if every man in China spontaneously cuts off his penis with a sharpened spoon.
I left Kent for only the second time in 13 months yesterday - to get vaccinated in East Sussex.
There be dragons in East Sussex - actually I find it interestingly undeveloped and quiet compared to other counties. A kind of central backwater, with some nice views over the Downs towards nowhere in particular.
You say that, but actually it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes China’s in the next half century. Just think about that. And how it could easily happen, if every man in China spontaneously cuts off his penis with a sharpened spoon.
It's not inconceivable that Kent could overtake Surrey as the regional powerhouse within the next half century with resulting pressure to bring about Sussex reunification.
Seems like a good idea to help work through the backlog of cases that have been building up? Will probably be more use than the Nightingale Hospitals were.
It's a start, but there is a lot more to the judicial system than magistrates' courts.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
Drops in on what’s otherwise a day away with wifey for our wedding anniversary, to say that’s a fantastic poll for the government three weeks before local elections.
Latest from the Zoe app: prof Spector suggesting that the vaccinated plus the previously infected is taking us close now to a degree of herd immunity.
The App data suggests the risk of getting the virus is now:
For the unvaccinated - one in 1100 For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100 For those with two doses (ditto) - one in 15000
He implies there has been one case of rare blood clotting from the 500,000 vaccinated AZN people in his database.
157 double-vaccinated people in his database have gone on to catch the virus, all with mild cases, compared to 18,000 in the same period among the unvaccinated.
He reckons case rates will stabilise around the current level for a few weeks as the focus now is on second doses so there will still be a degree of spread among younger people during the progressive unlocking.
Highly encouraging data, but speaking as - cough - a person who’s been one-dosed (a month ago) what does this actually mean? -
‘For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100 risk of getting the virus’
Does it mean per person per day? Per hour? Per year? It’s kinda vague (but sounds hopeful)
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
Was he not gifted it ? I think the concern is rather that it was a firm controlled by close member of his family, and he had not previously declared that as an interest. The declaration only came about, belatedly, as a result of the gift.
OK so didn't know that. Not mentioned in the story I read so more complicated then. It did seem very bizarre.
I do find it strange how many don't seem to see the appearance of a conflict of interest even if very innocent. When I ran my business I made it point in my T&C to state there would be any financial relationship between myself and my clients suppliers. Often I ran conferences and my clients suppliers or potential suppliers would sponsor elements of the event. I always made sure no payment went through my books. I arranged for sponsor to pay directly the venue/speaker/bar/etc so that no money came to me that could be considered an influencing factor.
I understood the contract is with the Welsh NHS.
"Topwood Ltd of Wrexham, a document-shredding firm, was awarded a three-year contract - worth £150,000 - by NHS Wales."
Hancock's remit is only the English NHS.
So it is a 150 k contract over 3 years to shred documents for the Welsh NHS ... presumably won in open tender.
It looks to me like a complete non-story (at least if the facts reported in the press are correct).
Not the point really and as you will see from my earlier post I did not have those facts. I was commenting on the bizarre story I read and commenting on the fact that it seemed like an odd thing for him to buy, particularly as he wasn't trying to hide it. That is not the case of course, as has been pointed out here, which explains the oddity of the story I read.
The fact that he didn't have a conflict of interest in this event doesn't mean it isn't reasonable to assume he might have some day because he holds 15% of the equity in an NHS approved supplier.
One should avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest even if innocent and of avoiding an unknown conflict of interest coming out of nowhere and biting you on the bum because you have taken shares or money from a company that could reasonably result in a conflict of interest.
See my other post as to what I did. It isn't difficult. This supplier was NHS approved. That is enough. In those circumstances I would not hold shares in them.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Really?
You come across more like a man in the bar of a hotel in Phuket looking for a hooker
Tables of University World Rankings CHANGE their metric ever year.
That is what produces the movement, and hence the wild stories for the press.
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
Which we've done. Those in categories representing over 99% of fatalities have now been vaccinated.
There are NO excess deaths and haven't been for a month already.
But it's still illegal to be in a relatives home when it wasn't in July last year.
It's still illegal to go inside a Nandos when it wasn't in July last year.
I left Kent for only the second time in 13 months yesterday - to get vaccinated in East Sussex.
A strange place, East Sussex.
It has got a woke Duke though.
Rye in the East, Lewes in the West, Wadhurst in the north. And perfect little villages scattered in between. What’s strange about it?
Not really a perjorative for me, but compared to Kent and West Sussex I find it a characterful and slightly less favoured backwater. More interesting, even.
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
Was he not gifted it ? I think the concern is rather that it was a firm controlled by close member of his family, and he had not previously declared that as an interest. The declaration only came about, belatedly, as a result of the gift.
OK so didn't know that. Not mentioned in the story I read so more complicated then. It did seem very bizarre.
I do find it strange how many don't seem to see the appearance of a conflict of interest even if very innocent. When I ran my business I made it point in my T&C to state there would be any financial relationship between myself and my clients suppliers. Often I ran conferences and my clients suppliers or potential suppliers would sponsor elements of the event. I always made sure no payment went through my books. I arranged for sponsor to pay directly the venue/speaker/bar/etc so that no money came to me that could be considered an influencing factor.
I understood the contract is with the Welsh NHS.
"Topwood Ltd of Wrexham, a document-shredding firm, was awarded a three-year contract - worth £150,000 - by NHS Wales."
Hancock's remit is only the English NHS.
So it is a 150 k contract over 3 years to shred documents for the Welsh NHS ... presumably won in open tender.
It looks to me like a complete non-story (at least if the facts reported in the press are correct).
Not the point really and as you will see from my earlier post I did not have those facts. I was commenting on the bizarre story I read and commenting on the fact that it seemed like an odd thing for him to buy, particularly as he wasn't trying to hide it. That is not the case of course, as has been pointed out here, which explains the oddity of the story I read.
The fact that he didn't have a conflict of interest in this event doesn't mean it isn't reasonable to assume he might have some day because he holds 15% of the equity in an NHS approved supplier.
One should avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest even if innocent and of avoiding an unknown conflict of interest coming out of nowhere and biting you on the bum because you have taken shares or money from a company that could reasonably result in a conflict of interest.
See my other post as to what I did. It isn't difficult. This supplier was NHS approved. That is enough. In those circumstances I would not hold shares in them.
Alternatively one could find out all the relevant facts before commenting .
Seems like a good idea to help work through the backlog of cases that have been building up? Will probably be more use than the Nightingale Hospitals were.
I am a big fan of Magistrates Courts, they tend to be sensible and pragmatic places to deal with summary offenses, and am in favour of this in principle but there is much more to the legal system than courts. Similar to the lack of doctors and nurses to operate the Nightingale Hospitals, there's an inherent danger in going before any sort of court when there are no barristers or solicitors to defend you (or even prosecute you in an increasing number of cases).
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
China will not be 'the' dominant power in the same way the US was, because after the fall of the iron curtain, the US was the global hegemon - totally unchallenged. China will not be that, because the US is still there, albeit on a downward trajectory, along with other world powers such as India. I think that's heartening. You know what they say about absolute power.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
Yes. They are invulnerable. And uncontainable. In a way the USSR never was. Because they are the biggest trader on earth. When they absorb Taiwan - as they shall - this supremacy will harden.
So, as you say, it’s too late. The best we can do is make sure we keep crucial tech, science, etc, in western hands (even if they have them too) so they cannot bully us. And we really need to ditch the worst of wokeness, even as we pray their curtailed liberties hinder them assuming total power
At the moment the trends aren’t great, there is too much basic denial. As we see here
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Places too for Philip's German grand nephews, correctly, though no place for Fergie or Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
Looks like everyone who needs to be there is there and not a body more. Much to be said for that.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
China will not be 'the' dominant power in the same way the US was, because after the fall of the iron curtain, the US was the global hegemon - totally unchallenged. China will not be that, because the US is still there, albeit on a downward trajectory, along with other world powers such as India. I think that's heartening. You know what they say about absolute power.
The Tom Tugenhardt school of thought (as echoed by David) is the correct one. Leon takes China’s supremacy as inevitable. It is not.
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
Which we've done. Those in categories representing over 99% of fatalities have now been vaccinated.
There are NO excess deaths and haven't been for a month already.
But it's still illegal to be in a relatives home when it wasn't in July last year.
It's still illegal to go inside a Nandos when it wasn't in July last year.
The groups which haven't been vaccinated have lower CFRs, but if you remove lockdown before they are vaccinated, then enough of them will be infected to flood hospitals etc...
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
Was he not gifted it ? I think the concern is rather that it was a firm controlled by close member of his family, and he had not previously declared that as an interest. The declaration only came about, belatedly, as a result of the gift.
OK so didn't know that. Not mentioned in the story I read so more complicated then. It did seem very bizarre.
I do find it strange how many don't seem to see the appearance of a conflict of interest even if very innocent. When I ran my business I made it point in my T&C to state there would be any financial relationship between myself and my clients suppliers. Often I ran conferences and my clients suppliers or potential suppliers would sponsor elements of the event. I always made sure no payment went through my books. I arranged for sponsor to pay directly the venue/speaker/bar/etc so that no money came to me that could be considered an influencing factor.
I understood the contract is with the Welsh NHS.
"Topwood Ltd of Wrexham, a document-shredding firm, was awarded a three-year contract - worth £150,000 - by NHS Wales."
Hancock's remit is only the English NHS.
So it is a 150 k contract over 3 years to shred documents for the Welsh NHS ... presumably won in open tender.
It looks to me like a complete non-story (at least if the facts reported in the press are correct).
Not the point really and as you will see from my earlier post I did not have those facts. I was commenting on the bizarre story I read and commenting on the fact that it seemed like an odd thing for him to buy, particularly as he wasn't trying to hide it. That is not the case of course, as has been pointed out here, which explains the oddity of the story I read.
The fact that he didn't have a conflict of interest in this event doesn't mean it isn't reasonable to assume he might have some day because he holds 15% of the equity in an NHS approved supplier.
One should avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest even if innocent and of avoiding an unknown conflict of interest coming out of nowhere and biting you on the bum because you have taken shares or money from a company that could reasonably result in a conflict of interest.
See my other post as to what I did. It isn't difficult. This supplier was NHS approved. That is enough. In those circumstances I would not hold shares in them.
I think you might have a point ... if the contract was with the English NHS.
However, health is completely devolved to Wales & Scotland. The contract is between Topwood Ltd and NHS Wales.
So, as far as I can see, there is absolutely zero cronyism (at least on the evidence available). Unless you think Vaughan Gething (Labour) who is Minister for Health in Wales is a great crony of Matt's?
Perhaps more interesting is why this rather lame story has got the publicity it has?
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
China will not be 'the' dominant power in the same way the US was, because after the fall of the iron curtain, the US was the global hegemon - totally unchallenged. China will not be that, because the US is still there, albeit on a downward trajectory, along with other world powers such as India. I think that's heartening. You know what they say about absolute power.
The Tom Tugenhardt school of thought (as echoed by David) is the correct one. Leon takes China’s supremacy as inevitable. It is not.
We are heading for a multipolar world. That's not a bad thing. Balance of powers was the aim of British foreign policy for many years.
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
Which we've done. Those in categories representing over 99% of fatalities have now been vaccinated.
There are NO excess deaths and haven't been for a month already.
But it's still illegal to be in a relatives home when it wasn't in July last year.
It's still illegal to go inside a Nandos when it wasn't in July last year.
The groups which haven't been vaccinated have lower CFRs, but if you remove lockdown before they are vaccinated, then enough of them will be infected to flood hospitals etc...
Hmmm... we’re at a very very low case rate requiring hospitalisation now. Given circa 70% either vaccinated or acquired immunity, what would R be if all restrictions were lifted tomorrow, going into the summer?
With this R, how long would it take before we started to see a meaningful increase in hospitalisations for the unvaccinated? And how much longer will it take to vaccinate the segment still vulnerable to hospitalisation cancelling this out before it happens?
Talk of “floods” in hospitals at this point are hyperbolic.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
Which we've done. Those in categories representing over 99% of fatalities have now been vaccinated.
There are NO excess deaths and haven't been for a month already.
But it's still illegal to be in a relatives home when it wasn't in July last year.
It's still illegal to go inside a Nandos when it wasn't in July last year.
The groups which haven't been vaccinated have lower CFRs, but if you remove lockdown before they are vaccinated, then enough of them will be infected to flood hospitals etc...
Based on models from February. And whatever models say today we cant take any action until mid May at the earliest.
Latest from the Zoe app: prof Spector suggesting that the vaccinated plus the previously infected is taking us close now to a degree of herd immunity.
The App data suggests the risk of getting the virus is now:
For the unvaccinated - one in 1100 For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100 For those with two doses (ditto) - one in 15000
He implies there has been one case of rare blood clotting from the 500,000 vaccinated AZN people in his database.
157 double-vaccinated people in his database have gone on to catch the virus, all with mild cases, compared to 18,000 in the same period among the unvaccinated.
He reckons case rates will stabilise around the current level for a few weeks as the focus now is on second doses so there will still be a degree of spread among younger people during the progressive unlocking.
Hmmmmmmmmmm.......
I'd be interested to see the cases chart using only PCR data for comparison. I think a lot of the positives are now from LFD.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
China will not be 'the' dominant power in the same way the US was, because after the fall of the iron curtain, the US was the global hegemon - totally unchallenged. China will not be that, because the US is still there, albeit on a downward trajectory, along with other world powers such as India. I think that's heartening. You know what they say about absolute power.
The Tom Tugenhardt school of thought (as echoed by David) is the correct one. Leon takes China’s supremacy as inevitable. It is not.
We are heading for a multipolar world. That's not a bad thing. Balance of powers was the aim of British foreign policy for many years.
I dunno. Multi polarity is an unstable equilibrium I reckon.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
Yes. They are invulnerable. And uncontainable. In a way the USSR never was. Because they are the biggest trader on earth. When they absorb Taiwan - as they shall - this supremacy will harden.
So, as you say, it’s too late. The best we can do is make sure we keep crucial tech, science, etc, in western hands (even if they have them too) so they cannot bully us. And we really need to ditch the worst of wokeness, even as we pray their curtailed liberties hinder them assuming total power
At the moment the trends aren’t great, there is too much basic denial. As we see here
We should also ditch the defeatism.
China's regime needs to keep convincing its burgeoning middle class that its way is better than the west's. That the new Chinese don't need all this democracy bullsh8t.
If, as in the past, the West's enormous powers of innovation allow it to pull ahead technically once again, the Chinese regime has a big problem.
That is why China has tried desperately to get its fingers into as much Western know-how as possible. It needs absolutely to cover all those bases.
It cannot afford to have Westerners trolling about in air cars, making use of fusion power and flying from London to Sydney in four hours while its citizens cannot.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
China will not be 'the' dominant power in the same way the US was, because after the fall of the iron curtain, the US was the global hegemon - totally unchallenged. China will not be that, because the US is still there, albeit on a downward trajectory, along with other world powers such as India. I think that's heartening. You know what they say about absolute power.
The Tom Tugenhardt school of thought (as echoed by David) is the correct one. Leon takes China’s supremacy as inevitable. It is not.
You misrepresent me
Do I think China will, for quite a while, be the biggest economy on the planet? Yes, for sure. Sheer size and momentum ensures that. Capitalism is an amazing thing, even when it is ‘state directed’
Indeed on PPP China has already been the largest economy since 2014
Do I believe China will be hegemonic and supreme? That’s very different. In a benign outcome China is just first among peaceful equals, alongside the USA, EU, eventually India. And in time India assumes the titular role as leader (or aliens invade)
But there is a much less pleasant futurity where a ruthless China exploits new science and tech - from surveillance to AI - in a way we woke-ishly refuse to do, and it becomes much more like the USA in 1946. But malignant
If already discussed my apologies, but what on earth was Matt Hancock doing buying 15% share in an NHS approved supplier? He declared it in March so not trying to hide it. It was bound to be an issue so why do it? Are people blind to the appearance of a conflict of interest?
Was he not gifted it ? I think the concern is rather that it was a firm controlled by close member of his family, and he had not previously declared that as an interest. The declaration only came about, belatedly, as a result of the gift.
OK so didn't know that. Not mentioned in the story I read so more complicated then. It did seem very bizarre.
I do find it strange how many don't seem to see the appearance of a conflict of interest even if very innocent. When I ran my business I made it point in my T&C to state there would be any financial relationship between myself and my clients suppliers. Often I ran conferences and my clients suppliers or potential suppliers would sponsor elements of the event. I always made sure no payment went through my books. I arranged for sponsor to pay directly the venue/speaker/bar/etc so that no money came to me that could be considered an influencing factor.
I understood the contract is with the Welsh NHS.
"Topwood Ltd of Wrexham, a document-shredding firm, was awarded a three-year contract - worth £150,000 - by NHS Wales."
Hancock's remit is only the English NHS.
So it is a 150 k contract over 3 years to shred documents for the Welsh NHS ... presumably won in open tender.
It looks to me like a complete non-story (at least if the facts reported in the press are correct).
Not the point really and as you will see from my earlier post I did not have those facts. I was commenting on the bizarre story I read and commenting on the fact that it seemed like an odd thing for him to buy, particularly as he wasn't trying to hide it. That is not the case of course, as has been pointed out here, which explains the oddity of the story I read.
The fact that he didn't have a conflict of interest in this event doesn't mean it isn't reasonable to assume he might have some day because he holds 15% of the equity in an NHS approved supplier.
One should avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest even if innocent and of avoiding an unknown conflict of interest coming out of nowhere and biting you on the bum because you have taken shares or money from a company that could reasonably result in a conflict of interest.
See my other post as to what I did. It isn't difficult. This supplier was NHS approved. That is enough. In those circumstances I would not hold shares in them.
Alternatively one could find out all the relevant facts before commenting .
* Gives Angela Rayner Paddington Hard Stare *
I made the point that it was a bizarre story right from the beginning as it was bound to be an issue and that he hadn't tried to hide it so it was very odd. I then made the point that he should have avoided a potential conflict of interest even if it wasn't one in this case
It is surely blindingly obvious that having a 15% stake in an NHS approved supplier by the minister responsible for the NHS is a conflict of interest under any circumstance.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
China will not be 'the' dominant power in the same way the US was, because after the fall of the iron curtain, the US was the global hegemon - totally unchallenged. China will not be that, because the US is still there, albeit on a downward trajectory, along with other world powers such as India. I think that's heartening. You know what they say about absolute power.
The US did not dominate the world because of its population. It did so because it had an enormous technological advantage over everyone else which allowed it to project its power where it willed. The key to China remaining merely one, if the dominant one, amongst several powers is that technological edge.
We live in dangerous times for that. Much traditional power is in danger of becoming as obsolete as an Iraqi tank in the Gulf war on the back of drone technology and AI fighting machines. Who develops the latter first will be unstoppable in conventional terms.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
Yes. They are invulnerable. And uncontainable. In a way the USSR never was. Because they are the biggest trader on earth. When they absorb Taiwan - as they shall - this supremacy will harden.
So, as you say, it’s too late. The best we can do is make sure we keep crucial tech, science, etc, in western hands (even if they have them too) so they cannot bully us. And we really need to ditch the worst of wokeness, even as we pray their curtailed liberties hinder them assuming total power
At the moment the trends aren’t great, there is too much basic denial. As we see here
We should also ditch the defeatism.
China's regime needs to keep convincing its burgeoning middle class that its way is better than the west's. That the new Chinese don't need all this democracy bullsh8t.
If, as in the past, the West's enormous powers of innovation allow it to pull ahead technically once again, the Chinese regime has a big problem.
That is why China has tried desperately to get its fingers into as much Western know-how as possible. It needs absolutely to cover all those bases.
It cannot afford to have Westerners trolling about in air cars, making use of fusion power and flying from London to Sydney in four hours while its citizens cannot.
That is the way to beat Xi.
It’s easy to sneer at its politicians, its guns, its culture wars. But America remains the most extraordinary boiling pot of innovation, collaboration and optimism that arguably humans have ever constructed.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
China will not be 'the' dominant power in the same way the US was, because after the fall of the iron curtain, the US was the global hegemon - totally unchallenged. China will not be that, because the US is still there, albeit on a downward trajectory, along with other world powers such as India. I think that's heartening. You know what they say about absolute power.
The Tom Tugenhardt school of thought (as echoed by David) is the correct one. Leon takes China’s supremacy as inevitable. It is not.
We are heading for a multipolar world. That's not a bad thing. Balance of powers was the aim of British foreign policy for many years.
I dunno. Multi polarity is an unstable equilibrium I reckon.
Arguably it contributed to unprecedented peace and prosperity in the 19th century, compared with the one after it, when things became less balanced.
I left Kent for only the second time in 13 months yesterday - to get vaccinated in East Sussex.
A strange place, East Sussex.
It has got a woke Duke though.
Rye in the East, Lewes in the West, Wadhurst in the north. And perfect little villages scattered in between. What’s strange about it?
To me, Lewes represents the liberal end of that East Sussex interesting-strangeness, some ghostly echoes of Brighton mixed with pitchforks, with the more traditionalist elements further inland. There's no grand centres like Canterbury or Arundel, no big seafaring histories like in neighbouring counties, and yet the place feels interesting and distinct - maybe just because fewer people have noticed it.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
China will not be 'the' dominant power in the same way the US was, because after the fall of the iron curtain, the US was the global hegemon - totally unchallenged. China will not be that, because the US is still there, albeit on a downward trajectory, along with other world powers such as India. I think that's heartening. You know what they say about absolute power.
The US did not dominate the world because of its population. It did so because it had an enormous technological advantage over everyone else which allowed it to project its power where it willed. The key to China remaining merely one, if the dominant one, amongst several powers is that technological edge.
We live in dangerous times for that. Much traditional power is in danger of becoming as obsolete as an Iraqi tank in the Gulf war on the back of drone technology and AI fighting machines. Who develops the latter first will be unstoppable in conventional terms.
You get it. Many don’t.
This is one reason I keep banging on about GPT3. It is clearly an incredible piece of technology with almost limitless applications. And imagine GPT4 or 5?
However in the West we are already trying to hinder development and access because of fears AI will be ‘racist’ or ‘biased’ like its human creators. This is a real battle going on now in Big Tech
The Chinese (as in their monkey science) will have no such doubts. They will exploit this tech ruthlessly. That is just one place they could gain a supreme advantage
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
Yes. They are invulnerable. And uncontainable. In a way the USSR never was. Because they are the biggest trader on earth. When they absorb Taiwan - as they shall - this supremacy will harden.
So, as you say, it’s too late. The best we can do is make sure we keep crucial tech, science, etc, in western hands (even if they have them too) so they cannot bully us. And we really need to ditch the worst of wokeness, even as we pray their curtailed liberties hinder them assuming total power
At the moment the trends aren’t great, there is too much basic denial. As we see here
We should also ditch the defeatism.
China's regime needs to keep convincing its burgeoning middle class that its way is better than the west's. That the new Chinese don't need all this democracy bullsh8t.
If, as in the past, the West's enormous powers of innovation allow it to pull ahead technically once again, the Chinese regime has a big problem.
That is why China has tried desperately to get its fingers into as much Western know-how as possible. It needs absolutely to cover all those bases.
It cannot afford to have Westerners trolling about in air cars, making use of fusion power and flying from London to Sydney in four hours while its citizens cannot.
That is the way to beat Xi.
It’s easy to sneer at its politicians, its guns, its culture wars. But America remains the most extraordinary boiling pot of innovation, collaboration and optimism that arguably humans have ever constructed.
And this, as Laloux states in his opening chapters, comes down to how its citizens can conceptualize their purpose and role in society, and hence how they are able to conceive of new ways of organizing.
For all those that decry the woke generation, they are in fact evolving those concepts and developing new approaches to organizing that we crusties hate because they make us uncomfortable. I, for one, do not despair with the coming generation, but see them as our hope to evolve away from the globe-destroying global corporate model to something more people, rather than product, oriented.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
Yes. They are invulnerable. And uncontainable. In a way the USSR never was. Because they are the biggest trader on earth. When they absorb Taiwan - as they shall - this supremacy will harden.
So, as you say, it’s too late. The best we can do is make sure we keep crucial tech, science, etc, in western hands (even if they have them too) so they cannot bully us. And we really need to ditch the worst of wokeness, even as we pray their curtailed liberties hinder them assuming total power
At the moment the trends aren’t great, there is too much basic denial. As we see here
We should also ditch the defeatism.
China's regime needs to keep convincing its burgeoning middle class that its way is better than the west's. That the new Chinese don't need all this democracy bullsh8t.
If, as in the past, the West's enormous powers of innovation allow it to pull ahead technically once again, the Chinese regime has a big problem.
That is why China has tried desperately to get its fingers into as much Western know-how as possible. It needs absolutely to cover all those bases.
It cannot afford to have Westerners trolling about in air cars, making use of fusion power and flying from London to Sydney in four hours while its citizens cannot.
That is the way to beat Xi.
It’s easy to sneer at its politicians, its guns, its culture wars. But America remains the most extraordinary boiling pot of innovation, collaboration and optimism that arguably humans have ever constructed.
And this, as Laloux states in his opening chapters, comes down to how its citizens can conceptualize their purpose and role in society, and hence how they are able to conceive of new ways of organizing.
For all those that decry the woke generation, they are in fact evolving those concepts and developing new approaches to organizing that we crusties hate because they make us uncomfortable. I, for one, do not despair with the coming generation, but see them as our hope to evolve away from the globe-destroying global corporate model to something more people, rather than product, oriented.
The sacrifices the young have made on behalf of the old in the last year are by any standard extraordinary.
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
Which we've done. Those in categories representing over 99% of fatalities have now been vaccinated.
There are NO excess deaths and haven't been for a month already.
But it's still illegal to be in a relatives home when it wasn't in July last year.
It's still illegal to go inside a Nandos when it wasn't in July last year.
The groups which haven't been vaccinated have lower CFRs, but if you remove lockdown before they are vaccinated, then enough of them will be infected to flood hospitals etc...
There's no data to back that up. The data says that the majority of adults have been vaccinated, the majority of the country have either natural or acquired antibodies. Case rates are starting from a very minimal floor with about one in 500 people having the virus, hospitals having negligible amounts of people in them.
Yet if it is legal to go into somebody else's living room then that's going to flood the hospitals? But if that becomes legal next month it won't?
Pfizer has shown the best resilience against variants so far in terms of antibody binding efficiency against the P1 Brazilian variant and the SA variant. That's in comparison to all other vaccines. AZ does very well in generating a very wide t-cell based immunity which could be which could lead to good long term immunity from severe symptoms against a very wide variety of variants but we can't say for sure just yet.
I heard one of the team who did that study on the radio last night. It did seem to be implied that mRNA vaccines like Pfizer might prove to be inferior for long term immunity compared to AZ.
Having just this week had AZ, and having been kept up half the night with a fever and chills born of powerful immune response, it did present as a blunt, six-hitting heavyweight – the Andrew Flintoff to Pfizer's Andrew Strauss.
Latest from the Zoe app: prof Spector suggesting that the vaccinated plus the previously infected is taking us close now to a degree of herd immunity.
The App data suggests the risk of getting the virus is now:
For the unvaccinated - one in 1100 For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100 For those with two doses (ditto) - one in 15000
He implies there has been one case of rare blood clotting from the 500,000 vaccinated AZN people in his database.
157 double-vaccinated people in his database have gone on to catch the virus, all with mild cases, compared to 18,000 in the same period among the unvaccinated.
He reckons case rates will stabilise around the current level for a few weeks as the focus now is on second doses so there will still be a degree of spread among younger people during the progressive unlocking.
Hmmmmmmmmmm.......
I'd be interested to see the cases chart using only PCR data for comparison. I think a lot of the positives are now from LFD.
The lateral flow tests are (mostly) being used for schools - not too many 65+ in secondary school.... Plus lots of the lateral flow tests are being checked with PCR.
In addition, the admissions are at a level that suggests that cases are not continuing to drop through the floor....
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
No one's arguing the US is perfect, least of all me. But I'm pretty clear which of the two countries smart immigrant engineers and scientists might see as the more attractive destination.
And the idea that China is a guaranteed global hegemon, as opposed to one of two world superpowers, is just silly.
I'm not convinced that Chinese genocide of Uighurs in Xinjiang is likely to deter promising non-Uighur scientists from moving to Beijing or Shanghai, which are thousands of miles away geographically, and even further in societal terms.
American police killing unarmed black people in Minneapolis is (arguably) as much of a deterrent to people moving to New York/LA.
Look at the list of authors on pretty well any US research publication, and compare with those on Chinese research papers. And look at what's happening in Hong Kong.
I think that's reasonable objective evidence for relative attractiveness.
That'a not to say that China doesn't have very good science, and a huge supply of domestic science graduates. The growing breadth and depth of their research efforts is extremely impressive.
But they have problems which the US does not - including a coming demographic crunch. (indeed it's not entirely inconceivable that the US population overtakes theirs in the next half century, should the US decide once again that immigration is rather a good idea...)
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
And yet, weirdly, Chinese universities are ascending the global rankings.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
Being bullied and patronised by the USA has not always been a comfortable experience since WW2 but we have on the main been on the same page and pretended to believe the same things. A century where China is the dominant power will have us harkening after the good old days without a doubt. Basic freedoms and principles that we hold dear will be quashed as will countries who find themselves in China's way and there will be nothing we can do about it.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
Yes. They are invulnerable. And uncontainable. In a way the USSR never was. Because they are the biggest trader on earth. When they absorb Taiwan - as they shall - this supremacy will harden.
So, as you say, it’s too late. The best we can do is make sure we keep crucial tech, science, etc, in western hands (even if they have them too) so they cannot bully us. And we really need to ditch the worst of wokeness, even as we pray their curtailed liberties hinder them assuming total power
At the moment the trends aren’t great, there is too much basic denial. As we see here
We should also ditch the defeatism.
China's regime needs to keep convincing its burgeoning middle class that its way is better than the west's. That the new Chinese don't need all this democracy bullsh8t.
If, as in the past, the West's enormous powers of innovation allow it to pull ahead technically once again, the Chinese regime has a big problem.
That is why China has tried desperately to get its fingers into as much Western know-how as possible. It needs absolutely to cover all those bases.
It cannot afford to have Westerners trolling about in air cars, making use of fusion power and flying from London to Sydney in four hours while its citizens cannot.
That is the way to beat Xi.
It’s easy to sneer at its politicians, its guns, its culture wars. But America remains the most extraordinary boiling pot of innovation, collaboration and optimism that arguably humans have ever constructed.
And this, as Laloux states in his opening chapters, comes down to how its citizens can conceptualize their purpose and role in society, and hence how they are able to conceive of new ways of organizing.
For all those that decry the woke generation, they are in fact evolving those concepts and developing new approaches to organizing that we crusties hate because they make us uncomfortable. I, for one, do not despair with the coming generation, but see them as our hope to evolve away from the globe-destroying global corporate model to something more people, rather than product, oriented.
The next generation is, literally, stupider than us.
I guess every 20 or 30 years there must have been some nutter in Rome, during the Empire, who pointed to the East and screamed ‘the barbarians are coming!’
For 500 years he was wrong and everyone carried on, just ignoring him.
I left Kent for only the second time in 13 months yesterday - to get vaccinated in East Sussex.
A strange place, East Sussex.
It has got a woke Duke though.
Rye in the East, Lewes in the West, Wadhurst in the north. And perfect little villages scattered in between. What’s strange about it?
To me, Lewes represents the liberal end of that East Sussex interesting-strangeness, some ghostly echoes of Brighton mixed with pitchforks, with the more traditionalist elements further inland. There's no grand centres like Canterbury or Arundel, no big seafaring histories like in neighbouring counties, and yet the place feels interesting and distinct - maybe just because fewer people have noticed it.
I suspect it's because much of it is not an easy commute from London.
ONS say 11k new cases per day in England. That doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
Agreed. With massive levels of testing we are now under 2.5k average cases for the whole of the UK. To suggest that we are only finding about 20% of cases now seems highly pessimistic.
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
Which we've done. Those in categories representing over 99% of fatalities have now been vaccinated.
There are NO excess deaths and haven't been for a month already.
But it's still illegal to be in a relatives home when it wasn't in July last year.
It's still illegal to go inside a Nandos when it wasn't in July last year.
The groups which haven't been vaccinated have lower CFRs, but if you remove lockdown before they are vaccinated, then enough of them will be infected to flood hospitals etc...
There's no data to back that up. The data says that the majority of adults have been vaccinated, the majority of the country have either natural or acquired antibodies. Case rates are starting from a very minimal floor with about one in 500 people having the virus, hospitals having negligible amounts of people in them.
Yet if it is legal to go into somebody else's living room then that's going to flood the hospitals? But if that becomes legal next month it won't?
Significant falls in the latest ONS survey (as of week ending last Friday). Prevalence dropped by about 30% in a week in England. Compatible with slowly building immunity, albeit still a fair way from herd immunity, but as per that reciprocal curve, the acceleration towards it will only increase with every step of immunity built.
Excellent news, what a shame the govt have committed to not looking at such evidence for examining our roadmap until mid May. Dates not data for them.
As some random bloke called.... Andy Cooke.. pointed out the other day on covidbetting.com, the roadmap appears to be linked quite closely to vaccination levels and the resultant population immunity.
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
Which we've done. Those in categories representing over 99% of fatalities have now been vaccinated.
There are NO excess deaths and haven't been for a month already.
But it's still illegal to be in a relatives home when it wasn't in July last year.
It's still illegal to go inside a Nandos when it wasn't in July last year.
The groups which haven't been vaccinated have lower CFRs, but if you remove lockdown before they are vaccinated, then enough of them will be infected to flood hospitals etc...
There's no data to back that up. The data says that the majority of adults have been vaccinated, the majority of the country have either natural or acquired antibodies. Case rates are starting from a very minimal floor with about one in 500 people having the virus, hospitals having negligible amounts of people in them.
Yet if it is legal to go into somebody else's living room then that's going to flood the hospitals? But if that becomes legal next month it won't?
A majority isn't herd immunity.
Neither is allowing people to go inside a restaurant or a relatives living room zero restrictions or distancing.
April looks like it will be broadly similar to March in terms of total doses,
1668863 1st doses 4823011 2nd doses
To come 6 million 2nd doses Maybe another million 1sts.
That'd give 13.5 million
14128391 in March
It does make me wonder whether the talk of a slowdown was aimed at placating the EU. Or possibly it was a slowdown compared to what the government had hoped would be available. Most likely though it's just because of the slowdown in first doses.
Comments
https://www.axios.com/billion-americans-yglesias-matthew-vox-population-2b9ade6e-7346-4460-8dd2-5bd86b13a02a.html
Hancock ought to have listed his sister's control of such a company.
I'm expecting his not to be classified odds to be around the 1.4 mark. We'll see.
However don't agree with the rest of your post because:
a) I don't care if he cleared it or declared it, he shouldn't own them. See my post on what I did in similar circumstances.
b) Again I don't care if the Wales contract had nothing to do with him. It is not a case of being corrupt, but a case of a potential conflict of interest arising.
What a load of utter bollocks. Innovated wearing masks - look at any pictorial depictions of the Black Death.
I suggest you try just a teensiest little bit to understand what other posters are saying, particularly when it disagrees with your own views.
To say that learning - particularly the paradigm breaking scientific leaps, such as relativity or quantum mechanics - requires dissent and challenge is not racist. It is simple fact.
Furthermore, I did not say China could not do such science: I said not as currently organized.
Of course, that would be madness.
Another telling point is Westerners who have taken positions in Chinese Universities have started to leave over the last few years. (Two of my friends have). The restrictions on foreign nationals have become more & more cumbersome & irritating.
Chinese science has made excellent progress, but it is still well behind the US, UK, all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea and some parts of Eastern Europe in terms of consistent quality of research outputs (but perhaps not quantity).
There is also extensive political interference in academic appointments & funding for scientific projects.
A gifted Chinese scientist will almost always prefer a job in a good Western University even against the most prestigIous & wealthy Chinese university like Tsinghua. China are still losing their very best scientists.
Corruption is a criminal matter, and until plod gets involved taking interviews under caution it is hot air and nothing else.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/04/14/former-met-police-chief-drawn-greensill-scandal/
Where does one begin with a statement like this?
China, population 1,400,000,000
America, population 330,000,000
For America to ‘overtake China in population by 2071’ the Chinese would have to stop having all babies tomorrow, and undertake the mass slaughter of maybe 300 million people with funny noses.
Meanwhile, America - an ageing society like China -
https://www.businessinsider.com/aging-population-healthcare
will suddenly have to stop ageing, have 40 kids per family, and encourage the immigration of 400 million people from El Salvador, not necessarily an election winner, but who knows
Seems like a good idea to help work through the backlog of cases that have been building up? Will probably be more use than the Nightingale Hospitals were.
Mongolia, Laos, Bhutan, Nepal etc... don't figure.
"Topwood Ltd of Wrexham, a document-shredding firm, was awarded a three-year contract - worth £150,000 - by NHS Wales."
Hancock's remit is only the English NHS.
So it is a 150 k contract over 3 years to shred documents for the Welsh NHS ... presumably won in open tender.
It looks to me like a complete non-story (at least if the facts reported in the press are correct).
We are in the 106th day.
One such event here would lead the news for days.
‘Oxford has been named the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. But the latest rankings show that it’s China's universities that are the rising stars of global higher education.‘
This is a ranking done by The Times, in London.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/best-universities-top-10-times-higher-education/
What is wrong with all of you?
I feel like a man on the balcony of a hotel in Phuket, pointing at a distant but incoming tsunami, while the rest of you are down in the bar having a chat about the day’s surfing
The App data suggests the risk of getting the virus is now:
For the unvaccinated - one in 1100
For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100
For those with two doses (ditto) - one in 15000
He implies there has been one case of rare blood clotting from the 500,000 vaccinated AZN people in his database.
157 double-vaccinated people in his database have gone on to catch the virus, all with mild cases, compared to 18,000 in the same period among the unvaccinated.
He reckons case rates will stabilise around the current level for a few weeks as the focus now is on second doses so there will still be a degree of spread among younger people during the progressive unlocking.
YOU ACTUALLY SAID THAT
As one Boris Johnson pointed out, the reduction in cases, hospitalisations and deaths is largely due the lockdown. We need replace that with vaccination derived herd immunity.
1 - Gifted shares in a family company.
2 - Checks with Civil Service before receiving gift.
3 - Declares it as required.
4 - Does not manage company.
5 - Is not responsible for procurement, and the alleged infraction occurred in a Health System in a different country.
and yet we have is Clare-of-Little-Brain Rayner going off like a broken foghorn on a sunny day.
When Cameron's huge pink elephant is standing in the corner.
She's going to get herself into the same trouble that Rosina Allin-Khan did when she falsely accused Nadhim Zahawi of jumping the vaccine queue.
Can the Opposition please get some leaders who are not so useless?
Covid-19 - the health condition
The link is pretty much broken in this country, probably forever even with the “mutants” that someone on the radio was just blathering about.
Still far too much interchangeability between the two things going on. Even with a blunt focus on looking for the virus rather than the health condition, the outlook is still very benign.
However, Nightingale Courts would fit right in as the name for some kangaroo court in a teen dystopia novel.
I think we should be starting to brace ourselves for such a world, that we should stop China buying up enterprise companies with IP in the west, restrict their access to our markets and go as far as we need to go to make sure that we are not beholden to them for things our society needs to operate. But we can't stop it. The pass was sold when they were given pretty much unrestricted access to our markets in the name of "free trade" which has proven to be nothing of the sort. They now have sufficient critical mass not to be vulnerable anymore.
Got Angela Rayner muddled up with the famous one.
Sorry.
‘For those with one dose (plus twelve days wait’ - one in 5100 risk of getting the virus’
Does it mean per person per day? Per hour? Per year? It’s kinda vague (but sounds hopeful)
The fact that he didn't have a conflict of interest in this event doesn't mean it isn't reasonable to assume he might have some day because he holds 15% of the equity in an NHS approved supplier.
One should avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest even if innocent and of avoiding an unknown conflict of interest coming out of nowhere and biting you on the bum because you have taken shares or money from a company that could reasonably result in a conflict of interest.
See my other post as to what I did. It isn't difficult. This supplier was NHS approved. That is enough. In those circumstances I would not hold shares in them.
You come across more like a man in the bar of a hotel in Phuket looking for a hooker
Tables of University World Rankings CHANGE their metric ever year.
That is what produces the movement, and hence the wild stories for the press.
There are NO excess deaths and haven't been for a month already.
But it's still illegal to be in a relatives home when it wasn't in July last year.
It's still illegal to go inside a Nandos when it wasn't in July last year.
* Gives Angela Rayner Paddington Hard Stare *
So, as you say, it’s too late. The best we can do is make sure we keep crucial tech, science, etc, in western hands (even if they have them too) so they cannot bully us. And we really need to ditch the worst of wokeness, even as we pray their curtailed liberties hinder them assuming total power
At the moment the trends aren’t great, there is too much basic denial. As we see here
To @OldKingCole - not the best of days at the office for your guys.
For any Middlesex fans - not your day, is it?
Not that I’m very pleased with that shot from Tom Lace.
However, health is completely devolved to Wales & Scotland. The contract is between Topwood Ltd and NHS Wales.
So, as far as I can see, there is absolutely zero cronyism (at least on the evidence available). Unless you think Vaughan Gething (Labour) who is Minister for Health in Wales is a great crony of Matt's?
Perhaps more interesting is why this rather lame story has got the publicity it has?
If you are not watching the Middlesex Hampshire game, you are missing the most bizarre collapse in years.
Middlesex are making England’s efforts with the bat against India look positively competent.
With this R, how long would it take before we started to see a meaningful increase in hospitalisations for the unvaccinated? And how much longer will it take to vaccinate the segment still vulnerable to hospitalisation cancelling this out before it happens?
Talk of “floods” in hospitals at this point are hyperbolic.
China's regime needs to keep convincing its burgeoning middle class that its way is better than the west's. That the new Chinese don't need all this democracy bullsh8t.
If, as in the past, the West's enormous powers of innovation allow it to pull ahead technically once again, the Chinese regime has a big problem.
That is why China has tried desperately to get its fingers into as much Western know-how as possible. It needs absolutely to cover all those bases.
It cannot afford to have Westerners trolling about in air cars, making use of fusion power and flying from London to Sydney in four hours while its citizens cannot.
That is the way to beat Xi.
Do I think China will, for quite a while, be the biggest economy on the planet? Yes, for sure. Sheer size and momentum ensures that. Capitalism is an amazing thing, even when it is ‘state directed’
Indeed on PPP China has already been the largest economy since 2014
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
Do I believe China will be hegemonic and supreme? That’s very different. In a benign outcome China is just first among peaceful equals, alongside the USA, EU, eventually India. And in time India assumes the titular role as leader (or aliens invade)
But there is a much less pleasant futurity where a ruthless China exploits new science and tech - from surveillance to AI - in a way we woke-ishly refuse to do, and it becomes much more like the USA in 1946. But malignant
It is surely blindingly obvious that having a 15% stake in an NHS approved supplier by the minister responsible for the NHS is a conflict of interest under any circumstance.
We live in dangerous times for that. Much traditional power is in danger of becoming as obsolete as an Iraqi tank in the Gulf war on the back of drone technology and AI fighting machines. Who develops the latter first will be unstoppable in conventional terms.
Lol
This is one reason I keep banging on about GPT3. It is clearly an incredible piece of technology with almost limitless applications. And imagine GPT4 or 5?
However in the West we are already trying to hinder development and access because of fears AI will be ‘racist’ or ‘biased’ like its human creators. This is a real battle going on now in Big Tech
The Chinese (as in their monkey science) will have no such doubts. They will exploit this tech ruthlessly. That is just one place they could gain a supreme advantage
For all those that decry the woke generation, they are in fact evolving those concepts and developing new approaches to organizing that we crusties hate because they make us uncomfortable. I, for one, do not despair with the coming generation, but see them as our hope to evolve away from the globe-destroying global corporate model to something more people, rather than product, oriented.
1668863 1st doses
4823011 2nd doses
To come
6 million 2nd doses
Maybe another million 1sts.
That'd give 13.5 million
14128391 in March
Yet if it is legal to go into somebody else's living room then that's going to flood the hospitals? But if that becomes legal next month it won't?
In addition, the admissions are at a level that suggests that cases are not continuing to drop through the floor....
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576
They also have smaller penises and dwindling sperm counts, to the extent they may be unable to reproduce by 2045
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/02/27/falling-sperm-counts-threaten-humanity-chemicals-blame-book-says/6842950002/
I guess every 20 or 30 years there must have been some nutter in Rome, during the Empire, who pointed to the East and screamed ‘the barbarians are coming!’
For 500 years he was wrong and everyone carried on, just ignoring him.
But then, one day, he was right.
I AM THAT SCREAMING NUTTER