How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
It is the way it has always been. The less that the hate filled messages of the left get through to voters and the polls..., the nastier the tone becomes. Its the main reason why I could never vote Labour... knowing what scum there is in a significant proportion of the party.
Somewhat over the top. We were all having a reasonable discussion about the topic at hand. It wasn't even totally Left vs Right.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
It depends upon whether you mean how many deaths have been recorded (where we're higher because we report honestly and test well), or how many actually died (excess deaths).
If you look at the latter which is the only valid international comparison they're already not at the worst end of the table. There are already more than 20 countries with more excess deaths than the UK and the fact the pandemic is over here but not elsewhere means that the number is increasing all the time.
To be honest I wish the number wasn't increasing all the time. Because its a tragedy that other countries are still recording deaths, we should take no schadenfreude on that. But its a fact, being one of the first nations to end the pandemic rapidly means that when all is said and done the butcher's bill in the UK will be mid-table at most.
Could it have been better? Perhaps. Could it have been worse? Yes, much worse.
I would appreciate if you didn’t try to make political capital about of large numbers of individual tragedies.
And I would be happier if they hadn't happened because people like you wanted a Clown in charge
You won
Suck it up
Every time I feel sad about the state of the country, I thank my lucky stars I voted for Boris. Because otherwise* Corbyn would be in charge. Could you imagine the carnage we might be going through now if the result had been otherwise? Boris might not have been exactly my preferred flavour of politician, but thank God Corbyn's not in charge.
To be clear, I think the handling of the pandemic has been disastrous. Not because of the number of people who have died - my view is that from a death toll point of view that would have happened, give or take a margin or error, whichever path we had taken from a roadmap based on sanity - but on the damage which has been done to the economy and the country's democratic institutions. But would it have been better with Corbyn? You have been driven insane by your hatred for Boris if you think so.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer who ended up in charge of the country. He would have made exactly the same decision at each point of the pandemic, dully following sage advice almost all of the time as this lot have done. Don't delude yourself otherwise.
(Would he have had the confidence to go it alone on vaccine procurement? Let's give him some credit and say possibly he would. Perhaps.)
*of course not otherwise. My vote made no difference in my safe Labour constituency or nationwide. But you get the gist.
We might have been looking wistfully across the water at the EU's well organised vaccine procurement process with priority access and bargain prices and the LDs with their unequivocal anti-Brexit stance would be riding high at 20-30% or more in the polls - Iraq war redux.
(Well, the first part about the EU procurement looking relatively good could have been true)
I think you are wrong here RP just for a change. Remember I am a LD not a Tory so I can't be put in that bracket.
Having said that I do accept your point re some Tories reaction. To Charles' credit he engaged in debate with you and I agree with him. Mark however just resorted to the frequent argument that Labour are at it as well, as if that is any sort of defence.
Perhaps - wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. I don't think that I am though for two reasons: 1 Dyson had no problem paying the £20m cost in his failed ventilator design "from his own deep pockets". SO a small amount to compensate staff / him for tax was well within the ability of his "deep pockets" to cover 2 After last week's lobbying scandal, Downing Street put it out that the PM was "shocked" over the behavious of civil servants. Yet here he is directly caught in a scandal where the rules governing how ministers behave - transparent, no conflict of interest, out in the open - has been breached.
Politically nothing will happen because he is untouchable. It doesn't make the open sewer flowing through government right though.
I think the point which has been made on here by @Charles and others is that there is nothing in this story to suggest Boris has done anything wrong in his dealing with Dyson
There are certainly legitimate issues to attack Boris on, but it is sensible for his critics to choose the correct story rather than everything Boris does is a 'gotcha' moment
Before I get boring I will move on. If nothing else it is food for thought for "Laura is a Tory like the rest of the BBC" critics. Remember that this is a BBC scoop not something that I have picked up off Skwarkbox. Perhaps Kuenssberg has completely misread the ministerial code when reporting this latest outrage? Perhaps not.
The problem with *any* story that isn't football at the moment is that very few people will pay attention. It truly is a good week to bury bad news.
To answer @Charles above perhaps the leak has been deliberately let out now so that it gets buried?
I'm disappointed in the BBC. They've been tempted into this by some of the suggestive language in the texts - but they should have higher standards.
My office are all laughing their arses off about the Super League plans collapsing.
At a time of such polarisation and division in society, it's great to have everyone agree that these scumbag club chairmen trying to sell out the fans - then failing miserably when they underestimated the reaction - is the most brilliant story of the year so far!
Yes. Although I still come back to the point that few of these same fans were complaining when the rich club chairmen landed them huge glamorous signings and silverware.
The roots of this lay a long way back.
Take a club like Man City. Middling to good, decent fan base. Then a huge buyout and MASSIVE injection of overseas funding turned it into something it never was.
So why the plans for the ESL came as such a shock baffles me. The writing was on the wall and this isn't over yet. I reckon the plans will return in other forms, maybe a drip feed. These owners are big businessmen used to getting their way.
The days when fans really had a say in the running of these big clubs has, I'm afraid, long gone. Which is why I handed back my season ticket. It's no longer the game I supported from my youth, at least not at that level.
Indeed and the unreality goes on. We like the German model of fan ownership. So where are the fans going to get $1.25bn- $1,5bn to acquire half of Man Utd, for example? The idea seems to be that they should be given these shares because they wear a replica shirt.
Tbh, I think the fans could probably raise the money. It may seem crazy but ultimately the number of fans who would want to invest up to £10k in their club is quite a big number. Spurs have got a three year waiting list for season tickets which start at £1k, cast the net wide enough and I don't think it would be difficult. At least for Man United, Spurs and Arsenal where there are probably quite a few very wealthy fans who would want to own part of the club and benefit from that investment over the long term. It's almost worth creating a Spac, having the fans invest in it and then approaching the club for a buyout or reverse merger.
There's loads of sports clubs that sell debentures to members - including Wembley, Lord's, Wimbledon and a lot of the swankier golf clubs. Most are in the £20-£30k range and have long waiting lists, it's easily doable for football clubs.
If you let debenture holders buy match day tickets and hospitality the day before they otherwise go on sale, there will be plenty of interest.
I think you are wrong here RP just for a change. Remember I am a LD not a Tory so I can't be put in that bracket.
Having said that I do accept your point re some Tories reaction. To Charles' credit he engaged in debate with you and I agree with him. Mark however just resorted to the frequent argument that Labour are at it as well, as if that is any sort of defence.
Perhaps - wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. I don't think that I am though for two reasons: 1 Dyson had no problem paying the £20m cost in his failed ventilator design "from his own deep pockets". SO a small amount to compensate staff / him for tax was well within the ability of his "deep pockets" to cover 2 After last week's lobbying scandal, Downing Street put it out that the PM was "shocked" over the behavious of civil servants. Yet here he is directly caught in a scandal where the rules governing how ministers behave - transparent, no conflict of interest, out in the open - has been breached.
Politically nothing will happen because he is untouchable. It doesn't make the open sewer flowing through government right though.
I think the point which has been made on here by @Charles and others is that there is nothing in this story to suggest Boris has done anything wrong in his dealing with Dyson
There are certainly legitimate issues to attack Boris on, but it is sensible for his critics to choose the correct story rather than everything Boris does is a 'gotcha' moment
Before I get boring I will move on. If nothing else it is food for thought for "Laura is a Tory like the rest of the BBC" critics. Remember that this is a BBC scoop not something that I have picked up off Skwarkbox. Perhaps Kuenssberg has completely misread the ministerial code when reporting this latest outrage? Perhaps not.
The problem with *any* story that isn't football at the moment is that very few people will pay attention. It truly is a good week to bury bad news.
To answer @Charles above perhaps the leak has been deliberately let out now so that it gets buried?
I'm disappointed in the BBC. They've been tempted into this by some of the suggestive language in the texts - but they should have higher standards.
This is news, and this sleaze story has legs. And there will be more to come, whether it is a managed leak as this seems to be or not.
My office are all laughing their arses off about the Super League plans collapsing.
At a time of such polarisation and division in society, it's great to have everyone agree that these scumbag club chairmen trying to sell out the fans - then failing miserably when they underestimated the reaction - is the most brilliant story of the year so far!
Yes. Although I still come back to the point that few of these same fans were complaining when the rich club chairmen landed them huge glamorous signings and silverware.
The roots of this lay a long way back.
Take a club like Man City. Middling to good, decent fan base. Then a huge buyout and MASSIVE injection of overseas funding turned it into something it never was.
So why the plans for the ESL came as such a shock baffles me. The writing was on the wall and this isn't over yet. I reckon the plans will return in other forms, maybe a drip feed. These owners are big businessmen used to getting their way.
The days when fans really had a say in the running of these big clubs has, I'm afraid, long gone. Which is why I handed back my season ticket. It's no longer the game I supported from my youth, at least not at that level.
Indeed and the unreality goes on. We like the German model of fan ownership. So where are the fans going to get $1.25bn- $1,5bn to acquire half of Man Utd, for example? The idea seems to be that they should be given these shares because they wear a replica shirt.
Tbh, I think the fans could probably raise the money. It may seem crazy but ultimately the number of fans who would want to invest up to £10k in their club is quite a big number. Spurs have got a three year waiting list for season tickets which start at £1k, cast the net wide enough and I don't think it would be difficult. At least for Man United, Spurs and Arsenal where there are probably quite a few very wealthy fans who would want to own part of the club and benefit from that investment over the long term. It's almost worth creating a Spac, having the fans invest in it and then approaching the club for a buyout or reverse merger.
Your kidding. Imagine getting agreement on anything from the thickness of the loo paper to the new away strip. Also, think of the people who would be, say, the large investors/owners. Suppose they had a few (hundred) million going spare. First they have their own fish to fry elsewhere; secondly they want to determine who does what and why.
Not going to happen.
I see this a lot when looking at "Assets of Community Value" which are places named by the community and over which they have a right to find a buyer if the owner wants to sell (eg. a historic pub, or some other building). It's all very well saying we can't sell this to the developers but the alternative is "the community" coming together to raise finance to run said asset (pub, library, youth centre). They are very rare - and usually only pubs work - for that reason.
I agree that the Dyson story is in itself a non-event, although the wisdom of the PM communicating directly with a controversial entrepreneur based overseas is debatable.
But it is part of a wider narrative that may come to haunt the government. It's the drip-drip of stories about privileged access to senior government figures that most individuals and businesses don't have, the drip-drip of stories about contracts that have been signed without full and timely accountability, and the drip-drip of stories about cronyism.
So far, such drip-drip stories have not damaged the government at all; quite the reverse, apparently. But I'm not sure that will last once we return to more normal non-Covid times.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
It is better, I do this for a living and the ONS regularly creates rods for its (our) own back by going over and above what is necessary. GDP is another area, on the internationally comparable measure the UK had a -4.8% economic contraction, under the ONS reported fogure it was -9.8%, there's literally no need for the latter figure, it's no more accurate than the former just calculated differently and attempts to measure the public sector with output factors rather than inputs like the rest of the word does it while also using the index method of measurement rather than what every single other country does which compares the absolute number to last year's absolute number
Ultimately it makes no difference as we can see on the ground the economy is doing just fine and bouncing back nicely. It just creates a really unnecessary narrative of the UK being the worst in certain measures when the reality is that we just use unnecessarily tough ones. It's classic civil service naivete.
An interesting, and under-analysed question, is why our vaccine hesitancy levels are so remarkably low.
You could argue that there's a conformist streak in our national character - but very clearly also a non-conformist/individualistic one, and I doubt there's anything particularly unique about the British in our nature that explains why we've all gone along with the vaccine programme.
A part of the explanation must lie with our media (and the information they have received from SAGE and government) - despite all the criticism of the British media, particularly early in the crisis, it's where most people got their information from, and our population seems relatively free of the quackery that has spooked people elsewhere, especially the rubbish circulating in the US.
There were plenty of anecdotal reports of people initially saying they would refuse the vaccine - I know a couple myself - who ended up meekly going along with it. Perhaps the way the storyline played out in the UK, with our relative success in getting vaccines out and running very early - helped persuade people that it was a good thing? Yet the US hasn't been far behind us (certainly ahead of most of the world) and yet many of their states are already running into vaccine reluctance, only just having reached half the population.
The most likely explanation ISTM is that the biggest single factor is the level-headed, objective and neutral coverage and worldwide perspective of our very own BBC. In particular we have an advantage over the Americans in that our media does take a global view and I bet Brits are a lot better informed about how things played out in other countries than are Americans. We are also helped by the depth and breadth of trust we have in the NHS.
Also the fact that politics hasn't interfered, and the vaccine programme hasn't become politicised in the way that it has in the US.
My office are all laughing their arses off about the Super League plans collapsing.
At a time of such polarisation and division in society, it's great to have everyone agree that these scumbag club chairmen trying to sell out the fans - then failing miserably when they underestimated the reaction - is the most brilliant story of the year so far!
Yes. Although I still come back to the point that few of these same fans were complaining when the rich club chairmen landed them huge glamorous signings and silverware.
The roots of this lay a long way back.
Take a club like Man City. Middling to good, decent fan base. Then a huge buyout and MASSIVE injection of overseas funding turned it into something it never was.
So why the plans for the ESL came as such a shock baffles me. The writing was on the wall and this isn't over yet. I reckon the plans will return in other forms, maybe a drip feed. These owners are big businessmen used to getting their way.
The days when fans really had a say in the running of these big clubs has, I'm afraid, long gone. Which is why I handed back my season ticket. It's no longer the game I supported from my youth, at least not at that level.
Indeed and the unreality goes on. We like the German model of fan ownership. So where are the fans going to get $1.25bn- $1,5bn to acquire half of Man Utd, for example? The idea seems to be that they should be given these shares because they wear a replica shirt.
Tbh, I think the fans could probably raise the money. It may seem crazy but ultimately the number of fans who would want to invest up to £10k in their club is quite a big number. Spurs have got a three year waiting list for season tickets which start at £1k, cast the net wide enough and I don't think it would be difficult. At least for Man United, Spurs and Arsenal where there are probably quite a few very wealthy fans who would want to own part of the club and benefit from that investment over the long term. It's almost worth creating a Spac, having the fans invest in it and then approaching the club for a buyout or reverse merger.
Your kidding. Imagine getting agreement on anything from the thickness of the loo paper to the new away strip. Also, think of the people who would be, say, the large investors/owners. Suppose they had a few (hundred) million going spare. First they have their own fish to fry elsewhere; secondly they want to determine who does what and why.
Not going to happen.
I see this a lot when looking at "Assets of Community Value" which are places named by the community and over which they have a right to find a buyer if the owner wants to sell (eg. a historic pub, or some other building). It's all very well saying we can't sell this to the developers but the alternative is "the community" coming together to raise finance to run said asset (pub, library, youth centre). They are very rare - and usually only pubs work - for that reason.
Yes, you're right. Community ownership of clubs could never work, which is why the German football system is the laughing stock of Europe, and not strong, relatively stable and competitive at European level.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
NI opening up to 35-39 shortly. Interestingly it's behind the rest of the UK on first doses. Indicates demand a bit weaker there than elsewhere I think ?
"The over-35s are being offered the vaccine because of uptake among the over-40s. "We know we have vaccinated many of them - over 120,000 - but what we have always found is that the enthusiasts come through pretty immediately, hovering over the booking line and others take a bit longer so we know those tend to be strung out over the number of weeks," she said. She said each cohort had had a similar pattern."
Hmmm.... sounds like a polite way of saying low uptake
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
Excess deaths is a gold standard. Yes there are so many other factors but that's true for any deaths measure you choose - our high population density, our high age profile, our high obesity rate etc all mean the UK was at particular risk to what this pandemic attacks.
But excess deaths is the only measurement that records how many people have actually died. No other measure does that. The Italians have considerably more people who have actually died than we have - and we have seen scenes of horror on TV there that never occurred in the UK which backs up that - yet supposedly according to some rankings they had fewer deaths than us? It was never true and the figures show that.
It may remind you of an M&S advert but quite frankly when it comes to data the UK is M&S, we're not Aldi. The UK doesn't get everything right, but when it comes to the honesty and integrity of our data it is much better than other nations - and that applies whether red or blue are in office.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
If Jeremy Hunt had won the leadership election ... he would also have dully followed sage advice most of the time. (I say this as someone who, in the unusual counterfactual that I was a member of the Tory party back at the last leadership election, would have voted for him.) But again, he might not have diverged from the EU on vaccine procurement.
I agree that the Dyson story is in itself a non-event, although the wisdom of the PM communicating directly with a controversial entrepreneur based overseas is debatable.
But it is part of a wider narrative that may come to haunt the government. It's the drip-drip of stories about privileged access to senior government figures that most individuals and businesses don't have, the drip-drip of stories about contracts that have been signed without full and timely accountability, and the drip-drip of stories about cronyism.
So far, such drip-drip stories have not damaged the government at all; quite the reverse, apparently. But I'm not sure that will last once we return to more normal non-Covid times.
There certainly needs to be changes in procedures and a general clean up.
It my be more Boris luck that he can blame previous stuff on Cameron or covid.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
All fair points. Ultimately we will never know exactly how many died of covid, and it probably doesn't really matter. The current 28 day cut off is a compromise, and at least stops the ludicrous run over by the bus covid death, at the expense of the Derek Draper type, clearly still unwell after a year.
I think you are wrong here RP just for a change. Remember I am a LD not a Tory so I can't be put in that bracket.
Having said that I do accept your point re some Tories reaction. To Charles' credit he engaged in debate with you and I agree with him. Mark however just resorted to the frequent argument that Labour are at it as well, as if that is any sort of defence.
Perhaps - wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. I don't think that I am though for two reasons: 1 Dyson had no problem paying the £20m cost in his failed ventilator design "from his own deep pockets". SO a small amount to compensate staff / him for tax was well within the ability of his "deep pockets" to cover 2 After last week's lobbying scandal, Downing Street put it out that the PM was "shocked" over the behavious of civil servants. Yet here he is directly caught in a scandal where the rules governing how ministers behave - transparent, no conflict of interest, out in the open - has been breached.
Politically nothing will happen because he is untouchable. It doesn't make the open sewer flowing through government right though.
I think the point which has been made on here by @Charles and others is that there is nothing in this story to suggest Boris has done anything wrong in his dealing with Dyson
There are certainly legitimate issues to attack Boris on, but it is sensible for his critics to choose the correct story rather than everything Boris does is a 'gotcha' moment
Before I get boring I will move on. If nothing else it is food for thought for "Laura is a Tory like the rest of the BBC" critics. Remember that this is a BBC scoop not something that I have picked up off Skwarkbox. Perhaps Kuenssberg has completely misread the ministerial code when reporting this latest outrage? Perhaps not.
The problem with *any* story that isn't football at the moment is that very few people will pay attention. It truly is a good week to bury bad news.
To answer @Charles above perhaps the leak has been deliberately let out now so that it gets buried?
This leak will also be buried I expect. The 'consultation' ends in ... May (ha ha.)
I agree that the Dyson story is in itself a non-event, although the wisdom of the PM communicating directly with a controversial entrepreneur based overseas is debatable.
But it is part of a wider narrative that may come to haunt the government. It's the drip-drip of stories about privileged access to senior government figures that most individuals and businesses don't have, the drip-drip of stories about contracts that have been signed without full and timely accountability, and the drip-drip of stories about cronyism.
So far, such drip-drip stories have not damaged the government at all; quite the reverse, apparently. But I'm not sure that will last once we return to more normal non-Covid times.
I commented on it at the time, as I'm sure others did. If you've got hardcore opponents of the EU and hardcore advocates of the EU voting the same way, somebody's buggering up their voting.
I agree that the Dyson story is in itself a non-event, although the wisdom of the PM communicating directly with a controversial entrepreneur based overseas is debatable.
But it is part of a wider narrative that may come to haunt the government. It's the drip-drip of stories about privileged access to senior government figures that most individuals and businesses don't have, the drip-drip of stories about contracts that have been signed without full and timely accountability, and the drip-drip of stories about cronyism.
So far, such drip-drip stories have not damaged the government at all; quite the reverse, apparently. But I'm not sure that will last once we return to more normal non-Covid times.
I think you are wrong here RP just for a change. Remember I am a LD not a Tory so I can't be put in that bracket.
Having said that I do accept your point re some Tories reaction. To Charles' credit he engaged in debate with you and I agree with him. Mark however just resorted to the frequent argument that Labour are at it as well, as if that is any sort of defence.
Perhaps - wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. I don't think that I am though for two reasons: 1 Dyson had no problem paying the £20m cost in his failed ventilator design "from his own deep pockets". SO a small amount to compensate staff / him for tax was well within the ability of his "deep pockets" to cover 2 After last week's lobbying scandal, Downing Street put it out that the PM was "shocked" over the behavious of civil servants. Yet here he is directly caught in a scandal where the rules governing how ministers behave - transparent, no conflict of interest, out in the open - has been breached.
Politically nothing will happen because he is untouchable. It doesn't make the open sewer flowing through government right though.
I think the point which has been made on here by @Charles and others is that there is nothing in this story to suggest Boris has done anything wrong in his dealing with Dyson
There are certainly legitimate issues to attack Boris on, but it is sensible for his critics to choose the correct story rather than everything Boris does is a 'gotcha' moment
Before I get boring I will move on. If nothing else it is food for thought for "Laura is a Tory like the rest of the BBC" critics. Remember that this is a BBC scoop not something that I have picked up off Skwarkbox. Perhaps Kuenssberg has completely misread the ministerial code when reporting this latest outrage? Perhaps not.
The problem with *any* story that isn't football at the moment is that very few people will pay attention. It truly is a good week to bury bad news.
To answer @Charles above perhaps the leak has been deliberately let out now so that it gets buried?
This leak will also be buried I expect. The 'consultation' ends in ... May (ha ha.)
And if the consultation ends in May you need someone to do the work.
Better to have someone lined up as an internal secondment for £30,000 rather than paying a firm £100,000+ to do so.
And that project covers 2 different passports, an internal one (which is the bone of contention) and the international one (which is probably unavoidable so needs to be implemented in an easy to implement way).
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
All fair points. Ultimately we will never know exactly how many died of covid, and it probably doesn't really matter. The current 28 day cut off is a compromise, and at least stops the ludicrous run over by the bus covid death, at the expense of the Derek Draper type, clearly still unwell after a year.
Derek Draper is a really horrible story, believed to be the longest case in the UK that wasn't fatal.
There will be many other similar horror stories around that don't affect journalists married to TV presenters, which we won't hear as much about. There are a handful of people who have been in the ICU for a year.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
It is better, I do this for a living and the ONS regularly creates rods for its (our) own back by going over and above what is necessary. GDP is another area, on the internationally comparable measure the UK had a -4.8% economic contraction, under the ONS reported fogure it was -9.8%, there's literally no need for the latter figure, it's no more accurate than the former just calculated differently and attempts to measure the public sector with output factors rather than inputs like the rest of the word does it while also using the index method of measurement rather than what every single other country does which compares the absolute number to last year's absolute number
Ultimately it makes no difference as we can see on the ground the economy is doing just fine and bouncing back nicely. It just creates a really unnecessary narrative of the UK being the worst in certain measures when the reality is that we just use unnecessarily tough ones. It's classic civil service naivete.
To be honest I'm glad the rod is there. Not because it changes things (it doesn't) but because in normal non-pandemic years it matters.
Gordon Brown knew nothing about the economy other than just throwing more and more money at the public sector, with rather little to show for it in output, until eventually the money ran out. After that I'd far rather have output than input measured on a standard basis.
While Osborne spent years constraining the funds available but not seeing anywhere near as much reduction in output than the cut to expenditure. Again better to get output measured than input there too.
Even if the 'price' for that is getting an artificially high contraction figure last year and an artificially high rebound figure this year. Its better that we measure things honestly rather than "reward" Chancellors by saying they've done a good job getting growth when all they've done is spend more money but with nothing to show for it.
I commented on it at the time, as I'm sure others did. If you've got hardcore opponents of the EU and hardcore advocates of the EU voting the same way, somebody's buggering up their voting.
Or the person in charge proposed something as popular as a Super League with no relegation?
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
My office are all laughing their arses off about the Super League plans collapsing.
At a time of such polarisation and division in society, it's great to have everyone agree that these scumbag club chairmen trying to sell out the fans - then failing miserably when they underestimated the reaction - is the most brilliant story of the year so far!
Yes. Although I still come back to the point that few of these same fans were complaining when the rich club chairmen landed them huge glamorous signings and silverware.
The roots of this lay a long way back.
Take a club like Man City. Middling to good, decent fan base. Then a huge buyout and MASSIVE injection of overseas funding turned it into something it never was.
So why the plans for the ESL came as such a shock baffles me. The writing was on the wall and this isn't over yet. I reckon the plans will return in other forms, maybe a drip feed. These owners are big businessmen used to getting their way.
The days when fans really had a say in the running of these big clubs has, I'm afraid, long gone. Which is why I handed back my season ticket. It's no longer the game I supported from my youth, at least not at that level.
That's my view. This hasn't gone away. It'll come back in some form. The media will laud "people power" for killing it but it seems clear to me it was the threat of immediate legislation that scuppered it for now.
Let's see in the coming seasons which 12 teams are more or less permanent features in the latter stage of whatever the CL looks like.
As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
I agree that the Dyson story is in itself a non-event, although the wisdom of the PM communicating directly with a controversial entrepreneur based overseas is debatable.
But it is part of a wider narrative that may come to haunt the government. It's the drip-drip of stories about privileged access to senior government figures that most individuals and businesses don't have, the drip-drip of stories about contracts that have been signed without full and timely accountability, and the drip-drip of stories about cronyism.
So far, such drip-drip stories have not damaged the government at all; quite the reverse, apparently. But I'm not sure that will last once we return to more normal non-Covid times.
Excellent post.
Thank you.
I think in this case there wasn't privileged access - it's very much a can you, well we can if..... question.
The problem is that other stories won't be as obvious.
Of a far greater concern to me would be where / how have the text messages got to a journalist and what else do they have?
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
It’s the transparency of the process that makes our stattos the gold standard. The ONS have a weekly deaths publication. Been going years. Boring. Then bang! And it comes into its own.
People question our inflation, GDP and immigration stats, and fair enough - these aren’t easy to get right. But I think the ONS weekly deaths stats are pretty close to the truth.
Obviously I know very little about the rest of the world. I suspect most developed nations are being honest about this, though there may be some definitional differences.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
The biggest mistake by remainers was not doing what they had been told by the British people. Many of them paid for that mistake with their careers and rightfully so.
My office are all laughing their arses off about the Super League plans collapsing.
At a time of such polarisation and division in society, it's great to have everyone agree that these scumbag club chairmen trying to sell out the fans - then failing miserably when they underestimated the reaction - is the most brilliant story of the year so far!
Yes. Although I still come back to the point that few of these same fans were complaining when the rich club chairmen landed them huge glamorous signings and silverware.
The roots of this lay a long way back.
Take a club like Man City. Middling to good, decent fan base. Then a huge buyout and MASSIVE injection of overseas funding turned it into something it never was.
So why the plans for the ESL came as such a shock baffles me. The writing was on the wall and this isn't over yet. I reckon the plans will return in other forms, maybe a drip feed. These owners are big businessmen used to getting their way.
The days when fans really had a say in the running of these big clubs has, I'm afraid, long gone. Which is why I handed back my season ticket. It's no longer the game I supported from my youth, at least not at that level.
Indeed and the unreality goes on. We like the German model of fan ownership. So where are the fans going to get $1.25bn- $1,5bn to acquire half of Man Utd, for example? The idea seems to be that they should be given these shares because they wear a replica shirt.
Tbh, I think the fans could probably raise the money. It may seem crazy but ultimately the number of fans who would want to invest up to £10k in their club is quite a big number. Spurs have got a three year waiting list for season tickets which start at £1k, cast the net wide enough and I don't think it would be difficult. At least for Man United, Spurs and Arsenal where there are probably quite a few very wealthy fans who would want to own part of the club and benefit from that investment over the long term. It's almost worth creating a Spac, having the fans invest in it and then approaching the club for a buyout or reverse merger.
Why would anybody invest ten grand in something that, as it turns out, they do not own? that they have little say in developing and disposing of of as they wish?
Ten grand for 'temporary custodianship' - whatever that is. At the whim of the shouty and entitled. What a mug investment that is. Talk about I saw you coming.
Today all the investors in English football are waking up to the fact they are the victims of a gigantic con. They thought they were buying property. It turns out they were buying 'temporary custodianship'
How long is the queue of mug billionaires waiting to be taken for the ride of the century?
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
It is better, I do this for a living and the ONS regularly creates rods for its (our) own back by going over and above what is necessary. GDP is another area, on the internationally comparable measure the UK had a -4.8% economic contraction, under the ONS reported fogure it was -9.8%, there's literally no need for the latter figure, it's no more accurate than the former just calculated differently and attempts to measure the public sector with output factors rather than inputs like the rest of the word does it while also using the index method of measurement rather than what every single other country does which compares the absolute number to last year's absolute number
Ultimately it makes no difference as we can see on the ground the economy is doing just fine and bouncing back nicely. It just creates a really unnecessary narrative of the UK being the worst in certain measures when the reality is that we just use unnecessarily tough ones. It's classic civil service naivete.
Bottom line is that the care home mistake was a big one that cost us a lot of lives. A mistake also made by Belgium and the Netherlands, which is little consolation. Whatever the final score, we could have saved lives by testing people before pushing them from hospital back into care, and by equipping our care homes more effectively to face the pandemic from the off.
Everything else is likely noise - for sure, decisions like the f**k up over Christmas, the single day back at schools in January, or with travel at various times, almost certainly pushed up our total case numbers and therefore impacted on deaths, but then similar misjudgements were being made by countries all over the world, and you'll never see the difference in outcome in the data, rough and ready as it is. If I were conducting the inquiry I'd be particularly critical where we have been slow to learn, or indeed willingly made the same mistake twice. Which we've done several times.
We also have a very comprehensive childhood vaccination scheme were participation is taken as normal, not a matter (generally speaking anyway) of debate. Flu vaccination is also common, especially among the older generation, and seen as a positive.
I do though, wonder about our stats a little; I would like to have seen, along with the 'deaths within' 28 days figures, a baseline of daily average deaths 2015-19 or something like that. I suspect that that is now below the norm.
On the tax story, I would be fine if the government had agreed to pay extra to cover the tax liability.
It's someone having special access to the PM, and having rules changed to suit them, that really grates.
Except its not possible or realistic for the government to pay extra to cover the tax liability - since the tax liability is personal and not like VAT just something slapped on top of the contract at a fixed amount. A fix as done by Rishi was the only viable solution.
Plus the only reason he had "special access to the PM" is because the PM was speaking to him trying to get ventillators into this country as a matter of urgency. It was one of the most important issues facing the nation and of course the PM was doing his job getting involved.
Do you think someone the PM is speaking to should not have access to speak to the PM? How does that work? 🤔
I commented on it at the time, as I'm sure others did. If you've got hardcore opponents of the EU and hardcore advocates of the EU voting the same way, somebody's buggering up their voting.
Peak Remainer idiocy surely has to be when Dominic Grieve voted against his own amendment....
No comments about football this morning? As a valediction to the saga, I rather like this essay by Dominic Sandbrook (who has done remarkably well to craft something so elegant so quickly, even if it is largely material already written, tweaked slightly to reflect the developments of the last 10 hours) - rather reflects the arguments @Leon has been making as the imbroglio thundered on: https://unherd.com/2021/04/football-and-the-decline-of-englishness/
My office are all laughing their arses off about the Super League plans collapsing.
At a time of such polarisation and division in society, it's great to have everyone agree that these scumbag club chairmen trying to sell out the fans - then failing miserably when they underestimated the reaction - is the most brilliant story of the year so far!
Yes. Although I still come back to the point that few of these same fans were complaining when the rich club chairmen landed them huge glamorous signings and silverware.
The roots of this lay a long way back.
Take a club like Man City. Middling to good, decent fan base. Then a huge buyout and MASSIVE injection of overseas funding turned it into something it never was.
So why the plans for the ESL came as such a shock baffles me. The writing was on the wall and this isn't over yet. I reckon the plans will return in other forms, maybe a drip feed. These owners are big businessmen used to getting their way.
The days when fans really had a say in the running of these big clubs has, I'm afraid, long gone. Which is why I handed back my season ticket. It's no longer the game I supported from my youth, at least not at that level.
Indeed and the unreality goes on. We like the German model of fan ownership. So where are the fans going to get $1.25bn- $1,5bn to acquire half of Man Utd, for example? The idea seems to be that they should be given these shares because they wear a replica shirt.
Tbh, I think the fans could probably raise the money. It may seem crazy but ultimately the number of fans who would want to invest up to £10k in their club is quite a big number. Spurs have got a three year waiting list for season tickets which start at £1k, cast the net wide enough and I don't think it would be difficult. At least for Man United, Spurs and Arsenal where there are probably quite a few very wealthy fans who would want to own part of the club and benefit from that investment over the long term. It's almost worth creating a Spac, having the fans invest in it and then approaching the club for a buyout or reverse merger.
Why would anybody invest ten grand in something that, as it turns out, they do not own? that they have little say in developing and disposing of of as they wish?
Ten grand for 'temporary custodianship' - whatever that is. At the whim of the shouty and entitled. What a mug investment that is. Talk about I saw you coming.
Today all the investors in English football are waking up to the fact they are the victims of a gigantic con. They thought they were buying property. It turns out they were buying 'temporary custodianship'
How long is the queue of mug billionaires waiting to be taken for the ride of the century?
It's dinner party bragging rights. But ultimately of no value, interest (imo) or reward.
Like being a 1/100th member of a racing syndicate. So you might get to lead the horse up on a Friday evening at Wolverhampton but other than that?
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
Agree. The other folly of the remainers was allowing the election which would result in an all or bust result and back to the status quo.
In this country we have an elected dictatorship normally. For a short period we actually had a parliament that genuinely debated stuff with the potential for compromise and minds being changed and new ideas.. Unfortunately is was such a radical change the MPs buggered it up.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
Excess deaths is a gold standard. Yes there are so many other factors but that's true for any deaths measure you choose - our high population density, our high age profile, our high obesity rate etc all mean the UK was at particular risk to what this pandemic attacks.
But excess deaths is the only measurement that records how many people have actually died. No other measure does that. The Italians have considerably more people who have actually died than we have - and we have seen scenes of horror on TV there that never occurred in the UK which backs up that - yet supposedly according to some rankings they had fewer deaths than us? It was never true and the figures show that.
It may remind you of an M&S advert but quite frankly when it comes to data the UK is M&S, we're not Aldi. The UK doesn't get everything right, but when it comes to the honesty and integrity of our data it is much better than other nations - and that applies whether red or blue are in office.
The Italians will overtake us in the number of deaths accredited (if that is the word) to Covid within the next 20 days. But I agree that is not the whole picture.
Good post. We also have a very comprehensive childhood vaccination scheme were participation is taken as normal, not a matter (generally speaking anyway) of debate. Flu vaccination is also common, especially among the older generation, and seen as a positive.
I do though, wonder about our stats a little; I would like to have seen, along with the 'deaths within' 28 days figures, a baseline of daily average deaths 2015-19 or something like that. I suspect that that is now below the norm.
Yes, that's a very good point - we may had a greater cultural acceptance of vaccination from the start.
Nevertheless I know two people who back last year were adamant they weren't going to have the vaccine - one a recovered cancer patient - and yet they both have, and I've seen other PB'ers recount similar stories. Something in the way the panedemic has played out, and been reported, has swung those Brits in line, when in both the US and EU many of the antis appear to be digging in.
Mr. Mark, I remember him gleefully crying out it was "too late" when he got an asked for concession. May've been then or at another time, but it was remarkably stupid.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
It is better, I do this for a living and the ONS regularly creates rods for its (our) own back by going over and above what is necessary. GDP is another area, on the internationally comparable measure the UK had a -4.8% economic contraction, under the ONS reported fogure it was -9.8%, there's literally no need for the latter figure, it's no more accurate than the former just calculated differently and attempts to measure the public sector with output factors rather than inputs like the rest of the word does it while also using the index method of measurement rather than what every single other country does which compares the absolute number to last year's absolute number
Ultimately it makes no difference as we can see on the ground the economy is doing just fine and bouncing back nicely. It just creates a really unnecessary narrative of the UK being the worst in certain measures when the reality is that we just use unnecessarily tough ones. It's classic civil service naivete.
Bottom line is that the care home mistake was a big one that cost us a lot of lives. A mistake also made by Belgium and the Netherlands, which is little consolation. Whatever the final score, we could have saved lives by testing people before pushing them from hospital back into care, and by equipping our care homes more effectively to face the pandemic from the off.
Everything else is likely noise - for sure, decisions like the f**k up over Christmas, the single day back at schools in January, or with travel at various times, almost certainly pushed up our total case numbers and therefore impacted on deaths, but then similar misjudgements were being made by countries all over the world, and you'll never see the difference in outcome in the data, rough and ready as it is. If I were conducting the inquiry I'd be particularly critical where we have been slow to learn, or indeed willingly made the same mistake twice. Which we've done several times.
The care home thing is also one of those things were I suspect other countries did the same but didn't have a problem because they released patients a week before Covid hit the hospital rather than afterwards.
It was a silly mistake to make and one we really do need to make sure we don't do again but even as I look at it from here it's hard to see how you could release hospital beds without creating similar issues.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
The biggest mistake by remainers was not doing what they had been told by the British people. Many of them paid for that mistake with their careers and rightfully so.
You make my point, since the soft Brexit options being floated by Letwin, Ken Clarke and others clearly delivered the referendum.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
The Super League plan wasn't about making more money for football overall, it was about the top sides taking a larger, and more predictable, share of the money.
It would have seen smaller teams in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A in the serious financial difficulties that sent Bury FC to the wall.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
Their problem was that the Remainer side was riven with factions. Labour MPs who wouldn't vote for an amendment proposed by a Tory, etc.
The Leave side was also riven with factions of course, and had we somehow ended up remaining we would now be discussing all Leave's opportunities to vote for any leave detail rather than none. But that's not where we are.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
If Jeremy Hunt had won the leadership election ... he would also have dully followed sage advice most of the time. (I say this as someone who, in the unusual counterfactual that I was a member of the Tory party back at the last leadership election, would have voted for him.) But again, he might not have diverged from the EU on vaccine procurement.
For me, the key player would have been Rory Stewart, who had worked through a previous pandemic and got the danger of rapid exponential growth. The week or so between the collapse of testing and lockdown contained an awful lot of the wave 1 infections and hence deaths. And I'm sure he would have stayed on under Hunt.
France is running at about half the UK's rate (10% vs 20%) Germany about a fifth (4% vs 20%)
The UK has similar excess rates to Spain, Italy and Poland. Even though we're probably largely done and they probably aren't, I'm not sure they are comparators to shout from the rooftops.
ETA: And now I must do some actual remunerative work. Shout at me if you see me here again.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
It is the way it has always been. The less that the hate filled messages of the left get through to voters and the polls..., the nastier the tone becomes. Its the main reason why I could never vote Labour... knowing what scum there is in a significant proportion of the party.
Somewhat over the top. We were all having a reasonable discussion about the topic at hand. It wasn't even totally Left vs Right.
If anything is over the top its about the left trying to smear Boris, something which in this case is totally unjustified. I loathe Boris but you can't pin this on him
On the tax story, I would be fine if the government had agreed to pay extra to cover the tax liability.
It's someone having special access to the PM, and having rules changed to suit them, that really grates.
Except its not possible or realistic for the government to pay extra to cover the tax liability - since the tax liability is personal and not like VAT just something slapped on top of the contract at a fixed amount. A fix as done by Rishi was the only viable solution.
Plus the only reason he had "special access to the PM" is because the PM was speaking to him trying to get ventillators into this country as a matter of urgency. It was one of the most important issues facing the nation and of course the PM was doing his job getting involved.
Do you think someone the PM is speaking to should not have access to speak to the PM? How does that work? 🤔
You think Dyson would have been unable to work out the tax liability and bill HMG for it.
I know the tax code is complicated, but it's not that complicated.
My office are all laughing their arses off about the Super League plans collapsing.
At a time of such polarisation and division in society, it's great to have everyone agree that these scumbag club chairmen trying to sell out the fans - then failing miserably when they underestimated the reaction - is the most brilliant story of the year so far!
Yes. Although I still come back to the point that few of these same fans were complaining when the rich club chairmen landed them huge glamorous signings and silverware.
The roots of this lay a long way back.
Take a club like Man City. Middling to good, decent fan base. Then a huge buyout and MASSIVE injection of overseas funding turned it into something it never was.
So why the plans for the ESL came as such a shock baffles me. The writing was on the wall and this isn't over yet. I reckon the plans will return in other forms, maybe a drip feed. These owners are big businessmen used to getting their way.
The days when fans really had a say in the running of these big clubs has, I'm afraid, long gone. Which is why I handed back my season ticket. It's no longer the game I supported from my youth, at least not at that level.
Indeed and the unreality goes on. We like the German model of fan ownership. So where are the fans going to get $1.25bn- $1,5bn to acquire half of Man Utd, for example? The idea seems to be that they should be given these shares because they wear a replica shirt.
Tbh, I think the fans could probably raise the money. It may seem crazy but ultimately the number of fans who would want to invest up to £10k in their club is quite a big number. Spurs have got a three year waiting list for season tickets which start at £1k, cast the net wide enough and I don't think it would be difficult. At least for Man United, Spurs and Arsenal where there are probably quite a few very wealthy fans who would want to own part of the club and benefit from that investment over the long term. It's almost worth creating a Spac, having the fans invest in it and then approaching the club for a buyout or reverse merger.
Why would anybody invest ten grand in something that, as it turns out, they do not own? that they have little say in developing and disposing of of as they wish?
Ten grand for 'temporary custodianship' - whatever that is. At the whim of the shouty and entitled. What a mug investment that is. Talk about I saw you coming.
Today all the investors in English football are waking up to the fact they are the victims of a gigantic con. They thought they were buying property. It turns out they were buying 'temporary custodianship'
How long is the queue of mug billionaires waiting to be taken for the ride of the century?
It's dinner party bragging rights. But ultimately of no value, interest (imo) or reward.
Like being a 1/100th member of a racing syndicate. So you might get to lead the horse up on a Friday evening at Wolverhampton but other than that?
Was that what it was sold as? I thought shares were sold in these clubs. Shares of ownership. Good luck raising serious money if what you are in fact selling all along was bragging rights.
PLus.....does 'temporary custodianship' extend to other assets at UK PLC? because if it does then good luck getting people to invest in Britain too.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
It’s the transparency of the process that makes our stattos the gold standard. The ONS have a weekly deaths publication. Been going years. Boring. Then bang! And it comes into its own.
People question our inflation, GDP and immigration stats, and fair enough - these aren’t easy to get right. But I think the ONS weekly deaths stats are pretty close to the truth.
Obviously I know very little about the rest of the world. I suspect most developed nations are being honest about this, though there may be some definitional differences.
One big plus is the independence of the ONS - that's been going for a long time, so it's an easy line to hold in the UK.
The ONS also has a lot of people who are high up in the world pecking order on statistical matters - all the academic stuff. Which helps on the independence angle - they consider themselves very much academics - if someone tried Florida like shit here, there would be mass resignations.
We are counting deaths in n number of ways - precisely because each measure has different utility -
- All deaths with COVID on the death certificate/official paperwork - 28 days - 60 days - Excess deaths
... and probably more
Note that many other countries are not running an infection survey, for example. It is easy to forget that just because "you" have something, not everyone else does.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
The biggest mistake by remainers was not doing what they had been told by the British people. Many of them paid for that mistake with their careers and rightfully so.
You make my point, since the soft Brexit options being floated by Letwin, Ken Clarke and others clearly delivered the referendum.
But despite there being a Remained majority in Parliament, Parliament voted against those options. All of them.
From memory the Lib Dems and Grieve etc rejected those options. So they got something harder inevitably instead.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
Boris was clear in his prezzer yesterday that he expects a third wave in the Autumn and was once again clear that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid, we will not eliminate it. The controversial vaccine certificate scheme was being floated as a possible way of facilitating some of that living. but not in a way that Boris couldn't tiptoe back from if it proves unpopular. So I think in this case the messaging is now pretty much aligned with reality as best as we can judge it. The BBC commented that early in the pandemic Boris had consistently focused on the upside and the possible and had used the word "alas" a lot in subsequent presentations. The consensus was that was no longer the case and he is being more cautious.
My office are all laughing their arses off about the Super League plans collapsing.
At a time of such polarisation and division in society, it's great to have everyone agree that these scumbag club chairmen trying to sell out the fans - then failing miserably when they underestimated the reaction - is the most brilliant story of the year so far!
Yes. Although I still come back to the point that few of these same fans were complaining when the rich club chairmen landed them huge glamorous signings and silverware.
The roots of this lay a long way back.
Take a club like Man City. Middling to good, decent fan base. Then a huge buyout and MASSIVE injection of overseas funding turned it into something it never was.
So why the plans for the ESL came as such a shock baffles me. The writing was on the wall and this isn't over yet. I reckon the plans will return in other forms, maybe a drip feed. These owners are big businessmen used to getting their way.
The days when fans really had a say in the running of these big clubs has, I'm afraid, long gone. Which is why I handed back my season ticket. It's no longer the game I supported from my youth, at least not at that level.
Indeed and the unreality goes on. We like the German model of fan ownership. So where are the fans going to get $1.25bn- $1,5bn to acquire half of Man Utd, for example? The idea seems to be that they should be given these shares because they wear a replica shirt.
Tbh, I think the fans could probably raise the money. It may seem crazy but ultimately the number of fans who would want to invest up to £10k in their club is quite a big number. Spurs have got a three year waiting list for season tickets which start at £1k, cast the net wide enough and I don't think it would be difficult. At least for Man United, Spurs and Arsenal where there are probably quite a few very wealthy fans who would want to own part of the club and benefit from that investment over the long term. It's almost worth creating a Spac, having the fans invest in it and then approaching the club for a buyout or reverse merger.
Why would anybody invest ten grand in something that, as it turns out, they do not own? that they have little say in developing and disposing of of as they wish?
Ten grand for 'temporary custodianship' - whatever that is. At the whim of the shouty and entitled. What a mug investment that is. Talk about I saw you coming.
Today all the investors in English football are waking up to the fact they are the victims of a gigantic con. They thought they were buying property. It turns out they were buying 'temporary custodianship'
How long is the queue of mug billionaires waiting to be taken for the ride of the century?
It's dinner party bragging rights. But ultimately of no value, interest (imo) or reward.
Like being a 1/100th member of a racing syndicate. So you might get to lead the horse up on a Friday evening at Wolverhampton but other than that?
Was that what it was sold as? I thought shares were sold in these clubs. Shares of ownership. Good luck raising serious money if what you are in fact selling all along was bragging rights.
PLus.....does 'temporary custodianship' extend to other assets at UK PLC? because if it does then good luck getting people to invest in Britain too.
Oh no they are definitely "ownership" but are of no consequence whatsoever.
You own 1/10,000th of THFC. You are an owner. But do you get to decide whether to sell Kane?
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
The biggest mistake by remainers was not doing what they had been told by the British people. Many of them paid for that mistake with their careers and rightfully so.
That is undoubtedly true, but isn't the major flaw in the referendum process itself as none of us knew what we were voting for anyway as the range of Brexit options was wide and huge. There are valid pros and cons to a very hard Brexit and a very soft Brexit which are very different.
I'm not sure how that could have been resolved. Maybe an 'in principle vote' followed by a specific vote after negotiations to confirm what is on offer.
On the tax story, I would be fine if the government had agreed to pay extra to cover the tax liability.
It's someone having special access to the PM, and having rules changed to suit them, that really grates.
Except its not possible or realistic for the government to pay extra to cover the tax liability - since the tax liability is personal and not like VAT just something slapped on top of the contract at a fixed amount. A fix as done by Rishi was the only viable solution.
Plus the only reason he had "special access to the PM" is because the PM was speaking to him trying to get ventillators into this country as a matter of urgency. It was one of the most important issues facing the nation and of course the PM was doing his job getting involved.
Do you think someone the PM is speaking to should not have access to speak to the PM? How does that work? 🤔
You think Dyson would have been unable to work out the tax liability and bill HMG for it.
I know the tax code is complicated, but it's not that complicated.
Yes I do. Because it is personal not corporate taxes in play. Dyson won't have his employees tax data.
Becoming liable for UK personal taxation mightn't just affect an engineer's earnings tax liability from earnings from Dyson but also outside earnings too.
Trying to tax and then reverse that tax would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Why not just have the clean solution of not taxing it in the first place?
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
Boris was clear in his prezzer yesterday that he expects a third wave in the Autumn and was once again clear that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid, we will not eliminate it. The controversial vaccine certificate scheme was being floated as a possible way of facilitating some of that living. but not in a way that Boris couldn't tiptoe back from if it proves unpopular. So I think in this case the messaging is now pretty much aligned with reality as best as we can judge it. The BBC commented that early in the pandemic Boris had consistently focused on the upside and the possible and had used the word "alas" a lot in subsequent presentations. The consensus was that was no longer the case and he is being more cautious.
If the vaccine programme proceeds as planned, and takeup is as good as looks likely, it isn't clear why we would have an autumn wave - at least in terms of symptoms of any seriousness.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
The biggest mistake by remainers was not doing what they had been told by the British people. Many of them paid for that mistake with their careers and rightfully so.
You make my point, since the soft Brexit options being floated by Letwin, Ken Clarke and others clearly delivered the referendum.
I don't disagree. Opposing both May and Letwin's proposals in the belief that they knew better was a terrible misjudgment and we have ended up with a stronger version of Brexit as a result. I suspect that this will ultimately find its own level and that we will end up cooperating with the EU on a range of matters again as the years go by.
Apologies for bringing this up again, but I think there's going to be a lot of falling out between fans (sadly, it's already happening with me and my lot )
From the Guardian:
Dave Ricketts: “As a season ticket holder of 47 years, he can frankly stick his apology where the sun don’t shine. As a fan base we don’t forget or forgive easily. This is meant to be a club set inside a community built on solidarity. He has tried his best to smash that to pieces. Ticket pricing, furloughing staff, trying to copyright the word Liverpool, and now this. He hung Jurgen Klopp and the players completely out to dry on Monday, as well as the fans. They need to go and quick, They will never be trusted again. However, Kudos to Jordan Henderson and the players. Jordan is a true leader and a Liverpool legend.”
Gerry Rawcliffe: “I am a Liverpool fan of nearly 60 years standing. While disgusted with Liverpool’s decision to sign up to the ESL, I think John Henry’s admission of serious error and apology to the fan base (and the playing, coaching and management staff) should be given more credit, as indeed should his rebuilding of the club from the dark days of Hicks and Gillette.”
I'm not going to be harsh on Johnson over Dyson. Corners will be cut during a pandemic. The bigger problem as with Cameron is the lack of probity in general. But he is who he is. We know what he is. A lifelong philanderer without any scruples. There isn't much point complaining. The task is for others to come up with something better.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
If Jeremy Hunt had won the leadership election ... he would also have dully followed sage advice most of the time. (I say this as someone who, in the unusual counterfactual that I was a member of the Tory party back at the last leadership election, would have voted for him.) But again, he might not have diverged from the EU on vaccine procurement.
For me, the key player would have been Rory Stewart, who had worked through a previous pandemic and got the danger of rapid exponential growth. The week or so between the collapse of testing and lockdown contained an awful lot of the wave 1 infections and hence deaths. And I'm sure he would have stayed on under Hunt.
France is running at about half the UK's rate (10% vs 20%) Germany about a fifth (4% vs 20%)
The UK has similar excess rates to Spain, Italy and Poland. Even though we're probably largely done and they probably aren't, I'm not sure they are comparators to shout from the rooftops.
ETA: And now I must do some actual remunerative work. Shout at me if you see me here again.
The inexcusable fuck up was allowing covid to be imported a second time during the summer.
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
The biggest mistake by remainers was not doing what they had been told by the British people. Many of them paid for that mistake with their careers and rightfully so.
You make my point, since the soft Brexit options being floated by Letwin, Ken Clarke and others clearly delivered the referendum.
But despite there being a Remained majority in Parliament, Parliament voted against those options. All of them.
From memory the Lib Dems and Grieve etc rejected those options. So they got something harder inevitably instead.
For sure. I criticised the LibDem MPs at the time - publicly and in one case directly
Trouble is peoples' attention span ain't that great.
Someone (anyone) helping out in a national emergency, indeed being asked to help by that nation, enquiring if this would mean financial disadvantage (it is one thing giving freely in time of need, it is another paying to do so), and then provoking a sensible rule change that applies to everyone.
Is fine.
Tax. Texts. Billionaire. Chums. Sleaze.
Is what many will take from it.
If nothing else it proves what a twat BoJo is as he should have outsourced this including the comms to No.23 at the Treasury who would have given the protocol in a dispassionate manner.
Plus who leaked the texts?!
That’s what I don’t understand.
Neither Boris or Dyson look good as a result. But who else had access - the Treasury?
I'm not sure how that could have been resolved. Maybe an 'in principle vote' followed by a specific vote after negotiations to confirm what is on offer.
Which is what Brexiteers this morning are advocating for Indy, cos they know if it had been offered for Brexit we would still be in the EU...
NI opening up to 35-39 shortly. Interestingly it's behind the rest of the UK on first doses. Indicates demand a bit weaker there than elsewhere I think ?
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
The reason we have the PM we do now, is because the hardcore Remoaners couldn't bring themselves to vote for Mrs May's deal.
A tricky one for me there Sandpit because you are absolutely right, but I am a Remoaner and if I had been an MP I would not have voted for May's deal.
It's not (just) about May's deal - when Letwin was doing his best to get Parliament to take over the agenda to push forward compromise options like CM2 or CU, the government refused to participate and most of the remainers voted against everything except a second vote. Whilst the path from a successful Letwin option through to a different outcome wouldn't have been a smooth one, it would have opened paths to a range of alternative universes - including one where the government changed tack and itself went for a softer path, rather than sit and be humiliated as backbenchers took over the agenda.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
The biggest mistake by remainers was not doing what they had been told by the British people. Many of them paid for that mistake with their careers and rightfully so.
That is undoubtedly true, but isn't the major flaw in the referendum process itself as none of us knew what we were voting for anyway as the range of Brexit options was wide and huge. There are valid pros and cons to a very hard Brexit and a very soft Brexit which are very different.
I'm not sure how that could have been resolved. Maybe an 'in principle vote' followed by a specific vote after negotiations to confirm what is on offer.
The way the EU have behaved towards us post Brexit tells a lot about their snakery. Being in or out largely depends if you felt it was better being on the outside pissing in or on the inside pissing out. I voted Remain, but the perfidious EU makes me feel that whatever the cost now, stay out.
I think you are wrong here RP just for a change. Remember I am a LD not a Tory so I can't be put in that bracket.
Having said that I do accept your point re some Tories reaction. To Charles' credit he engaged in debate with you and I agree with him. Mark however just resorted to the frequent argument that Labour are at it as well, as if that is any sort of defence.
Perhaps - wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. I don't think that I am though for two reasons: 1 Dyson had no problem paying the £20m cost in his failed ventilator design "from his own deep pockets". SO a small amount to compensate staff / him for tax was well within the ability of his "deep pockets" to cover 2 After last week's lobbying scandal, Downing Street put it out that the PM was "shocked" over the behavious of civil servants. Yet here he is directly caught in a scandal where the rules governing how ministers behave - transparent, no conflict of interest, out in the open - has been breached.
Politically nothing will happen because he is untouchable. It doesn't make the open sewer flowing through government right though.
I think the point which has been made on here by @Charles and others is that there is nothing in this story to suggest Boris has done anything wrong in his dealing with Dyson
There are certainly legitimate issues to attack Boris on, but it is sensible for his critics to choose the correct story rather than everything Boris does is a 'gotcha' moment
Before I get boring I will move on. If nothing else it is food for thought for "Laura is a Tory like the rest of the BBC" critics. Remember that this is a BBC scoop not something that I have picked up off Skwarkbox. Perhaps Kuenssberg has completely misread the ministerial code when reporting this latest outrage? Perhaps not.
The problem with *any* story that isn't football at the moment is that very few people will pay attention. It truly is a good week to bury bad news.
To answer @Charles above perhaps the leak has been deliberately let out now so that it gets buried?
This leak will also be buried I expect. The 'consultation' ends in ... May (ha ha.)
And if the consultation ends in May you need someone to do the work.
Better to have someone lined up as an internal secondment for £30,000 rather than paying a firm £100,000+ to do so.
And that project covers 2 different passports, an internal one (which is the bone of contention) and the international one (which is probably unavoidable so needs to be implemented in an easy to implement way).
Both of debatable utility for a disease which has killed fewer/same people vs. malaria and to which most of the world's population is now immune (antibodies or T cells, look them up).
Never proposed after the 1957 or 1968 flu pandemics. Both quite nasty but as a matter of policy normal life went on. Vaccines were never compulsory.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
Boris was clear in his prezzer yesterday that he expects a third wave in the Autumn and was once again clear that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid, we will not eliminate it. The controversial vaccine certificate scheme was being floated as a possible way of facilitating some of that living. but not in a way that Boris couldn't tiptoe back from if it proves unpopular. So I think in this case the messaging is now pretty much aligned with reality as best as we can judge it. The BBC commented that early in the pandemic Boris had consistently focused on the upside and the possible and had used the word "alas" a lot in subsequent presentations. The consensus was that was no longer the case and he is being more cautious.
If the vaccine programme proceeds as planned, and takeup is as good as looks likely, it isn't clear why we would have an autumn wave - at least in terms of symptoms of any seriousness.
He's still trying to maximise vaccination take-up by keeping his finger on the fear button.
Would it have been better that we didn’t make this change and he didn’t do the work to try and help out in the pandemic?
Oh come off it! You get some work abroad. You pay the taxes due. Why should you expect to be excused the obligation to pay tax just because it is an emergency?
And if this is a valid excuse, does it apply to anyone else - say, doctors and nurses coming here to help out? Do they get not to pay tax too?
Dyson made a commercial decision to move his operations abroad. That doubtless had benefits for him and his staff. But it also has consequences and one of those is that you don't get the same advantages that you would have if you'd remained a British tax resident.
What grates is not the government doing whatever necessary to get much needed equipment. It may well make sense to make it easy for ventilator manufacturers to provide equipment in the U.K. No, it's the sense of entitlement in Dyson's request - especially from a company with no experience whatsoever in making this equipment - the "wanting cake and eating it" approach and the continuing impression that what counts with this government is personal connection rather than any objective standards or principles such as, ooh, I don't know, the tax laws applying equally to all.
Boris was clear in his prezzer yesterday that he expects a third wave in the Autumn and was once again clear that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid, we will not eliminate it. The controversial vaccine certificate scheme was being floated as a possible way of facilitating some of that living. but not in a way that Boris couldn't tiptoe back from if it proves unpopular. So I think in this case the messaging is now pretty much aligned with reality as best as we can judge it. The BBC commented that early in the pandemic Boris had consistently focused on the upside and the possible and had used the word "alas" a lot in subsequent presentations. The consensus was that was no longer the case and he is being more cautious.
The scientists seem clear that Covid isn't going to miraculously disappear on 21st June as billed. When restrictions carry on an awful lot of people who take the PM at face value (helped along by the friendly press) are going to be mightily pissed off.
We're 13 months into this, and I wouldn't be surprised if another year down the line we aren't still enjoying Covid restrictions of some kind. I hope not, but hope isn't enough, nor is mass vaccination of the UK population against the existing strain.
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
Text to the PM not about manufacturing, or requirements, or distribution, or lead times.
It's about Tax
It's about the personal tax liability of his employees who should not be penalized for volunteering to relocate to the UK temporarily to help out.
You lost me (and most of the nation) at "personal tax liability"...
Oh I know ... if you're explaining you're losing ... but the point still needs to be made by someone even if our media is either too stupid, too lazy or too seduced by gotcha journalism to do its job properly.
I think you are wrong here RP just for a change. Remember I am a LD not a Tory so I can't be put in that bracket.
Having said that I do accept your point re some Tories reaction. To Charles' credit he engaged in debate with you and I agree with him. Mark however just resorted to the frequent argument that Labour are at it as well, as if that is any sort of defence.
Perhaps - wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. I don't think that I am though for two reasons: 1 Dyson had no problem paying the £20m cost in his failed ventilator design "from his own deep pockets". SO a small amount to compensate staff / him for tax was well within the ability of his "deep pockets" to cover 2 After last week's lobbying scandal, Downing Street put it out that the PM was "shocked" over the behavious of civil servants. Yet here he is directly caught in a scandal where the rules governing how ministers behave - transparent, no conflict of interest, out in the open - has been breached.
Politically nothing will happen because he is untouchable. It doesn't make the open sewer flowing through government right though.
I think the point which has been made on here by @Charles and others is that there is nothing in this story to suggest Boris has done anything wrong in his dealing with Dyson
There are certainly legitimate issues to attack Boris on, but it is sensible for his critics to choose the correct story rather than everything Boris does is a 'gotcha' moment
Before I get boring I will move on. If nothing else it is food for thought for "Laura is a Tory like the rest of the BBC" critics. Remember that this is a BBC scoop not something that I have picked up off Skwarkbox. Perhaps Kuenssberg has completely misread the ministerial code when reporting this latest outrage? Perhaps not.
The problem with *any* story that isn't football at the moment is that very few people will pay attention. It truly is a good week to bury bad news.
To answer @Charles above perhaps the leak has been deliberately let out now so that it gets buried?
This leak will also be buried I expect. The 'consultation' ends in ... May (ha ha.)
And if the consultation ends in May you need someone to do the work.
Better to have someone lined up as an internal secondment for £30,000 rather than paying a firm £100,000+ to do so.
And that project covers 2 different passports, an internal one (which is the bone of contention) and the international one (which is probably unavoidable so needs to be implemented in an easy to implement way).
Both of debatable utility for a disease which has killed fewer/same people vs. malaria and to which most of the world's population is now immune (antibodies or T cells, look them up).
Never proposed after the 1957 or 1968 flu pandemics. Both quite nasty but as a matter of policy normal life went on. Vaccines were never compulsory.
I don't remember international travel being a daily occurrence in 1968. The world has moved on, as has the speed a disease or disease variant can spread across the world.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
Boris was clear in his prezzer yesterday that he expects a third wave in the Autumn and was once again clear that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid, we will not eliminate it. The controversial vaccine certificate scheme was being floated as a possible way of facilitating some of that living. but not in a way that Boris couldn't tiptoe back from if it proves unpopular. So I think in this case the messaging is now pretty much aligned with reality as best as we can judge it. The BBC commented that early in the pandemic Boris had consistently focused on the upside and the possible and had used the word "alas" a lot in subsequent presentations. The consensus was that was no longer the case and he is being more cautious.
If the vaccine programme proceeds as planned, and takeup is as good as looks likely, it isn't clear why we would have an autumn wave - at least in terms of symptoms of any seriousness.
He's still trying to maximise vaccination take-up by keeping his finger on the fear button.
Of course, but PB'ers are replaying the same tune as if it is fact.
Applying some thought before repeating anything that comes from the mouth of our current PM would seem sensible, whatever your politics.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
It is the way it has always been. The less that the hate filled messages of the left get through to voters and the polls..., the nastier the tone becomes. Its the main reason why I could never vote Labour... knowing what scum there is in a significant proportion of the party.
Somewhat over the top. We were all having a reasonable discussion about the topic at hand. It wasn't even totally Left vs Right.
If anything is over the top its about the left trying to smear Boris, something which in this case is totally unjustified. I loathe Boris but you can't pin this on him
I think you have demonstrated why your comments were over the top - I started the discussion by disagreeing with RP and I was supporting Boris's actions! It was a sensible discussion from those from both the right and left in most part.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
Boris was clear in his prezzer yesterday that he expects a third wave in the Autumn and was once again clear that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid, we will not eliminate it. The controversial vaccine certificate scheme was being floated as a possible way of facilitating some of that living. but not in a way that Boris couldn't tiptoe back from if it proves unpopular. So I think in this case the messaging is now pretty much aligned with reality as best as we can judge it. The BBC commented that early in the pandemic Boris had consistently focused on the upside and the possible and had used the word "alas" a lot in subsequent presentations. The consensus was that was no longer the case and he is being more cautious.
If the vaccine programme proceeds as planned, and takeup is as good as looks likely, it isn't clear why we would have an autumn wave - at least in terms of symptoms of any seriousness.
Given the natural R number for COVID, it will spread through the unvaccinated like a chainsaw through cheese.
The vaccines are very defective at preventing serious disease, but they *seem* to be less effective at preventing transmission - it may well be that the vaccines are, in effect, turning COVID into the Flu. Something that is not dangerous to the vaccinated, but still spreads very easily.
If the transmission continues, and COVID doesn't die out from herd immunity, then the deaths/hospitalisations will be low to non-existent among the vaccinated, but there will be a mini-epidemic among the unvaccinated.
Given the composition of the group that doesn't *want* to be vaccinated.... that is going to produce some ugly headlines, I think.
It is going to be an unimaginably massive story - but based on 99.9999% speculation. 24 hour rolling news will be mental. "Where is this life in the Universe? Are they more like Alien - or Predator? What will this news do to house prices? We go over now to Meghan Markle for an in-depth interview on what it means for the Royal family....."
We are going to lose or shit. Be a good time to bury bad news though...
Things we can't quite explain isn't really prove of aliens from elsewhere...
That would require metals or compounds no one has a clue how to make or organic matter that has little to do with us.
If you know of a metal or compound that can withstand 150Gs in earth’s atmosphere, then there’s a world of materials scientists that would like to hear from you.
I have some on my desk: iron meteorites do that all the time.
Do meteorites really decelerate at that level without going poot?
Alternatively, maybe you can concoct a counterfactual (note: you can't) whereby Labour had managed to have a non-insane leader like, say, Kier Starmer ending up in charge of the country.
No, but you can absolutely concoct a counterfactual where a Tory other than BoZo won the leadership election, or one where BoZo was removed by a Tory party that cared about the fact he is a Clown.
There were other paths less disastrous than the one the fanbois continue to cheer.
If Jeremy Hunt had won the leadership election ... he would also have dully followed sage advice most of the time. (I say this as someone who, in the unusual counterfactual that I was a member of the Tory party back at the last leadership election, would have voted for him.) But again, he might not have diverged from the EU on vaccine procurement.
For me, the key player would have been Rory Stewart, who had worked through a previous pandemic and got the danger of rapid exponential growth. The week or so between the collapse of testing and lockdown contained an awful lot of the wave 1 infections and hence deaths. And I'm sure he would have stayed on under Hunt.
France is running at about half the UK's rate (10% vs 20%) Germany about a fifth (4% vs 20%)
The UK has similar excess rates to Spain, Italy and Poland. Even though we're probably largely done and they probably aren't, I'm not sure they are comparators to shout from the rooftops.
ETA: And now I must do some actual remunerative work. Shout at me if you see me here again.
The inexcusable fuck up was allowing covid to be imported a second time during the summer.
And this answers @IanB2 's question above. We will have a 3rd wave because a new mutation of the pox gets imported from countries not even close to having mass vaccination. At the moment the issue has been that we have the doors wide open to let people fly in with mutant pox. But in a month or so's time we're going to allow people to fly abroad on holibobs, and that was a great way of reimporting it last time.
I don't see that the general populace is going to allow the current restrictions to continue much longer - they want a holiday. But that just means them coming back again later.
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
Why aren't they? That would be #classicjohnson.
Watch the money flood out of English football now.
And watch Lineker and co wailing then about where all the investors have gone......wah wah.
Well you and those idiots Johnson and Dowden turned their assets into 'temporary custodianship'.
How many should he have saved? I see nowhere comparable where no one has died.
Our deaths figure is likely to be at the worse end of the table, simply because of the big mistake made with care homes back at the beginning of the crisis. But on cases, we're now mid table and if these third waves pick up around the world, could end up in the better half of the statistics. Whereas our headstart on vaccine supply gave us a one-off advantage, it looks like it'll be our very low levels of vaccine hesitancy, compared to both the US and Europe, that could prove decisive.
I also think we have been remarkably 'honest' in our deaths reporting. Excess deaths tells a different story. I am not claiming we have done ''well' whatever that means. We have made enormous wrong calls, not least the care homes as you say (although I think that partly lies at the hands of hospitals trying to clear the decks in advance, trying to avoid what they had seen from Italy). The issue with the inevitable inquiry will be that people have already made up their minds.
I'm always sceptical when it comes to these claims that our data is somehow better. Reminds me of an M&S advert, "it's not just data, but British data...". Of course there are countries where their figures are likely suspect, but we fool ourselves if we imagine that other developed nations aren't capable of managing their statistics as well as we are. You see the same coming from Americans, and it isn't credible from them either.
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
It is better, I do this for a living and the ONS regularly creates rods for its (our) own back by going over and above what is necessary. GDP is another area, on the internationally comparable measure the UK had a -4.8% economic contraction, under the ONS reported fogure it was -9.8%, there's literally no need for the latter figure, it's no more accurate than the former just calculated differently and attempts to measure the public sector with output factors rather than inputs like the rest of the word does it while also using the index method of measurement rather than what every single other country does which compares the absolute number to last year's absolute number
Ultimately it makes no difference as we can see on the ground the economy is doing just fine and bouncing back nicely. It just creates a really unnecessary narrative of the UK being the worst in certain measures when the reality is that we just use unnecessarily tough ones. It's classic civil service naivete.
Bottom line is that the care home mistake was a big one that cost us a lot of lives. A mistake also made by Belgium and the Netherlands, which is little consolation. Whatever the final score, we could have saved lives by testing people before pushing them from hospital back into care, and by equipping our care homes more effectively to face the pandemic from the off.
Everything else is likely noise - for sure, decisions like the f**k up over Christmas, the single day back at schools in January, or with travel at various times, almost certainly pushed up our total case numbers and therefore impacted on deaths, but then similar misjudgements were being made by countries all over the world, and you'll never see the difference in outcome in the data, rough and ready as it is. If I were conducting the inquiry I'd be particularly critical where we have been slow to learn, or indeed willingly made the same mistake twice. Which we've done several times.
I think I agree with pretty much all this, but I do echo the reservations about other countries' data. I've spent my career analysing data coming out of a variety of sources, and UK and US companies and organisations just do produce more reliable information than almost anywhere else. I don't know whether it's due to culture, or competence, or what, but pretty much everywhere in Europe (maybe excluding Germany/Austria/Switzerland) is at least one order of magnitude worse. France is particularly bad, and with developing countries (I'm thinking of Latin America specifically) data quality is just an accepted limitation that has to be priced in because you know you aren't getting the full picture
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
Boris was clear in his prezzer yesterday that he expects a third wave in the Autumn and was once again clear that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid, we will not eliminate it. The controversial vaccine certificate scheme was being floated as a possible way of facilitating some of that living. but not in a way that Boris couldn't tiptoe back from if it proves unpopular. So I think in this case the messaging is now pretty much aligned with reality as best as we can judge it. The BBC commented that early in the pandemic Boris had consistently focused on the upside and the possible and had used the word "alas" a lot in subsequent presentations. The consensus was that was no longer the case and he is being more cautious.
If the vaccine programme proceeds as planned, and takeup is as good as looks likely, it isn't clear why we would have an autumn wave - at least in terms of symptoms of any seriousness.
Given the natural R number for COVID, it will spread through the unvaccinated like a chainsaw through cheese.
The vaccines are very defective at preventing serious disease, but they *seem* to be less effective at preventing transmission - it may well be that the vaccines are, in effect, turning COVID into the Flu. Something that is not dangerous to the vaccinated, but still spreads very easily.
If the transmission continues, and COVID doesn't die out from herd immunity, then the deaths/hospitalisations will be low to non-existent among the vaccinated, but there will be a mini-epidemic among the unvaccinated.
Given the composition of the group that doesn't *want* to be vaccinated.... that is going to produce some ugly headlines, I think.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
It is the way it has always been. The less that the hate filled messages of the left get through to voters and the polls..., the nastier the tone becomes. Its the main reason why I could never vote Labour... knowing what scum there is in a significant proportion of the party.
Somewhat over the top. We were all having a reasonable discussion about the topic at hand. It wasn't even totally Left vs Right.
If anything is over the top its about the left trying to smear Boris, something which in this case is totally unjustified. I loathe Boris but you can't pin this on him
I think you have demonstrated why your comments were over the top - I started the discussion by disagreeing with RP and I was supporting Boris's actions! It was a sensible discussion from those from both the right and left in most part.
Remember that the identity of "the left trying to smear Boris" is that well known Corbynite Laura Kuenssberg and whomever it was inside Downing Street who leaked it to her.
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
Why aren't they? That would be #classicjohnson.
At least promise it - and then don't carry out the promise.
We are commenting on an obscure internet blog, not texting Cabinet Ministers...
The only point in your posts is to attack Boris while at the same time he grows in popularity
It must be very annoying
Of course Johnson grows in popularity. Everything this government says or does has but one objective - into crease Johnson's personal popularity.
The rights and wrongs of policy decisions do not matter in the slightest. Johnson is concerned with only one person. And his image.
That is no way to run a country.
It is an absolute outrage. Boris keeps getting the big decisions right and what he does is popular leaving those who have an irrational hatred of the man gnashing their teeth in despair. Surely there has to be an ECHR angle to this? Its not fair that people like @Scott_xP and @RochdalePioneers are reduced to complaining about a tax break given to engineers coming to this country to save lives. Its just demeaning for them. Something must be done.
Except, there is short term long term...
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
Boris was clear in his prezzer yesterday that he expects a third wave in the Autumn and was once again clear that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid, we will not eliminate it. The controversial vaccine certificate scheme was being floated as a possible way of facilitating some of that living. but not in a way that Boris couldn't tiptoe back from if it proves unpopular. So I think in this case the messaging is now pretty much aligned with reality as best as we can judge it. The BBC commented that early in the pandemic Boris had consistently focused on the upside and the possible and had used the word "alas" a lot in subsequent presentations. The consensus was that was no longer the case and he is being more cautious.
If the vaccine programme proceeds as planned, and takeup is as good as looks likely, it isn't clear why we would have an autumn wave - at least in terms of symptoms of any seriousness.
Given the natural R number for COVID, it will spread through the unvaccinated like a chainsaw through cheese.
The vaccines are very defective at preventing serious disease, but they *seem* to be less effective at preventing transmission - it may well be that the vaccines are, in effect, turning COVID into the Flu. Something that is not dangerous to the vaccinated, but still spreads very easily.
If the transmission continues, and COVID doesn't die out from herd immunity, then the deaths/hospitalisations will be low to non-existent among the vaccinated, but there will be a mini-epidemic among the unvaccinated.
Given the composition of the group that doesn't *want* to be vaccinated.... that is going to produce some ugly headlines, I think.
'defective' is surely a typo?!?
In the UK we're talking about a tiny percentage, surely - well below the level that would threaten herd immunity
Remember that the identity of "the left trying to smear Boris" is that well known Corbynite Laura Kuenssberg and whomever it was inside Downing Street who leaked it to her.
Comments
You can challenge our data on the grounds that we're counting people with positive tests during the four weeks prior, but not people who die with obvious symptoms but no test, or people who die after the 28 days.
Excess deaths isn't a gold standard because there are so many other factors, including the age profile of the population and the effect of lockdown, particularly travel restrictions reducing deaths on the road.
If you look at the latter which is the only valid international comparison they're already not at the worst end of the table. There are already more than 20 countries with more excess deaths than the UK and the fact the pandemic is over here but not elsewhere means that the number is increasing all the time.
To be honest I wish the number wasn't increasing all the time. Because its a tragedy that other countries are still recording deaths, we should take no schadenfreude on that. But its a fact, being one of the first nations to end the pandemic rapidly means that when all is said and done the butcher's bill in the UK will be mid-table at most.
Could it have been better? Perhaps. Could it have been worse? Yes, much worse.
(Well, the first part about the EU procurement looking relatively good could have been true)
If you let debenture holders buy match day tickets and hospitality the day before they otherwise go on sale, there will be plenty of interest.
Not going to happen.
I see this a lot when looking at "Assets of Community Value" which are places named by the community and over which they have a right to find a buyer if the owner wants to sell (eg. a historic pub, or some other building). It's all very well saying we can't sell this to the developers but the alternative is "the community" coming together to raise finance to run said asset (pub, library, youth centre). They are very rare - and usually only pubs work - for that reason.
But it is part of a wider narrative that may come to haunt the government. It's the drip-drip of stories about privileged access to senior government figures that most individuals and businesses don't have, the drip-drip of stories about contracts that have been signed without full and timely accountability, and the drip-drip of stories about cronyism.
So far, such drip-drip stories have not damaged the government at all; quite the reverse, apparently. But I'm not sure that will last once we return to more normal non-Covid times.
Ultimately it makes no difference as we can see on the ground the economy is doing just fine and bouncing back nicely. It just creates a really unnecessary narrative of the UK being the worst in certain measures when the reality is that we just use unnecessarily tough ones. It's classic civil service naivete.
You could argue that there's a conformist streak in our national character - but very clearly also a non-conformist/individualistic one, and I doubt there's anything particularly unique about the British in our nature that explains why we've all gone along with the vaccine programme.
A part of the explanation must lie with our media (and the information they have received from SAGE and government) - despite all the criticism of the British media, particularly early in the crisis, it's where most people got their information from, and our population seems relatively free of the quackery that has spooked people elsewhere, especially the rubbish circulating in the US.
There were plenty of anecdotal reports of people initially saying they would refuse the vaccine - I know a couple myself - who ended up meekly going along with it. Perhaps the way the storyline played out in the UK, with our relative success in getting vaccines out and running very early - helped persuade people that it was a good thing? Yet the US hasn't been far behind us (certainly ahead of most of the world) and yet many of their states are already running into vaccine reluctance, only just having reached half the population.
The most likely explanation ISTM is that the biggest single factor is the level-headed, objective and neutral coverage and worldwide perspective of our very own BBC. In particular we have an advantage over the Americans in that our media does take a global view and I bet Brits are a lot better informed about how things played out in other countries than are Americans. We are also helped by the depth and breadth of trust we have in the NHS.
Also the fact that politics hasn't interfered, and the vaccine programme hasn't become politicised in the way that it has in the US.
"The over-35s are being offered the vaccine because of uptake among the over-40s.
"We know we have vaccinated many of them - over 120,000 - but what we have always found is that the enthusiasts come through pretty immediately, hovering over the booking line and others take a bit longer so we know those tend to be strung out over the number of weeks," she said.
She said each cohort had had a similar pattern."
Hmmm.... sounds like a polite way of saying low uptake
But excess deaths is the only measurement that records how many people have actually died. No other measure does that. The Italians have considerably more people who have actually died than we have - and we have seen scenes of horror on TV there that never occurred in the UK which backs up that - yet supposedly according to some rankings they had fewer deaths than us? It was never true and the figures show that.
It may remind you of an M&S advert but quite frankly when it comes to data the UK is M&S, we're not Aldi. The UK doesn't get everything right, but when it comes to the honesty and integrity of our data it is much better than other nations - and that applies whether red or blue are in office.
It my be more Boris luck that he can blame previous stuff on Cameron or covid.
https://order-order.com/2021/04/20/exclusive-job-ad-confirms-digital-and-non-digital-covid-passports-in-development/
I commented on it at the time, as I'm sure others did. If you've got hardcore opponents of the EU and hardcore advocates of the EU voting the same way, somebody's buggering up their voting.
Better to have someone lined up as an internal secondment for £30,000 rather than paying a firm £100,000+ to do so.
And that project covers 2 different passports, an internal one (which is the bone of contention) and the international one (which is probably unavoidable so needs to be implemented in an easy to implement way).
There will be many other similar horror stories around that don't affect journalists married to TV presenters, which we won't hear as much about. There are a handful of people who have been in the ICU for a year.
Gordon Brown knew nothing about the economy other than just throwing more and more money at the public sector, with rather little to show for it in output, until eventually the money ran out. After that I'd far rather have output than input measured on a standard basis.
While Osborne spent years constraining the funds available but not seeing anywhere near as much reduction in output than the cut to expenditure. Again better to get output measured than input there too.
Even if the 'price' for that is getting an artificially high contraction figure last year and an artificially high rebound figure this year. Its better that we measure things honestly rather than "reward" Chancellors by saying they've done a good job getting growth when all they've done is spend more money but with nothing to show for it.
It's someone having special access to the PM, and having rules changed to suit them, that really grates.
That morning when the press coverage headlined on parliament voting against everything was the moment we got landed with hard Brexit, and the moment when the reputation of the last parliament self-destructed.
The biggest mistake by the remainers wasn't refusing to back May but refusing to back Letwin.
The problem is that other stories won't be as obvious.
Of a far greater concern to me would be where / how have the text messages got to a journalist and what else do they have?
People question our inflation, GDP and immigration stats, and fair enough - these aren’t easy to get right. But I think the ONS weekly deaths stats are pretty close to the truth.
Obviously I know very little about the rest of the world. I suspect most developed nations are being honest about this, though there may be some definitional differences.
Ten grand for 'temporary custodianship' - whatever that is. At the whim of the shouty and entitled. What a mug investment that is. Talk about I saw you coming.
Today all the investors in English football are waking up to the fact they are the victims of a gigantic con. They thought they were buying property. It turns out they were buying 'temporary custodianship'
How long is the queue of mug billionaires waiting to be taken for the ride of the century?
1. As the government are not going to underwrite the huge debt football is now in, torpedoing footballs best money making schemes out of that debt is a courageous political decision.
2. Don’t you feel at all there is going to be a third wave of Covid here, on the basis that’s how it works, it comes and goes in waves, places that don’t even lock down it flows and ebbs over them - as it ebbs we might be fooling ourselves it’s something we done, fooling ourselves we won’t get it bad again?
If scientifically I am right, the political message has to align with it? Which it isn’t.
Everything else is likely noise - for sure, decisions like the f**k up over Christmas, the single day back at schools in January, or with travel at various times, almost certainly pushed up our total case numbers and therefore impacted on deaths, but then similar misjudgements were being made by countries all over the world, and you'll never see the difference in outcome in the data, rough and ready as it is. If I were conducting the inquiry I'd be particularly critical where we have been slow to learn, or indeed willingly made the same mistake twice. Which we've done several times.
I do though, wonder about our stats a little; I would like to have seen, along with the 'deaths within' 28 days figures, a baseline of daily average deaths 2015-19 or something like that. I suspect that that is now below the norm.
Plus the only reason he had "special access to the PM" is because the PM was speaking to him trying to get ventillators into this country as a matter of urgency. It was one of the most important issues facing the nation and of course the PM was doing his job getting involved.
Do you think someone the PM is speaking to should not have access to speak to the PM? How does that work? 🤔
Problem for pro-EU MPs is that the alternative to May's deal wasn't rejoining the EU. It was no deal or, as it turned out, a harder/less close deal.
If you remove something you don't like but the alternative is worse, it's the act of a fool.
As a valediction to the saga, I rather like this essay by Dominic Sandbrook (who has done remarkably well to craft something so elegant so quickly, even if it is largely material already written, tweaked slightly to reflect the developments of the last 10 hours) - rather reflects the arguments @Leon has been making as the imbroglio thundered on: https://unherd.com/2021/04/football-and-the-decline-of-englishness/
Like being a 1/100th member of a racing syndicate. So you might get to lead the horse up on a Friday evening at Wolverhampton but other than that?
In this country we have an elected dictatorship normally. For a short period we actually had a parliament that genuinely debated stuff with the potential for compromise and minds being changed and new ideas.. Unfortunately is was such a radical change the MPs buggered it up.
Great TV though.
Nevertheless I know two people who back last year were adamant they weren't going to have the vaccine - one a recovered cancer patient - and yet they both have, and I've seen other PB'ers recount similar stories. Something in the way the panedemic has played out, and been reported, has swung those Brits in line, when in both the US and EU many of the antis appear to be digging in.
It was a silly mistake to make and one we really do need to make sure we don't do again but even as I look at it from here it's hard to see how you could release hospital beds without creating similar issues.
It would have seen smaller teams in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A in the serious financial difficulties that sent Bury FC to the wall.
The Leave side was also riven with factions of course, and had we somehow ended up remaining we would now be discussing all Leave's opportunities to vote for any leave detail rather than none. But that's not where we are.
And if we take the excess deaths data from the FT tracker,
https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938
France is running at about half the UK's rate (10% vs 20%)
Germany about a fifth (4% vs 20%)
The UK has similar excess rates to Spain, Italy and Poland. Even though we're probably largely done and they probably aren't, I'm not sure they are comparators to shout from the rooftops.
ETA: And now I must do some actual remunerative work. Shout at me if you see me here again.
I know the tax code is complicated, but it's not that complicated.
PLus.....does 'temporary custodianship' extend to other assets at UK PLC? because if it does then good luck getting people to invest in Britain too.
The ONS also has a lot of people who are high up in the world pecking order on statistical matters - all the academic stuff. Which helps on the independence angle - they consider themselves very much academics - if someone tried Florida like shit here, there would be mass resignations.
We are counting deaths in n number of ways - precisely because each measure has different utility -
- All deaths with COVID on the death certificate/official paperwork
- 28 days
- 60 days
- Excess deaths
... and probably more
Note that many other countries are not running an infection survey, for example. It is easy to forget that just because "you" have something, not everyone else does.
From memory the Lib Dems and Grieve etc rejected those options. So they got something harder inevitably instead.
You own 1/10,000th of THFC. You are an owner. But do you get to decide whether to sell Kane?
I'm not sure how that could have been resolved. Maybe an 'in principle vote' followed by a specific vote after negotiations to confirm what is on offer.
Becoming liable for UK personal taxation mightn't just affect an engineer's earnings tax liability from earnings from Dyson but also outside earnings too.
Trying to tax and then reverse that tax would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Why not just have the clean solution of not taxing it in the first place?
From the Guardian:
Dave Ricketts: “As a season ticket holder of 47 years, he can frankly stick his apology where the sun don’t shine. As a fan base we don’t forget or forgive easily. This is meant to be a club set inside a community built on solidarity. He has tried his best to smash that to pieces. Ticket pricing, furloughing staff, trying to copyright the word Liverpool, and now this. He hung Jurgen Klopp and the players completely out to dry on Monday, as well as the fans. They need to go and quick, They will never be trusted again. However, Kudos to Jordan Henderson and the players. Jordan is a true leader and a Liverpool legend.”
Gerry Rawcliffe: “I am a Liverpool fan of nearly 60 years standing. While disgusted with Liverpool’s decision to sign up to the ESL, I think John Henry’s admission of serious error and apology to the fan base (and the playing, coaching and management staff) should be given more credit, as indeed should his rebuilding of the club from the dark days of Hicks and Gillette.”
Never proposed after the 1957 or 1968 flu pandemics. Both quite nasty but as a matter of policy normal life went on. Vaccines were never compulsory.
And if this is a valid excuse, does it apply to anyone else - say, doctors and nurses coming here to help out? Do they get not to pay tax too?
Dyson made a commercial decision to move his operations abroad. That doubtless had benefits for him and his staff. But it also has consequences and one of those is that you don't get the same advantages that you would have if you'd remained a British tax resident.
What grates is not the government doing whatever necessary to get much needed equipment. It may well make sense to make it easy for ventilator manufacturers to provide equipment in the U.K. No, it's the sense of entitlement in Dyson's request - especially from a company with no experience whatsoever in making this equipment - the "wanting cake and eating it" approach and the continuing impression that what counts with this government is personal connection rather than any objective standards or principles such as, ooh, I don't know, the tax laws applying equally to all.
We're 13 months into this, and I wouldn't be surprised if another year down the line we aren't still enjoying Covid restrictions of some kind. I hope not, but hope isn't enough, nor is mass vaccination of the UK population against the existing strain.
Applying some thought before repeating anything that comes from the mouth of our current PM would seem sensible, whatever your politics.
I'm happy to put this matter behind us now. FSG still have my respect, they made a mistake and they've apologised.
The vaccines are very defective at preventing serious disease, but they *seem* to be less effective at preventing transmission - it may well be that the vaccines are, in effect, turning COVID into the Flu. Something that is not dangerous to the vaccinated, but still spreads very easily.
If the transmission continues, and COVID doesn't die out from herd immunity, then the deaths/hospitalisations will be low to non-existent among the vaccinated, but there will be a mini-epidemic among the unvaccinated.
Given the composition of the group that doesn't *want* to be vaccinated.... that is going to produce some ugly headlines, I think.
I don't see that the general populace is going to allow the current restrictions to continue much longer - they want a holiday. But that just means them coming back again later.
And watch Lineker and co wailing then about where all the investors have gone......wah wah.
Well you and those idiots Johnson and Dowden turned their assets into 'temporary custodianship'.
Win win for Johnson. Ehem.....
In the UK we're talking about a tiny percentage, surely - well below the level that would threaten herd immunity