"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
Indeed. And outside expertise is very useful - when the skill are relevant. Feynman and the Challenger investigation was a classic.
iirc Feynman was given the O-ring answer by an insider, though I'm not sure which side that supports.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
Someone posted on here yesterday - 1 in 6 hospitality businesses fail within their first year, even without a pandemic. It's a hugely risky field and I applaud anyone willing to take it, I wouldn't!
I would love to open a gastropub but simply don't have the risk appetite. I applaud and respect anyone who does – providing a wonderful service for the public without the promise of safe profit (or any profit at all), long hours, and lots of hard work!
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
I have a Journalism Studies degree. Which I deployed for a year and a half working in radio before binning it and going into sales. Very few of my fellow alumni work as actual journalists.
I don't think I've seen anything more pathetic from a rich nation this pandemic than Japan's feeble vaccination effort. They are sub 4% with a first dose right now.
It really is as well that they don't have a major international sporting event with tens of thousands of people supposedly coming from all around the world to participate and see it any time soon, isn't it?
Can anyone explain to me why the wealthy Pacific Rim nations – Japan, Australia, NZ and Singapore – have been so utterly useless at actually vaccinating anyone?
Possibly that they were so successful at controlling the disease by other measures, that they took the view that the long shot on the vaccines was not worth emergency procurement.
Starting to look like a massive mistake now. One truth about Covid-19: You can run. But you can't hide.
If you tried to change the rules linking job grades to wages, there would be a mass revolt. If you tried to give programmers the job grade to get them the pay, there would be a mass revolt.
HR Rules come from Cabinet office/dept HR -> both of whom are accountable to Ministers. Obviously Ministers could change these rules if they wanted civil service reform & prioritized it as an issue.
Simple solution: hire some new people on a track called 'specialized skills' and give them better terms and conditions. Anyone joining new goes onto different terms and conditions anyway -> most of which are less generous than old-timers get.
The idea that civil servants could block such a change is for the birds. They didn't manage to block an unlawful attempt to gut their pensions, a decade long pay freeze -> they are hardly going to be able to block a move to pay some other civil servants more money.
But it won't happen because Tories want to reduce size of public sector.
It won’t happen because of the Civil Service Union, they want people to be paid mostly on time served, to constantly move people around between departments, and for it to be almost impossible to fire anyone for poor performance.
Cummings was right, the whole edifice is simply unfit for purpose in the 21st century and needs turning upside down.
Civil service unions lose every fight they get into - if they even bother to try. David Cameron in a coalition govt managed to cut some govt departments headcounts by 40%! Alongside pay freeze, pensions changes etc. Honestly I don't know where you get the idea that unions could block these changes if Ministers wanted them.
I suspect you find that a lot of civil servants did very nicely thank you over the Cameron cuts post 2010. Huge payoffs and rehired as consultants for the work that still needed doing shortly afterwards.
So it appears from Neil Ferguson’s comments today that pretty much the only criteria determining lockdown easing is transmissibility of variants and therefore impact on case numbers. The impact on severe disease and therefore overall real impact on public health almost an afterthought. High cases = high levels of serious illness/deaths just taken as axiomatic.
Yes, it's almost as though the government is going out of its way to ignore the effect of vaccines on hospitalisations. First we had Boris crediting lockdown with the rapid reduction in deaths and hospitalisations, then we had JVT saying much the same and since then we've had a whole bunch of SAGE scientists saying that cases > *. That runs completely counter to what we were told the vaccines we're for - to stop people going to hospital for COVID.
I heard him this morning. I thought the focus was very much on hospitalisations. He repeatedly emphasised that these were not increasing as any increase in infection was amongst the very young and unvaccinated. There was a risk that arose from multigenerational families but only where vaccination had not taken place. He seemed pretty optimistic to me.
Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain. Among the most plausible explanations is surveillance of humanity by extra-terrestrial life forms, which makes this, potentially, the biggest story in the history of planet earth
So the UK media runs with a tiny, boring story about a disgruntled nurse and ‘Brits book up the Algarve’
Last night was a turning on point on Pb on this topic. The “is it really happening” question has been positively answered by a decent subset here now. The next question is “what happens next?”.
My own view is “bugger all”. The President can give a speech a year hence that says “we’ve uncovered a great mystery, something we don’t understand that is of Intelligence but is not human. We invite countries around the world and the scientific community to help us understand it, on the basis of peace, transparency and friendship”.
And by the end of the week, the stock market will be back to where it was and most people will be going on their lives as before.
Yes, that could easily happen. A global shrug. Especially if this is all we get. Grainy videos, eye witness accounts, fairly compelling evidence of ‘something’ - but we don’t know what...
However if the evidence grows - a pretty massive ‘if’ - I am sure it will impact us. In unimaginable ways - unimaginable because this is completely outwith the regular human experience
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
Well done to your friend's son. Sort of journalist we need. And I wonder where your niece will end up!
On topic, I remember when this site posted an article just before the 2019 election that said that Channel 4 putting a block of ice in place of Boris in a debate should terrify the Conservatives. I think this nurse business is not even a molehill, it's a tiny fleabite on the most gifted politician we've had since Tony Blair.
I don't think I've seen anything more pathetic from a rich nation this pandemic than Japan's feeble vaccination effort. They are sub 4% with a first dose right now.
It really is as well that they don't have a major international sporting event with tens of thousands of people supposedly coming from all around the world to participate and see it any time soon, isn't it?
Can anyone explain to me why the wealthy Pacific Rim nations – Japan, Australia, NZ and Singapore – have been so utterly useless at actually vaccinating anyone?
For wealthy countries the trend is the fewer deaths in 2020, the less fussed they were about being front of the queue for vaccines. Hardly surprising.
Maybe not that surprising, but also deeply unwise. Storing up problems for the future.
Even Domski is going to struggle to actually destroy Boris, though I imagine he's relentless in support of a cause (geniuses like Domski directing the ant colony).
The Dom is reputed to be a genius campaigner.
If his next campaign is the downfall of King BoZo, why would you bet against that?
Because he destroyed his own reputation last year and made himself a punchline.
Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair used to be genius campaigners. Campbell has been pissing into the wind for years now on Brexit and Blair's exortations on it were ignored too.
Although you probably find CampbellClaret's Tweets to be the best thing since sliced bread and can't understand why he's not being listened to.
The *only* thing that will give Dom any credibility on this is when he produces the evidence. I am uninterested in his opinion. I am interested in his facts.
Even then, with proof on the table that the PM ignored the science and was happy to let the bodies pile high, the Cult will just shrug. Yeah ok he killed granny but he's a lad isn't he and I'd still have a pint with him.
Alternatively thanks to Boris's government granny has been vaccinated.
My grandparents have had both vaccines and I'll be going to see them (having had one myself already too) this weekend. 👍
Personally I credit the NHS and the researchers and the nurses jabbing you for a pay cut, not the PM. Like I said, the Cult is strong in you.
You're the one in the Cult. Why aren't other European nation's nurses vaccinating healthy 38 year olds without pre-existing health conditions?
Is it because other European nation's nurses are lazy bastards who are letting vaccines sit idle in the fridge rather than vaccinating people?
Or is it because they don't have the vaccine supplies that our government procured and theirs didn't?
So lets talk about project management. Lets assume a company CEO has his head of department come to him early in a crisis and say "we will need x and we need to start now". CEO green lights the project and allocates the resources including someone to project manage. He then stands aside whilst the actual work gets done.
Does the credit sit with the department head who realised the problem? The CEO who commissioned the work, or the people who did the work? The answer of course is all of them, but to different percentages.
The bulk of the credit for our vaccination triumph is with the scientists who did the research, with the medical professionals and managers who firstly signed off the vaccine and now manage the roll-out, and with the superb nurses and doctors who face an endless line of people to do the same repetitive task every day for months with a smile.
The cult want to ignore all the people who did all the actual work and instead praise the CEO who said "get on with it". I can guarantee you this - had the medics screwed up the research, had NHS logistics screwed up the procurement and distribribution it wouldn't be Boris Johnson taking responsibility. Yet you want to grant him all the credit for other people's success.
Its A Cult. And you're deep in it drinking the kool-aid.
You're the one in a Cult. The difference between the nation's is not the willingness of nurses to do vaccinations, it is almost entirely down to procurement. And procurement was a national responsibility.
This government hired Kate Bingham, gave her responsibilities and told her to spend whatever she needed to get what we need.
Other governments gave responsibility to Commissioner Kyriakides with a target set of haggling to get best value for money and limited liability.
For much of last year the Government was getting ridiculed for the "sleaze" of hiring Bingham and slated for not deferring to Kyriakides.
The Liberal Democrats were outraged we didn't wind up Bingham's scheme and join Kyriakides scheme instead.
Now you have the barefaced cheek to say it's not political. You are drinking Kool Aid and don't have the credibility to acknowledge the Liberal Democrats called this wrong and the Government called this right. For shame on you.
PS NHS logistics didn't do the procurement. The Government created Bingham's taskforce which did.
I know that you seem fixated on "no, your mum" as a response this morning, a pity as you're better than that. Especially when you have luterally agreed with my argument about having commissioned the work that all the work was done not by the government.
Whatever. If you want to think He was actually doing something with those multichannel pippettes he posed with, feel free.
Its not the Government's job to "do the work" the Government's job is to pick its priorities and commission those who are capable to get its objectives done.
Our government picked its priority as procuring vaccines as soon as possible, at whatever cost it took.
Other government's picked a priority of procuring vaccines at value for money, with limited liability.
Your party attacked our government for its priorities and said it should have abandoned its scheme and joined the other scheme.
Which set of priorities do you think with the benefit of hindsight was correct? Did our government choose the right set of priorities - or did our neighbours with their completely different scheme we'd have joined had your party been in charge have a better or worse set of priorities?
I don't think I've seen anything more pathetic from a rich nation this pandemic than Japan's feeble vaccination effort. They are sub 4% with a first dose right now.
It really is as well that they don't have a major international sporting event with tens of thousands of people supposedly coming from all around the world to participate and see it any time soon, isn't it?
Can anyone explain to me why the wealthy Pacific Rim nations – Japan, Australia, NZ and Singapore – have been so utterly useless at actually vaccinating anyone?
80% of Japanese don’t want the Olympics. Maybe they’re just doing what it takes to make sure...
Don't they? Why not? Purely covid related or something else? I thought the Japanese loved a big tournament?
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain. Among the most plausible explanations is surveillance of humanity by extra-terrestrial life forms, which makes this, potentially, the biggest story in the history of planet earth
So the UK media runs with a tiny, boring story about a disgruntled nurse and ‘Brits book up the Algarve’
Last night was a turning on point on Pb on this topic. The “is it really happening” question has been positively answered by a decent subset here now. The next question is “what happens next?”.
My own view is “bugger all”. The President can give a speech a year hence that says “we’ve uncovered a great mystery, something we don’t understand that is of Intelligence but is not human. We invite countries around the world and the scientific community to help us understand it, on the basis of peace, transparency and friendship”.
And by the end of the week, the stock market will be back to where it was and most people will be going on their lives as before.
Yes, that could easily happen. A global shrug. Especially if this is all we get. Grainy videos, eye witness accounts, fairly compelling evidence of ‘something’ - but we don’t know what...
However if the evidence grows - a pretty massive ‘if’ - I am sure it will impact us. In unimaginable ways - unimaginable because this is completely outwith the regular human experience
Well, not since the ancient civilizations had all those visitations.....!
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
So it appears from Neil Ferguson’s comments today that pretty much the only criteria determining lockdown easing is transmissibility of variants and therefore impact on case numbers. The impact on severe disease and therefore overall real impact on public health almost an afterthought. High cases = high levels of serious illness/deaths just taken as axiomatic.
What makes you say that?
I thought he'd said the opposite.
Maybe taking too much from second hand report with Guardian slant...
Your summary is a pretty fair reflection of the report.
However, the report is a bit of a mismash of quotes, some from different times, put together to make a story that doesn't necessarily stand up with what's been said.
The one interesting bit is the "in the balance" quote, which is surprisingly bleak. Other than that, it's speculation that transmission among vaccinated people may be higher, but I can't believe we've got good info on that yet. We're only really just pinning down the effects of vaccines on onwards transmission of the older strains! The suggestion that the new strain is not more severe (again, surely short of data on that?) is much more positive and goes somewhat against the idea of a big peak in hospitalisations (with vaccines still protective against severe disease and at least partly against infection and transmission you need a lot more people to ge infected than in January to reach similar hospitalisation levels.
"EU leaders will call on Boris Johnson to respect the rights of their citizens in the wake of scandals over their treatment in the UK, including their detention in removal centres, according to a leaked draft statement seen by the Guardian.
The message to the British prime minister will follow a first discussion of EU-UK relations between the 27 heads of state and government since the ratification of the trade and cooperation agreement struck last Christmas Eve."
I don't think I've seen anything more pathetic from a rich nation this pandemic than Japan's feeble vaccination effort. They are sub 4% with a first dose right now.
It really is as well that they don't have a major international sporting event with tens of thousands of people supposedly coming from all around the world to participate and see it any time soon, isn't it?
Can anyone explain to me why the wealthy Pacific Rim nations – Japan, Australia, NZ and Singapore – have been so utterly useless at actually vaccinating anyone?
Because their lockdowns really worked through a combination of being an incredibly long way from anywhere else and social controls that we would find unacceptable. So the urgency wasn't there. But the virus was.
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
I thought Gove was in the anti-vocational camp. Otherwise, yes.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
Someone posted on here yesterday - 1 in 6 hospitality businesses fail within their first year, even without a pandemic. It's a hugely risky field and I applaud anyone willing to take it, I wouldn't!
It's a low wage, low productivity industry which uses labour and capital inefficiently and holds the economy back. Like farming.
Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain. Among the most plausible explanations is surveillance of humanity by extra-terrestrial life forms, which makes this, potentially, the biggest story in the history of planet earth
So the UK media runs with a tiny, boring story about a disgruntled nurse and ‘Brits book up the Algarve’
Last night was a turning on point on Pb on this topic. The “is it really happening” question has been positively answered by a decent subset here now. The next question is “what happens next?”.
My own view is “bugger all”. The President can give a speech a year hence that says “we’ve uncovered a great mystery, something we don’t understand that is of Intelligence but is not human. We invite countries around the world and the scientific community to help us understand it, on the basis of peace, transparency and friendship”.
And by the end of the week, the stock market will be back to where it was and most people will be going on their lives as before.
Yes, that could easily happen. A global shrug. Especially if this is all we get. Grainy videos, eye witness accounts, fairly compelling evidence of ‘something’ - but we don’t know what...
However if the evidence grows - a pretty massive ‘if’ - I am sure it will impact us. In unimaginable ways - unimaginable because this is completely outwith the regular human experience
Well, not since the ancient civilizations had all those visitations.....!
Lamb came up at PMQs. As an aside, I get the impression lamb is falling off takeaway menus. Is there a shortage? It's not like takeaways insist on fresh rather than frozen.
Public sector workers - and I am one - still tend to have an outdated view of what cost-of-living increases tend to look like - so 1% is views as 'insulting' or 'derisory'. There seems to be a view that in the private sector people are getting 3% and 4% as a matter of course. That sort of level went out the window 15-20 years ago - 1% is now a pretty good deal. This isn't a comment on the level nurses or anyone else deserves, just a comment on the slightly skewed view the public sector have of what people in the private sector get.
One thing that is common in the public sector is automatic progression (also in universities, where I work). So, eahc year you get not only the pay rise for your job, but you automatically (at least wthin bands) move up a point and get a pay rise that way. So our pay settlements are often 1% or so, but I get a pay rise each year of more like 3% overall. Now, it's still a problem if I, in five years, earn less in real terms than someone five points above me does today, but it does mean that most of us get real terms increases every year (the one thing that might break that is the USS contributions fiasco, but we'll see).
In competitive, professional private sector, there's often similar, although less define progression - my wife's annual pay increases in the same role often outstripped min. But in other roles, supermarkets etc, you're in hte role you're in and all you get is the national pay increase. If it's 1% pay rise it's really 1% pay rise.
I can only comment on my own department and say we get no automatic rise within the pay band. I don't know about people on older contracts.
I should clarify that my experience is national government civil service (automatic annual increments within band, plus national pay settlement), private sector (no automatic increments, but in practice there was competition for staff, so I got a pay rise every year within the same role - athough the size of that did vary) and university (annual increments within bands, move up one point each year, plus the national pay rise).
It may well vary in other areas of the public sector. What's yours, if you don't mind me asking?
I did 5 yrs in civil service central govt dept. Think there were automatic increments but don't remember them being as high as 3%. Never understood the fuss about 1% or 3% or whatever. The difference always seemed to be negligible at the end of the day.
The pay travesty I remember was that some jobs were misgraded which led to huge salary differences largely inexplicable by the level of responsibility/skills/whatever required.
I saw a reflection of the salary difference issue - I worked for an oil company that hired alot of ex-civil servants.
Who found the idea that specialists could be paid more than their managers.... EVILLLLLL
Which led to the introduction of contracting in a big way - for the SAP boom, for example.
Yes this makes it difficult for civil service to hire people with specialist skills. This is of course what all these agencies & consultancies want.
Paying someone X was "insulting to their managers" but paying their personal service company 800 a day wasn't.
Humans are weird.
Yes they are, these sort of blind spots are cost the government a fortune in consultants - and often end up with the consultants themselves having to be switched out because IR35 - so for example your infosec lead changes every six months, which is somewhat sub-optimal from an infosec point of view!
IR35 - either the person is outside or they are inside. time spent at a site really shouldn't make much difference.
Indeed. And if the consultant concerned is on payroll for a company (not just umbrella) then it doesn't matter either way. Which is why a lot of contractors are looking for permanent roles at the moment. Though in any case its fairly straightforward to stay outside IR35 if the client is sensible and the contract written appropriately.
One of the signs of a bad regulation is that a whole industry is dedicated to dodging it. IR35 is about the worst ever, from that point of view.
So it appears from Neil Ferguson’s comments today that pretty much the only criteria determining lockdown easing is transmissibility of variants and therefore impact on case numbers. The impact on severe disease and therefore overall real impact on public health almost an afterthought. High cases = high levels of serious illness/deaths just taken as axiomatic.
Yes, it's almost as though the government is going out of its way to ignore the effect of vaccines on hospitalisations. First we had Boris crediting lockdown with the rapid reduction in deaths and hospitalisations, then we had JVT saying much the same and since then we've had a whole bunch of SAGE scientists saying that cases > *. That runs completely counter to what we were told the vaccines we're for - to stop people going to hospital for COVID.
Easy explanation: it's behavioural science gone bad. The Nudgers hate messaging that vaccinations keep you safe as it stops the vaxxed following the rules.
But that's a desirable aim. You want normal life to resume and getting people out there again post immunity is a big step towards normality.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Among the nurses/doctors I know, it's conditions rather than pay that they see as the problem. Most would say (at least, though I think they believe it) that they'd rather have more staff than more pay.
Even Domski is going to struggle to actually destroy Boris, though I imagine he's relentless in support of a cause (geniuses like Domski directing the ant colony).
The Dom is reputed to be a genius campaigner.
If his next campaign is the downfall of King BoZo, why would you bet against that?
Because he destroyed his own reputation last year and made himself a punchline.
Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair used to be genius campaigners. Campbell has been pissing into the wind for years now on Brexit and Blair's exortations on it were ignored too.
Although you probably find CampbellClaret's Tweets to be the best thing since sliced bread and can't understand why he's not being listened to.
The *only* thing that will give Dom any credibility on this is when he produces the evidence. I am uninterested in his opinion. I am interested in his facts.
Even then, with proof on the table that the PM ignored the science and was happy to let the bodies pile high, the Cult will just shrug. Yeah ok he killed granny but he's a lad isn't he and I'd still have a pint with him.
Alternatively thanks to Boris's government granny has been vaccinated.
My grandparents have had both vaccines and I'll be going to see them (having had one myself already too) this weekend. 👍
Personally I credit the NHS and the researchers and the nurses jabbing you for a pay cut, not the PM. Like I said, the Cult is strong in you.
You're the one in the Cult. Why aren't other European nation's nurses vaccinating healthy 38 year olds without pre-existing health conditions?
Is it because other European nation's nurses are lazy bastards who are letting vaccines sit idle in the fridge rather than vaccinating people?
Or is it because they don't have the vaccine supplies that our government procured and theirs didn't?
So lets talk about project management. Lets assume a company CEO has his head of department come to him early in a crisis and say "we will need x and we need to start now". CEO green lights the project and allocates the resources including someone to project manage. He then stands aside whilst the actual work gets done.
Does the credit sit with the department head who realised the problem? The CEO who commissioned the work, or the people who did the work? The answer of course is all of them, but to different percentages.
The bulk of the credit for our vaccination triumph is with the scientists who did the research, with the medical professionals and managers who firstly signed off the vaccine and now manage the roll-out, and with the superb nurses and doctors who face an endless line of people to do the same repetitive task every day for months with a smile.
The cult want to ignore all the people who did all the actual work and instead praise the CEO who said "get on with it". I can guarantee you this - had the medics screwed up the research, had NHS logistics screwed up the procurement and distribribution it wouldn't be Boris Johnson taking responsibility. Yet you want to grant him all the credit for other people's success.
Its A Cult. And you're deep in it drinking the kool-aid.
You're the one in a Cult. The difference between the nation's is not the willingness of nurses to do vaccinations, it is almost entirely down to procurement. And procurement was a national responsibility.
This government hired Kate Bingham, gave her responsibilities and told her to spend whatever she needed to get what we need.
Other governments gave responsibility to Commissioner Kyriakides with a target set of haggling to get best value for money and limited liability.
For much of last year the Government was getting ridiculed for the "sleaze" of hiring Bingham and slated for not deferring to Kyriakides.
The Liberal Democrats were outraged we didn't wind up Bingham's scheme and join Kyriakides scheme instead.
Now you have the barefaced cheek to say it's not political. You are drinking Kool Aid and don't have the credibility to acknowledge the Liberal Democrats called this wrong and the Government called this right. For shame on you.
PS NHS logistics didn't do the procurement. The Government created Bingham's taskforce which did.
I know that you seem fixated on "no, your mum" as a response this morning, a pity as you're better than that. Especially when you have luterally agreed with my argument about having commissioned the work that all the work was done not by the government.
Whatever. If you want to think He was actually doing something with those multichannel pippettes he posed with, feel free.
Its not the Government's job to "do the work" the Government's job is to pick its priorities and commission those who are capable to get its objectives done.
Our government picked its priority as procuring vaccines as soon as possible, at whatever cost it took.
Other government's picked a priority of procuring vaccines at value for money, with limited liability.
Your party attacked our government for its priorities and said it should have abandoned its scheme and joined the other scheme.
Which set of priorities do you think with the benefit of hindsight was correct? Did our government choose the right set of priorities - or did our neighbours with their completely different scheme we'd have joined had your party been in charge have a better or worse set of priorities?
@RochdalePioneers : You are right, it is a cult. Philip is training to be a high priest of the cult and prays to Boris every morning day and night. He is hoping one day to have the chance of genuinely kissing Boris' ring in person, rather than just doing it on here 24/7.
If you tried to change the rules linking job grades to wages, there would be a mass revolt. If you tried to give programmers the job grade to get them the pay, there would be a mass revolt.
HR Rules come from Cabinet office/dept HR -> both of whom are accountable to Ministers. Obviously Ministers could change these rules if they wanted civil service reform & prioritized it as an issue.
Simple solution: hire some new people on a track called 'specialized skills' and give them better terms and conditions. Anyone joining new goes onto different terms and conditions anyway -> most of which are less generous than old-timers get.
The idea that civil servants could block such a change is for the birds. They didn't manage to block an unlawful attempt to gut their pensions, a decade long pay freeze -> they are hardly going to be able to block a move to pay some other civil servants more money.
But it won't happen because Tories want to reduce size of public sector.
It won’t happen because of the Civil Service Union, they want people to be paid mostly on time served, to constantly move people around between departments, and for it to be almost impossible to fire anyone for poor performance.
Cummings was right, the whole edifice is simply unfit for purpose in the 21st century and needs turning upside down.
Civil service unions lose every fight they get into - if they even bother to try. David Cameron in a coalition govt managed to cut some govt departments headcounts by 40%! Alongside pay freeze, pensions changes etc. Honestly I don't know where you get the idea that unions could block these changes if Ministers wanted them.
I suspect you find that a lot of civil servants did very nicely thank you over the Cameron cuts post 2010. Huge payoffs and rehired as consultants for the work that still needed doing shortly afterwards.
I know of a couple who got early retirement, with a year’s notice in cash and a full pension. Younger friends in the CS either jumped at the opportunity to get out with a payoff as private industry and consulting were all hiring, or they stayed in and got promoted.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
You need a degree , in the old days you could become a nurse without one. If you see what lots of them actually do then they do not need a degree. They should sort out roles and have different categories.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
I thought Gove was in the anti-vocational camp. Otherwise, yes.
He was/is obsessed by STEM. Probably because he studied English, which is, lets face it, the easiest STEM subject (only kidding English grads).
Sad as it is, I can't see how this story damages the PM. If the revelation was that she was quitting because he'd been shagging her then even then I doubt it would do him much damage.
People know he lies, betrays, cocks up and cocks about. They don't care. If he was ANY other politician they would care. But Brand Boris is the political sensation of this century so far - an entirely fictional concoction that seems to mesmerise by the million.
Yep. And when it ends - as it will - the number of folk saying they never did buy into it will vastly exceed the number who never bought into it.
I don't think Boris is as wildly popular as you think. He doesn't have to have fans. He just has to have more people who prefer him to the alternative than the other way around. Hartlepool man (as an archetype) doesn't believe Boris is on his side. Not really. Hartlepool man votes for Boris because Boris doesn't appear to be actively hostile to him.
Well it's all relative in that if the alternatives are unpopular it makes him look a better proposition. So I agree with that. And it's not that he's wildly and widely popular. He's disliked by many and I'm sure there are plenty who can just take him or leave him.
But he's a very unusual politician. He's a brand rather than a real person to an extent that's quite rare in politics. And what a powerful brand it is. People cut him slack. They are indulgent of him because they feel like they know him. Just observe how he's talked about if you doubt this.
So when you add to that brand power him being the man who (for real) Got Brexit Done, and the man who (for real) Saw Us Through The Pandemic, regardless of Brexit not making anybody's life better, and regardless of our Covid response other than vaccines being objectively pisspoor, you get something that is pretty formidable and will take a lot of shifting.
I note that you've resolved the dilemma of whether to call him 'Johnson' or 'Boris' by refusing to name xxxxx, and just referring to 'he' or 'him'. Neat.
Yep. It's the new approach. The logical next iteration - given I'm usually discussing the Brand - is "it".
On topic, I remember when this site posted an article just before the 2019 election that said that Channel 4 putting a block of ice in place of Boris in a debate should terrify the Conservatives. I think this nurse business is not even a molehill, it's a tiny fleabite on the most gifted politician we've had since Tony Blair.
Big problem countries like NZ/Australia have, and have always had, is the exit plan. Once you’ve got used to celebrating your achievement in having almost zero COVID deaths, and even cases, how do you transition to a World where you will probably be accepting they happen at a much higher level (vaccine or no vaccine). In a reasonable timescale.
Lamb came up at PMQs. As an aside, I get the impression lamb is falling off takeaway menus. Is there a shortage? It's not like takeaways insist on fresh rather than frozen.
My understanding is that market prices for lamb and beef are currently massively above trend (after tanking for a while last year).
Public sector workers - and I am one - still tend to have an outdated view of what cost-of-living increases tend to look like - so 1% is views as 'insulting' or 'derisory'. There seems to be a view that in the private sector people are getting 3% and 4% as a matter of course. That sort of level went out the window 15-20 years ago - 1% is now a pretty good deal. This isn't a comment on the level nurses or anyone else deserves, just a comment on the slightly skewed view the public sector have of what people in the private sector get.
One thing that is common in the public sector is automatic progression (also in universities, where I work). So, eahc year you get not only the pay rise for your job, but you automatically (at least wthin bands) move up a point and get a pay rise that way. So our pay settlements are often 1% or so, but I get a pay rise each year of more like 3% overall. Now, it's still a problem if I, in five years, earn less in real terms than someone five points above me does today, but it does mean that most of us get real terms increases every year (the one thing that might break that is the USS contributions fiasco, but we'll see).
In competitive, professional private sector, there's often similar, although less define progression - my wife's annual pay increases in the same role often outstripped min. But in other roles, supermarkets etc, you're in hte role you're in and all you get is the national pay increase. If it's 1% pay rise it's really 1% pay rise.
I can only comment on my own department and say we get no automatic rise within the pay band. I don't know about people on older contracts.
I should clarify that my experience is national government civil service (automatic annual increments within band, plus national pay settlement), private sector (no automatic increments, but in practice there was competition for staff, so I got a pay rise every year within the same role - athough the size of that did vary) and university (annual increments within bands, move up one point each year, plus the national pay rise).
It may well vary in other areas of the public sector. What's yours, if you don't mind me asking?
I did 5 yrs in civil service central govt dept. Think there were automatic increments but don't remember them being as high as 3%. Never understood the fuss about 1% or 3% or whatever. The difference always seemed to be negligible at the end of the day.
The pay travesty I remember was that some jobs were misgraded which led to huge salary differences largely inexplicable by the level of responsibility/skills/whatever required.
I saw a reflection of the salary difference issue - I worked for an oil company that hired alot of ex-civil servants.
Who found the idea that specialists could be paid more than their managers.... EVILLLLLL
Which led to the introduction of contracting in a big way - for the SAP boom, for example.
Yes this makes it difficult for civil service to hire people with specialist skills. This is of course what all these agencies & consultancies want.
Paying someone X was "insulting to their managers" but paying their personal service company 800 a day wasn't.
Humans are weird.
Yes they are, these sort of blind spots are cost the government a fortune in consultants - and often end up with the consultants themselves having to be switched out because IR35 - so for example your infosec lead changes every six months, which is somewhat sub-optimal from an infosec point of view!
IR35 - either the person is outside or they are inside. time spent at a site really shouldn't make much difference.
Indeed. And if the consultant concerned is on payroll for a company (not just umbrella) then it doesn't matter either way. Which is why a lot of contractors are looking for permanent roles at the moment. Though in any case its fairly straightforward to stay outside IR35 if the client is sensible and the contract written appropriately.
One of the signs of a bad regulation is that a whole industry is dedicated to dodging it. IR35 is about the worst ever, from that point of view.
IR35 is a sledgehammer designed to fix a particular issue - which is discouraging companies from moving more and more people off payroll.
Now were Employer NI not such a significant source of tax it wouldn't be a problem but because it's worth the Government needs to whatever it can (regardless of how stupid it is) to keep that money rolling in.
I know exactly what it is. An enormous auto-complete machine. But maybe that’s all intelligence is. Auto-complete. We do not have Free Will. We just auto-complete in response to stimuli
We're autocomplete plus the ability to add to our dictionary of autocomplete terms.
That is what makes GPT-3 so uninteresting and very, very far away from generalised artificial intelligence. It's 1950s AI technology with an eye-watering amount of money thrown at the training data set.
It's why even in the incredibly limited domain of computer games "advanced" AIs get absolutely trashed by scrub tier strategies - if its not in the train g data they don't know what to do yet a human would be able to instantly adapt and overcome.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Opposition might be less if the houses (a) weren't so sh1t and (b) deliberately took up too much land. The Government should be saying to the building industry, you want your houses, in return you show us how you will minimise land usage. How hard can it be to come with the modern equivalent of terraces?
Even Domski is going to struggle to actually destroy Boris, though I imagine he's relentless in support of a cause (geniuses like Domski directing the ant colony).
The Dom is reputed to be a genius campaigner.
If his next campaign is the downfall of King BoZo, why would you bet against that?
Because he destroyed his own reputation last year and made himself a punchline.
Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair used to be genius campaigners. Campbell has been pissing into the wind for years now on Brexit and Blair's exortations on it were ignored too.
Although you probably find CampbellClaret's Tweets to be the best thing since sliced bread and can't understand why he's not being listened to.
The *only* thing that will give Dom any credibility on this is when he produces the evidence. I am uninterested in his opinion. I am interested in his facts.
Even then, with proof on the table that the PM ignored the science and was happy to let the bodies pile high, the Cult will just shrug. Yeah ok he killed granny but he's a lad isn't he and I'd still have a pint with him.
Alternatively thanks to Boris's government granny has been vaccinated.
My grandparents have had both vaccines and I'll be going to see them (having had one myself already too) this weekend. 👍
Personally I credit the NHS and the researchers and the nurses jabbing you for a pay cut, not the PM. Like I said, the Cult is strong in you.
You're the one in the Cult. Why aren't other European nation's nurses vaccinating healthy 38 year olds without pre-existing health conditions?
Is it because other European nation's nurses are lazy bastards who are letting vaccines sit idle in the fridge rather than vaccinating people?
Or is it because they don't have the vaccine supplies that our government procured and theirs didn't?
So lets talk about project management. Lets assume a company CEO has his head of department come to him early in a crisis and say "we will need x and we need to start now". CEO green lights the project and allocates the resources including someone to project manage. He then stands aside whilst the actual work gets done.
Does the credit sit with the department head who realised the problem? The CEO who commissioned the work, or the people who did the work? The answer of course is all of them, but to different percentages.
The bulk of the credit for our vaccination triumph is with the scientists who did the research, with the medical professionals and managers who firstly signed off the vaccine and now manage the roll-out, and with the superb nurses and doctors who face an endless line of people to do the same repetitive task every day for months with a smile.
The cult want to ignore all the people who did all the actual work and instead praise the CEO who said "get on with it". I can guarantee you this - had the medics screwed up the research, had NHS logistics screwed up the procurement and distribribution it wouldn't be Boris Johnson taking responsibility. Yet you want to grant him all the credit for other people's success.
Its A Cult. And you're deep in it drinking the kool-aid.
You're the one in a Cult. The difference between the nation's is not the willingness of nurses to do vaccinations, it is almost entirely down to procurement. And procurement was a national responsibility.
This government hired Kate Bingham, gave her responsibilities and told her to spend whatever she needed to get what we need.
Other governments gave responsibility to Commissioner Kyriakides with a target set of haggling to get best value for money and limited liability.
For much of last year the Government was getting ridiculed for the "sleaze" of hiring Bingham and slated for not deferring to Kyriakides.
The Liberal Democrats were outraged we didn't wind up Bingham's scheme and join Kyriakides scheme instead.
Now you have the barefaced cheek to say it's not political. You are drinking Kool Aid and don't have the credibility to acknowledge the Liberal Democrats called this wrong and the Government called this right. For shame on you.
PS NHS logistics didn't do the procurement. The Government created Bingham's taskforce which did.
I know that you seem fixated on "no, your mum" as a response this morning, a pity as you're better than that. Especially when you have luterally agreed with my argument about having commissioned the work that all the work was done not by the government.
Whatever. If you want to think He was actually doing something with those multichannel pippettes he posed with, feel free.
Its not the Government's job to "do the work" the Government's job is to pick its priorities and commission those who are capable to get its objectives done.
Our government picked its priority as procuring vaccines as soon as possible, at whatever cost it took.
Other government's picked a priority of procuring vaccines at value for money, with limited liability.
Your party attacked our government for its priorities and said it should have abandoned its scheme and joined the other scheme.
Which set of priorities do you think with the benefit of hindsight was correct? Did our government choose the right set of priorities - or did our neighbours with their completely different scheme we'd have joined had your party been in charge have a better or worse set of priorities?
@RochdalePioneers : You are right, it is a cult. Philip is training to be a high priest of the cult and prays to Boris every morning day and night. He is hoping one day to have the chance of genuinely kissing Boris' ring in person, rather than just doing it on here 24/7.
Peanut gallery is back I see.
Can you answer a simple straight question, which set of priorities and which scheme was better?
The UK's Kate Bingham procurement scheme, with priorities of getting vaccines ASAP at any cost?
Or the EU's Commissioner Kyriakides procurment scheme, with priorities of value for money and limited liability?
Straw man, as has been pointed out. It's just another dent in the shiny fat carapace.
It's a social experiment.
Just how much shit will the fanbois eat?
Does BoZo literally have to shoot someone on the Mall?
Would they still vote for him?
So long as his opponent is a woke culture warrior, who reads the Guardian, hates his country and conspires with those who wish to break it up - quite a lot will keep voting for the incumbent.
Are you ok there, Sandpit? Not out for too long in the heat, I hope. Because that is one bizarre take on Keir Starmer! You sound like a raddled old Colonel down at the Old Calcutta.
So the UK media runs with a tiny, boring story about a disgruntled nurse and ‘Brits book up the Algarve’
Last night was a turning on point on Pb on this topic. The “is it really happening” question has been positively answered by a decent subset here now. The next question is “what happens next?”.
My own view is “bugger all”. The President can give a speech a year hence that says “we’ve uncovered a great mystery, something we don’t understand that is of Intelligence but is not human. We invite countries around the world and the scientific community to help us understand it, on the basis of peace, transparency and friendship”.
And by the end of the week, the stock market will be back to where it was and most people will be going on their lives as before.
Yes, that could easily happen. A global shrug. Especially if this is all we get. Grainy videos, eye witness accounts, fairly compelling evidence of ‘something’ - but we don’t know what...
However if the evidence grows - a pretty massive ‘if’ - I am sure it will impact us. In unimaginable ways - unimaginable because this is completely outwith the regular human experience
Robert and others have questioned why the craft don’t have better radar or visual cloaking. But that’s because they’re not empathising with whatever is behind them. No point thinking about hostile intent because it would be over quickly. But if your goal was a benign “contact”, then you wouldn’t risk causing the breakdown of the very civilisation you wish to engage with, by making a sudden big gesture. Too risky. You’d gradually sow the seed in society’s mindset. And then escalate it over time. In short, you’d try to be seen but not too quickly by too many people.
Equally this would be the disclosure approach of a responsible government. You don’t get the President to give a speech out of nowhere. You set the scene over time using lower level officials, retired personnel and the media. So by the time the President gives his speech, most people know what he’s going to say.
So that’s Step 1 (their move) and Step 2 (ours) covered. Step 3 is their move again. How long do they take to make it? How far do they go with this step? If this is a gradual benign contact, they’ll presumably have done it many times. It could be a human lifetime before they do much more than flybys.
There’s another possibility of course beyond hostile intent and benign contact. Which is that they are indifferent to our awareness of them.
Another possibility again which is any of combination of the above with different actors involved.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Good, housing and planning is probably the single most important issue facing the country after the pandemic. The Tory MPs opposed to it should consider what happens in a world where people in their 40s are still paying half their salaries in rent.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Among the nurses/doctors I know, it's conditions rather than pay that they see as the problem. Most would say (at least, though I think they believe it) that they'd rather have more staff than more pay.
UK Doctors are very very well paid for one of the few "jobs for life" (not just a pun) that still exist, and a role which has one of the highest level of prestige (which many enjoy). They also have one of the most generous pension schemes in the world. That said, it is hard work and sometimes conditions are not great if they are working in hospitals, though I fail to see how GPs have poor conditions. If they don't like the conditions they could opt to work in industry, though unlike their colleagues in other countries, few opt for this, probably because it is less secure.
The pay gap between doctors and other health professionals (partic. nurses) is vast and it is odd that the media never comment on it. It is perhaps one area where media deference still exists
Today shows why Starmer is rubbish. I watched him at PMQs and I don’t know what he thinks about anything of substance. He went on international travel, but the focus of Labour’s criticism is that there is a lack of clarity about the amber list. Who gives a fuck about that?
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
Someone posted on here yesterday - 1 in 6 hospitality businesses fail within their first year, even without a pandemic. It's a hugely risky field and I applaud anyone willing to take it, I wouldn't!
It's a low wage, low productivity industry which uses labour and capital inefficiently and holds the economy back. Like farming.
It's not my fault that some pubs and restaurants go bust in the normal course of events. I can't imagine that many being owned by "large chains" go bust. The others who do go bust need to manage their businesses better I suppose. Why does it take so long to make a Flat White? I'm amazed at the likes of PT crying tears over this. What about the fishing, farming and haulage industry that are being murdered by Brexit. Oh wait, it's Brexit, they're supposed to take care of themselves, the market will sort them out!!
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Opposition might be less if the houses (a) weren't so sh1t and (b) deliberately took up too much land. The Government should be saying to the building industry, you want your houses, in return you show us how you will minimise land usage. How hard can it be to come with the modern equivalent of terraces?
Detached and Semi-Detached housing is more sought after than terraced homes and provides more space for gardens.
Though most building done around here nowadays seems to be done in the "mews" type, which is sort of like a modern terrace style.
Taking more land in order to make try and make more homes semi-detached at least would be an improvement.
Four men arrested over convoy of cars that drove through London calling for Jewish girls to be raped were also held for 'attack' on Jewish-owned cars in Manchester
Just been sent a tweet from Guido Fawkes website. Just poppped over there and took a look at how much money Angela Rayner has been raking in whilst whining about wallpaper .. the hypocrisy of it is staggering.
More at Guido Fawkes ..the amount she has been raking in is staggering.....
Anyone like to guess how much since Jan 2020?
Note too whilst she is being mauled in the HOC .she covers her face with a mask halfway through....not surprised she is embarrassed.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
Today shows why Starmer is rubbish. I watched him at PMQs and I don’t know what he thinks about anything of substance. He went on international travel, but the focus of Labour’s criticism is that there is a lack of clarity about the amber list. Who gives a fuck about that?
Captain Hindsight strikes again......Labour missed a massive open goal early on just to call for an Australia / NZ style border closure, instead it has always been well this country should be on the list sooner, I think we need a bit more clarity on these rules, more money for those self isolating.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
So basically you have a free for all in the Home Counties concreting all over the green belt while the North and Midlands where house prices are cheaper get barely any new housing at all.
If you want a policy to guarantee the Blue Wall falls to the LDs as much as the Red Wall has fallen to the Tories that would be it.
Yes we need some more affordable homes in London and the South but they should be concentrated in brownbelt land first
Even Domski is going to struggle to actually destroy Boris, though I imagine he's relentless in support of a cause (geniuses like Domski directing the ant colony).
The Dom is reputed to be a genius campaigner.
If his next campaign is the downfall of King BoZo, why would you bet against that?
Because he destroyed his own reputation last year and made himself a punchline.
Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair used to be genius campaigners. Campbell has been pissing into the wind for years now on Brexit and Blair's exortations on it were ignored too.
Although you probably find CampbellClaret's Tweets to be the best thing since sliced bread and can't understand why he's not being listened to.
The *only* thing that will give Dom any credibility on this is when he produces the evidence. I am uninterested in his opinion. I am interested in his facts.
Even then, with proof on the table that the PM ignored the science and was happy to let the bodies pile high, the Cult will just shrug. Yeah ok he killed granny but he's a lad isn't he and I'd still have a pint with him.
Alternatively thanks to Boris's government granny has been vaccinated.
My grandparents have had both vaccines and I'll be going to see them (having had one myself already too) this weekend. 👍
Personally I credit the NHS and the researchers and the nurses jabbing you for a pay cut, not the PM. Like I said, the Cult is strong in you.
You're the one in the Cult. Why aren't other European nation's nurses vaccinating healthy 38 year olds without pre-existing health conditions?
Is it because other European nation's nurses are lazy bastards who are letting vaccines sit idle in the fridge rather than vaccinating people?
Or is it because they don't have the vaccine supplies that our government procured and theirs didn't?
So lets talk about project management. Lets assume a company CEO has his head of department come to him early in a crisis and say "we will need x and we need to start now". CEO green lights the project and allocates the resources including someone to project manage. He then stands aside whilst the actual work gets done.
Does the credit sit with the department head who realised the problem? The CEO who commissioned the work, or the people who did the work? The answer of course is all of them, but to different percentages.
The bulk of the credit for our vaccination triumph is with the scientists who did the research, with the medical professionals and managers who firstly signed off the vaccine and now manage the roll-out, and with the superb nurses and doctors who face an endless line of people to do the same repetitive task every day for months with a smile.
The cult want to ignore all the people who did all the actual work and instead praise the CEO who said "get on with it". I can guarantee you this - had the medics screwed up the research, had NHS logistics screwed up the procurement and distribribution it wouldn't be Boris Johnson taking responsibility. Yet you want to grant him all the credit for other people's success.
Its A Cult. And you're deep in it drinking the kool-aid.
You're the one in a Cult. The difference between the nation's is not the willingness of nurses to do vaccinations, it is almost entirely down to procurement. And procurement was a national responsibility.
This government hired Kate Bingham, gave her responsibilities and told her to spend whatever she needed to get what we need.
Other governments gave responsibility to Commissioner Kyriakides with a target set of haggling to get best value for money and limited liability.
For much of last year the Government was getting ridiculed for the "sleaze" of hiring Bingham and slated for not deferring to Kyriakides.
The Liberal Democrats were outraged we didn't wind up Bingham's scheme and join Kyriakides scheme instead.
Now you have the barefaced cheek to say it's not political. You are drinking Kool Aid and don't have the credibility to acknowledge the Liberal Democrats called this wrong and the Government called this right. For shame on you.
PS NHS logistics didn't do the procurement. The Government created Bingham's taskforce which did.
I know that you seem fixated on "no, your mum" as a response this morning, a pity as you're better than that. Especially when you have luterally agreed with my argument about having commissioned the work that all the work was done not by the government.
Whatever. If you want to think He was actually doing something with those multichannel pippettes he posed with, feel free.
Its not the Government's job to "do the work" the Government's job is to pick its priorities and commission those who are capable to get its objectives done.
Our government picked its priority as procuring vaccines as soon as possible, at whatever cost it took.
Other government's picked a priority of procuring vaccines at value for money, with limited liability.
Your party attacked our government for its priorities and said it should have abandoned its scheme and joined the other scheme.
Which set of priorities do you think with the benefit of hindsight was correct? Did our government choose the right set of priorities - or did our neighbours with their completely different scheme we'd have joined had your party been in charge have a better or worse set of priorities?
@RochdalePioneers : You are right, it is a cult. Philip is training to be a high priest of the cult and prays to Boris every morning day and night. He is hoping one day to have the chance of genuinely kissing Boris' ring in person, rather than just doing it on here 24/7.
Peanut gallery is back I see.
Can you answer a simple straight question, which set of priorities and which scheme was better?
The UK's Kate Bingham procurement scheme, with priorities of getting vaccines ASAP at any cost?
Or the EU's Commissioner Kyriakides procurment scheme, with priorities of value for money and limited liability?
It wasn't what I was referring to dumbass. How is your training for chief bum licker to the PM going? Is being a 24/7 keyboard warrior sufficient qualification for the post? Probably not. Even for such a lowly position it is unlikely "Boris" would consider you.
I'll let you into another secret, without wishing to sound like Charles, I know people that went to school with Boris Johnson. If you knew a little more about your idol, you would realise that he would think you very amusing, and not in a good way. My advice would be to try and find someone a little more worthy of your undying admiration.
Straw man, as has been pointed out. It's just another dent in the shiny fat carapace.
It's a social experiment.
Just how much shit will the fanbois eat?
Does BoZo literally have to shoot someone on the Mall?
Would they still vote for him?
So long as his opponent is a woke culture warrior, who reads the Guardian, hates his country and conspires with those who wish to break it up - quite a lot will keep voting for the incumbent.
Are you ok there, Sandpit? Not out for too long in the heat, I hope. Because that is one bizarre take on Keir Starmer! You sound like a raddled old Colonel down at the Old Calcutta.
It may not be fair on Keir Starmer. But that is how many people see him. Every time he does something to appease the Corbynite wing or the Remainer ultras (or indeed the Scottish Nationalists), that impression grows. I certainly don't believe he WANTS to do those things - at least not the first or the last - but he is being forced into having to do so by the unfortunate logic of the disparate votes Labour needs to attract to secure a majority, or even a plurality.
So the UK media runs with a tiny, boring story about a disgruntled nurse and ‘Brits book up the Algarve’
Last night was a turning on point on Pb on this topic. The “is it really happening” question has been positively answered by a decent subset here now. The next question is “what happens next?”.
My own view is “bugger all”. The President can give a speech a year hence that says “we’ve uncovered a great mystery, something we don’t understand that is of Intelligence but is not human. We invite countries around the world and the scientific community to help us understand it, on the basis of peace, transparency and friendship”.
And by the end of the week, the stock market will be back to where it was and most people will be going on their lives as before.
Yes, that could easily happen. A global shrug. Especially if this is all we get. Grainy videos, eye witness accounts, fairly compelling evidence of ‘something’ - but we don’t know what...
However if the evidence grows - a pretty massive ‘if’ - I am sure it will impact us. In unimaginable ways - unimaginable because this is completely outwith the regular human experience
Robert and others have questioned why the craft don’t have better radar or visual cloaking. But that’s because they’re not empathising with whatever is behind them. No point thinking about hostile intent because it would be over quickly. But if your goal was a benign “contact”, then you wouldn’t risk causing the breakdown of the very civilisation you wish to engage with, by making a sudden big gesture. Too risky. You’d gradually sow the seed in society’s mindset. And then escalate it over time. In short, you’d try to be seen but not too quickly by too many people.
Equally this would be the disclosure approach of a responsible government. You don’t get the President to give a speech out of nowhere. You set the scene over time using lower level officials, retired personnel and the media. So by the time the President gives his speech, most people know what he’s going to say.
So that’s Step 1 (their move) and Step 2 (ours) covered. Step 3 is their move again. How long do they take to make it? How far do they go with this step? If this is a gradual benign contact, they’ll presumably have done it many times. It could be a human lifetime before they do much more than flybys.
There’s another possibility of course beyond hostile intent and benign contact. Which is that they are indifferent to our awareness of them.
Another possibility again which is any of combination of the above with different actors involved.
And they've clearly been watching all of Hollywood's output on the subject, which is how they know only to make contact with the US, and that the irrelevant remaining 95% of the world will just somehow fall into line during the dramatic third act.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
3-4x average incomes or household incomes...
The issue with housing is that it will consume all money that a bank can lend against it - for most people will always borrow as much as the bank will lend them...
So if you want house prices at 3-4 times income you need to severely restrict what they can lend...
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Among the nurses/doctors I know, it's conditions rather than pay that they see as the problem. Most would say (at least, though I think they believe it) that they'd rather have more staff than more pay.
UK Doctors are very very well paid for one of the few "jobs for life" (not just a pun) that still exist, and a role which has one of the highest level of prestige (which many enjoy). They also have one of the most generous pension schemes in the world. That said, it is hard work and sometimes conditions are not great if they are working in hospitals, though I fail to see how GPs have poor conditions. If they don't like the conditions they could opt to work in industry, though unlike their colleagues in other countries, few opt for this, probably because it is less secure.
The pay gap between doctors and other health professionals (partic. nurses) is vast and it is odd that the media never comment on it. It is perhaps one area where media deference still exists
Surely one of our current problems is that too many doctors are opting out.
Some of this is for pay reasons but sfaict from the outside, there are a lot of problems with doctors in training grades that could easily be addressed should anyone at the DoH care (obviously they are distracted at the moment) and at the other end there was an unforeseen consequence of capping pensions. In the middle there are more part-time medics.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
So basically you have a free for all in the Home Counties concreting all over the green belt while the North and Midlands where house prices are cheaper get barely any new housing at all.
If you want a policy to guarantee the Blue Wall falls to the LDs as much as the Red Wall has fallen to the Tories that would be it
Absolutely free for all in the Home Counties yes, that's part of having a free market. If people want to live their and buy the land then let them do as they please with their land.
If others want the land protected, let them buy the land.
Free market in action. If the Tories won't defend a free market I couldn't care less if those seats fall to a party that will.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Among the nurses/doctors I know, it's conditions rather than pay that they see as the problem. Most would say (at least, though I think they believe it) that they'd rather have more staff than more pay.
UK Doctors are very very well paid for one of the few "jobs for life" (not just a pun) that still exist, and a role which has one of the highest level of prestige (which many enjoy). They also have one of the most generous pension schemes in the world. That said, it is hard work and sometimes conditions are not great if they are working in hospitals, though I fail to see how GPs have poor conditions. If they don't like the conditions they could opt to work in industry, though unlike their colleagues in other countries, few opt for this, probably because it is less secure.
The pay gap between doctors and other health professionals (partic. nurses) is vast and it is odd that the media never comment on it. It is perhaps one area where media deference still exists
The experience of GPs and junior doctors is vastly different, I think.
Even Domski is going to struggle to actually destroy Boris, though I imagine he's relentless in support of a cause (geniuses like Domski directing the ant colony).
The Dom is reputed to be a genius campaigner.
If his next campaign is the downfall of King BoZo, why would you bet against that?
Because he destroyed his own reputation last year and made himself a punchline.
Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair used to be genius campaigners. Campbell has been pissing into the wind for years now on Brexit and Blair's exortations on it were ignored too.
Although you probably find CampbellClaret's Tweets to be the best thing since sliced bread and can't understand why he's not being listened to.
The *only* thing that will give Dom any credibility on this is when he produces the evidence. I am uninterested in his opinion. I am interested in his facts.
Even then, with proof on the table that the PM ignored the science and was happy to let the bodies pile high, the Cult will just shrug. Yeah ok he killed granny but he's a lad isn't he and I'd still have a pint with him.
Alternatively thanks to Boris's government granny has been vaccinated.
My grandparents have had both vaccines and I'll be going to see them (having had one myself already too) this weekend. 👍
Personally I credit the NHS and the researchers and the nurses jabbing you for a pay cut, not the PM. Like I said, the Cult is strong in you.
You're the one in the Cult. Why aren't other European nation's nurses vaccinating healthy 38 year olds without pre-existing health conditions?
Is it because other European nation's nurses are lazy bastards who are letting vaccines sit idle in the fridge rather than vaccinating people?
Or is it because they don't have the vaccine supplies that our government procured and theirs didn't?
So lets talk about project management. Lets assume a company CEO has his head of department come to him early in a crisis and say "we will need x and we need to start now". CEO green lights the project and allocates the resources including someone to project manage. He then stands aside whilst the actual work gets done.
Does the credit sit with the department head who realised the problem? The CEO who commissioned the work, or the people who did the work? The answer of course is all of them, but to different percentages.
The bulk of the credit for our vaccination triumph is with the scientists who did the research, with the medical professionals and managers who firstly signed off the vaccine and now manage the roll-out, and with the superb nurses and doctors who face an endless line of people to do the same repetitive task every day for months with a smile.
The cult want to ignore all the people who did all the actual work and instead praise the CEO who said "get on with it". I can guarantee you this - had the medics screwed up the research, had NHS logistics screwed up the procurement and distribribution it wouldn't be Boris Johnson taking responsibility. Yet you want to grant him all the credit for other people's success.
Its A Cult. And you're deep in it drinking the kool-aid.
You're the one in a Cult. The difference between the nation's is not the willingness of nurses to do vaccinations, it is almost entirely down to procurement. And procurement was a national responsibility.
This government hired Kate Bingham, gave her responsibilities and told her to spend whatever she needed to get what we need.
Other governments gave responsibility to Commissioner Kyriakides with a target set of haggling to get best value for money and limited liability.
For much of last year the Government was getting ridiculed for the "sleaze" of hiring Bingham and slated for not deferring to Kyriakides.
The Liberal Democrats were outraged we didn't wind up Bingham's scheme and join Kyriakides scheme instead.
Now you have the barefaced cheek to say it's not political. You are drinking Kool Aid and don't have the credibility to acknowledge the Liberal Democrats called this wrong and the Government called this right. For shame on you.
PS NHS logistics didn't do the procurement. The Government created Bingham's taskforce which did.
I know that you seem fixated on "no, your mum" as a response this morning, a pity as you're better than that. Especially when you have luterally agreed with my argument about having commissioned the work that all the work was done not by the government.
Whatever. If you want to think He was actually doing something with those multichannel pippettes he posed with, feel free.
Its not the Government's job to "do the work" the Government's job is to pick its priorities and commission those who are capable to get its objectives done.
Our government picked its priority as procuring vaccines as soon as possible, at whatever cost it took.
Other government's picked a priority of procuring vaccines at value for money, with limited liability.
Your party attacked our government for its priorities and said it should have abandoned its scheme and joined the other scheme.
Which set of priorities do you think with the benefit of hindsight was correct? Did our government choose the right set of priorities - or did our neighbours with their completely different scheme we'd have joined had your party been in charge have a better or worse set of priorities?
@RochdalePioneers : You are right, it is a cult. Philip is training to be a high priest of the cult and prays to Boris every morning day and night. He is hoping one day to have the chance of genuinely kissing Boris' ring in person, rather than just doing it on here 24/7.
Peanut gallery is back I see.
Can you answer a simple straight question, which set of priorities and which scheme was better?
The UK's Kate Bingham procurement scheme, with priorities of getting vaccines ASAP at any cost?
Or the EU's Commissioner Kyriakides procurment scheme, with priorities of value for money and limited liability?
It wasn't what I was referring to dumbass. How is your training for chief bum licker to the PM going? Is being a 24/7 keyboard warrior sufficient qualification for the post? Probably not. Even for such a lowly position it is unlikely "Boris" would consider you.
I'll let you into another secret, without wishing to sound like Charles, I know people that went to school with Boris Johnson. If you knew a little more about your idol, you would realise that he would think you very amusing, and not in a good way. My advice would be to try and find someone a little more worthy of your undying admiration.
So you're too embarrassed to answer a straight question with a straight answer. Got it.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
Someone posted on here yesterday - 1 in 6 hospitality businesses fail within their first year, even without a pandemic. It's a hugely risky field and I applaud anyone willing to take it, I wouldn't!
It's a low wage, low productivity industry which uses labour and capital inefficiently and holds the economy back. Like farming.
It's not my fault that some pubs and restaurants go bust in the normal course of events. I can't imagine that many being owned by "large chains" go bust. The others who do go bust need to manage their businesses better I suppose. Why does it take so long to make a Flat White? I'm amazed at the likes of PT crying tears over this. What about the fishing, farming and haulage industry that are being murdered by Brexit. Oh wait, it's Brexit, they're supposed to take care of themselves, the market will sort them out!!
Farming uses 62% of our land to make 0.6% of our GDP, land that is desperately needed for other purposes like housing, and takes £3 billion/year in subsidies into the bargain. The sooner the Australians and whoever free up the land, labour and capital the better. It's long overdue.
As somebody who is always on the lookout for attack lines that will destroy Boris and the government, even I think the Jenny McGee story is a complete non-story.
Indeed. The rather comical desperation to find The Thing That Will Bring Boris Down This Week is proof of the lamentable political impotence of his opponents; politcal strength means creating your own opportunities if they don't exist already, a talent of which they seem completely devoid. But no, they keep hoping against hope as if they were listening to a 1960s Adam West cliffhanger:
'Is this the zero hour for the Dynamic Duo? Are the sands of time really running out for Batman and Robin? At long last have they met a gritty, granulated, inglorious end?'
'Can it be? The Dynamic Duo crushed to death by an eight ton meteorite??'
'Are our eyes deceiving us?? Has the giant clam really swallowed Robin??'
'Tune in next week – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!'
Yes, very good. I used to watch that and it's exactly how it was. Viz, 'him', I'd actually settle for him just being slapped around for a while by Mr Freeze before the inevitable escape. Least that could be enjoyed on its own terms and in its own right.
But look, in all seriousness, what you are overtly celebrating is the complete severing of the link between popularity and merit in our politics. I know it's never been a super-strong positive correlation, it can never be like that in such a messy world filled with such messy people, but it's now gone entirely and is even turning negative. This, objectively, is a really bad development.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
3-4x average incomes or household incomes...
The issue with housing is that it will consume all money that a bank can lend against it - for most people will always borrow as much as the bank will lend them...
So if you want house prices at 3-4 times income you need to severely restrict what they can lend...
That's not true, prices go up or down as far as income ratios are concerned based upon supply and demand. If supply of homes goes up faster than demand for homes does then ratios will go down, which is what the NIMBYs are terrified about as they view high prices as a feature not a bug.
House price ratios vary dramatically across the nation.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Among the nurses/doctors I know, it's conditions rather than pay that they see as the problem. Most would say (at least, though I think they believe it) that they'd rather have more staff than more pay.
UK Doctors are very very well paid for one of the few "jobs for life" (not just a pun) that still exist, and a role which has one of the highest level of prestige (which many enjoy). They also have one of the most generous pension schemes in the world. That said, it is hard work and sometimes conditions are not great if they are working in hospitals, though I fail to see how GPs have poor conditions. If they don't like the conditions they could opt to work in industry, though unlike their colleagues in other countries, few opt for this, probably because it is less secure.
The pay gap between doctors and other health professionals (partic. nurses) is vast and it is odd that the media never comment on it. It is perhaps one area where media deference still exists
It is in part a legacy of the "Officers vs Other Ranks" division in British society. One group simply gets a better deal in so many ways. True of many other areas of life too.
I don't complain about my pay and conditions because I am very well paid to do a job that I love. There is a large vocational motivation for me to keep working.
That said, there is a massive international market in health care workers, as the skills and qualifications are so internationally recognised. Demand exceeds supply, so health care providers either pay the going rate or have staff shortages impinging on function. We are currently having to readvertise Consultant jobs in my department because there are no appointable applicants.
Lots of our European staff have left. Often they came because of nursing unemployment in Spain or Portugal etc, but now they can get jobs easily because of covid, and see their families too. Many of them haven't been able to see families for over a year, while previously they could pop back readily via Ryanair.
We still get reasonable numbers of Nigerisn, Egyptian and Pakistani applicants from overseas, and I expect that we will recruit more from there in the future.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Among the nurses/doctors I know, it's conditions rather than pay that they see as the problem. Most would say (at least, though I think they believe it) that they'd rather have more staff than more pay.
UK Doctors are very very well paid for one of the few "jobs for life" (not just a pun) that still exist, and a role which has one of the highest level of prestige (which many enjoy). They also have one of the most generous pension schemes in the world. That said, it is hard work and sometimes conditions are not great if they are working in hospitals, though I fail to see how GPs have poor conditions. If they don't like the conditions they could opt to work in industry, though unlike their colleagues in other countries, few opt for this, probably because it is less secure.
The pay gap between doctors and other health professionals (partic. nurses) is vast and it is odd that the media never comment on it. It is perhaps one area where media deference still exists
Yes and no because while you are lying in bed, the experienced nurses on the ward are probably earning more than the trainee doctors you see.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
So basically you have a free for all in the Home Counties concreting all over the green belt while the North and Midlands where house prices are cheaper get barely any new housing at all.
If you want a policy to guarantee the Blue Wall falls to the LDs as much as the Red Wall has fallen to the Tories that would be it
Absolutely free for all in the Home Counties yes, that's part of having a free market. If people want to live their and buy the land then let them do as they please with their land.
If others want the land protected, let them buy the land.
Free market in action. If the Tories won't defend a free market I couldn't care less if those seats fall to a party that will.
Rubbish, most extra demand for housing in the Home Counties comes from people moving out of London looking for cheaper housing to buy.
Build more affordable housing in brownbelt land in London first to reduce demand and also encourage more of our most skilled to stay in the North and Midlands where there is plenty of cheap property, rather than moving south to London as soon as they graduate.
The Tories are not and never have been a pure free market party and if the Liberals gain their southern seats it will be because of their NIMBY wing, not their Orange Book free market wing
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
Well perhaps. I tend to perhaps rather lazily assume that the country needs more STEM graduates. My view is that the country should therefore pay for them. Want to do a physics degree? Great, we'll pay your fees. May even pay a stipend towards living costs. Want to do an English literature degree? Also great, but you'll need to pay your own way. (But that should be fine because actually it shouldn't need to cost a lot to do an English literature degree. (The fact that universities can charge £9000 a year for some lectures and access to a library really needs addressing.))
How do we decide between the deserving and undeserving degrees? I don't know. But surely we can try.
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
I have something of a minority view on this. Personally I think law is what I call a "techie" subject, ie the sort of thing that might be most usefully taught in technical college like car mechanics and plumbing but not quite as useful.
The LLB is a serious attempt to make the law an academically rigorous subject and it just isn't. It does this by borrowing from philosophy, sociology and, most importantly, using lots of big and unnecessary words but it rather gives the game away by having exams which are basically memory tests. One of my life's regrets is studying law at University instead of something interesting.
For me, the job of a lawyer is to solve problems. Sometimes knowledge of the law gives you a tool kit that facilitates that process. Sometimes a good understanding of psychology or economics is more useful depending on the nature of the dispute.
So for me the LLB is something of a mistake and teaches remarkably few of the useful skills that a lawyer might have. An apprenticeship might do better depending on the quality of the teachers and the range of experience that was available. Obviously churning through debt recovery summons or the like would teach very little.
Straw man, as has been pointed out. It's just another dent in the shiny fat carapace.
It's a social experiment.
Just how much shit will the fanbois eat?
Does BoZo literally have to shoot someone on the Mall?
Would they still vote for him?
So long as his opponent is a woke culture warrior, who reads the Guardian, hates his country and conspires with those who wish to break it up - quite a lot will keep voting for the incumbent.
Are you ok there, Sandpit? Not out for too long in the heat, I hope. Because that is one bizarre take on Keir Starmer! You sound like a raddled old Colonel down at the Old Calcutta.
Like most parodies, there’s just enough truth in it...
Why Labour didn't make NHS pay a central focus of the recent elections is beyond me.
They did....but then got distracted by Boris curtains and wallpaper, as they thought they would be a slamdunk hit on the Tories. And the public went, meh, somebody might have paid for Boris flat furniture so we didn't (we did, but that got lost in the story).
Is also worth noting the polling so far hasn't shown the 1% rise to be thought of as massively unfair / unpopular.
As somebody who is always on the lookout for attack lines that will destroy Boris and the government, even I think the Jenny McGee story is a complete non-story.
Indeed. The rather comical desperation to find The Thing That Will Bring Boris Down This Week is proof of the lamentable political impotence of his opponents; politcal strength means creating your own opportunities if they don't exist already, a talent of which they seem completely devoid. But no, they keep hoping against hope as if they were listening to a 1960s Adam West cliffhanger:
'Is this the zero hour for the Dynamic Duo? Are the sands of time really running out for Batman and Robin? At long last have they met a gritty, granulated, inglorious end?'
'Can it be? The Dynamic Duo crushed to death by an eight ton meteorite??'
'Are our eyes deceiving us?? Has the giant clam really swallowed Robin??'
'Tune in next week – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!'
Yes, very good. I used to watch that and it's exactly how it was. Viz, 'him', I'd actually settle for him just being slapped around for a while by Mr Freeze before the inevitable escape. Least that could be enjoyed on its own terms and in its own right.
But look, in all seriousness, what you are overtly celebrating is the complete severing of the link between popularity and merit in our politics. I know it's never been a super-strong positive correlation, it can never be like that in such a messy world filled with such messy people, but it's now gone entirely and is even turning negative. This, objectively, is a really bad development.
I would just ask you to consider this. Everything said of Boris by those on the left, and those of his party who have abandoned him, is very similar to what was said of Blair by those on the right, and those in his party that had abandoned him.
I don’t think either side was/is right, I just seen the analogy. The belief that the PM is awful and on the make, together with his chums. The feeling of powerlessness that the public just don’t see it too. The idea that if they just wait long enough, the voters will catch on.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Among the nurses/doctors I know, it's conditions rather than pay that they see as the problem. Most would say (at least, though I think they believe it) that they'd rather have more staff than more pay.
UK Doctors are very very well paid for one of the few "jobs for life" (not just a pun) that still exist, and a role which has one of the highest level of prestige (which many enjoy). They also have one of the most generous pension schemes in the world. That said, it is hard work and sometimes conditions are not great if they are working in hospitals, though I fail to see how GPs have poor conditions. If they don't like the conditions they could opt to work in industry, though unlike their colleagues in other countries, few opt for this, probably because it is less secure.
The pay gap between doctors and other health professionals (partic. nurses) is vast and it is odd that the media never comment on it. It is perhaps one area where media deference still exists
The experience of GPs and junior doctors is vastly different, I think.
A lot of GPs are on massive comp. A minority of so called "super GPs" are earning over £250k, and one was reported to be earning 700k. Nice little earner for the most secure job in the world. Junior doctors less so, but their pay compares well with other professions at similar ages, and they of course hope to become a consultant where they will be able to earn over £100k year and do private practice additionally, have very large pensions and are in a job for life. As I say, doctors are the last profession that people, and the media in particular, are still unnecessarily deferential to. The idea that they are poorly compensated compared to other professions is a well spun lie from the BMA
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
So basically you have a free for all in the Home Counties concreting all over the green belt while the North and Midlands where house prices are cheaper get barely any new housing at all.
If you want a policy to guarantee the Blue Wall falls to the LDs as much as the Red Wall has fallen to the Tories that would be it
Absolutely free for all in the Home Counties yes, that's part of having a free market. If people want to live their and buy the land then let them do as they please with their land.
If others want the land protected, let them buy the land.
Free market in action. If the Tories won't defend a free market I couldn't care less if those seats fall to a party that will.
Rubbish, most extra demand for housing in the Home Counties comes from people moving out of London looking for cheaper housing.
Build more affordable housing in brownbelt land in London first to reduce demand and also encourage more of our most skilled to stay in the North and Midlands where there is plenty of cheap property, rather than moving south to London as soon as they graduate.
The Tories are not and never have been a pure free market party and if the Liberals gain their southern seats it will be because of their NIMBY wing, not their Orange Book free market wing
People moving out of London need somewhere to live yes, they are your compatriots and they deserve somewhere to live. That's part of a free nation and afree market, people are free to move around - and if they wish to buy somewhere in the Home Counties and commute to London and someone is willing to sell to them then so be it. That is entirely appropriate and not inappropriate.
If the Tories don't defend the free market then there's no point supporting them. If the Tories are going to oppose a free market and be as NIMBY as the Lib Dems then I couldn't care less if the Tories or Lib Dems win the seats.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Because those in post have put artificially high barriers to entry in terms of qualifications etc and we don't train enough.
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
I thought Gove was in the anti-vocational camp. Otherwise, yes.
He was/is obsessed by STEM. Probably because he studied English, which is, lets face it, the easiest STEM subject (only kidding English grads).
I got the impression Gove was a liberal arts man and it was Cummings pushing stem.
He wrote: “He continued to play the field for a while, especially when he was out of town on business, when he would frequently hit on female journalists who covered Microsoft.
Bill Gates today would have been MeToo'ed and cancelled before Microsoft Windows ever really got off the ground. The Apple and Linux fan boys might say they would have been a good thing.
Should the government cut funding to businesses that have been impacted, like VAT cuts, furlough, grants, loans, rates relief and much more - put VAT on hospitality back up and give that money to the NHS? 🤔
yes
So devastate even more the businesses like pubs and restaurants etc that are on their knees in order to give more money to those in secure jobs? 🤔
Pubs and restaurants will start making their usual vast amounts of profits etc as everyone rushes back to them, desperate for their alcoholic meals. Meanwhile NHS workers will continue to eek out their salaries between their vast childcare costs and their full tax and NI contributions Class 1. There will always be Pubs and restaurants, but will there always be nurses and doctors now that we are jailing EU visitors at the border.
This is just so deeply delusional. Pubs and restaurants do not make "usual vast amounts of profits". Indeed, as we discussed only yesterday significant percentages of them go bust every normal year losing their life savings and all too often their homes put up as collateral. Those who work in the sector have little to no job security and are doing better than most if they even get the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, those working for the NHS are paid on average well above the national average, receive full pay for very extended periods if they are sick, get a full year's worth of full pay when they have kids and have pensions that are simply unobtainable to most in the private sector. I am not saying they don't deserve it but those who work with that incredible job security and confidence really need to acquire some understanding of how the majority of their fellow citizens paying their taxes to pay their wages live.
And yet, for all that, there are masses of vacant nurses posts in the NHS.
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Because those in post have put artificially high barriers to entry in terms of qualifications etc and we don't train enough.
Also total nursing numbers have been going up, not down.
Malawi received 102,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine it acquired from the African Union on 26 March and used almost 80% of them.
Health authorities in Malawi have incinerated 19,610 expired doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, saying it will reassure the public that any vaccines they do get are safe.
Why Labour didn't make NHS pay a central focus of the recent elections is beyond me.
They did....but then got distracted by Boris curtains and wallpaper, as they thought they would be a slamdunk hit on the Tories. And the public went, meh, somebody might have paid for Boris flat furniture so we didn't (we did, but that got lost in the story).
Is also worth noting the polling so far hasn't shown the 1% rise to be thought of as massively unfair / unpopular.
It's a damn sight more than many in the private sector, especially the self-employed, who actually pay the NHS staff's wages, have had.
Prof Neil Ferguson, one of the government’s key modellers, talked about a “glimmer of hope” that the Indian variant was perhaps not quite as transmissible as first feared.
Last week it was reported there was a “realistic possibility” that it could be 50% more infectious than the UK variant.
That could have a devastating impact if left to spread even with the vaccine rollout the UK has achieved.
But confidence in that figure was always heavily caveated – there’s only a 50:50 chance it is that high.
And data that is now emerging is tentatively pointing towards the Indian variant having less of an advantage over the UK variant.
He wrote: “He continued to play the field for a while, especially when he was out of town on business, when he would frequently hit on female journalists who covered Microsoft.
Bill Gates today would have been MeToo'ed and cancelled before Microsoft Windows ever really got off the ground. The Apple and Linux fan boys might say they would have been a good thing.
Let’s not forget to focus on the good news here for any young boys reading. It doesn’t matter what you look like - so long as you end up with some cash you too will be able to get your end away.
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
I have something of a minority view on this. Personally I think law is what I call a "techie" subject, ie the sort of thing that might be most usefully taught in technical college like car mechanics and plumbing but not quite as useful.
The LLB is a serious attempt to make the law an academically rigorous subject and it just isn't. It does this by borrowing from philosophy, sociology and, most importantly, using lots of big and unnecessary words but it rather gives the game away by having exams which are basically memory tests. One of my life's regrets is studying law at University instead of something interesting.
For me, the job of a lawyer is to solve problems. Sometimes knowledge of the law gives you a tool kit that facilitates that process. Sometimes a good understanding of psychology or economics is more useful depending on the nature of the dispute.
So for me the LLB is something of a mistake and teaches remarkably few of the useful skills that a lawyer might have. An apprenticeship might do better depending on the quality of the teachers and the range of experience that was available. Obviously churning through debt recovery summons or the like would teach very little.
But as I say, this is a minority view.
Basically the LPC and the BVC and then training contracts and pupillage are where you actually learn the skills for practicing law as a professional, I agree the LLB is only really relevant if you want an academic career in the law
I am sure Mini-Trump Macron will probably push for some nonsense extra red-tape specially for UK tourists, because of our quasi-effective vaccine usage.
Even Domski is going to struggle to actually destroy Boris, though I imagine he's relentless in support of a cause (geniuses like Domski directing the ant colony).
The Dom is reputed to be a genius campaigner.
If his next campaign is the downfall of King BoZo, why would you bet against that?
Because he destroyed his own reputation last year and made himself a punchline.
Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair used to be genius campaigners. Campbell has been pissing into the wind for years now on Brexit and Blair's exortations on it were ignored too.
Although you probably find CampbellClaret's Tweets to be the best thing since sliced bread and can't understand why he's not being listened to.
The *only* thing that will give Dom any credibility on this is when he produces the evidence. I am uninterested in his opinion. I am interested in his facts.
Even then, with proof on the table that the PM ignored the science and was happy to let the bodies pile high, the Cult will just shrug. Yeah ok he killed granny but he's a lad isn't he and I'd still have a pint with him.
Alternatively thanks to Boris's government granny has been vaccinated.
My grandparents have had both vaccines and I'll be going to see them (having had one myself already too) this weekend. 👍
Personally I credit the NHS and the researchers and the nurses jabbing you for a pay cut, not the PM. Like I said, the Cult is strong in you.
You're the one in the Cult. Why aren't other European nation's nurses vaccinating healthy 38 year olds without pre-existing health conditions?
Is it because other European nation's nurses are lazy bastards who are letting vaccines sit idle in the fridge rather than vaccinating people?
Or is it because they don't have the vaccine supplies that our government procured and theirs didn't?
So lets talk about project management. Lets assume a company CEO has his head of department come to him early in a crisis and say "we will need x and we need to start now". CEO green lights the project and allocates the resources including someone to project manage. He then stands aside whilst the actual work gets done.
Does the credit sit with the department head who realised the problem? The CEO who commissioned the work, or the people who did the work? The answer of course is all of them, but to different percentages.
The bulk of the credit for our vaccination triumph is with the scientists who did the research, with the medical professionals and managers who firstly signed off the vaccine and now manage the roll-out, and with the superb nurses and doctors who face an endless line of people to do the same repetitive task every day for months with a smile.
The cult want to ignore all the people who did all the actual work and instead praise the CEO who said "get on with it". I can guarantee you this - had the medics screwed up the research, had NHS logistics screwed up the procurement and distribribution it wouldn't be Boris Johnson taking responsibility. Yet you want to grant him all the credit for other people's success.
Its A Cult. And you're deep in it drinking the kool-aid.
You're the one in a Cult. The difference between the nation's is not the willingness of nurses to do vaccinations, it is almost entirely down to procurement. And procurement was a national responsibility.
This government hired Kate Bingham, gave her responsibilities and told her to spend whatever she needed to get what we need.
Other governments gave responsibility to Commissioner Kyriakides with a target set of haggling to get best value for money and limited liability.
For much of last year the Government was getting ridiculed for the "sleaze" of hiring Bingham and slated for not deferring to Kyriakides.
The Liberal Democrats were outraged we didn't wind up Bingham's scheme and join Kyriakides scheme instead.
Now you have the barefaced cheek to say it's not political. You are drinking Kool Aid and don't have the credibility to acknowledge the Liberal Democrats called this wrong and the Government called this right. For shame on you.
PS NHS logistics didn't do the procurement. The Government created Bingham's taskforce which did.
I know that you seem fixated on "no, your mum" as a response this morning, a pity as you're better than that. Especially when you have luterally agreed with my argument about having commissioned the work that all the work was done not by the government.
Whatever. If you want to think He was actually doing something with those multichannel pippettes he posed with, feel free.
Its not the Government's job to "do the work" the Government's job is to pick its priorities and commission those who are capable to get its objectives done.
Our government picked its priority as procuring vaccines as soon as possible, at whatever cost it took.
Other government's picked a priority of procuring vaccines at value for money, with limited liability.
Your party attacked our government for its priorities and said it should have abandoned its scheme and joined the other scheme.
Which set of priorities do you think with the benefit of hindsight was correct? Did our government choose the right set of priorities - or did our neighbours with their completely different scheme we'd have joined had your party been in charge have a better or worse set of priorities?
@RochdalePioneers : You are right, it is a cult. Philip is training to be a high priest of the cult and prays to Boris every morning day and night. He is hoping one day to have the chance of genuinely kissing Boris' ring in person, rather than just doing it on here 24/7.
Peanut gallery is back I see.
Can you answer a simple straight question, which set of priorities and which scheme was better?
The UK's Kate Bingham procurement scheme, with priorities of getting vaccines ASAP at any cost?
Or the EU's Commissioner Kyriakides procurment scheme, with priorities of value for money and limited liability?
It wasn't what I was referring to dumbass. How is your training for chief bum licker to the PM going? Is being a 24/7 keyboard warrior sufficient qualification for the post? Probably not. Even for such a lowly position it is unlikely "Boris" would consider you.
I'll let you into another secret, without wishing to sound like Charles, I know people that went to school with Boris Johnson. If you knew a little more about your idol, you would realise that he would think you very amusing, and not in a good way. My advice would be to try and find someone a little more worthy of your undying admiration.
So you're too embarrassed to answer a straight question with a straight answer. Got it.
Unlike you I am not absurdly obsessed with the EU and the UK government and the relative merits of both. It is now a boring debate as it is over. Those of you on the "winning" side seemed determined to keep trying to convince yourselves it was a good idea. As your ideological soulmate, Mr Trump might say SAD!
So to indulge your silly post, I will answer and obviously the answer was Kate Bingham, duh, and well done to her, and even Bozo for commissioning her to do it. As mentioned to you before on this subject you are obsessed with Philip, there are EU members who didn't participate and are also outperforming the rest of the EU. I know that is inconvenient for those like you who are gullible to believe Boris Johnson is some kind of decision making genius, but there we are. Keep up the course work. I am sure that one day Boris will not reward your hard work and loyalty.
Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...
Please provide cite. From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
If you tried to change the rules linking job grades to wages, there would be a mass revolt. If you tried to give programmers the job grade to get them the pay, there would be a mass revolt.
HR Rules come from Cabinet office/dept HR -> both of whom are accountable to Ministers. Obviously Ministers could change these rules if they wanted civil service reform & prioritized it as an issue.
Simple solution: hire some new people on a track called 'specialized skills' and give them better terms and conditions. Anyone joining new goes onto different terms and conditions anyway -> most of which are less generous than old-timers get.
The idea that civil servants could block such a change is for the birds. They didn't manage to block an unlawful attempt to gut their pensions, a decade long pay freeze -> they are hardly going to be able to block a move to pay some other civil servants more money.
But it won't happen because Tories want to reduce size of public sector.
It won’t happen because of the Civil Service Union, they want people to be paid mostly on time served, to constantly move people around between departments, and for it to be almost impossible to fire anyone for poor performance.
Cummings was right, the whole edifice is simply unfit for purpose in the 21st century and needs turning upside down.
Civil service unions lose every fight they get into - if they even bother to try. David Cameron in a coalition govt managed to cut some govt departments headcounts by 40%! Alongside pay freeze, pensions changes etc. Honestly I don't know where you get the idea that unions could block these changes if Ministers wanted them.
I suspect you find that a lot of civil servants did very nicely thank you over the Cameron cuts post 2010. Huge payoffs and rehired as consultants for the work that still needed doing shortly afterwards.
Yes - one ex-colleague bought a boat! But Cameron wanted to be able to say he'd shrunk the public sector, and got rid of all those enemies of enterprise. Taxpayers paid for it handsomely.
Why Labour didn't make NHS pay a central focus of the recent elections is beyond me.
They did....but then got distracted by Boris curtains and wallpaper, as they thought they would be a slamdunk hit on the Tories. And the public went, meh, somebody might have paid for Boris flat furniture so we didn't (we did, but that got lost in the story).
Is also worth noting the polling so far hasn't shown the 1% rise to be thought of as massively unfair / unpopular.
Worth pointing out that a 1% rise is often pretty decent in the private sector (especially as it beat inflation). So I'm not completely sure complaining loudly about people *only* receiving an inflation beating pay rise is quite the electoral gold that lots of Labourites think it is.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
So basically you have a free for all in the Home Counties concreting all over the green belt while the North and Midlands where house prices are cheaper get barely any new housing at all.
If you want a policy to guarantee the Blue Wall falls to the LDs as much as the Red Wall has fallen to the Tories that would be it
Absolutely free for all in the Home Counties yes, that's part of having a free market. If people want to live their and buy the land then let them do as they please with their land.
If others want the land protected, let them buy the land.
Free market in action. If the Tories won't defend a free market I couldn't care less if those seats fall to a party that will.
Rubbish, most extra demand for housing in the Home Counties comes from people moving out of London looking for cheaper housing.
Build more affordable housing in brownbelt land in London first to reduce demand and also encourage more of our most skilled to stay in the North and Midlands where there is plenty of cheap property, rather than moving south to London as soon as they graduate.
The Tories are not and never have been a pure free market party and if the Liberals gain their southern seats it will be because of their NIMBY wing, not their Orange Book free market wing
People moving out of London need somewhere to live yes, they are your compatriots and they deserve somewhere to live. That's part of a free nation and afree market, people are free to move around - and if they wish to buy somewhere in the Home Counties and commute to London and someone is willing to sell to them then so be it. That is entirely appropriate and not inappropriate.
If the Tories don't defend the free market then there's no point supporting them. If the Tories are going to oppose a free market and be as NIMBY as the Lib Dems then I couldn't care less if the Tories or Lib Dems win the seats.
If there was more affordable housing to buy in London though, fewer Londoners would feel the need to move to the Home Counties to be able to afford to buy their first property.
Historically the Liberals have been more free market than the Tories, it is the Social Democrat wing of the LDs who tend to be the most NIMBY.
If the Tories lose large numbers of seats to the LDs in the South then they could lose their majority even if they keep most of their gains from Labour in the RedWall
Straw man, as has been pointed out. It's just another dent in the shiny fat carapace.
It's a social experiment.
Just how much shit will the fanbois eat?
Does BoZo literally have to shoot someone on the Mall?
Would they still vote for him?
So long as his opponent is a woke culture warrior, who reads the Guardian, hates his country and conspires with those who wish to break it up - quite a lot will keep voting for the incumbent.
Are you ok there, Sandpit? Not out for too long in the heat, I hope. Because that is one bizarre take on Keir Starmer! You sound like a raddled old Colonel down at the Old Calcutta.
It may not be fair on Keir Starmer. But that is how many people see him. Every time he does something to appease the Corbynite wing or the Remainer ultras (or indeed the Scottish Nationalists), that impression grows. I certainly don't believe he WANTS to do those things - at least not the first or the last - but he is being forced into having to do so by the unfortunate logic of the disparate votes Labour needs to attract to secure a majority, or even a plurality.
It certainly isn't fair on Keir Starmer. He patently is not a superwoke culture warrior who hates Britain. I mean. c'mon. He's the knighted ex DPP, soft left at the most, who is (I fear) marching away from radicalism, seeing this as the route to electability. I can tell you with no word of a lie that the appeasement is almost all the other way. He is pissing off the Left something chronic. Tosses them the odd bone - eg a tweet or two about LGBT - and that's about it.
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
I have something of a minority view on this. Personally I think law is what I call a "techie" subject, ie the sort of thing that might be most usefully taught in technical college like car mechanics and plumbing but not quite as useful.
The LLB is a serious attempt to make the law an academically rigorous subject and it just isn't. It does this by borrowing from philosophy, sociology and, most importantly, using lots of big and unnecessary words but it rather gives the game away by having exams which are basically memory tests. One of my life's regrets is studying law at University instead of something interesting.
For me, the job of a lawyer is to solve problems. Sometimes knowledge of the law gives you a tool kit that facilitates that process. Sometimes a good understanding of psychology or economics is more useful depending on the nature of the dispute.
So for me the LLB is something of a mistake and teaches remarkably few of the useful skills that a lawyer might have. An apprenticeship might do better depending on the quality of the teachers and the range of experience that was available. Obviously churning through debt recovery summons or the like would teach very little.
But as I say, this is a minority view.
Basically the LPC and the BVC and then training contracts and pupillage are where you actually learn the skills for practicing law as a professional, I agree the LLB is only really relevant if you want an academic career in the law
England seem to have made a better job of this than Scotland where the LLB (Hons) route + DIploma in Legal Practice is pretty much universal.
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
I thought Gove was in the anti-vocational camp. Otherwise, yes.
He was/is obsessed by STEM. Probably because he studied English, which is, lets face it, the easiest STEM subject (only kidding English grads).
I got the impression Gove was a liberal arts man and it was Cummings pushing stem.
No, when he was Ed Sec, he pushed STEM. Cummings did a degree in History I believe.
Straw man, as has been pointed out. It's just another dent in the shiny fat carapace.
It's a social experiment.
Just how much shit will the fanbois eat?
Does BoZo literally have to shoot someone on the Mall?
Would they still vote for him?
So long as his opponent is a woke culture warrior, who reads the Guardian, hates his country and conspires with those who wish to break it up - quite a lot will keep voting for the incumbent.
Are you ok there, Sandpit? Not out for too long in the heat, I hope. Because that is one bizarre take on Keir Starmer! You sound like a raddled old Colonel down at the Old Calcutta.
It may not be fair on Keir Starmer. But that is how many people see him. Every time he does something to appease the Corbynite wing or the Remainer ultras (or indeed the Scottish Nationalists), that impression grows. I certainly don't believe he WANTS to do those things - at least not the first or the last - but he is being forced into having to do so by the unfortunate logic of the disparate votes Labour needs to attract to secure a majority, or even a plurality.
It certainly isn't fair on Keir Starmer. He patently is not a superwoke culture warrior who hates Britain. I mean. c'mon. He's the knighted ex DPP, soft left at the most, who is (I fear) marching away from radicalism, seeing this as the route to electability. I can tell you with no word of a lie that the appeasement is almost all the other way. He is pissing off the Left something chronic. Tosses them the odd bone - eg a tweet or two about LGBT - and that's about it.
Yesterday, the former president of the USA reversed his earlier statements, and confirmed that American military has encountered advanced technology it cannot explain...
Please provide cite. From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
He's actually quite hesitant and inarticulate - for Obama
I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur
"we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"
I am sure Mini-Trump Macron will probably push for some nonsense extra red-tape specially for UK tourists, because of our quasi-effective vaccine usage.
I doubt it, he's just bailed out Eurostar and without British tourists taking the train it will need more money.
I still remember being told that the UK government would have to participate in its bail out by our die hard remainers and that we'd come out worse becuase the French would dictate terms or close the line. Lol.
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
Credit to the government for standing up to the NIMBY and leftwing environmentalist scum.
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Well they have already lost control of Oxfordshire county council to a Labour, LD and Green coalition and lost control of some district councils like Tunbridge Wells and Chelmsford and Guildford in the local elections over planning so the Government and local Tory councils need to be careful to ensure where new housing is built it is focused on brownbelt land rather than greenbelt land as far as possible
Central government should remove the ability for NIMBY councils to block developments, then this is no longer an issue.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
So basically you have a free for all in the Home Counties concreting all over the green belt while the North and Midlands where house prices are cheaper get barely any new housing at all.
If you want a policy to guarantee the Blue Wall falls to the LDs as much as the Red Wall has fallen to the Tories that would be it
Absolutely free for all in the Home Counties yes, that's part of having a free market. If people want to live their and buy the land then let them do as they please with their land.
If others want the land protected, let them buy the land.
Free market in action. If the Tories won't defend a free market I couldn't care less if those seats fall to a party that will.
Rubbish, most extra demand for housing in the Home Counties comes from people moving out of London looking for cheaper housing.
Build more affordable housing in brownbelt land in London first to reduce demand and also encourage more of our most skilled to stay in the North and Midlands where there is plenty of cheap property, rather than moving south to London as soon as they graduate.
The Tories are not and never have been a pure free market party and if the Liberals gain their southern seats it will be because of their NIMBY wing, not their Orange Book free market wing
People moving out of London need somewhere to live yes, they are your compatriots and they deserve somewhere to live. That's part of a free nation and afree market, people are free to move around - and if they wish to buy somewhere in the Home Counties and commute to London and someone is willing to sell to them then so be it. That is entirely appropriate and not inappropriate.
If the Tories don't defend the free market then there's no point supporting them. If the Tories are going to oppose a free market and be as NIMBY as the Lib Dems then I couldn't care less if the Tories or Lib Dems win the seats.
If there was more affordable housing to buy in London though, fewer Londoners would feel the need to move to the Home Counties to be able to afford to buy their first property.
Historically the Liberals have been more free market than the Tories, it is the Social Democrat wing of the LDs who tend to be the most NIMBY.
If the Tories lose large numbers of seats to the LDs in the South then they could lose their majority even if they keep most of their gains from Labour in the RedWall
And where exactly is the green land that is needed to build more housing in London?
The Home Counties are worth what they are because they're within commuting distance of London, so objecting to people moving there to commute to London is sheer hypocrisy.
If the Home Counties won't have land developed to build commuting homes for Londoners to live in then London should expand and grow into the Home Counties.
You keep talking about pathetic local politics issues as if that is a winning argument. I support the Tories because they do the right thing, if the Tories won't do the right thing then they don't deserve my vote. Either the Tories believe in a free market and ensuring people are able to own their own home, or they don't in which case I hope another party wins instead.
Why Labour didn't make NHS pay a central focus of the recent elections is beyond me.
They did....but then got distracted by Boris curtains and wallpaper, as they thought they would be a slamdunk hit on the Tories. And the public went, meh, somebody might have paid for Boris flat furniture so we didn't (we did, but that got lost in the story).
Is also worth noting the polling so far hasn't shown the 1% rise to be thought of as massively unfair / unpopular.
Worth pointing out that a 1% rise is often pretty decent in the private sector (especially as it beat inflation). So I'm not completely sure complaining loudly about people *only* receiving an inflation beating pay rise is quite the electoral gold that lots of Labourites think it is.
Inflation being 1.5pc as opposed to 3pc has played havoc for last decade; perhaps the cause of all our problems.
"A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in Britain is a social scientist turned race adviser who has no medical qualifications.
Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various government-commissioned reports on welfare issues."
The only issue I'd have with that quote is that "medical qualifications" are not that relevant to how to handle a pandemic. Most epidemiologists haven't been to med school and most medics are not qualified on how to handle a pandemic.
See, e.g. Dr Sarah Jarvis who, unless her MA is in something relevant, is qualified to talk about symptoms and treatment of Covid, but not about how best to tackle it on a public-health basis. She can of course have an opinion on the phone ins, but so can Dave from Watford.
I've seen some quite absurd things posted by doctors - leaping to conclusions to fit their personal opinions, quite clearly.
To be fair, also some absurd things posted/stated by epidemiologists, for the same reasons.
But the media should start with "does this person have qualifications/experience that suggest they should know what they're talking about" and then, ideally (asking too much?) follow up with a bit of critical appraisal of what thet actually say, including looking for other people who should know what they're talking about who may have differing opinions.
See, e.g., masks and the whole airbourne or not debate.
The 'media' is, largely I believe staffed by journalists. How does one become one? The truly 'investigative' reporter, who makes themselves informed about what they are investigating is, in my experience, rare.
I have a niece who wants to become a journalist. She's attending a college course to learn how to do it and will soon transition into 3rd year at University to get her "degree". I have asked what she wants to be a journalist of. There is no clear answer. I ask what area she has researched and thinks she has something to say on. Ditto.
She's a lovely girl but she frankly has zero chance of ever being paid to be a professional journalist and I fear the same will apply to the vast majority of those studying such a course.
In contrast the son of a friend of mine wrote a series of pieces for the Big Issue on homelessness, drug dependency and the interaction between the 2. Compelling pieces about something he clearly cared deeply about and had researched carefully. He also wrote endless pieces for fanzines of his favourite football team to practise his skill. After several years he now has a full time job as a journalist. It's a tough gig but he loves it.
How do you feel about the trend back in the legal profession to apprenticeship rather than a necessity of a degree? A good thing or bad?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
I thought Gove was in the anti-vocational camp. Otherwise, yes.
He was/is obsessed by STEM. Probably because he studied English, which is, lets face it, the easiest STEM subject (only kidding English grads).
I got the impression Gove was a liberal arts man and it was Cummings pushing stem.
No, when he was Ed Sec, he pushed STEM. Cummings did a degree in History I believe.
Yes, but I thought that the STEM-pushing came from Cummings, while Gove was more concerned with the liberal arts and getting everyone to university. Gove tried to rewrite the history syllabus, not physics. Obviously since they were a double act, we can never be sure who was the straight man and who the clown on any particular issue.
Comments
If the pay and conditions in the NHS are so good, why is it struggling to recruit and retain staff?
Starting to look like a massive mistake now. One truth about Covid-19: You can run. But you can't hide.
However if the evidence grows - a pretty massive ‘if’ - I am sure it will impact us. In unimaginable ways - unimaginable because this is completely outwith the regular human experience
And I wonder where your niece will end up!
Maybe not that surprising, but also deeply unwise. Storing up problems for the future.
Our government picked its priority as procuring vaccines as soon as possible, at whatever cost it took.
Other government's picked a priority of procuring vaccines at value for money, with limited liability.
Your party attacked our government for its priorities and said it should have abandoned its scheme and joined the other scheme.
Which set of priorities do you think with the benefit of hindsight was correct? Did our government choose the right set of priorities - or did our neighbours with their completely different scheme we'd have joined had your party been in charge have a better or worse set of priorities?
I think a lot of snobby BS is written about the relative merit of degrees. Young people should follow what they are passionate about ideally, but if not, there is nothing to say they shouldn't study something that might take them on a path elsewhere. If everyone only does vocational degrees in law or medicine or only STEM subjects (yes I am thinking of the twat Gove) then the country will be a poorer place
https://www.ft.com/content/73576fb2-e655-40cc-a339-4c99ae0b0e50
“I don’t think Boris has any idea what’s about to hit him. An unholy alliance of rightwing Nimbys and leftwing environmentalists are coming to destroy these planning reforms. Whether they win or lose, the arguing will be brutal for us. We could soon be in real trouble.”
However, the report is a bit of a mismash of quotes, some from different times, put together to make a story that doesn't necessarily stand up with what's been said.
The one interesting bit is the "in the balance" quote, which is surprisingly bleak. Other than that, it's speculation that transmission among vaccinated people may be higher, but I can't believe we've got good info on that yet. We're only really just pinning down the effects of vaccines on onwards transmission of the older strains! The suggestion that the new strain is not more severe (again, surely short of data on that?) is much more positive and goes somewhat against the idea of a big peak in hospitalisations (with vaccines still protective against severe disease and at least partly against infection and transmission you need a lot more people to ge infected than in January to reach similar hospitalisation levels.
"EU leaders will call on Boris Johnson to respect the rights of their citizens in the wake of scandals over their treatment in the UK, including their detention in removal centres, according to a leaked draft statement seen by the Guardian.
The message to the British prime minister will follow a first discussion of EU-UK relations between the 27 heads of state and government since the ratification of the trade and cooperation agreement struck last Christmas Eve."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/19/eu-to-ask-uk-to-respect-citizens-rights-after-mistreatment-scandals
This is a fight worth having. It is a fight I hope they take to the end and win.
Now were Employer NI not such a significant source of tax it wouldn't be a problem but because it's worth the Government needs to whatever it can (regardless of how stupid it is) to keep that money rolling in.
That is what makes GPT-3 so uninteresting and very, very far away from generalised artificial intelligence. It's 1950s AI technology with an eye-watering amount of money thrown at the training data set.
It's why even in the incredibly limited domain of computer games "advanced" AIs get absolutely trashed by scrub tier strategies - if its not in the train g data they don't know what to do yet a human would be able to instantly adapt and overcome.
Can you answer a simple straight question, which set of priorities and which scheme was better?
The UK's Kate Bingham procurement scheme, with priorities of getting vaccines ASAP at any cost?
Or the EU's Commissioner Kyriakides procurment scheme, with priorities of value for money and limited liability?
Equally this would be the disclosure approach of a responsible government. You don’t get the President to give a speech out of nowhere. You set the scene over time using lower level officials, retired personnel and the media. So by the time the President gives his speech, most people know what he’s going to say.
So that’s Step 1 (their move) and Step 2 (ours) covered. Step 3 is their move again. How long do they take to make it? How far do they go with this step? If this is a gradual benign contact, they’ll presumably have done it many times. It could be a human lifetime before they do much more than flybys.
There’s another possibility of course beyond hostile intent and benign contact. Which is that they are indifferent to our awareness of them.
Another possibility again which is any of combination of the above with different actors involved.
The pay gap between doctors and other health professionals (partic. nurses) is vast and it is odd that the media never comment on it. It is perhaps one area where media deference still exists
Though most building done around here nowadays seems to be done in the "mews" type, which is sort of like a modern terrace style.
Taking more land in order to make try and make more homes semi-detached at least would be an improvement.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9595327/Four-arrested-anti-Semitic-convoy-London-held-attack-Jewish-owned-car.html
More at Guido Fawkes ..the amount she has been raking in is staggering.....
Anyone like to guess how much since Jan 2020?
Note too whilst she is being mauled in the HOC .she covers her face with a mask halfway through....not surprised she is embarrassed.
Have a free market nationwide with Councils only able to block developments in their local area if at least 70% of homes are owner occupied and house prices are no more than 3-4x incomes.
If you want a policy to guarantee the Blue Wall falls to the LDs as much as the Red Wall has fallen to the Tories that would be it.
Yes we need some more affordable homes in London and the South but they should be concentrated in brownbelt land first
I'll let you into another secret, without wishing to sound like Charles, I know people that went to school with Boris Johnson. If you knew a little more about your idol, you would realise that he would think you very amusing, and not in a good way. My advice would be to try and find someone a little more worthy of your undying admiration.
I certainly don't believe he WANTS to do those things - at least not the first or the last - but he is being forced into having to do so by the unfortunate logic of the disparate votes Labour needs to attract to secure a majority, or even a plurality.
The issue with housing is that it will consume all money that a bank can lend against it - for most people will always borrow as much as the bank will lend them...
So if you want house prices at 3-4 times income you need to severely restrict what they can lend...
Some of this is for pay reasons but sfaict from the outside, there are a lot of problems with doctors in training grades that could easily be addressed should anyone at the DoH care (obviously they are distracted at the moment) and at the other end there was an unforeseen consequence of capping pensions. In the middle there are more part-time medics.
If others want the land protected, let them buy the land.
Free market in action. If the Tories won't defend a free market I couldn't care less if those seats fall to a party that will.
But look, in all seriousness, what you are overtly celebrating is the complete severing of the link between popularity and merit in our politics. I know it's never been a super-strong positive correlation, it can never be like that in such a messy world filled with such messy people, but it's now gone entirely and is even turning negative. This, objectively, is a really bad development.
House price ratios vary dramatically across the nation.
Covid cases in Chile and Uruguay on the rise again...despite vaccination.
The likes of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay well up. Brazil they never manage to get the levels down.
I don't complain about my pay and conditions because I am very well paid to do a job that I love. There is a large vocational motivation for me to keep working.
That said, there is a massive international market in health care workers, as the skills and qualifications are so internationally recognised. Demand exceeds supply, so health care providers either pay the going rate or have staff shortages impinging on function. We are currently having to readvertise Consultant jobs in my department because there are no appointable applicants.
Lots of our European staff have left. Often they came because of nursing unemployment in Spain or Portugal etc, but now they can get jobs easily because of covid, and see their families too. Many of them haven't been able to see families for over a year, while previously they could pop back readily via Ryanair.
We still get reasonable numbers of Nigerisn, Egyptian and Pakistani applicants from overseas, and I expect that we will recruit more from there in the future.
Build more affordable housing in brownbelt land in London first to reduce demand and also encourage more of our most skilled to stay in the North and Midlands where there is plenty of cheap property, rather than moving south to London as soon as they graduate.
The Tories are not and never have been a pure free market party and if the Liberals gain their southern seats it will be because of their NIMBY wing, not their Orange Book free market wing
I tend to perhaps rather lazily assume that the country needs more STEM graduates. My view is that the country should therefore pay for them. Want to do a physics degree? Great, we'll pay your fees. May even pay a stipend towards living costs. Want to do an English literature degree? Also great, but you'll need to pay your own way. (But that should be fine because actually it shouldn't need to cost a lot to do an English literature degree. (The fact that universities can charge £9000 a year for some lectures and access to a library really needs addressing.))
How do we decide between the deserving and undeserving degrees? I don't know. But surely we can try.
The LLB is a serious attempt to make the law an academically rigorous subject and it just isn't. It does this by borrowing from philosophy, sociology and, most importantly, using lots of big and unnecessary words but it rather gives the game away by having exams which are basically memory tests. One of my life's regrets is studying law at University instead of something interesting.
For me, the job of a lawyer is to solve problems. Sometimes knowledge of the law gives you a tool kit that facilitates that process. Sometimes a good understanding of psychology or economics is more useful depending on the nature of the dispute.
So for me the LLB is something of a mistake and teaches remarkably few of the useful skills that a lawyer might have. An apprenticeship might do better depending on the quality of the teachers and the range of experience that was available. Obviously churning through debt recovery summons or the like would teach very little.
But as I say, this is a minority view.
Is also worth noting the polling so far hasn't shown the 1% rise to be thought of as massively unfair / unpopular.
I don’t think either side was/is right, I just seen the analogy. The belief that the PM is awful and on the make, together with his chums. The feeling of powerlessness that the public just don’t see it too. The idea that if they just wait long enough, the voters will catch on.
If the Tories don't defend the free market then there's no point supporting them. If the Tories are going to oppose a free market and be as NIMBY as the Lib Dems then I couldn't care less if the Tories or Lib Dems win the seats.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14996782/bill-gates-naked-pool-parties-friendship-jeffrey-epstein-divorce/
Bill Gates today would have been MeToo'ed and cancelled before Microsoft Windows ever really got off the ground. The Apple and Linux fan boys might say they would have been a good thing.
Malawi received 102,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine it acquired from the African Union on 26 March and used almost 80% of them.
Health authorities in Malawi have incinerated 19,610 expired doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, saying it will reassure the public that any vaccines they do get are safe.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-57168841
Last week it was reported there was a “realistic possibility” that it could be 50% more infectious than the UK variant.
That could have a devastating impact if left to spread even with the vaccine rollout the UK has achieved.
But confidence in that figure was always heavily caveated – there’s only a 50:50 chance it is that high.
And data that is now emerging is tentatively pointing towards the Indian variant having less of an advantage over the UK variant.
I am sure Mini-Trump Macron will probably push for some nonsense extra red-tape specially for UK tourists, because of our quasi-effective vaccine usage.
So to indulge your silly post, I will answer and obviously the answer was Kate Bingham, duh, and well done to her, and even Bozo for commissioning her to do it. As mentioned to you before on this subject you are obsessed with Philip, there are EU members who didn't participate and are also outperforming the rest of the EU. I know that is inconvenient for those like you who are gullible to believe Boris Johnson is some kind of decision making genius, but there we are. Keep up the course work. I am sure that one day Boris will not reward your hard work and loyalty.
From what I saw he said it had observed phenomena it couldn't explain. Not the same thing.
Historically the Liberals have been more free market than the Tories, it is the Social Democrat wing of the LDs who tend to be the most NIMBY.
If the Tories lose large numbers of seats to the LDs in the South then they could lose their majority even if they keep most of their gains from Labour in the RedWall
Chris Whitty is on holiday for the first time in two years - but is still tracking the Indian variant of coronavirus.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9595339/Chris-Whitty-holiday-two-years-checking-Indian-variant.html
I think my interpretation of his garbled words is fair. But you are free to demur
"we can't explain how they move, their trajectory, they did not have an easily explainable pattern"
https://twitter.com/EndUAPSecrecy/status/1394700044423634946?s=20
I still remember being told that the UK government would have to participate in its bail out by our die hard remainers and that we'd come out worse becuase the French would dictate terms or close the line. Lol.
The Home Counties are worth what they are because they're within commuting distance of London, so objecting to people moving there to commute to London is sheer hypocrisy.
If the Home Counties won't have land developed to build commuting homes for Londoners to live in then London should expand and grow into the Home Counties.
You keep talking about pathetic local politics issues as if that is a winning argument. I support the Tories because they do the right thing, if the Tories won't do the right thing then they don't deserve my vote. Either the Tories believe in a free market and ensuring people are able to own their own home, or they don't in which case I hope another party wins instead.
Inflation being 1.5pc as opposed to 3pc has played havoc for last decade; perhaps the cause of all our problems.
And since no-one understands inflation...