An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Mightn't it include people who are already in hospital, that acquire the infection while in hospital?
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
"Four of them were hospitalized"... with non-severe illness. Which indicates precautionary measures; they weren't taking any chances with the seriously elderly and highly vulnerable.
Whatever causes Long Covid will almost certainly be seriously hampered by vaccinations that protect against other levels of illness. Your immune system is ramped up and fully prepared for it.
I'm convinced that for some (not all) long covid will turn out to be functional neuronal disorders (FND). Real conditions, just not driven by physical effects of the virus. Some absolutely will have physical damage - heart, lungs etc. But I am hearing many cases that sound so much like FND, and not hard to understand why - the awful stress of this year on people. Some will not like the diagnosis, and I may be very wrong, but that's my take on this. A colleague knows of a young girl near Bristol who woke up paralyzed recently. Not physical damage, a history of being bullied, and I imagine covid stress too. Diagnosed as FND, and still struggling.
How do you know "not driven by physical effects of the virus" ? FND is something of a catch all term for ill explained neuronal effects. Even clear physical post viral effects like cardiomyopathy have until quite recently been difficult to diagnose and ill explained.
One of the interesting things about Covid is the sheer number of patients with conditions like "brain fog". I think it's reasonably likely that we'll start to explain some of the mechanisms responsible.
I'll hold my hands and and admit that I don't know and can't know that they are not driven by physical effects of the virus. We may very well come to explain ALL long covid, but we currently can't and I am struck by the similarity of the stories of long covid, notably among those who were not seriously ill, but now experience a constellation of symptoms, something seen in FND (which is indeed a catchall, but useful). I am convinced that many long covid sufferers will have physical damage, but I suspect some will not. Their suffering should not be trivialised and that is not my intention. But if they are suffering from FND then the recovery will be different to recovery from lung damage, or heart damage etc. I may be very wrong.
'Long Covid' is no different from your FND in that it's a catch all term for a lot of cases which are poorly explained, and of varied nature. This Nature article calls it "a whole soup of stuff": https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-021-00069-9
Four different proposals were shortlisted, as the various councils disagreed as to their preferred option.
From afar, I thought that the Morecambe Bay Authority looked the most interesting merging South Lakeland, Barrow and Lancaster councils, with the rest of Cumbria forming another unitary. This appeared to go hark back a few years to the northern part of the old Lancastershire boundaries. However Lancashire County Council is looking into its own unitarisation proposals.
There was a separate consultation for North Yorkshire and Somerset, but these looked less interesting.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what is relevant here, I think ; a Conservative government that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar prestige rested on international contributions to legal process.
And then people realised just how open to abuse and over the top international laws were becoming, as well as how they were being abused in ways never intended and rowed it back.
The difference with domestic law is if the courts get something wrong then we can change the law democratically via Parliament. If the international courts get something wrong then Parliament can't readily fix that.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what is relevant here, I think ; a Conservative government that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar prestige rested on international contributions to legal process.
And then people realised just how open to abuse and over the top international laws were becoming, as well as how they were being abused in ways never intended and rowed it back.
The difference with domestic law is if the courts get something wrong then we can change the law democratically via Parliament. If the international courts get something wrong then Parliament can't readily fix that.
For me, it was entertaining to ask the following, in certain circles -
"When are we going to chase after the people from the other side for War Crimes?"
The response is quite interesting - apparently, it would be wrong, disgusting even, to send Phil Shiner Part Deux after the Taliban.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Mightn't it include people who are already in hospital, that acquire the infection while in hospital?
Yes it does. But the figures don't strike me as unrealistic. Nerys is citing low levels of hospitalisation based on areas with very low numbers of cases. It's possible to drill down on the website into where hospitalisations are occurring - doesn't look inconsistent with what we know. 100 hospitalisations a day for a serious endemic disease is not a particularly high number in a country of 67million, even where the majority have been immunised.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Read the stats update in a minute and you will see - it comes down to *who* is going to hospital.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
This winding up scammers, are people doing it for the elevated reason of protecting that little old lady who might be next in line and who won't be gotten around to because of the farting around with you? Or is it more just that it's a viscerally enjoyable thing to do?
Both. Although (the last time I did it - and maybe that was why the last, although they also seem to have gone out of fashion a bit) I once had a guy on the MS scam who, when I started going through my menus realised I was on Linux and we had a bit of a brief conversation where it turned out he was also a Linux user and wannabe developer. I wished him luck and end of call. I like to think he found a better job, but who knows. Think my heart went out of it a bit after that as I thought about the people on the other end (yes, they're scamming people - but is it that much worse than the call centre people at Wonga etc? Neither probably doing it for enjoyment but from - perceived, at least - necessity). I think I've had one MS scam since then to which I just said I hadn't got Windows and hung up.
When I get the automated scam calls, which seem more common now, I generally reply 'yes' to automated "we think you've been in an accident that wasn't your fault, is that right" so yo get passed on to a real person, then say nothing until cut off. Figure that does waste time for them and spoil the economics.
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
I was not doing that. I was multiplying total tests by specificity to get false positives. Then dividing true positives by total positives to get predictive value. That is the way it is done.
Sorry but I don't think you can multiply total tests by specificity to get false positives UNLESS you are testing people at random. The testing we are doing in the UK is targeted in lots of ways... to contacts of cases, to people with symptoms etc.
So it's wrong to say we would expect 1,000 false positives per day.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Without knowing what proportion of people in the UK are known by PBers, and that that grouping is a representative sample, that will give you zero useful information.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what is relevant here, I think ; a Conservative government that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar prestige rested on international contributions to legal process.
And then people realised just how open to abuse and over the top international laws were becoming, as well as how they were being abused in ways never intended and rowed it back.
The difference with domestic law is if the courts get something wrong then we can change the law democratically via Parliament. If the international courts get something wrong then Parliament can't readily fix that.
What was abusive about the War Crimes Act?
The objections to it were that it was retrospective legislation - making a crime something that was not a crime at the time. I find that odd. Murder of civilians - even in war-time - has always been a crime. Being an accessory to such murder has always been a crime.
The idea that people in the Baltic who killed Jews did not know that what they were doing was wrong, was a crime struck me as feeble. Of course they did.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Oh, for fuck's sake - if people want to keep trotting this out, then for God's sake come up with some numbers! How many people would you expect to die from non-covid issues within 28 days of a random event, out of around 2000 positives? Bearing in mind that the age spread of positive cases nowadays looks the right hand side of this:
Answer? You'd be averaging somewhere around 1-2. Not 10.
Maybe it's all gone away and maybe it's all false positives and maybe it's just people who've been hit by a bus in the intensive care ward. But it's very very very likely not.
1-2 would be based upon average population. If your sample isn't average then its entirely possible that should be 10 instead.
Worth bearing in mind that people are being tested not just in schools but especially in care homes and in hospitals etc. If a vaccinated care home resident gets or tests positive for the virus, then even if they're entirely asymptomatic from the virus, they're going to have a much more significant death chance that 2 per 2000 per 28 days. The median life expectancy for people who enter care homes is less than 12 months afterall.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Mightn't it include people who are already in hospital, that acquire the infection while in hospital?
Yes it does. But the figures don't strike me as unrealistic. Nerys is citing low levels of hospitalisation based on areas with very low numbers of cases. It's possible to drill down on the website into where hospitalisations are occurring - doesn't look inconsistent with what we know. 100 hospitalisations a day for a serious endemic disease is not a particularly high number in a country of 67million, even where the majority have been immunised.
Exactly. Drilling down, we have 5 admissions throughout the whole South East and only 58 in hospital with it, with 6 on ventilation. You'd have a bunch of hospitals with zero admissions that day.
Hampshire Hospitals NHS Trust had zero admissions and a total of 2 people in any of their hospitals with covid, neither of whom are on ventilation.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Oh, for fuck's sake - if people want to keep trotting this out, then for God's sake come up with some numbers! How many people would you expect to die from non-covid issues within 28 days of a random event, out of around 2000 positives? Bearing in mind that the age spread of positive cases nowadays looks the right hand side of this:
Answer? You'd be averaging somewhere around 1-2. Not 10.
Maybe it's all gone away and maybe it's all false positives and maybe it's just people who've been hit by a bus in the intensive care ward. But it's very very very likely not.
1-2 would be based upon average population. If your sample isn't average then its entirely possible that should be 10 instead.
Worth bearing in mind that people are being tested not just in schools but especially in care homes and in hospitals etc. If a vaccinated care home resident gets or tests positive for the virus, then even if they're entirely asymptomatic from the virus, they're going to have a much more significant death chance that 2 per 2000 per 28 days. The median life expectancy for people who enter care homes is less than 12 months afterall.
Same for those in hospital for other reasons etc.
That heatmap gives the distribution of positive results. From that, they ain't concentrated in the elderly, now, are they?
The Header by Cyclefree is interesting and I don't entirely disagree with it. I do however think she makes some poor arguments on certain issues.
Personally I think Mercer is absolutely right on this. One of the reasons that the recent trials failed - indeed why they should never have been held - is that the men had already investigated before and that it was decided the evidence was not sufficient. The prosecution depended on statements made 50 years ago which the investigators decided had been made under coercion and direction from superior officers and that they were therefore unsafe. This was the conclusion reached in 2010 but the prosecutors tried to reintroduce the same evidence with no new supporting evidence and the judge rightly told them to take a hike. This is always going to be the case with these trials which is why they are pointless and wrong.
But on the more general point I am afraid the view that "this was a war in which both sides were combatants" has already been implicitly accepted in the Good Friday Agreement. That is why all those prisoners who had been found guilty of murder were let out and others, who had not got to trial, were given letters of immunity. The whole basis of the Good Friday Agreement was that bad things happened but we cannot punish those who did them because to do so we perpetuate the cycle of violence. But apparently we are to exclude one specific set of combatants from that rule. And that being the one set who - unlike the IRA and Loyalist gunmen were not given a choice of whether or not they had to walk the streets of Belfast carrying a gun.
If you think the Good Friday Agreement is rubbish and should be torn up then that is of course a valid view, even if one I disagree with. But it is hypocritical to defend the agreement and then attack the necessary evils that had to be put in place to make it work. What we need to do is mitigate those evils - one of which was the idea that one set of combatants should be hung out to dry whilst the others do, literally, get away with murder.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
I am not suggesting that one side should benefit and not the other. See my para upthread re the counter-argument. My concern is that this choice risks not working because you get neither truth nor justice.
I will admit that I am a bit of a fundamentalist about the importance of both - but I can see the strong counter-arguments in a place such as NI. A very good book on this is by Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing - A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. It takes the story of Jean McConville but expands to cover just the sort of things we have been discussing in relation to IRA crimes. It is heartbreaking - especially when you realise the effects on the families - but a very worthwhile read.
The trouble is that - for all that I agree with you about truth and justice - the GFA is not based on those principles.
Much like the unwritten agreement in the post-Franco era, it is based on hiding the truth and hoping that peace lasts long enough that people on all sides become invested in it sufficiently to let it rest for the sake of continuing the peace. Either that or they die and it is no longer an issue. It is cruel but it is the only way they could see to get the paramilitaries onside. I am still not convinced that it has worked or ever will. But it is what both Governments and the paramilitaries signed up to.
The Spanish example is interesting because that unwritten agreement is now, in part, being torn up with steps being taken against Francoists and their descendants and the truth of some of what was done by Franco now coming out. It shows that the passage of time may not be a healer - look how long ago the Spanish civil war was. Indeed, it may make the demand for knowledge even more urgent. And once knowledge is out, who knows what it may lead to.
Anyway thanks for the thoughtful comments.
Truth and reconciliation is a rare thing, isn't it? Truth and vengeance is more common.
We should cherish that we are one of the very few places in the history of the world where power is passed on bloodlessly.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Without knowing what proportion of people in the UK are known by PBers, and that that grouping is a representative sample, that will give you zero useful information.
Looking again at the West Yorkshire hospitalisations that have been updated, these are still coming down. Last few weeks: 121, 80, 65, 55, 46 in w/e 9/5 (for approx 2.4m population). So trend is close to national.
On the spectre of local restrictions, interesting to note that nearly half the admissions this time out were from Mid-Yorkshire Trust, covering Wakefield but also the Dewsbury & Batley & Spen areas, which remain warm spots.
Any imposition, or even anomalous non-imposition, of restrictions would be a hotly contested issue in a July by-election.
Surge vaccination seems like a decent idea epidemiologically at first glance, but also politically.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Without knowing what proportion of people in the UK are known by PBers, and that that grouping is a representative sample, that will give you zero useful information.
Have you ever made public the numbers of people who visit PB? (I'd imagine not, and nor would I imagine you'd want to)
However just out of curiosity now I'm on the subject - was peak PB the Brexit vote?
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Oh, for fuck's sake - if people want to keep trotting this out, then for God's sake come up with some numbers! How many people would you expect to die from non-covid issues within 28 days of a random event, out of around 2000 positives? Bearing in mind that the age spread of positive cases nowadays looks the right hand side of this:
Answer? You'd be averaging somewhere around 1-2. Not 10.
Maybe it's all gone away and maybe it's all false positives and maybe it's just people who've been hit by a bus in the intensive care ward. But it's very very very likely not.
1-2 would be based upon average population. If your sample isn't average then its entirely possible that should be 10 instead.
Worth bearing in mind that people are being tested not just in schools but especially in care homes and in hospitals etc. If a vaccinated care home resident gets or tests positive for the virus, then even if they're entirely asymptomatic from the virus, they're going to have a much more significant death chance that 2 per 2000 per 28 days. The median life expectancy for people who enter care homes is less than 12 months afterall.
Same for those in hospital for other reasons etc.
That heatmap gives the distribution of positive results. From that, they ain't concentrated in the elderly, now, are they?
Not many would need to be in the elderly/care homes/hospitalised to really weight the sample.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
The rate of increase on positive tests when controlled for total tests seems to have ticked down a notch on yesterday too – or am I imagining/misremembering that?
And for hospitalisations, in England over the last week: 490 admitted from the community (average 70 per day). 22 admissions and diagnoses from a care home (average 3 per day).
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
So far I have been called up for jury service 3 times.
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
Very much so. If Hashim Thaci, and also eventually other members of the KLA too, are convicted at the Hague, it will also show that this transcendent legal principle can even be stronger in the long-term than the vicissitudes and failures of western intervention, such as in the Blair government's undifferentiated backing for them, too.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Without knowing what proportion of people in the UK are known by PBers, and that that grouping is a representative sample, that will give you zero useful information.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
The rate of increase on positive tests when controlled for total tests seems to have ticked down a notch on yesterday too – or am I imagining/misremembering that?
Overall, it looks to me like:
- Probable gentle rise in cases, concentrated in the unvaccinated. Spike on the 10th; let's see if it continues or has subsided again. - Very gentle decline in hospitalisations continuing (looked like it had stalled, but with more information, looks like still declining). Number in hospital and number on mechanical ventilation continuing to gently decline - Deaths sub-10 per day; a spike on the 11th looks to be increasing the average, so at this level, data will be noisy.
And for hospitalisations, in England over the last week: 490 admitted from the community (average 70 per day). 22 admissions and diagnoses from a care home (average 3 per day).
So 4.2% of those figures were from a care home.
4.2% of the general community does not live in a care home.
So yes, care homes are disproportionately weighted. So 10 natural deaths with Covid are entirely plausible.
This winding up scammers, are people doing it for the elevated reason of protecting that little old lady who might be next in line and who won't be gotten around to because of the farting around with you? Or is it more just that it's a viscerally enjoyable thing to do?
Both. Although (the last time I did it - and maybe that was why the last, although they also seem to have gone out of fashion a bit) I once had a guy on the MS scam who, when I started going through my menus realised I was on Linux and we had a bit of a brief conversation where it turned out he was also a Linux user and wannabe developer. I wished him luck and end of call. I like to think he found a better job, but who knows. Think my heart went out of it a bit after that as I thought about the people on the other end (yes, they're scamming people - but is it that much worse than the call centre people at Wonga etc? Neither probably doing it for enjoyment but from - perceived, at least - necessity). I think I've had one MS scam since then to which I just said I hadn't got Windows and hung up.
When I get the automated scam calls, which seem more common now, I generally reply 'yes' to automated "we think you've been in an accident that wasn't your fault, is that right" so yo get passed on to a real person, then say nothing until cut off. Figure that does waste time for them and spoil the economics.
I feel sorry for some of them too. It depends of course. There's scammers and scammers. I had a year in the wilderness in London after uni and for a few weeks worked in what I think they call a Boiler Room, using a high pressure sales script to try and foist life insurance with an "investment angle" (I know I know) onto vulnerable people. And those vulnerable people included me, since the job was commission only and I sold a grand total of zero policies (due to inability to deliver said "high pressure script" with any energy or conviction) and was therefore paid absolutely nothing for my labour. Some of the more flamboyant older guys were making loads of dosh though. Some real "characters" aka shysters there. "Boris" would have done brilliantly.
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
I was not doing that. I was multiplying total tests by specificity to get false positives. Then dividing true positives by total positives to get predictive value. That is the way it is done.
Sorry but I don't think you can multiply total tests by specificity to get false positives UNLESS you are testing people at random. The testing we are doing in the UK is targeted in lots of ways... to contacts of cases, to people with symptoms etc.
So it's wrong to say we would expect 1,000 false positives per day.
You cite a story from October last year, when prevalence was higher, and testing was lower.
Can you really say that 1.5 million tests a day is focused mainly, or even disproportionately, on high-risk COVID cases, when only 1.5 in 1000 of those tested are being found to be positive.
People aged 18 and over in three wards in #Blackburn can now book an appointment for a Pfizer jab online.
It's after the Indian variant was found in Shear Brow and Corporation Park, Billinge and Beardwood aswell as Bastwell & Daisyfield.
Excellent news.
I read somewhere (perhaps on PB??) that Public Health England has bollocked the local NHS trust for deploying those jabs to youngsters ahead of timetable. But it's not clear that PHE can actually stop the NHS from doing so, so I assume they'll take one for the team and carry on jabbing.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
The rate of increase on positive tests when controlled for total tests seems to have ticked down a notch on yesterday too – or am I imagining/misremembering that?
Overall, it looks to me like:
- Probable gentle rise in cases, concentrated in the unvaccinated. Spike on the 10th; let's see if it continues or has subsided again. - Very gentle decline in hospitalisations continuing (looked like it had stalled, but with more information, looks like still declining). Number in hospital and number on mechanical ventilation continuing to gently decline - Deaths sub-10 per day; a spike on the 11th looks to be increasing the average, so at this level, data will be noisy.
That's exactly my sense Andy, but I haven't crunched the numbers in detail.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
A blurred distinction in practice, but in theory is it not knowledge of the people that rules you out rather than knowledge of the subject matter?
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
I was not doing that. I was multiplying total tests by specificity to get false positives. Then dividing true positives by total positives to get predictive value. That is the way it is done.
Sorry but I don't think you can multiply total tests by specificity to get false positives UNLESS you are testing people at random. The testing we are doing in the UK is targeted in lots of ways... to contacts of cases, to people with symptoms etc.
So it's wrong to say we would expect 1,000 false positives per day.
You cite a story from October last year, when prevalence was higher, and testing was lower.
Can you really say that 1.5 million tests a day is focused mainly, or even disproportionately, on high-risk COVID cases, when only 1.5 in 1000 of those tested are being found to be positive.
Bollocks, is what I say to that suggestion.
Precisely. This is relevant from that article:
People do not get admitted to hospital by false positives, so if more people are in hospital with Covid, then you can be pretty sure that is due to genuine cases. The same is true of the number of deaths.
Dr Birrell says that to be certain cases really are increasing, the daily case count "should always be considered alongside other information sources, such as the hospitalisations or deaths, or the community surveys run by the ONS or REACT".
In October last year hospitalisations and deaths were increasing. That is not the case today.
False positives was nonsense last October. Its not now, its a real issue now.
Not sure if this really fits in with the love bomb Scotland narrative, unless it was just another bullshit position of the 73 different bullshit positions on Scotland that these goons hold every week. I wonder if the Pritster paid the FM of Scotland and MSP for the constituency the courtesy of informing her that this was going to take place?
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
The rate of increase on positive tests when controlled for total tests seems to have ticked down a notch on yesterday too – or am I imagining/misremembering that?
Overall, it looks to me like:
- Probable gentle rise in cases, concentrated in the unvaccinated. Spike on the 10th; let's see if it continues or has subsided again. - Very gentle decline in hospitalisations continuing (looked like it had stalled, but with more information, looks like still declining). Number in hospital and number on mechanical ventilation continuing to gently decline - Deaths sub-10 per day; a spike on the 11th looks to be increasing the average, so at this level, data will be noisy.
That's exactly my sense Andy, but I haven't crunched the numbers in detail.
Is the road map in tatters? Is going to the big cricket match next week off? 🙁
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
I was not doing that. I was multiplying total tests by specificity to get false positives. Then dividing true positives by total positives to get predictive value. That is the way it is done.
Sorry but I don't think you can multiply total tests by specificity to get false positives UNLESS you are testing people at random. The testing we are doing in the UK is targeted in lots of ways... to contacts of cases, to people with symptoms etc.
So it's wrong to say we would expect 1,000 false positives per day.
You cite a story from October last year, when prevalence was higher, and testing was lower.
Can you really say that 1.5 million tests a day is focused mainly, or even disproportionately, on high-risk COVID cases, when only 1.5 in 1000 of those tested are being found to be positive.
Bollocks, is what I say to that suggestion.
Precisely. This is relevant from that article:
People do not get admitted to hospital by false positives, so if more people are in hospital with Covid, then you can be pretty sure that is due to genuine cases. The same is true of the number of deaths.
Dr Birrell says that to be certain cases really are increasing, the daily case count "should always be considered alongside other information sources, such as the hospitalisations or deaths, or the community surveys run by the ONS or REACT".
In October last year hospitalisations and deaths were increasing. That is not the case today.
False positives was nonsense last October. Its not now, its a real issue now.
I'm not saying you are wrong – indeed what you write makes sense. But wouldn't we simply expect many more asymptomatic cases now as more and more people become vaccinated?
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
So you want to tear up the Good Friday Agreement and reopen the Troubles?
Because that principle was abandoned as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
This winding up scammers, are people doing it for the elevated reason of protecting that little old lady who might be next in line and who won't be gotten around to because of the farting around with you? Or is it more just that it's a viscerally enjoyable thing to do?
Both. Although (the last time I did it - and maybe that was why the last, although they also seem to have gone out of fashion a bit) I once had a guy on the MS scam who, when I started going through my menus realised I was on Linux and we had a bit of a brief conversation where it turned out he was also a Linux user and wannabe developer. I wished him luck and end of call. I like to think he found a better job, but who knows. Think my heart went out of it a bit after that as I thought about the people on the other end (yes, they're scamming people - but is it that much worse than the call centre people at Wonga etc? Neither probably doing it for enjoyment but from - perceived, at least - necessity). I think I've had one MS scam since then to which I just said I hadn't got Windows and hung up.
When I get the automated scam calls, which seem more common now, I generally reply 'yes' to automated "we think you've been in an accident that wasn't your fault, is that right" so yo get passed on to a real person, then say nothing until cut off. Figure that does waste time for them and spoil the economics.
Yes, both for me. I find it cruelly amusing (especially during lockdown), but I forgive myself. I do try to be weird and diverting, so maybe they are entertained even as I waste their time.
Also I figure that the more of us do this, successfully, the quicker this whole stupid scam will become uneconomic, and they will give up their wretched cold-calling
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Without knowing what proportion of people in the UK are known by PBers, and that that grouping is a representative sample, that will give you zero useful information.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
The rate of increase on positive tests when controlled for total tests seems to have ticked down a notch on yesterday too – or am I imagining/misremembering that?
Overall, it looks to me like:
- Probable gentle rise in cases, concentrated in the unvaccinated. Spike on the 10th; let's see if it continues or has subsided again. - Very gentle decline in hospitalisations continuing (looked like it had stalled, but with more information, looks like still declining). Number in hospital and number on mechanical ventilation continuing to gently decline - Deaths sub-10 per day; a spike on the 11th looks to be increasing the average, so at this level, data will be noisy.
That's exactly my sense Andy, but I haven't crunched the numbers in detail.
Is the road map in tatters? Is going to the big cricket match next week off? 🙁
Again, I don't know what you are talking about. No, the roadmap is not "in tatters".
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
So far I have been called up for jury service 3 times.
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
So you've had 3 bites at the cherry and me not even a nibble. This seems most unfair.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
So you want to tear up the Good Friday Agreement and reopen the Troubles?
Because that principle was abandoned as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Don't be a pillock. Really. I was stating why I thought the War Crimes Act 1991 was a good piece of legislation to have passed.
Of course I don't want the Troubles to restart. I would point out that there is currently violence happening in NI but no great interest on the part of the current British government in why that might be happening. Nor any great urgency to resolve it. Apparently NI is less important than a football league to this government.
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
I was not doing that. I was multiplying total tests by specificity to get false positives. Then dividing true positives by total positives to get predictive value. That is the way it is done.
Sorry but I don't think you can multiply total tests by specificity to get false positives UNLESS you are testing people at random. The testing we are doing in the UK is targeted in lots of ways... to contacts of cases, to people with symptoms etc.
So it's wrong to say we would expect 1,000 false positives per day.
You cite a story from October last year, when prevalence was higher, and testing was lower.
Can you really say that 1.5 million tests a day is focused mainly, or even disproportionately, on high-risk COVID cases, when only 1.5 in 1000 of those tested are being found to be positive.
Bollocks, is what I say to that suggestion.
Precisely. This is relevant from that article:
People do not get admitted to hospital by false positives, so if more people are in hospital with Covid, then you can be pretty sure that is due to genuine cases. The same is true of the number of deaths.
Dr Birrell says that to be certain cases really are increasing, the daily case count "should always be considered alongside other information sources, such as the hospitalisations or deaths, or the community surveys run by the ONS or REACT".
In October last year hospitalisations and deaths were increasing. That is not the case today.
False positives was nonsense last October. Its not now, its a real issue now.
I'm not saying you are wrong – indeed what you write makes sense. But wouldn't we simply expect many more asymptomatic cases now as more and more people become vaccinated?
Yes - and note a lot of the current cases are from lateral flow (and often not confirmed). Lateral flow will mainly be asymptomatic (schools, workplaces etc).
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
So far I have been called up for jury service 3 times.
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
So you've had 3 bites at the cherry and me not even a nibble. This seems most unfair.
I wouldn't complain if I were you. Some cases can make one ill with PTSD-like stuff.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
So you want to tear up the Good Friday Agreement and reopen the Troubles?
Because that principle was abandoned as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Don't be a pillock. Really. I was stating why I thought the War Crimes Act 1991 was a good piece of legislation to have passed.
Of course I don't want the Troubles to restart. I would point out that there is currently violence happening in NI but no great interest on the part of the current British government in why that might be happening. Nor any great urgency to resolve it. Apparently NI is less important than a football league to this government.
The War Crimes Act 1991 was good at the time but by 1997 the idea that murderers would face justice no matter what was a principle we could no longer adhere to because to do so was keeping the Troubles alive. So the Good Friday Agreement 1997 killed that principle - it was determined better to draw a line in the sand and let murderers and let the murderers out of jail than continue to demand justice.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
The problem is, as I see it, that Britain effectively abandoned that principle with the GFA. They may have done it for the best of reasons but they have said that, in effect, the pursuit of justice is not an absolute, it only matters when it is convenient. In the case of Northern Ireland it became inconvenient and was therefore abandoned. To my mind that sets a precedent for that specific conflict which cannot be simply or easily overturned.
As many here have suggested, vaccinations now available to all over 18s in Blackburn and Darwen (why not Bolton and Erewash too I wonder? I expect the same will be true there). To be honest, it's hard to believe there's anyone left in BwD who hasn't had it, so long has it spent close to the top of the league tables for positive tests.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
So far I have been called up for jury service 3 times.
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
So you've had 3 bites at the cherry and me not even a nibble. This seems most unfair.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
Holding someone until they can take a flight back is normal practice. It’s unusual to offsite them but detention is unexceptional
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
So far I have been called up for jury service 3 times.
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
So you've had 3 bites at the cherry and me not even a nibble. This seems most unfair.
I wouldn't complain if I were you. Some cases can make one ill with PTSD-like stuff.
Yes, that's true. Those cases are rare but if you get one, potentially traumatizing.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
Holding someone until they can take a flight back is normal practice. It’s unusual to offsite them but detention is unexceptional
According to the Guardian report, a significant number of people may have been sent elsewhere. That's what the Europeans will be watching.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
Holding someone until they can take a flight back is normal practice. It’s unusual to offsite them but detention is unexceptional
According to the Guardian report, a significant number of people may have been sent elsewhere. That's what the Europeans will be watching.
Not just sent anywhere. According to the Guardian someone who flew from Mexico was returned to Mexico.
That's what happens when you fly illegally to another nation, you get turned around and sent back. Not pick your pick of new destinations.
It would be a major shock if the government were just deporting people to random nations.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
Holding someone until they can take a flight back is normal practice. It’s unusual to offsite them but detention is unexceptional
Probably more necessary now than normal due to the lack of frequent flights.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
Holding someone until they can take a flight back is normal practice. It’s unusual to offsite them but detention is unexceptional
According to the Guardian report, a significant number of people may have been sent elsewhere. That's what the Europeans will be watching.
Not just sent anywhere. According to the Guardian someone who flew from Mexico was returned to Mexico.
That's what happens when you fly illegally to another nation, you get turned around and sent back. Not pick your pick of new destinations.
Nope. There are mentions of places like Yarl's Wood in the report. As I said, that's what the Europeans will be watching.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
Holding someone until they can take a flight back is normal practice. It’s unusual to offsite them but detention is unexceptional
According to the Guardian report, a significant number of people may have been sent elsewhere. That's what the Europeans will be watching.
Not just sent anywhere. According to the Guardian someone who flew from Mexico was returned to Mexico.
That's what happens when you fly illegally to another nation, you get turned around and sent back. Not pick your pick of new destinations.
It would be a major shock if the government were just deporting people to random nations.
I think he means off the airport rather than the next flight.
BTW the Graun seems to have revised their piece. Clearer that some people claiming to have interviews were rejected. Not clear why.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
Very much so. If Hashim Thaci, and also eventually other members of the KLA too, are convicted at the Hague, it will also show that this transcendent legal principle can even be stronger in the long-term than the vicissitudes and failures of western intervention, such as in the Blair government's undifferentiated backing for them, too.
"Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic" - they all shared a characteristic. They were no longer in power, or useful to those in power in their countries. Prosecuting them wouldn't restart the wars.
Prosecuting PIRA members, or UVF (or other such groups) members would restart the Troubles in short order.
This winding up scammers, are people doing it for the elevated reason of protecting that little old lady who might be next in line and who won't be gotten around to because of the farting around with you? Or is it more just that it's a viscerally enjoyable thing to do?
Sounds like you have a bit of sympathy for the scammers. I have zero sympathy for them.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
Holding someone until they can take a flight back is normal practice. It’s unusual to offsite them but detention is unexceptional
According to the Guardian report, a significant number of people may have been sent elsewhere. That's what the Europeans will be watching.
Not just sent anywhere. According to the Guardian someone who flew from Mexico was returned to Mexico.
That's what happens when you fly illegally to another nation, you get turned around and sent back. Not pick your pick of new destinations.
Nope. There are mentions of places like Yarl's Wood in the report. As I said, that's what the Europeans will be watching.
Yarl's Wood is a detention center to hold people until they can be deported. What else do you expect?
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
Very much so. If Hashim Thaci, and also eventually other members of the KLA too, are convicted at the Hague, it will also show that this transcendent legal principle can even be stronger in the long-term than the vicissitudes and failures of western intervention, such as in the Blair government's undifferentiated backing for them, too.
"Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic" - they all shared a characteristic. They were no longer in power, or useful to those in power in their countries. Prosecuting them wouldn't restart the wars.
Prosecuting PIRA members, or UVF (or other such groups) members would restart the Troubles in short order.
Hashim Thaci was President of Kosovo, still favoured by NATO , and still had almost as powerful an adminstrative position, until quite recently, when he was sent for trial at the Hague, AFAIK.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
So you want to tear up the Good Friday Agreement and reopen the Troubles?
Because that principle was abandoned as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Don't be a pillock. Really. I was stating why I thought the War Crimes Act 1991 was a good piece of legislation to have passed.
Of course I don't want the Troubles to restart. I would point out that there is currently violence happening in NI but no great interest on the part of the current British government in why that might be happening. Nor any great urgency to resolve it. Apparently NI is less important than a football league to this government.
The War Crimes Act 1991 was good at the time but by 1997 the idea that murderers would face justice no matter what was a principle we could no longer adhere to because to do so was keeping the Troubles alive. So the Good Friday Agreement 1997 killed that principle - it was determined better to draw a line in the sand and let murderers and let the murderers out of jail than continue to demand justice.
In which case there really should have been no problem with telling the Ballymurphy families the truth - that their loved ones were innocent and were killed by the security services. But no - they were forced to wait and suffer and fight for even that small bit of comfort.
Abandoning prosecutions but telling the truth I could just about stomach. Abandoning prosecutions but refusing to tell the truth, to provide even that much comfort to victims, is just revolting to my mind - a cynical betrayal of victims by both the state and the terrorists.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
Very much so. If Hashim Thaci, and also eventually other members of the KLA too, are convicted at the Hague, it will also show that this transcendent legal principle can even be stronger in the long-term than the vicissitudes and failures of western intervention, such as in the Blair government's undifferentiated backing for them, too.
"Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic" - they all shared a characteristic. They were no longer in power, or useful to those in power in their countries. Prosecuting them wouldn't restart the wars.
Prosecuting PIRA members, or UVF (or other such groups) members would restart the Troubles in short order.
Hashim Thaci was President of Kosovo, still favoured by NATO , and still had almost as powerful an adminstrative position, until quite recently, when he was sent for the Hague trial, AFAIK.
It is an age old conundrum in the treating of eg warlords - offer them immunity and hence bring them in, or try to arrest them/bring them to justice meaning they stay at large.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
So far I have been called up for jury service 3 times.
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
So you've had 3 bites at the cherry and me not even a nibble. This seems most unfair.
I wouldn't complain if I were you. Some cases can make one ill with PTSD-like stuff.
Can I just gently comment that for those of us who have a family member suffering serious PTSD from attending ground zero in New Zealand's earthquakes and 10 years later needing 16 electroconvulsive treatment sessions, it is not something to be taken lightly
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
Holding someone until they can take a flight back is normal practice. It’s unusual to offsite them but detention is unexceptional
According to the Guardian report, a significant number of people may have been sent elsewhere. That's what the Europeans will be watching.
Not just sent anywhere. According to the Guardian someone who flew from Mexico was returned to Mexico.
That's what happens when you fly illegally to another nation, you get turned around and sent back. Not pick your pick of new destinations.
Nope. There are mentions of places like Yarl's Wood in the report. As I said, that's what the Europeans will be watching.
Yarl's Wood is a detention center to hold people until they can be deported. What else do you expect?
The Europeans will expect reciprocity. So far there are no reports of Britons being sent off site to detention centres.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
So far I have been called up for jury service 3 times.
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
So you've had 3 bites at the cherry and me not even a nibble. This seems most unfair.
I wouldn't complain if I were you. Some cases can make one ill with PTSD-like stuff.
Can I just gently comment that for those of us who have a family member suffering serious PTSD from attending ground zero in New Zealand's earthquakes and 10 years later needing 16 electroconvulsive treatment sessions, it is not something to be taken lightly
I quite agree. I was entirely serious (just in case you thought I was joking about it: not sure either way, but I don't want to cause you any offence).
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
The rate of increase on positive tests when controlled for total tests seems to have ticked down a notch on yesterday too – or am I imagining/misremembering that?
Overall, it looks to me like:
- Probable gentle rise in cases, concentrated in the unvaccinated. Spike on the 10th; let's see if it continues or has subsided again. - Very gentle decline in hospitalisations continuing (looked like it had stalled, but with more information, looks like still declining). Number in hospital and number on mechanical ventilation continuing to gently decline - Deaths sub-10 per day; a spike on the 11th looks to be increasing the average, so at this level, data will be noisy.
That's also my sense. The effect of the May 17th changes will need careful study; although I think they could have safely pushed that date a week or two forward, the 5 week gap to the next set of changes is probably needed. I still think we're on track for it, given the vaccination progress and effectiveness.
The Header by Cyclefree is interesting and I don't entirely disagree with it. I do however think she makes some poor arguments on certain issues.
Personally I think Mercer is absolutely right on this. One of the reasons that the recent trials failed - indeed why they should never have been held - is that the men had already investigated before and that it was decided the evidence was not sufficient. The prosecution depended on statements made 50 years ago which the investigators decided had been made under coercion and direction from superior officers and that they were therefore unsafe. This was the conclusion reached in 2010 but the prosecutors tried to reintroduce the same evidence with no new supporting evidence and the judge rightly told them to take a hike. This is always going to be the case with these trials which is why they are pointless and wrong.
But on the more general point I am afraid the view that "this was a war in which both sides were combatants" has already been implicitly accepted in the Good Friday Agreement. That is why all those prisoners who had been found guilty of murder were let out and others, who had not got to trial, were given letters of immunity. The whole basis of the Good Friday Agreement was that bad things happened but we cannot punish those who did them because to do so we perpetuate the cycle of violence. But apparently we are to exclude one specific set of combatants from that rule. And that being the one set who - unlike the IRA and Loyalist gunmen were not given a choice of whether or not they had to walk the streets of Belfast carrying a gun.
If you think the Good Friday Agreement is rubbish and should be torn up then that is of course a valid view, even if one I disagree with. But it is hypocritical to defend the agreement and then attack the necessary evils that had to be put in place to make it work. What we need to do is mitigate those evils - one of which was the idea that one set of combatants should be hung out to dry whilst the others do, literally, get away with murder.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
The UK government and army wasn’t “a side”.
The “sides” were the Loyalists and the Provos. The army should be held to a higher standard
Four different proposals were shortlisted, as the various councils disagreed as to their preferred option.
From afar, I thought that the Morecambe Bay Authority looked the most interesting merging South Lakeland, Barrow and Lancaster councils, with the rest of Cumbria forming another unitary. This appeared to go hark back a few years to the northern part of the old Lancastershire boundaries. However Lancashire County Council is looking into its own unitarisation proposals.
There was a separate consultation for North Yorkshire and Somerset, but these looked less interesting.
From nearby that proposal is one of the worst.
Two unitaries, Cumberland and Westmorland please. And give Barrow-in-Furness back, as a district, to the Lancastrians.
And for hospitalisations, in England over the last week: 490 admitted from the community (average 70 per day). 22 admissions and diagnoses from a care home (average 3 per day).
So 4.2% of those figures were from a care home.
4.2% of the general community does not live in a care home.
So yes, care homes are disproportionately weighted. So 10 natural deaths with Covid are entirely plausible.
Wrong calculation. There's no point further engaging. You've long made your mind up that you want us to have achieved herd immunity and therefore you will argue that until you're blue in the face.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
So you want to tear up the Good Friday Agreement and reopen the Troubles?
Because that principle was abandoned as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Don't be a pillock. Really. I was stating why I thought the War Crimes Act 1991 was a good piece of legislation to have passed.
Of course I don't want the Troubles to restart. I would point out that there is currently violence happening in NI but no great interest on the part of the current British government in why that might be happening. Nor any great urgency to resolve it. Apparently NI is less important than a football league to this government.
The War Crimes Act 1991 was good at the time but by 1997 the idea that murderers would face justice no matter what was a principle we could no longer adhere to because to do so was keeping the Troubles alive. So the Good Friday Agreement 1997 killed that principle - it was determined better to draw a line in the sand and let murderers and let the murderers out of jail than continue to demand justice.
In which case there really should have been no problem with telling the Ballymurphy families the truth - that their loved ones were innocent and were killed by the security services. But no - they were forced to wait and suffer and fight for even that small bit of comfort.
Abandoning prosecutions but telling the truth I could just about stomach. Abandoning prosecutions but refusing to tell the truth, to provide even that much comfort to victims, is just revolting to my mind - a cynical betrayal of victims by both the state and the terrorists.
There was no problem, it happened. They've been told that. That's why it's in the news this week.
If you want it done sooner then why? How? Who would have done so? People aren't generally keen on revisiting issues of half a century ago unless it's dragged out by someone with an agenda, in this case the families concerned. Had they not been dogged then it would have been a case of letting sleeping dogs lie.
That's not dodgy or weird, that's just bureaucratic inertia. People concentrate on the issues of today not the fights of five decades ago from a time a line in the sand has already been drawn.
Nothing cynical. I doubt anyone who was senior making decisions fifty years ago is still working on it today. None may even be alive anymore.
I was selected for the random home antibody testing, and have just completed my test having had the AZN two months back. No short term antibodies but the long term antibody line shows positive, if rather faint. I guess this means the vaccine worked!
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
The rate of increase on positive tests when controlled for total tests seems to have ticked down a notch on yesterday too – or am I imagining/misremembering that?
Overall, it looks to me like:
- Probable gentle rise in cases, concentrated in the unvaccinated. Spike on the 10th; let's see if it continues or has subsided again. - Very gentle decline in hospitalisations continuing (looked like it had stalled, but with more information, looks like still declining). Number in hospital and number on mechanical ventilation continuing to gently decline - Deaths sub-10 per day; a spike on the 11th looks to be increasing the average, so at this level, data will be noisy.
That's also my sense. The effect of the May 17th changes will need careful study; although I think they could have safely pushed that date a week or two forward, the 5 week gap to the next set of changes is probably needed. I still think we're on track for it, given the vaccination progress and effectiveness.
Four different proposals were shortlisted, as the various councils disagreed as to their preferred option.
From afar, I thought that the Morecambe Bay Authority looked the most interesting merging South Lakeland, Barrow and Lancaster councils, with the rest of Cumbria forming another unitary. This appeared to go hark back a few years to the northern part of the old Lancastershire boundaries. However Lancashire County Council is looking into its own unitarisation proposals.
There was a separate consultation for North Yorkshire and Somerset, but these looked less interesting.
From nearby that proposal is one of the worst.
Two unitaries, Cumberland and Westmorland please. And give Barrow-in-Furness back, as a district, to the Lancastrians.
No - absolutely not. That simply does not reflect the reality of life now in the Furness area.
Four different proposals were shortlisted, as the various councils disagreed as to their preferred option.
From afar, I thought that the Morecambe Bay Authority looked the most interesting merging South Lakeland, Barrow and Lancaster councils, with the rest of Cumbria forming another unitary. This appeared to go hark back a few years to the northern part of the old Lancastershire boundaries. However Lancashire County Council is looking into its own unitarisation proposals.
There was a separate consultation for North Yorkshire and Somerset, but these looked less interesting.
From nearby that proposal is one of the worst.
Two unitaries, Cumberland and Westmorland please. And give Barrow-in-Furness back, as a district, to the Lancastrians.
No - absolutely not. That simply does not reflect the reality of life now in the Furness area.
Haha. Shockingly, I have never been to Cumbria. What’s your preferred governance arrangement?
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
So you want to tear up the Good Friday Agreement and reopen the Troubles?
Because that principle was abandoned as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Don't be a pillock. Really. I was stating why I thought the War Crimes Act 1991 was a good piece of legislation to have passed.
Of course I don't want the Troubles to restart. I would point out that there is currently violence happening in NI but no great interest on the part of the current British government in why that might be happening. Nor any great urgency to resolve it. Apparently NI is less important than a football league to this government.
The War Crimes Act 1991 was good at the time but by 1997 the idea that murderers would face justice no matter what was a principle we could no longer adhere to because to do so was keeping the Troubles alive. So the Good Friday Agreement 1997 killed that principle - it was determined better to draw a line in the sand and let murderers and let the murderers out of jail than continue to demand justice.
In which case there really should have been no problem with telling the Ballymurphy families the truth - that their loved ones were innocent and were killed by the security services. But no - they were forced to wait and suffer and fight for even that small bit of comfort.
Abandoning prosecutions but telling the truth I could just about stomach. Abandoning prosecutions but refusing to tell the truth, to provide even that much comfort to victims, is just revolting to my mind - a cynical betrayal of victims by both the state and the terrorists.
There was no problem, it happened. They've been told that. That's why it's in the news this week.
If you want it done sooner then why? How? Who would have done so? People aren't generally keen on revisiting issues of half a century ago unless it's dragged out by someone with an agenda, in this case the families concerned. Had they not been dogged then it would have been a case of letting sleeping dogs lie.
That's not dodgy or weird, that's just bureaucratic inertia. People concentrate on the issues of today not the fights of five decades ago from a time a line in the sand has already been drawn.
Nothing cynical. I doubt anyone who was senior making decisions fifty years ago is still working on it today. None may even be alive anymore.
I'm not going to repeat my header. The government knew from at least 2010 that the Ballymurphy victims were innocent, if not before. They had a golden opportunity to clear this up at the time of the Savile report. They could and should have done so. They rightly deserve to be castigated for dragging their feet on it.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
So far I have been called up for jury service 3 times.
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
So you've had 3 bites at the cherry and me not even a nibble. This seems most unfair.
I wouldn't complain if I were you. Some cases can make one ill with PTSD-like stuff.
Can I just gently comment that for those of us who have a family member suffering serious PTSD from attending ground zero in New Zealand's earthquakes and 10 years later needing 16 electroconvulsive treatment sessions, it is not something to be taken lightly
I quite agree. I was entirely serious (just in case you thought I was joking about it: not sure either way, but I don't want to cause you any offence).
No of course not, and you haven't
It is just that mental health is in crisis today, driven by covid and other factors, and for those suffering, like my eldest, it wrecks lives jobs, relationships and can be a lifelong battle
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
I was not doing that. I was multiplying total tests by specificity to get false positives. Then dividing true positives by total positives to get predictive value. That is the way it is done.
Sorry but I don't think you can multiply total tests by specificity to get false positives UNLESS you are testing people at random. The testing we are doing in the UK is targeted in lots of ways... to contacts of cases, to people with symptoms etc.
So it's wrong to say we would expect 1,000 false positives per day.
You cite a story from October last year, when prevalence was higher, and testing was lower.
Can you really say that 1.5 million tests a day is focused mainly, or even disproportionately, on high-risk COVID cases, when only 1.5 in 1000 of those tested are being found to be positive.
Bollocks, is what I say to that suggestion.
Obviously the testing is focused on those more likely to have COVID than would be achieved by sampling at random. Obviously.
ONS reckons roughly 55k people out of 65m have covid in latest survey. That's a few thousand new cases per day.
Is your position really that we are doing 1m tests a day and somehow missing those people? And instead getting loads of false positives?
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Phew. Although I've always fancied doing jury service and I wouldn't mind a long trial. Anything apart from something gruesome appeals. Never got the call though. Most people I know have but not me. Bit odd really. Still, their loss.
I've done it twice (all short trials). It has some small interest for a day or so, but its pretty grim overall. Huge amounts of just sitting and waiting.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
A blurred distinction in practice, but in theory is it not knowledge of the people that rules you out rather than knowledge of the subject matter?
Both. I think either one would have ruled me out, but I knew the area, had worked for some of the firms (a long list) connected, and (vaguely) knew some of the people (a long list of names). So heavily ruled out on three grounds
1) War is a difficult matter when it is civil war and some of the sides are bound by no international rules of war. It makes it tricky for those who, notionally, are.
2) What on earth would count as caring about Northern Ireland? I care. How would Cyclefree like me to show it?
3) If a Brexit/Scottish independence/something else decision goes a way I don't care for I accept it as part of a complex modern political process. It is rational to expect everyone in Ireland to do the same.
4) Countries with a past as evil and divided as Germany, compared with which Ireland is a triviality, manage to run today without people threatening to kill each other because of a decision they don't take a shine to. We expect everyone on the island of Ireland to do so as well.
5) The moment the people of NI agree what future they want, whether a continuation of this one or something else, the entire western world will bend over backwards to make sure they get what they agree to want. There is a rich panoply of good choices for the island including:
NI Independence, in or out of EU One independent island in or out of the EU Irish union with Britain. Irish union with Scotland (good historic grounds).
Loads more choices than most of us have.
It is just possible that others have actually cared slightly too much and that some tougher love and a bit of realism about choices would be useful.
Some interesting 'helicopter' on long term demographic change and he seems (like me) to come down on the side of the Alternative Narrative, ie Labour should prioritize securing and expanding their new base rather than bust a gut chasing their old one.
Rather fudges things at the end, though, with the conclusion that what Labour really need to get back in the game are policies that will - wait for it - "make Britain richer, fairer, cleaner and more contented."
Four different proposals were shortlisted, as the various councils disagreed as to their preferred option.
From afar, I thought that the Morecambe Bay Authority looked the most interesting merging South Lakeland, Barrow and Lancaster councils, with the rest of Cumbria forming another unitary. This appeared to go hark back a few years to the northern part of the old Lancastershire boundaries. However Lancashire County Council is looking into its own unitarisation proposals.
There was a separate consultation for North Yorkshire and Somerset, but these looked less interesting.
From nearby that proposal is one of the worst.
Two unitaries, Cumberland and Westmorland please. And give Barrow-in-Furness back, as a district, to the Lancastrians.
No - absolutely not. That simply does not reflect the reality of life now in the Furness area.
Haha. Shockingly, I have never been to Cumbria. What’s your preferred governance arrangement?
Blimey!
None of the proposals are ideal. The worst by a long way is having a unitary authority for the whole of Cumbria. The big issue is that you have in the middle the National Park and then all the areas around the outside. The National Park has its own governance to a certain extent so thought needs to be given to how the internal ring and the outer ring work together.
Of the proposals put forward the one we've favoured in our response is this one:-
"Carlisle City Council and Eden District Council submitted a joint proposal for two unitary councils covering the whole of the area of the administrative county of Cumbria: one unitary council in the north comprising the current districts of Allerdale, Carlisle and Eden; and one in the south comprising the current districts of Barrow, Copeland and South Lakeland in the south."
That at least makes geographic sense, avoids remote areas being governed from places far away (such as Carlisle, which takes absolutely no interest in places like Copeland) and is in line with how people Iive and work in the area. Barrow and Millom, for instance, are closely connected in terms of people living and working in both areas and moving easily between the two, in a way which does not happen between, say, Millom and Carlisle or Penrith etc.
Putting somewhere like Lancaster together with the Furness area is wrong because they are very far apart and have very different needs so one area will inevitably suffer.
This winding up scammers, are people doing it for the elevated reason of protecting that little old lady who might be next in line and who won't be gotten around to because of the farting around with you? Or is it more just that it's a viscerally enjoyable thing to do?
Sounds like you have a bit of sympathy for the scammers. I have zero sympathy for them.
Depends. They are sometimes being exploited themselves and exploited people get some sympathy from me, yes.
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
I was not doing that. I was multiplying total tests by specificity to get false positives. Then dividing true positives by total positives to get predictive value. That is the way it is done.
Sorry but I don't think you can multiply total tests by specificity to get false positives UNLESS you are testing people at random. The testing we are doing in the UK is targeted in lots of ways... to contacts of cases, to people with symptoms etc.
So it's wrong to say we would expect 1,000 false positives per day.
You cite a story from October last year, when prevalence was higher, and testing was lower.
Can you really say that 1.5 million tests a day is focused mainly, or even disproportionately, on high-risk COVID cases, when only 1.5 in 1000 of those tested are being found to be positive.
Bollocks, is what I say to that suggestion.
Obviously the testing is focused on those more likely to have COVID than would be achieved by sampling at random. Obviously.
ONS reckons roughly 55k people out of 65m have covid in latest survey. That's a few thousand new cases per day.
Is your position really that we are doing 1m tests a day and somehow missing those people? And instead getting loads of false positives?
Aren't the Lateral Flow Tests only recorded as positive if confirmed by a laboratory test?
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
What it symbolises for this discussion is really what's relevant there, I think ; a Conservative administration that still understood how much of Britain's entire postwar influence rested on its international contributions to legal process.
To my mind, it's a good example of legislation that makes those voting for it feel good, but which actually achieves nothing.
The principle that no matter what the passage of time and no matter how successful murderers have been at finding refuge they can still be made to pay for their crimes is an important principle to establish, no matter what the difficulties with such prosecutions. It is the principle behind the prosecutions of people like Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as other less well-known criminals. It is a good principle for Britain to have established and enacted into its laws. Human nature being what it is, it is likely that there will continue to be such crimes and if this enables Britain not to be a place of refuge for such criminals, so much the better.
Very much so. If Hashim Thaci, and also eventually other members of the KLA too, are convicted at the Hague, it will also show that this transcendent legal principle can even be stronger in the long-term than the vicissitudes and failures of western intervention, such as in the Blair government's undifferentiated backing for them, too.
"Charles Taylor and Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic" - they all shared a characteristic. They were no longer in power, or useful to those in power in their countries. Prosecuting them wouldn't restart the wars.
Prosecuting PIRA members, or UVF (or other such groups) members would restart the Troubles in short order.
Hashim Thaci was President of Kosovo, still favoured by NATO , and still had almost as powerful an adminstrative position, until quite recently, when he was sent for the Hague trial, AFAIK.
It is an age old conundrum in the treating of eg warlords - offer them immunity and hence bring them in, or try to arrest them/bring them to justice meaning they stay at large.
It is my understanding that Thaci was judged expendable by his allies - at home and abroad. A neat way to distance themselves from him.
Comments
The difference with domestic law is if the courts get something wrong then we can change the law democratically via Parliament. If the international courts get something wrong then Parliament can't readily fix that.
"When are we going to chase after the people from the other side for War Crimes?"
The response is quite interesting - apparently, it would be wrong, disgusting even, to send Phil Shiner Part Deux after the Taliban.
But the figures don't strike me as unrealistic. Nerys is citing low levels of hospitalisation based on areas with very low numbers of cases. It's possible to drill down on the website into where hospitalisations are occurring - doesn't look inconsistent with what we know.
100 hospitalisations a day for a serious endemic disease is not a particularly high number in a country of 67million, even where the majority have been immunised.
When I get the automated scam calls, which seem more common now, I generally reply 'yes' to automated "we think you've been in an accident that wasn't your fault, is that right" so yo get passed on to a real person, then say nothing until cut off. Figure that does waste time for them and spoil the economics.
http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/health_and_science/science/2016/05/160505_SCI_Cicadas.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2.jpg
So it's wrong to say we would expect 1,000 false positives per day.
https://www.bbc.com/news/54270373
The objections to it were that it was retrospective legislation - making a crime something that was not a crime at the time. I find that odd. Murder of civilians - even in war-time - has always been a crime. Being an accessory to such murder has always been a crime.
The idea that people in the Baltic who killed Jews did not know that what they were doing was wrong, was a crime struck me as feeble. Of course they did.
Worth bearing in mind that people are being tested not just in schools but especially in care homes and in hospitals etc. If a vaccinated care home resident gets or tests positive for the virus, then even if they're entirely asymptomatic from the virus, they're going to have a much more significant death chance that 2 per 2000 per 28 days. The median life expectancy for people who enter care homes is less than 12 months afterall.
Same for those in hospital for other reasons etc.
I'd imagine a long trial would be simply awful.
I plan to develop great expertise in any areas where major trials are likely in that it rules you out! I think in fact that this is the case is insane - I'd have been a great juror to sit on that Libor trial - I'm sure I'd have known far more than the lawyers, possibly more than the defendents and expert witnesses. It's a bit odd that these trials are more about the story than the facts. (Just as it seems to me, and undoubtedly good reason for it etc - not bad-mouthing the system)
Drilling down, we have 5 admissions throughout the whole South East and only 58 in hospital with it, with 6 on ventilation. You'd have a bunch of hospitals with zero admissions that day.
Hampshire Hospitals NHS Trust had zero admissions and a total of 2 people in any of their hospitals with covid, neither of whom are on ventilation.
From that, they ain't concentrated in the elderly, now, are they?
We should cherish that we are one of the very few places in the history of the world where power is passed on bloodlessly.
On the spectre of local restrictions, interesting to note that nearly half the admissions this time out were from Mid-Yorkshire Trust, covering Wakefield but also the Dewsbury & Batley & Spen areas, which remain warm spots.
Any imposition, or even anomalous non-imposition, of restrictions would be a hotly contested issue in a July by-election.
Surge vaccination seems like a decent idea epidemiologically at first glance, but also politically.
However just out of curiosity now I'm on the subject - was peak PB the Brexit vote?
22 admissions and diagnoses from a care home (average 3 per day).
First time was when I was studing at university I was called up at home. I was able to get off with a good excuse.
Second time I had a 2 day case regarding a local councillor who had countersigned a passport application form, but that passport application itself was fraudulent.
The third time was part of a larger group for jury selection for a several months long rape trial. Luckily I was not chosen for that, nor any other case.
- Probable gentle rise in cases, concentrated in the unvaccinated. Spike on the 10th; let's see if it continues or has subsided again.
- Very gentle decline in hospitalisations continuing (looked like it had stalled, but with more information, looks like still declining). Number in hospital and number on mechanical ventilation continuing to gently decline
- Deaths sub-10 per day; a spike on the 11th looks to be increasing the average, so at this level, data will be noisy.
4.2% of the general community does not live in a care home.
So yes, care homes are disproportionately weighted. So 10 natural deaths with Covid are entirely plausible.
Can you really say that 1.5 million tests a day is focused mainly, or even disproportionately, on high-risk COVID cases, when only 1.5 in 1000 of those tested are being found to be positive.
Bollocks, is what I say to that suggestion.
I read somewhere (perhaps on PB??) that Public Health England has bollocked the local NHS trust for deploying those jabs to youngsters ahead of timetable. But it's not clear that PHE can actually stop the NHS from doing so, so I assume they'll take one for the team and carry on jabbing.
Never had these problems under Trump.
People do not get admitted to hospital by false positives, so if more people are in hospital with Covid, then you can be pretty sure that is due to genuine cases. The same is true of the number of deaths.
Dr Birrell says that to be certain cases really are increasing, the daily case count "should always be considered alongside other information sources, such as the hospitalisations or deaths, or the community surveys run by the ONS or REACT".
In October last year hospitalisations and deaths were increasing. That is not the case today.
False positives was nonsense last October. Its not now, its a real issue now.
https://twitter.com/Karin_Goodwin/status/1392793625298341889?s=20
I guess we should be grateful that the Home Office didn't send in 1 PARA, though the cavalry is waiting
https://twitter.com/rain_later/status/1392865569293078529?s=20
Because that principle was abandoned as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Also I figure that the more of us do this, successfully, the quicker this whole stupid scam will become uneconomic, and they will give up their wretched cold-calling
Of course I don't want the Troubles to restart. I would point out that there is currently violence happening in NI but no great interest on the part of the current British government in why that might be happening. Nor any great urgency to resolve it. Apparently NI is less important than a football league to this government.
To do so would be, ironically, an injustice.
To be honest, it's hard to believe there's anyone left in BwD who hasn't had it, so long has it spent close to the top of the league tables for positive tests.
That's what happens when you fly illegally to another nation, you get turned around and sent back. Not pick your pick of new destinations.
It would be a major shock if the government were just deporting people to random nations.
BTW the Graun seems to have revised their piece. Clearer that some people claiming to have interviews were rejected. Not clear why.
Prosecuting PIRA members, or UVF (or other such groups) members would restart the Troubles in short order.
Abandoning prosecutions but telling the truth I could just about stomach. Abandoning prosecutions but refusing to tell the truth, to provide even that much comfort to victims, is just revolting to my mind - a cynical betrayal of victims by both the state and the terrorists.
--AS
The “sides” were the Loyalists and the Provos. The army should be held to a higher standard
There's no point further engaging. You've long made your mind up that you want us to have achieved herd immunity and therefore you will argue that until you're blue in the face.
If you want it done sooner then why? How? Who would have done so? People aren't generally keen on revisiting issues of half a century ago unless it's dragged out by someone with an agenda, in this case the families concerned. Had they not been dogged then it would have been a case of letting sleeping dogs lie.
That's not dodgy or weird, that's just bureaucratic inertia. People concentrate on the issues of today not the fights of five decades ago from a time a line in the sand has already been drawn.
Nothing cynical. I doubt anyone who was senior making decisions fifty years ago is still working on it today. None may even be alive anymore.
No death data at the moment
No death data at the moment
What’s your preferred governance arrangement?
It is just that mental health is in crisis today, driven by covid and other factors, and for those suffering, like my eldest, it wrecks lives jobs, relationships and can be a lifelong battle
The increase in cases is in the unvaccinated groups.
ONS reckons roughly 55k people out of 65m have covid in latest survey. That's a few thousand new cases per day.
Is your position really that we are doing 1m tests a day and somehow missing those people? And instead getting loads of false positives?
1) War is a difficult matter when it is civil war and some of the sides are bound by no international rules of war. It makes it tricky for those who, notionally, are.
2) What on earth would count as caring about Northern Ireland? I care. How would Cyclefree like me to show it?
3) If a Brexit/Scottish independence/something else decision goes a way I don't care for I accept it as part of a complex modern political process. It is rational to expect everyone in Ireland to do the same.
4) Countries with a past as evil and divided as Germany, compared with which Ireland is a triviality, manage to run today without people threatening to kill each other because of a decision they don't take a shine to. We expect everyone on the island of Ireland to do so as well.
5) The moment the people of NI agree what future they want, whether a continuation of this one or something else, the entire western world will bend over backwards to make sure they get what they agree to want. There is a rich panoply of good choices for the island including:
NI Independence, in or out of EU
One independent island in or out of the EU
Irish union with Britain.
Irish union with Scotland (good historic grounds).
Loads more choices than most of us have.
It is just possible that others have actually cared slightly too much and that some tougher love and a bit of realism about choices would be useful.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/peter-kellner-on-the-labour-party-crisis-7960234
Some interesting 'helicopter' on long term demographic change and he seems (like me) to come down on the side of the Alternative Narrative, ie Labour should prioritize securing and expanding their new base rather than bust a gut chasing their old one.
Rather fudges things at the end, though, with the conclusion that what Labour really need to get back in the game are policies that will - wait for it - "make Britain richer, fairer, cleaner and more contented."
And he got paid for that, I suppose.
None of the proposals are ideal. The worst by a long way is having a unitary authority for the whole of Cumbria. The big issue is that you have in the middle the National Park and then all the areas around the outside. The National Park has its own governance to a certain extent so thought needs to be given to how the internal ring and the outer ring work together.
Of the proposals put forward the one we've favoured in our response is this one:-
"Carlisle City Council and Eden District Council submitted a joint proposal for two unitary councils covering the whole of the area of the administrative county of Cumbria: one unitary council in the north comprising the current districts of Allerdale, Carlisle and Eden; and one in the south comprising the current districts of Barrow, Copeland and South Lakeland in the south."
That at least makes geographic sense, avoids remote areas being governed from places far away (such as Carlisle, which takes absolutely no interest in places like Copeland) and is in line with how people Iive and work in the area. Barrow and Millom, for instance, are closely connected in terms of people living and working in both areas and moving easily between the two, in a way which does not happen between, say, Millom and Carlisle or Penrith etc.
Putting somewhere like Lancaster together with the Furness area is wrong because they are very far apart and have very different needs so one area will inevitably suffer.
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1392884591128612868?s=20