Here’s a bet for the value eaters, perhaps interest the lads who punted SNP as not the largest party? Tbf I’m not sure if anyone is actually offering a price..
Wow - you seem a little bit unhinged about football fans celebrating a football win.
He's from Scotland. It happens so rarely...
It happens on an annual basis just like every other place
Celtic win. Or Rangers win.
A whole season, as exciting as a coin toss.....
Er, last 10 seasons - Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic RANGERS.
That's a bent coin.
Do you realise that any other sequence that you may have listed is equally unlikely?
True! Very good.
But looking at the population rather than the order ... a tad suspicious.
No not at all. If you toss a completely fair coin long enough you'll get that sequence without doubt. Just because it happens is no reason to discard the idea that the coin is fair. In fact if it never happened that would be far more suspect.
There's a chap called Jaynes who wrote some great books on probability. His work isn't easy, and I find it rather hard work, but I'm pretty sure he's got the right end of the stick.
A subject I thought I knew very well turns out to be one that I don't. I'll keep trying though.
Couple of probability geeks we are by the sounds of it. No, if I toss a coin and get 9 Celtics and a Rangers (any order) this wouldn't be particularly suspicious. Agreed. But what if I did the exercise 3 times and it went as follows -
CCCCCCCCCR CCCRCCCCCC RCCCCCCCCC
Should I now be getting twitchy?
For an unbiased coin, no.
You probability geek, you.
But the question is whether it IS unbiased.
How many consecutive runs of 10 with 9 Cs until we should start to suspect otherwise?
Are we talking Celtic vs Rangers here or a coin?
Both. It's a coin with Celtic written on one side and Rangers on the other.
Oh right. Those coins. The Celtic/Rangers coins.
Well for those coins....oh no wait. This is too boring.
You made the error to start with and are now "doing a kini". But it's boring tbh.
Yes, you bail out. Good call.
But look, there's nothing boring about probability, it's the very stuff of life. And if presented in a catchy way it can grip.
For example, a trick I like. You get a deck of 52 cards, face down, and you turn them over, one at a time in quick succession, predicting red or black. A par score for that is around 29 - an average person will get 29 right - but my average is 37 and my best is 43.
I used to do it at parties and people would stop dancing and crowd around, laughing and shaking their heads.
Not so sure about 'kini' though. Sounds a bit weedy. Can we not have Special K?
Keeps doing it (and filming) for hours until he gets 10 in a row and then releases just that one?
Is the right answer. Ten hours it took him, and he still had the showmanship to be positive about it right from the start. It’s purely a numbers game and it will always happen eventually, if you have enough patience. In theory it’s a 1 in 1024 event, although half of those events will fail at the first toss.
Wow - you seem a little bit unhinged about football fans celebrating a football win.
He's from Scotland. It happens so rarely...
It happens on an annual basis just like every other place
Celtic win. Or Rangers win.
A whole season, as exciting as a coin toss.....
Er, last 10 seasons - Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic RANGERS.
That's a bent coin.
Do you realise that any other sequence that you may have listed is equally unlikely?
True! Very good.
But looking at the population rather than the order ... a tad suspicious.
No not at all. If you toss a completely fair coin long enough you'll get that sequence without doubt. Just because it happens is no reason to discard the idea that the coin is fair. In fact if it never happened that would be far more suspect.
There's a chap called Jaynes who wrote some great books on probability. His work isn't easy, and I find it rather hard work, but I'm pretty sure he's got the right end of the stick.
A subject I thought I knew very well turns out to be one that I don't. I'll keep trying though.
Couple of probability geeks we are by the sounds of it. No, if I toss a coin and get 9 Celtics and a Rangers (any order) this wouldn't be particularly suspicious. Agreed. But what if I did the exercise 3 times and it went as follows -
CCCCCCCCCR CCCRCCCCCC RCCCCCCCCC
Should I now be getting twitchy?
Is the current Rangers team any good?
Stevie says so. Says he's found something special up there.
Good enough to win in Scotland but not in Europe.
Well we'll see where he goes with it. He could be doing a Clough.
Those days are gone. You need serious money to do well in Europe.
RFC have enough cash swilling around to blow on certain stuff
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
I think the risk for Labour is a LibDem/Green pincer movement on its voters. Having lost the link to “the workers”, a large chunk of the residual vote is susceptible to those two parties if Labour looks to be a lame duck. The Tories weren’t in so bad a position because the liberals never could penetrate their core vote, and the recovery was on under Cameron before UKIP really took off.
I agree. Though conversely if Labour isn't seen as a lame duck but as a credible government it would work the other way. Greens in particular, and some Lib Dems, would swallow their reservations about Labour because their antipathy to the Tories is much, much stronger.
I agree with that. The Labour Party needs to look as if might win, in order to borrow the votes required to win.
Seattle Times ($) Suspect in Washington state’s $650 million fraud arrested at airport trying to leave U.S.
A Nigerian man suspected in Washington state’s $650 million unemployment fraud was arrested Friday at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport by federal agents as he allegedly attempted to leave the country.
Abidemi Rufai, of Lekki, Nigeria, appeared in federal court Saturday on charges that he used the identities of more than 100 Washington residents to steal more than $350,000 in unemployment benefits from the Washington state Employment Security Department (ESD) during the COVID-19 pandemic last year.
“This is the first, but will not be the last, significant arrest in our ongoing investigation of ESD fraud,” said Tessa Gorman, acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, in a statement Monday.
Rufai was arrested by FBI agents Friday evening and is scheduled for a detention hearing Wednesday. The case will be prosecuted in federal court in Tacoma.
Rufai’s arrest comes almost a year to the day after ESD officials announced they were temporarily suspending unemployment benefits payments after discovering that criminals had used stolen Social Security numbers and other personal information to file bogus claims for federal and state unemployment benefits.
Within days, ESD officials disclosed that “hundreds of millions of dollars” had likely been stolen in a fraud scheme that law enforcement officials and cybercrime experts said was partly based in Nigeria.
Washington was among the first states to be hit by a wave of fraud that would eventually strike dozens of states and siphon off billions of dollars in federal aid meant for pandemic victims.
Rufai, who used the alias Sandy Tang, is also suspected of defrauding unemployment programs in Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Wyoming, as well as involvement in other fraud schemes.
Federal officials acknowledged that Rufai’s presence in the United States probably was unusual in the unemployment fraud scheme. According to the complaint, many of the fraudulent claims that hit the ESD were likely filed from outside the United States, according to the complaint. . . .
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
I think the risk for Labour is a LibDem/Green pincer movement on its voters. Having lost the link to “the workers”, a large chunk of the residual vote is susceptible to those two parties if Labour looks to be a lame duck. The Tories weren’t in so bad a position because the liberals never could penetrate their core vote, and the recovery was on under Cameron before UKIP really took off.
Isn’t the problem for Labour that the Conservatives have arguably annexed a large part of their traditional core vote. To the extent that it may soon come to be seen actually as the Conservatives core vote. So fighting to get it back may actually be a futile strategy. The huge gaps opening up are actually in elements of the traditional Tory core vote - but is Labour actually at all well positioned to exploit that?
That’s what I mean though. Boris’ new voters (and, for now at least, I do think they are his and not his party’s) would have been the back bone of the unions 30 years ago.
It’s a conundrum, because the other Labour voters are much more vulnerable to the LibDems and Greens.
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Well the counter arguments are 1) the models were unnecessarily pessimistic, and 2) in all three lockdowns, cases were on their way down before lockdowns kicked in. (Though to be honest the data we have for lockdown 1 is so sketchy and you have to make so many assumptions on timescales between infection and death that you could equally draw the more intuitive conclusion that lockdown led to cases falling.) Lockdowns 2 and 3 are unequivocal though. Start of fall in positive tests - our data was pretty good by then, though not perfect - predated lockdowns. Lockdown may have led to cases falling faster, but as we've no counterfactual we can't be sure.
I don't see how the central forecasts could have been grossly misleading when even WITH the action the NHS struggled badly. And the action (in essence) was to reduce mixing between people. Which is how the virus spreads. That less interaction means less virus is surely a stone cold fact. We can debate plenty but not this, I don't think. Lockdown meant less interaction which meant less virus.
Anyway, I'm off now to celebrate liberation day in my local hostelry.
My order is already in my head. Two pints of Harveys bitter, a bottle of red (shared), moules frites, sticky toffee pudding, double espresso. Can't wait, what a treat.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
Well it’s almost the same result as GE2019 and I don’t hear Corbyn's performance then being described as remarkably resilient
33% is ok if the others are on 30% 20% 10% and 7%, not when someone’s on 40 odd
Anyway, I'm off now to celebrate liberation day in my local hostelry.
My order is already in my head. Two pints of Harveys bitter, a bottle of red (shared), moules frites, sticky toffee pudding, double espresso. Can't wait, what a treat.
You can’t have red with moules!
I thought we were all looking for a bit of rebellion and lack of conformity with consensus wisdom.
Guido quotes the ONS today with the estimate that the pandemic and lockdown to date has cost the taxpayer a cool USD372bn. And that's to May 2021.
Over the next 18 months Johnson & co will be trying to plug gaps and get some of that back. So no, there won't be an early election.
In fact, it would not surprise me if the colossal bill for covid/lockdown is now driving the agenda. It would explain why Johnson, after countless cave-ins, is suddenly standing up to SAGE.
He simply cannot afford not to.
I thought Modern Monetary Theory held that deficits are irrelevant and you can print money for ever without any bad stuff happening.
Is that even a theory? So far as I can see economists have given up on theory. They've lit the blue touchpaper, stood well back, but no way are they going back to the firework.
Personally I think that a line needs to be drawn under this QE phase as quickly as possible and no matter the temptation it shouldn't be used again.
The economic climate is so weird at the moment.
A couple of straws in the wind. My sister, who works in a dubious part of financial services, asked me last week whether I wanted to invest in a new coin that is launching next week.
On Facebook this morning, someone I know was telling people not to sell bitcoin and that now was a good time to buy etc. etc.
It's all going to end in tears.
I'm sure you're right.
I think bitcoin is worth zero. I've never owned any, nor do I want to. I did consider shorting it, but thankfully worked out that any number could be the price. I sort of hope that the crypto-currencies fade away (thus not hurting people really badly), but I'm almost sure that it won't be a clean demise, and I may be massively wrong and one day be forced to use bitcoin as its the only sensible choice. I hope that they fade away mainly because I think they bring massive potential issues with them, and the more valuable they get the worse those issues are.
I'm 100% not the person to trust in terms of these valuations though - I've been completely wrong all the way.
As I am a moron* I don't understand Bitcoin and the various other made up coins. Money is Gold. It has an intrinsic value. Most currency is now a promissory note where its value comes from it being the only way to pay your taxes.
But where is the value in Bitcoin? It has no intrinsic value. It has no inferred value. It isn't an official currency of anywhere. I don't get it.
Why is gold intrinsically valuable? It’s pretty, it’s got some good uses in electronics, and you can make things that don’t corrode. Other than that, it has value because we value it. Which is indeed a self-referential circle, and that’s exactly what value is.
The value of a thing is the amount by which someone values it; no more, no less. Money is simply a trusted and transferable measure of value owed. Gold can be useful for that because lots of people value it, but that value does shift against other things. Anything that is valued by lots of people could be useful as a basis for money. Personally, I’m sceptical on Bitcoin, because I don’t value it, but that could just be me. It’s also very new, which makes it harder for lots of people to reliably continue to value it over time (with gold, silver, land, for example, there’s a long and well-pronounced habit of valuing them - your instinctive ascribing some intrinsic value to it in and of itself is a good example of that.
We've had two or three heavy downpours here in lowland east London this afternoon.
Before this place turns into netweather.tv, those hoping for a heatwave - I can't see it. Settled and warmer by the middle of next week perhaps but for me the High pressure is building in the wrong place for heat fans (more to the north and west than to the east). No sign of a "plume" of hot air from the Sahara either but we've enjoyed or endured a prolonged period of below average temperatures in London.
No, not the vaccine scaremongering, the turgid collaboration with Van the Man or getting cosy with Dessie Swain, but 'I continue to tread the path of passive rebellion and try to tow the line'!!
Anyway, I'm off now to celebrate liberation day in my local hostelry.
My order is already in my head. Two pints of Harveys bitter, a bottle of red (shared), moules frites, sticky toffee pudding, double espresso. Can't wait, what a treat.
You can’t have red with moules!
I thought we were all looking for a bit of rebellion and lack of conformity with consensus wisdom.
Doesn’t taste good as a mix. Worse than pineapple on pizza.
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Well the counter arguments are 1) the models were unnecessarily pessimistic, and 2) in all three lockdowns, cases were on their way down before lockdowns kicked in. (Though to be honest the data we have for lockdown 1 is so sketchy and you have to make so many assumptions on timescales between infection and death that you could equally draw the more intuitive conclusion that lockdown led to cases falling.) Lockdowns 2 and 3 are unequivocal though. Start of fall in positive tests - our data was pretty good by then, though not perfect - predated lockdowns. Lockdown may have led to cases falling faster, but as we've no counterfactual we can't be sure.
I don't see how the central forecasts could have been grossly misleading when even WITH the action the NHS struggled badly. And the action (in essence) was to reduce mixing between people. Which is how the virus spreads. That less interaction means less virus is surely a stone cold fact. We can debate plenty but not this, I don't think. Lockdown meant less interaction which meant less virus.
Well you'd think so. But the data suggests otherwise - cases were probably already coming down. I agree it's counterintuitive. But it appears to be the case. My theory is that people adjusted their behaviour on their own before any measures were mandated. And that to turn the corner, this is enough. Perhaps lockdown then brought cases down more quickly. Very hard to know.
Anyway, I'm off now to celebrate liberation day in my local hostelry.
My order is already in my head. Two pints of Harveys bitter, a bottle of red (shared), moules frites, sticky toffee pudding, double espresso. Can't wait, what a treat.
You can’t have red with moules!
I thought we were all looking for a bit of rebellion and lack of conformity with consensus wisdom.
Doesn’t taste good as a mix. Worse than pineapple on pizza.
Maybe the red is to go with the sticky toffee pudding.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Of course they can, but last time it required (in no particular order):
A purge of the hard left The Conservative government to have lost the faith of the electorate on the economy A charismatic, forward thinking and positive leader.
I see no signs of Labour having a Blairite economic offer to the (largely Conservative) voters it needs to convince.
It batted down here this morning. But it's glorious now. Shorts weather.
Sounds like a classic thunder storm to me. Clashes of masses of hot & cold air. Or visa vesa.
Very common in much if not most of US, esp. South & Midwest. Rare in Pacific Northwest except occasionally in the winter.
My first December in Seattle, was sitting around on a cool, windy day.
Started thundering, lightening, some hail mixed in. Then snowed like a sonofabitch dumped nine inches just in time for rush hour AND end of the school day. Epic mess!
Especially as the thermometer dropped like a rock, and a mini-mini-ice age froze everything in situ for over a week.
So maybe you've got something to look forward to? Nordic skiing coming to Soho!
Anyway, I'm off now to celebrate liberation day in my local hostelry.
My order is already in my head. Two pints of Harveys bitter, a bottle of red (shared), moules frites, sticky toffee pudding, double espresso. Can't wait, what a treat.
You can’t have red with moules!
Wouldn’t be my choice but have the wine you enjoy, especially when you have been waiting for it for the best part of a year!
No, not the vaccine scaremongering, the turgid collaboration with Van the Man or getting cosy with Dessie Swain, but 'I continue to tread the path of passive rebellion and try to tow the line'!!
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
The SAGE projections (explicitly stated as not being forecasts in their paper) were based on Cabinet office central rollout scenario - which was 2.7m vaccinations per week for England only.
And since 31stMarch - we have been doing almost exactly 2.7m vaccinations per week in England.
Not really, looking at the last few weeks I count 3.2, 3.0, 2.9 - that's 1m additional vaccine doses vs the SAGE forecast that have been done in just three weeks in England. Also including a bank holiday which definitely hit numbers by a fair amount. This is also after the AZ decision to not use it for 18-39 year olds which has undoubtedly hit the first dose rate to some degree.
Somewhat unfair to accuse them of making up a dodgy number when they were given it by the Cabinet Office and told to work on that assumption (and they highlighted in the models in question that should the number be higher, the result would be better).
One would assume that the Government, who had all the inside information on the vaccine acquisition, would do better, of course, but how good are your models when you’ve been given a specific input to use that’s wrong?
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Doing it "just in time" means that it was done "in time".
The justification of entering lockdown was to prevent the NHS collapsing and it didn't collapse.
Stripping away people's basic civil liberties before it's necessary, without trying other steps first, is not a good thing.
Wow - you seem a little bit unhinged about football fans celebrating a football win.
He's from Scotland. It happens so rarely...
It happens on an annual basis just like every other place
Celtic win. Or Rangers win.
A whole season, as exciting as a coin toss.....
Er, last 10 seasons - Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic RANGERS.
That's a bent coin.
Do you realise that any other sequence that you may have listed is equally unlikely?
True! Very good.
But looking at the population rather than the order ... a tad suspicious.
No not at all. If you toss a completely fair coin long enough you'll get that sequence without doubt. Just because it happens is no reason to discard the idea that the coin is fair. In fact if it never happened that would be far more suspect.
There's a chap called Jaynes who wrote some great books on probability. His work isn't easy, and I find it rather hard work, but I'm pretty sure he's got the right end of the stick.
A subject I thought I knew very well turns out to be one that I don't. I'll keep trying though.
Couple of probability geeks we are by the sounds of it. No, if I toss a coin and get 9 Celtics and a Rangers (any order) this wouldn't be particularly suspicious. Agreed. But what if I did the exercise 3 times and it went as follows -
CCCCCCCCCR CCCRCCCCCC RCCCCCCCCC
Should I now be getting twitchy?
For an unbiased coin, no.
You probability geek, you.
But the question is whether it IS unbiased.
How many consecutive runs of 10 with 9 Cs until we should start to suspect otherwise?
Are we talking Celtic vs Rangers here or a coin?
Both. It's a coin with Celtic written on one side and Rangers on the other.
Oh right. Those coins. The Celtic/Rangers coins.
Well for those coins....oh no wait. This is too boring.
You made the error to start with and are now "doing a kini". But it's boring tbh.
Yes, you bail out. Good call.
But look, there's nothing boring about probability, it's the very stuff of life. And if presented in a catchy way it can grip.
For example, a trick I like. You get a deck of 52 cards, face down, and you turn them over, one at a time in quick succession, predicting red or black. A par score for that is around 29 - an average person will get 29 right - but my average is 37 and my best is 43.
I used to do it at parties and people would stop dancing and crowd around, laughing and shaking their heads.
Not so sure about 'kini' though. Sounds a bit weedy. Can we not have Special K?
Keeps doing it (and filming) for hours until he gets 10 in a row and then releases just that one?
Is the right answer. Ten hours it took him, and he still had the showmanship to be positive about it right from the start. It’s purely a numbers game and it will always happen eventually, if you have enough patience. In theory it’s a 1 in 1024 event, although half of those events will fail at the first toss.
There's a racing tipster scam based on this. You tip every horse in a race. Then you only do a follow up contact with those who got the right tip for race 1. If it was an outsider you look (to them) like the real deal. Some of them will be prepared to open their wallet.
Wow - you seem a little bit unhinged about football fans celebrating a football win.
He's from Scotland. It happens so rarely...
It happens on an annual basis just like every other place
Celtic win. Or Rangers win.
A whole season, as exciting as a coin toss.....
Er, last 10 seasons - Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic RANGERS.
That's a bent coin.
Do you realise that any other sequence that you may have listed is equally unlikely?
True! Very good.
But looking at the population rather than the order ... a tad suspicious.
No not at all. If you toss a completely fair coin long enough you'll get that sequence without doubt. Just because it happens is no reason to discard the idea that the coin is fair. In fact if it never happened that would be far more suspect.
There's a chap called Jaynes who wrote some great books on probability. His work isn't easy, and I find it rather hard work, but I'm pretty sure he's got the right end of the stick.
A subject I thought I knew very well turns out to be one that I don't. I'll keep trying though.
Couple of probability geeks we are by the sounds of it. No, if I toss a coin and get 9 Celtics and a Rangers (any order) this wouldn't be particularly suspicious. Agreed. But what if I did the exercise 3 times and it went as follows -
CCCCCCCCCR CCCRCCCCCC RCCCCCCCCC
Should I now be getting twitchy?
For an unbiased coin, no.
You probability geek, you.
But the question is whether it IS unbiased.
How many consecutive runs of 10 with 9 Cs until we should start to suspect otherwise?
Are we talking Celtic vs Rangers here or a coin?
Both. It's a coin with Celtic written on one side and Rangers on the other.
Oh right. Those coins. The Celtic/Rangers coins.
Well for those coins....oh no wait. This is too boring.
You made the error to start with and are now "doing a kini". But it's boring tbh.
Yes, you bail out. Good call.
But look, there's nothing boring about probability, it's the very stuff of life. And if presented in a catchy way it can grip.
For example, a trick I like. You get a deck of 52 cards, face down, and you turn them over, one at a time in quick succession, predicting red or black. A par score for that is around 29 - an average person will get 29 right - but my average is 37 and my best is 43.
I used to do it at parties and people would stop dancing and crowd around, laughing and shaking their heads.
Not so sure about 'kini' though. Sounds a bit weedy. Can we not have Special K?
Keeps doing it (and filming) for hours until he gets 10 in a row and then releases just that one?
Is the right answer. Ten hours it took him, and he still had the showmanship to be positive about it right from the start. It’s purely a numbers game and it will always happen eventually, if you have enough patience. In theory it’s a 1 in 1024 event, although half of those events will fail at the first toss.
Can we see the video of the last time he got the 9 in a row but not the 10?
Was this really the first question from a Conservative MP today to Hancock ?
Greg Clark (Con), the chair of the Commons science committee, asks at what point it will be safe for people to travel to countries country on the amber list.
Was this really the first question from a Conservative MP today to Hancock ?
Greg Clark (Con), the chair of the Commons science committee, asks at what point it will be safe for people to travel to countries country on the amber list.
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Well the counter arguments are 1) the models were unnecessarily pessimistic, and 2) in all three lockdowns, cases were on their way down before lockdowns kicked in. (Though to be honest the data we have for lockdown 1 is so sketchy and you have to make so many assumptions on timescales between infection and death that you could equally draw the more intuitive conclusion that lockdown led to cases falling.) Lockdowns 2 and 3 are unequivocal though. Start of fall in positive tests - our data was pretty good by then, though not perfect - predated lockdowns. Lockdown may have led to cases falling faster, but as we've no counterfactual we can't be sure.
I don't see how the central forecasts could have been grossly misleading when even WITH the action the NHS struggled badly. And the action (in essence) was to reduce mixing between people. Which is how the virus spreads. That less interaction means less virus is surely a stone cold fact. We can debate plenty but not this, I don't think. Lockdown meant less interaction which meant less virus.
Well you'd think so. But the data suggests otherwise - cases were probably already coming down. I agree it's counterintuitive. But it appears to be the case. My theory is that people adjusted their behaviour on their own before any measures were mandated. And that to turn the corner, this is enough. Perhaps lockdown then brought cases down more quickly. Very hard to know.
There is no evidence cases were coming down before the first lockdown. Even Haimes at his data twisting best could only get them falling 1 day before full lockdown and that was with a set of assumptions so biased as to defy belief.
Love to see your working as to the second and third lockdown.
The second lockdown was announced 5 days before it came into effect so there was almost certainly behaviour modification before lockdown was introduced and as expected cases kept rising after lockdown.
No, not the vaccine scaremongering, the turgid collaboration with Van the Man or getting cosy with Dessie Swain, but 'I continue to tread the path of passive rebellion and try to tow the line'!!
If he reacted that badly to the vaccine, then getting Covid sounds like it would have killed him.
Think you are SERIOUSLY underestimating the boost to his immune system that Eric Clapton and other rock legends got, from years of wrestling with groupie-transmitted microbes of MANY kinds & characteristics (the groupies and the bugs).
Clearly it was this that saved Ted Nugent after he contracted COVID.
BTW and FYI, not sure if most PBers are aware of this, but Trumpsky substituted Nugent for Pence as VP on this GOP ticket last year. So that Ted is current serving as Secret Vice President.
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Well the counter arguments are 1) the models were unnecessarily pessimistic, and 2) in all three lockdowns, cases were on their way down before lockdowns kicked in. (Though to be honest the data we have for lockdown 1 is so sketchy and you have to make so many assumptions on timescales between infection and death that you could equally draw the more intuitive conclusion that lockdown led to cases falling.) Lockdowns 2 and 3 are unequivocal though. Start of fall in positive tests - our data was pretty good by then, though not perfect - predated lockdowns. Lockdown may have led to cases falling faster, but as we've no counterfactual we can't be sure.
Lockdown 2: nope. Kicked in on Thursday 5th, positive cases peaked around the 10th. Lockdown 3: nope. Came in staggered (as London and some of the South East entered Tier 4 earlier than the rest of the country); cases in each region only started falling after Tier 4/stay at home order kicked in there.
Was this really the first question from a Conservative MP today to Hancock ?
Greg Clark (Con), the chair of the Commons science committee, asks at what point it will be safe for people to travel to countries country on the amber list.
Whoever is talking about an early election is showing themselves as the affluent political classes at their most vacuous.Do not these people have more important things to be thinking about?
No, not the vaccine scaremongering, the turgid collaboration with Van the Man or getting cosy with Dessie Swain, but 'I continue to tread the path of passive rebellion and try to tow the line'!!
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Well the counter arguments are 1) the models were unnecessarily pessimistic, and 2) in all three lockdowns, cases were on their way down before lockdowns kicked in. (Though to be honest the data we have for lockdown 1 is so sketchy and you have to make so many assumptions on timescales between infection and death that you could equally draw the more intuitive conclusion that lockdown led to cases falling.) Lockdowns 2 and 3 are unequivocal though. Start of fall in positive tests - our data was pretty good by then, though not perfect - predated lockdowns. Lockdown may have led to cases falling faster, but as we've no counterfactual we can't be sure.
Lockdown 2: nope. Kicked in on Thursday 5th, positive cases peaked around the 10th. Lockdown 3: nope. Came in staggered (as London and some of the South East entered Tier 4 earlier than the rest of the country); cases in each region only started falling after Tier 4/stay at home order kicked in there.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
There is nothing in the figures which makes a Labour recovery impossible. In 1997 it took Tory atrophy, scandal, the ERM debacle, death wish, desire to lose, and a rare political genius in charge of Labour of the sort we see only every few decades.
I don't see the conditions being right for Labour as long as they have no interesting policies, a shortage of interesting people, and little political genius around.
The fact was in 1997, Blair didn't deliver a narrow Wilson-style 1964 win but an almost unprecedented landslide - a bigger win that Thatcher's in 1983.
Nobody is expecting such a fundamental upheaval and Labour doesn't need that. It needs the Conservative seat number to fall by about 60. Now, who, where and how those 60 seats fall is the question - Labour will get some but others may go to the LDs or perhaps the Greens.
No, not the vaccine scaremongering, the turgid collaboration with Van the Man or getting cosy with Dessie Swain, but 'I continue to tread the path of passive rebellion and try to tow the line'!!
If he reacted that badly to the vaccine, then getting Covid sounds like it would have killed him.
Think you are SERIOUSLY underestimating the boost to his immune system that Eric Clapton and other rock legends got, from years of wrestling with groupie-transmitted microbes of MANY kinds & characteristics (the groupies and the bugs).
Clearly it was this that saved Ted Nugent after he contracted COVID.
BTW and FYI, not sure if most PBers are aware of this, but Trumpsky substituted Nugent for Pence as VP on this GOP ticket last year. So that Ted is current serving as Secret Vice President.
Ted used to go out into the desert, with a truck loaded up with amps.
And play.
People 40 miles away complained about the noise.
Whatever you may think about Ted, he ain't doing it quietly.....
Wow - you seem a little bit unhinged about football fans celebrating a football win.
He's from Scotland. It happens so rarely...
It happens on an annual basis just like every other place
Celtic win. Or Rangers win.
A whole season, as exciting as a coin toss.....
Er, last 10 seasons - Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic RANGERS.
That's a bent coin.
Do you realise that any other sequence that you may have listed is equally unlikely?
True! Very good.
But looking at the population rather than the order ... a tad suspicious.
No not at all. If you toss a completely fair coin long enough you'll get that sequence without doubt. Just because it happens is no reason to discard the idea that the coin is fair. In fact if it never happened that would be far more suspect.
There's a chap called Jaynes who wrote some great books on probability. His work isn't easy, and I find it rather hard work, but I'm pretty sure he's got the right end of the stick.
A subject I thought I knew very well turns out to be one that I don't. I'll keep trying though.
Couple of probability geeks we are by the sounds of it. No, if I toss a coin and get 9 Celtics and a Rangers (any order) this wouldn't be particularly suspicious. Agreed. But what if I did the exercise 3 times and it went as follows -
CCCCCCCCCR CCCRCCCCCC RCCCCCCCCC
Should I now be getting twitchy?
For an unbiased coin, no.
You probability geek, you.
But the question is whether it IS unbiased.
How many consecutive runs of 10 with 9 Cs until we should start to suspect otherwise?
Are we talking Celtic vs Rangers here or a coin?
Both. It's a coin with Celtic written on one side and Rangers on the other.
Oh right. Those coins. The Celtic/Rangers coins.
Well for those coins....oh no wait. This is too boring.
You made the error to start with and are now "doing a kini". But it's boring tbh.
Yes, you bail out. Good call.
But look, there's nothing boring about probability, it's the very stuff of life. And if presented in a catchy way it can grip.
For example, a trick I like. You get a deck of 52 cards, face down, and you turn them over, one at a time in quick succession, predicting red or black. A par score for that is around 29 - an average person will get 29 right - but my average is 37 and my best is 43.
I used to do it at parties and people would stop dancing and crowd around, laughing and shaking their heads.
Not so sure about 'kini' though. Sounds a bit weedy. Can we not have Special K?
Keeps doing it (and filming) for hours until he gets 10 in a row and then releases just that one?
Is the right answer. Ten hours it took him, and he still had the showmanship to be positive about it right from the start. It’s purely a numbers game and it will always happen eventually, if you have enough patience. In theory it’s a 1 in 1024 event, although half of those events will fail at the first toss.
There's a racing tipster scam based on this. You tip every horse in a race. Then you only do a follow up contact with those who got the right tip for race 1. If it was an outsider you look (to them) like the real deal. Some of them will be prepared to open their wallet.
That was actually the premise of the whole Derren Brown show, called “The System”, of which the 10 heads demonstration was a small part.
No, not the vaccine scaremongering, the turgid collaboration with Van the Man or getting cosy with Dessie Swain, but 'I continue to tread the path of passive rebellion and try to tow the line'!!
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
There is nothing in the figures which makes a Labour recovery impossible. In 1997 it took Tory atrophy, scandal, the ERM debacle, death wish, desire to lose, and a rare political genius in charge of Labour of the sort we see only every few decades.
I don't see the conditions being right for Labour as long as they have no interesting policies, a shortage of interesting people, and little political genius around.
The fact was in 1997, Blair didn't deliver a narrow Wilson-style 1964 win but an almost unprecedented landslide - a bigger win that Thatcher's in 1983.
Nobody is expecting such a fundamental upheaval and Labour doesn't need that. It needs the Conservative seat number to fall by about 60. Now, who, where and how those 60 seats fall is the question - Labour will get some but others may go to the LDs or perhaps the Greens.
Seats falling to the Greens are less likely to be Tory than they are from Labour....
Wow - you seem a little bit unhinged about football fans celebrating a football win.
He's from Scotland. It happens so rarely...
It happens on an annual basis just like every other place
Celtic win. Or Rangers win.
A whole season, as exciting as a coin toss.....
Er, last 10 seasons - Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic RANGERS.
That's a bent coin.
Do you realise that any other sequence that you may have listed is equally unlikely?
True! Very good.
But looking at the population rather than the order ... a tad suspicious.
No not at all. If you toss a completely fair coin long enough you'll get that sequence without doubt. Just because it happens is no reason to discard the idea that the coin is fair. In fact if it never happened that would be far more suspect.
There's a chap called Jaynes who wrote some great books on probability. His work isn't easy, and I find it rather hard work, but I'm pretty sure he's got the right end of the stick.
A subject I thought I knew very well turns out to be one that I don't. I'll keep trying though.
Couple of probability geeks we are by the sounds of it. No, if I toss a coin and get 9 Celtics and a Rangers (any order) this wouldn't be particularly suspicious. Agreed. But what if I did the exercise 3 times and it went as follows -
CCCCCCCCCR CCCRCCCCCC RCCCCCCCCC
Should I now be getting twitchy?
For an unbiased coin, no.
You probability geek, you.
But the question is whether it IS unbiased.
How many consecutive runs of 10 with 9 Cs until we should start to suspect otherwise?
Are we talking Celtic vs Rangers here or a coin?
Both. It's a coin with Celtic written on one side and Rangers on the other.
Oh right. Those coins. The Celtic/Rangers coins.
Well for those coins....oh no wait. This is too boring.
You made the error to start with and are now "doing a kini". But it's boring tbh.
Yes, you bail out. Good call.
But look, there's nothing boring about probability, it's the very stuff of life. And if presented in a catchy way it can grip.
For example, a trick I like. You get a deck of 52 cards, face down, and you turn them over, one at a time in quick succession, predicting red or black. A par score for that is around 29 - an average person will get 29 right - but my average is 37 and my best is 43.
I used to do it at parties and people would stop dancing and crowd around, laughing and shaking their heads.
Not so sure about 'kini' though. Sounds a bit weedy. Can we not have Special K?
Keeps doing it (and filming) for hours until he gets 10 in a row and then releases just that one?
Is the right answer. Ten hours it took him, and he still had the showmanship to be positive about it right from the start. It’s purely a numbers game and it will always happen eventually, if you have enough patience. In theory it’s a 1 in 1024 event, although half of those events will fail at the first toss.
There's a racing tipster scam based on this. You tip every horse in a race. Then you only do a follow up contact with those who got the right tip for race 1. If it was an outsider you look (to them) like the real deal. Some of them will be prepared to open their wallet.
That was actually the premise of the whole Derren Brown show, called “The System”, of which the 10 heads demonstration was a small part.
As I said before making the in person prover a Novice hurdles was an act of pure genius. Pretty much going to guarantee a dramatic result for one of the bettors and 'evidence' of the Tipsters power.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
Wow - you seem a little bit unhinged about football fans celebrating a football win.
He's from Scotland. It happens so rarely...
It happens on an annual basis just like every other place
Celtic win. Or Rangers win.
A whole season, as exciting as a coin toss.....
Er, last 10 seasons - Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic Celtic RANGERS.
That's a bent coin.
Do you realise that any other sequence that you may have listed is equally unlikely?
True! Very good.
But looking at the population rather than the order ... a tad suspicious.
No not at all. If you toss a completely fair coin long enough you'll get that sequence without doubt. Just because it happens is no reason to discard the idea that the coin is fair. In fact if it never happened that would be far more suspect.
There's a chap called Jaynes who wrote some great books on probability. His work isn't easy, and I find it rather hard work, but I'm pretty sure he's got the right end of the stick.
A subject I thought I knew very well turns out to be one that I don't. I'll keep trying though.
Couple of probability geeks we are by the sounds of it. No, if I toss a coin and get 9 Celtics and a Rangers (any order) this wouldn't be particularly suspicious. Agreed. But what if I did the exercise 3 times and it went as follows -
CCCCCCCCCR CCCRCCCCCC RCCCCCCCCC
Should I now be getting twitchy?
For an unbiased coin, no.
You probability geek, you.
But the question is whether it IS unbiased.
How many consecutive runs of 10 with 9 Cs until we should start to suspect otherwise?
Are we talking Celtic vs Rangers here or a coin?
Both. It's a coin with Celtic written on one side and Rangers on the other.
Oh right. Those coins. The Celtic/Rangers coins.
Well for those coins....oh no wait. This is too boring.
You made the error to start with and are now "doing a kini". But it's boring tbh.
Yes, you bail out. Good call.
But look, there's nothing boring about probability, it's the very stuff of life. And if presented in a catchy way it can grip.
For example, a trick I like. You get a deck of 52 cards, face down, and you turn them over, one at a time in quick succession, predicting red or black. A par score for that is around 29 - an average person will get 29 right - but my average is 37 and my best is 43.
I used to do it at parties and people would stop dancing and crowd around, laughing and shaking their heads.
Not so sure about 'kini' though. Sounds a bit weedy. Can we not have Special K?
Keeps doing it (and filming) for hours until he gets 10 in a row and then releases just that one?
Is the right answer. Ten hours it took him, and he still had the showmanship to be positive about it right from the start. It’s purely a numbers game and it will always happen eventually, if you have enough patience. In theory it’s a 1 in 1024 event, although half of those events will fail at the first toss.
Can we see the video of the last time he got the 9 in a row but not the 10?
Wouldn’t that be good. Unless he got very lucky, there must have been a pile of 7s and 8s in the recording.
Why the big panic about whether the Indian variant become “the dominant variant”. Something’s got to be the dominant variant. Unless somebody can demonstrate evidence that the “Indian” variant is more harmful and/or vaccine evasive than those it replaces (beyond just “lots of people have died in India in Indian specific circumstances”) what’s the problem? Might even be doing us a favour if it’s less harmful.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
Not sure. Think you can overlook that May made quite a lot of progress in “red wall” seats. Possible it really was more about policy than personality.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
An encouraging read about the Indian variant. I recommend the whole thread
John Burn-Murdoch, of the FT, has been one of the most balanced, clever and clear-sighted of journalists throughout the pandemic. If the sitch is bad, he calls it for what it is, if he sees good things, he says that. He was one of the first to note that the UK was heading for a terrible death toll, back in spring 2020
Right now he is reassured (but still watchful). That is really good news
"First, today’s Sanger data on variants at local level. On the surface, this doesn’t look good. Cases of non-B.1.617.2 are in decline, but those red peaks are the variant sending overall rates climbing"
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Doing it "just in time" means that it was done "in time".
The justification of entering lockdown was to prevent the NHS collapsing and it didn't collapse.
Stripping away people's basic civil liberties before it's necessary, without trying other steps first, is not a good thing.
Unless doing it a couple of weeks earlier would have led to a much lower peak and far fewer deaths.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellasie I, Jah, Rastafari!
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh but he is to many. This is my strong sense of it. I'd love to be wrong of course.
Thought experiment though. Jeremy Hunt wins the leadership and leads into the last GE. An 80 seat Con majority?
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Doing it "just in time" means that it was done "in time".
The justification of entering lockdown was to prevent the NHS collapsing and it didn't collapse.
Stripping away people's basic civil liberties before it's necessary, without trying other steps first, is not a good thing.
Unless doing it a couple of weeks earlier would have led to a much lower peak and far fewer deaths.
It doesn't matter. It's not the government's job to stop deaths.
The justification for stripping civil liberties was to stop the NHS collapsing. They achieved that. If the NHS wasn't going to collapse, or other actions short of lockdown could prevent it, there'd be no justification to have a lockdown.
BTW fpt misogyny feels too weak a word for threatening women with rape. When I hear the word "misogyny" I think of someone believing women are too stupid to be doctors or should just be in the kitchen or are not strong enough to be CEO's or whatever.
Threatening rape is of a whole different order. It is sadism directed at women.
I believe in the case of anti-Semitism it is also driven by the fact that it is because (AIUI) “Jewishness” passes through the female line.
It’s basically another way of getting rid of Jews.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh but he is to many. This is my strong sense of it. I'd love to be wrong of course.
Thought experiment though. Jeremy Hunt wins the leadership and leads into the last GE. An 80 seat Con majority?
He is undoubtable popular and it is greatly annoying his opponents and of course someday he will become a former PM, and I actually believe that when it happens it will be swift
However, as things are just now I cannot see him leaving before the next GE, which maybe will be late 2023
An encouraging read about the Indian variant. I recommend the whole thread
John Burn-Murdoch, of the FT, has been one of the most balanced, clever and clear-sighted of journalists throughout the pandemic. If the sitch is bad, he calls it for what it is, if he sees good things, he says that. He was one of the first to note that the UK was heading for a terrible death toll, back in spring 2020
Right now he is reassured (but still watchful). That is really good news
"First, today’s Sanger data on variants at local level. On the surface, this doesn’t look good. Cases of non-B.1.617.2 are in decline, but those red peaks are the variant sending overall rates climbing"
Yes. Was about to post this myself. Positivity rates in Bolton are dropping and the overall picture in Sefton is dropping back to the Merseyside average too.
Why the big panic about whether the Indian variant become “the dominant variant”. Something’s got to be the dominant variant. Unless somebody can demonstrate evidence that the “Indian” variant is more harmful and/or vaccine evasive than those it replaces (beyond just “lots of people have died in India in Indian specific circumstances”) what’s the problem? Might even be doing us a favour if it’s less harmful.
I’d love to see the source but apparently there was an Indian doctor/scientist on one of the news programmes the other day saying, “I’m not sure why the English are so worried about the Indian variant, it’s the English variant that is scaring us!”
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
Not sure. Think you can overlook that May made quite a lot of progress in “red wall” seats. Possible it really was more about policy than personality.
There's been a Lab to Con trend there for a long time, this is true, and I think the Brexit/Johnson combo has supercharged it. I'm not 100% sure what's driving it either. I come from the Red Wall but that's a long time ago now. What I do know is I'd be more confident about Labour's prospects at the next GE against any Tory leader bar this one.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh but he is to many. This is my strong sense of it. I'd love to be wrong of course.
Thought experiment though. Jeremy Hunt wins the leadership and leads into the last GE. An 80 seat Con majority?
He is undoubtable popular and it is greatly annoying his opponents and of course someday he will become a former PM, and I actually believe that when it happens it will be swift
However, as things are just now I cannot see him leaving before the next GE, maybe late 2023
He's a charlatan and a chancer, but also a deeply gifted populist with the common touch
And now he has a shot at greatness. If he can steer the country through Brexit, see off Scexit, and speed our recovery from the greatest peacetime crisis in several centuries, he will be hailed as a hero for all times. It's unfair on other politicians who might have done much better, but he is a lucky general
He has the right ego for the challenge. He believes he is destined
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh but he is to many. This is my strong sense of it. I'd love to be wrong of course.
Thought experiment though. Jeremy Hunt wins the leadership and leads into the last GE. An 80 seat Con majority?
He is undoubtable popular and it is greatly annoying his opponents and of course someday he will become a former PM, and I actually believe that when it happens it will be swift
However, as things are just now I cannot see him leaving before the next GE, maybe late 2023
He's a charlatan and a chancer, but also a deeply gifted populist with the common touch
And now he has a shot at greatness. If he can steer the country through Brexit, see off Scexit, and speed our recovery from the greatest peacetime crisis in several centuries, he will be hailed as a hero for all times. It's unfair on other politicians who might have done much better, but he is a lucky general
He has the right ego for the challenge. He believes he is destined
Why the big panic about whether the Indian variant become “the dominant variant”. Something’s got to be the dominant variant. Unless somebody can demonstrate evidence that the “Indian” variant is more harmful and/or vaccine evasive than those it replaces (beyond just “lots of people have died in India in Indian specific circumstances”) what’s the problem? Might even be doing us a favour if it’s less harmful.
I’d love to see the source but apparently there was an Indian doctor/scientist on one of the news programmes the other day saying, “I’m not sure why the English are so worried about the Indian variant, it’s the English variant that is scaring us!”
Yes, doctors in India are overwhelmed by what they call the “English Variant” as much as by what we call the “Indian Variant”. Both are bad, but numbers thankfully appear to be turning in the right direction.
Just like to point out that those SAGE forecasts had us doing 2.7m vaccinations per week, we're now at 3.7m per week and climbing. I don't understand how scientists with access to government internal data have done a worse job than city analysts who are working with third hand data we get from industry sources.
I think we need to chuck a load of them in the bin with the journalists....it keeps happening, remember the UoW model where they got all the basic input parameters wrong in terms of things like ICU beds and they had mental confidence intervals.
We had the firebreak one with again nonsense confidence intervals going from a firebreak might save anywhere between a few 100 and 100k lives in 3 months. If my models outputted such nonsense, I would be back looking at rewriting the model, as we might as well got binface to make the prediction.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h SAGE members are crawling all over the broadcast media this morning trying to spook everyone over the Indian variant / saying the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. Behavioural scientists and mathematician modellers literally telling the country to stay in their box.
And the medio lap it up with no counter balance
I am at the stage now that when I hear one of these sage/Independent sage bods seeking a zero covid policy and to hold us all to ransom I switch off
They have had too much power and are far from sage as far as I can see
The media and these organisation's need to be front, centre and throughout the public enquiry
Why do you say they've had too much power given the mistakes we've made have generally been in the other direction, ie taking action too late and easing too soon?
Well, I think we locked down too hard and for too long. There's a law of diminishing returns, and while not doing some things was sensible (mosh pits - bad idea in a pandemic), many of the restrictions introduced brought such negligible benefits in terms of controlling the spread that they did not outweigh their costs (there are no 'zero cost' measures.) And people will die as a result, through missed medical treatments, through specific avoidable poverty, and through the UK being poorer and being able to afford less in the way of healthcare. But we'll never know. We can never show the counterfactual.
Some of the individual measures were unnecessary and badly framed but it's clear that where we erred, by and large, was in consistently underestimating Covid.
Take the 1st lockdown. The virus was spreading rapidly and projections said drastic action was needed otherwise the NHS would fall over and deaths could be huge with people unable to access treatment. We eventually did it and what happened? The NHS damn near did fall over in places during the April peak. Then the measures kicked in and numbers started to fall.
That has every indication of something which was done just in time to avert catastrophe, something which really ought to have been done sooner. I've yet to hear a good counter-argument to this.
Doing it "just in time" means that it was done "in time".
The justification of entering lockdown was to prevent the NHS collapsing and it didn't collapse.
Stripping away people's basic civil liberties before it's necessary, without trying other steps first, is not a good thing.
Unless doing it a couple of weeks earlier would have led to a much lower peak and far fewer deaths.
It doesn't matter. It's not the government's job to stop deaths.
The justification for stripping civil liberties was to stop the NHS collapsing. They achieved that. If the NHS wasn't going to collapse, or other actions short of lockdown could prevent it, there'd be no justification to have a lockdown.
That argument will look weak if acting a few days earlier would have saved 50,000 lives.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh but he is to many. This is my strong sense of it. I'd love to be wrong of course.
Thought experiment though. Jeremy Hunt wins the leadership and leads into the last GE. An 80 seat Con majority?
He is undoubtable popular and it is greatly annoying his opponents and of course someday he will become a former PM, and I actually believe that when it happens it will be swift
However, as things are just now I cannot see him leaving before the next GE, maybe late 2023
He's a charlatan and a chancer, but also a deeply gifted populist with the common touch
And now he has a shot at greatness. If he can steer the country through Brexit, see off Scexit, and speed our recovery from the greatest peacetime crisis in several centuries, he will be hailed as a hero for all times. It's unfair on other politicians who might have done much better, but he is a lucky general
He has the right ego for the challenge. He believes he is destined
"It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair Boris is like trying to pin jelly to a wall."
We've had two or three heavy downpours here in lowland east London this afternoon.
Before this place turns into netweather.tv, those hoping for a heatwave - I can't see it. Settled and warmer by the middle of next week perhaps but for me the High pressure is building in the wrong place for heat fans (more to the north and west than to the east). No sign of a "plume" of hot air from the Sahara either but we've enjoyed or endured a prolonged period of below average temperatures in London.
Should be 18c in mid May but 15c today.
Last year was exceptional. This year, well, won't be.
We've had two or three heavy downpours here in lowland east London this afternoon.
Before this place turns into netweather.tv, those hoping for a heatwave - I can't see it. Settled and warmer by the middle of next week perhaps but for me the High pressure is building in the wrong place for heat fans (more to the north and west than to the east). No sign of a "plume" of hot air from the Sahara either but we've enjoyed or endured a prolonged period of below average temperatures in London.
Should be 18c in mid May but 15c today.
Last year was exceptional. This year, well, won't be.
Just how it is.
The strange thing is that my solar panels from the 3rd Feb to 3rd May this year generated 4% more than last year
He has the right ego for the challenge. He believes he is destined
He has already fucked up 2 out of 3
He hasn't, but he still has a way to go
Today's opening up is like a vast tidal wave finally receding, giving us the first chance to count the drowned.
On my local high street I can see that several businesses - which I presumed were just temporarily shuttered - are, in fact, never going to reopen. The To Let signs are up. Very sad
Boris and Sunak have to navigate us through these economic white waters, which lie in wait beyond the Falls
In the two weeks before it was added to the 'red list', the total number of variants entering the UK from India was greater than from any other country - so why wasn't it put on the list sooner?
Today's opening up is like a vast tidal wave finally receding, giving us the first chance to count the drowned.
On my local high street I can see that several businesses - which I presumed were just temporarily shuttered - are, in fact, never going to reopen. The To Let signs are up. Very sad
Boris and Sunak have to navigate us through these economic white waters, which lie in wait beyond the Falls
Did you miss Frost earlier?
He wants to hire someone outside Government to find a benefit of Brexit...
Why the big panic about whether the Indian variant become “the dominant variant”. Something’s got to be the dominant variant. Unless somebody can demonstrate evidence that the “Indian” variant is more harmful and/or vaccine evasive than those it replaces (beyond just “lots of people have died in India in Indian specific circumstances”) what’s the problem? Might even be doing us a favour if it’s less harmful.
I’d love to see the source but apparently there was an Indian doctor/scientist on one of the news programmes the other day saying, “I’m not sure why the English are so worried about the Indian variant, it’s the English variant that is scaring us!”
Yes, doctors in India are overwhelmed by what they call the “English Variant” as much as by what we call the “Indian Variant”. Both are bad, but numbers thankfully appear to be turning in the right direction.
We have no Indian variant on the island as yet, so predictably some residents now want North Island walled off.
I’m beyond Anger now but driving as far away from Acceptance as possible. Johnson saw what was happening in India and yet dithered for over a week before he put it on the Red List, because he was due to go there to sign a Trade Deal — that got cancelled anyway, the toxic clown. https://twitter.com/Aiannucci/status/1393478477546938368
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh but he is to many. This is my strong sense of it. I'd love to be wrong of course.
Thought experiment though. Jeremy Hunt wins the leadership and leads into the last GE. An 80 seat Con majority?
He is undoubtable popular and it is greatly annoying his opponents and of course someday he will become a former PM, and I actually believe that when it happens it will be swift
However, as things are just now I cannot see him leaving before the next GE, which maybe will be late 2023
The case for early elction:
Reasons to go for a GE as early as possible (22/23):
Once Boris's wheels come off his position is irrecoverable - that's in his nature.
It is very hard to get Boris's wheels to come off but the number of ways it can happen are very numerous.
The longer that passes the nearer comes the time when his wheels come off.
If he can get to a GE and win he could possibly be PM for 8/9+ years even if his election position is irrecoverable. A place in history.
This also leaves open the outside chance of his wheels staying on and doing 9-13 years as PM - a historic place in history.
So get a GE out of the way asap, and afterwards it is (relatively) plain sailing.
I’m beyond Anger now but driving as far away from Acceptance as possible. Johnson saw what was happening in India and yet dithered for over a week before he put it on the Red List, because he was due to go there to sign a Trade Deal — that got cancelled anyway, the toxic clown. https://twitter.com/Aiannucci/status/1393478477546938368
Too bad you can't paste a Tweet from the Leader of the Opposition.
Why the big panic about whether the Indian variant become “the dominant variant”. Something’s got to be the dominant variant. Unless somebody can demonstrate evidence that the “Indian” variant is more harmful and/or vaccine evasive than those it replaces (beyond just “lots of people have died in India in Indian specific circumstances”) what’s the problem? Might even be doing us a favour if it’s less harmful.
If a new variant becomes dominant its likely because it is more infectious.
Though a more infectious but less dangerous variant may be no bad thing.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Leon and Doug are spot on: that John Burn-Murdoch thread on Twitter is excellent. I wonder if we could see positive tests nationwide start falling again this week? We were within an ace of it today…
Leon and Doug are spot on: that John Burn-Murdoch thread on Twitter is excellent. I wonder if we could see positive tests nationwide start falling again this week? We were within an ace of it today…
Comments
https://twitter.com/thescotsman/status/1394340178366447622?s=21
https://twitter.com/scotlandsky/status/1394004935122030594?s=21
Seattle Times ($) Suspect in Washington state’s $650 million fraud arrested at airport trying to leave U.S.
A Nigerian man suspected in Washington state’s $650 million unemployment fraud was arrested Friday at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport by federal agents as he allegedly attempted to leave the country.
Abidemi Rufai, of Lekki, Nigeria, appeared in federal court Saturday on charges that he used the identities of more than 100 Washington residents to steal more than $350,000 in unemployment benefits from the Washington state Employment Security Department (ESD) during the COVID-19 pandemic last year.
“This is the first, but will not be the last, significant arrest in our ongoing investigation of ESD fraud,” said Tessa Gorman, acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, in a statement Monday.
Rufai was arrested by FBI agents Friday evening and is scheduled for a detention hearing Wednesday. The case will be prosecuted in federal court in Tacoma.
Rufai’s arrest comes almost a year to the day after ESD officials announced they were temporarily suspending unemployment benefits payments after discovering that criminals had used stolen Social Security numbers and other personal information to file bogus claims for federal and state unemployment benefits.
Within days, ESD officials disclosed that “hundreds of millions of dollars” had likely been stolen in a fraud scheme that law enforcement officials and cybercrime experts said was partly based in Nigeria.
Washington was among the first states to be hit by a wave of fraud that would eventually strike dozens of states and siphon off billions of dollars in federal aid meant for pandemic victims.
Rufai, who used the alias Sandy Tang, is also suspected of defrauding unemployment programs in Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Wyoming, as well as involvement in other fraud schemes.
Federal officials acknowledged that Rufai’s presence in the United States probably was unusual in the unemployment fraud scheme. According to the complaint, many of the fraudulent claims that hit the ESD were likely filed from outside the United States, according to the complaint. . . .
It’s a conundrum, because the other Labour voters are much more vulnerable to the LibDems and Greens.
33% is ok if the others are on 30% 20% 10% and 7%, not when someone’s on 40 odd
Yes, hail.
It’s pretty, it’s got some good uses in electronics, and you can make things that don’t corrode.
Other than that, it has value because we value it. Which is indeed a self-referential circle, and that’s exactly what value is.
The value of a thing is the amount by which someone values it; no more, no less.
Money is simply a trusted and transferable measure of value owed.
Gold can be useful for that because lots of people value it, but that value does shift against other things. Anything that is valued by lots of people could be useful as a basis for money.
Personally, I’m sceptical on Bitcoin, because I don’t value it, but that could just be me. It’s also very new, which makes it harder for lots of people to reliably continue to value it over time (with gold, silver, land, for example, there’s a long and well-pronounced habit of valuing them - your instinctive ascribing some intrinsic value to it in and of itself is a good example of that.
Watching PSG last night reminded me of the time Celtic lost 7-0 to Barcelona, and both sets of supporters were shouting ‘Ney-mar goals’
Before this place turns into netweather.tv, those hoping for a heatwave - I can't see it. Settled and warmer by the middle of next week perhaps but for me the High pressure is building in the wrong place for heat fans (more to the north and west than to the east). No sign of a "plume" of hot air from the Sahara either but we've enjoyed or endured a prolonged period of below average temperatures in London.
Should be 18c in mid May but 15c today.
No, not the vaccine scaremongering, the turgid collaboration with Van the Man or getting cosy with Dessie Swain, but 'I continue to tread the path of passive rebellion and try to tow the line'!!
https://twitter.com/RollingStone/status/1394043745461473280?s=20
If only I had something interesting to say 😕
Very common in much if not most of US, esp. South & Midwest. Rare in Pacific Northwest except occasionally in the winter.
My first December in Seattle, was sitting around on a cool, windy day.
Started thundering, lightening, some hail mixed in. Then snowed like a sonofabitch dumped nine inches just in time for rush hour AND end of the school day. Epic mess!
Especially as the thermometer dropped like a rock, and a mini-mini-ice age froze everything in situ for over a week.
So maybe you've got something to look forward to? Nordic skiing coming to Soho!
One would assume that the Government, who had all the inside information on the vaccine acquisition, would do better, of course, but how good are your models when you’ve been given a specific input to use that’s wrong?
The justification of entering lockdown was to prevent the NHS collapsing and it didn't collapse.
Stripping away people's basic civil liberties before it's necessary, without trying other steps first, is not a good thing.
Greg Clark (Con), the chair of the Commons science committee, asks at what point it will be safe for people to travel to countries country on the amber list.
Love to see your working as to the second and third lockdown.
The second lockdown was announced 5 days before it came into effect so there was almost certainly behaviour modification before lockdown was introduced and as expected cases kept rising after lockdown.
Clearly it was this that saved Ted Nugent after he contracted COVID.
BTW and FYI, not sure if most PBers are aware of this, but Trumpsky substituted Nugent for Pence as VP on this GOP ticket last year. So that Ted is current serving as Secret Vice President.
Lockdown 3: nope. Came in staggered (as London and some of the South East entered Tier 4 earlier than the rest of the country); cases in each region only started falling after Tier 4/stay at home order kicked in there.
I was heading home after work, listening to 5 Live commentary, and it was so tense and exciting I pulled over for that corner LOL.
I loved a comment on 606 afterwards "let's leave the 6'4" man unmarked" 😂
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/05/17/stereotypical-image-red-wall-residents-accurate?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=red_wall_residents
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=region&areaName=Yorkshire and The Humber
The November and January lockdowns seem to have come in just at the peaks.
But then Yorkshire had somewhat strange and different patterns to many other parts of the country and the lockdowns certainly had an effect.
Similar modus operandi, or just a Camden thing?
Nobody is expecting such a fundamental upheaval and Labour doesn't need that. It needs the Conservative seat number to fall by about 60. Now, who, where and how those 60 seats fall is the question - Labour will get some but others may go to the LDs or perhaps the Greens.
And play.
People 40 miles away complained about the noise.
Whatever you may think about Ted, he ain't doing it quietly.....
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zv-3EfC17Rc (47’ video, but very entertaining).
Let’s begin with this, @MattHancock in the House of Commons this afternoon: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/a120872a-3c1e-4bf0-bb6a-14d80b65579d?in=16:53:00
https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1394361567786016768
The good news is that they have pizza on special offer, so I have ordered one of my favourite varieties.
John Burn-Murdoch, of the FT, has been one of the most balanced, clever and clear-sighted of journalists throughout the pandemic. If the sitch is bad, he calls it for what it is, if he sees good things, he says that. He was one of the first to note that the UK was heading for a terrible death toll, back in spring 2020
Right now he is reassured (but still watchful). That is really good news
https://ft.com/content/ce0730c2-4a0e-4452-bddd-39040785db1a
"First, today’s Sanger data on variants at local level. On the surface, this doesn’t look good. Cases of non-B.1.617.2 are in decline, but those red peaks are the variant sending overall rates climbing"
Thought experiment though. Jeremy Hunt wins the leadership and leads into the last GE. An 80 seat Con majority?
The justification for stripping civil liberties was to stop the NHS collapsing. They achieved that. If the NHS wasn't going to collapse, or other actions short of lockdown could prevent it, there'd be no justification to have a lockdown.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/05/17/harry-kane-tells-tottenham-wants-leave-club-summer/
I fancy a bet on Spurs and Arsenal to both get relegated next season.
It’s basically another way of getting rid of Jews.
However, as things are just now I cannot see him leaving before the next GE, which maybe will be late 2023
And now he has a shot at greatness. If he can steer the country through Brexit, see off Scexit, and speed our recovery from the greatest peacetime crisis in several centuries, he will be hailed as a hero for all times. It's unfair on other politicians who might have done much better, but he is a lucky general
He has the right ego for the challenge. He believes he is destined
Looks like the crazy mother fuckers are going to, at the very least, cripple Roe.
Just how it is.
Today's opening up is like a vast tidal wave finally receding, giving us the first chance to count the drowned.
On my local high street I can see that several businesses - which I presumed were just temporarily shuttered - are, in fact, never going to reopen. The To Let signs are up. Very sad
Boris and Sunak have to navigate us through these economic white waters, which lie in wait beyond the Falls
@EdConwaySky analyses the data.
Latest: https://trib.al/eaE3srB https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1394375223986868224/video/1
He wants to hire someone outside Government to find a benefit of Brexit...
Maybe you should apply
Reasons to go for a GE as early as possible (22/23):
Once Boris's wheels come off his position is irrecoverable - that's in his nature.
It is very hard to get Boris's wheels to come off but the number of ways it can happen are very numerous.
The longer that passes the nearer comes the time when his wheels come off.
If he can get to a GE and win he could possibly be PM for 8/9+ years even if his election position is irrecoverable. A place in history.
This also leaves open the outside chance of his wheels staying on and doing 9-13 years as PM - a historic place in history.
So get a GE out of the way asap, and afterwards it is (relatively) plain sailing.
Though a more infectious but less dangerous variant may be no bad thing.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
https://twitter.com/UKLabour/status/1394278528292634634
Today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia.
Labour is committed to promoting and defending the rights of our LGBT+ communities. #IDAHOBIT2021