Public Health England has presented the first real-world data on vaccine efficacy against B.1.617.2, the variant first found in India.
Efficacy against symptomatic B.1.617.2 was 81% after two doses, much higher than many have feared.
Story:
I'd be surprised if it wasn't higher than that once the final data comes out as this will be based on older people arriving from India. Finger in the air I'd guess at almost no efficacy dilution.
I would have thought that the double vaccinated would be British Contacts of Indian visitors, so not nessicarily older.
There is a new AV for PB to get excited over:
It’s called AV.1 & contains 3 mutations seen in variants of concern: E484K, which is in B1351 South African, & associated with immune escape, N439K, also linked to immune escape, and P681H which is in the Kent variant and linked to greater transmissibility https://t.co/9KFQu3Dm1G
I’m stunned to learn that there are animal products in Mackies. I thought they were all made from cardboard.
I haven't been in a McDonald's for over 10 years...sounds like it hasn't changed.
This is when you can tell that PB is really down to earth and in touch with the people.
I do like a sausage Mcmuffin as a guilty pleasure maybe once per month. Their coffee is good too and a third of the price of coffee shop takeaways
Double sausage and egg mcmuffins are great. Not so much the coffee but they don't do cortados, you only get those in wanky London coffee places run by Australians.
@Maxpb@Cyclefree Don't forget not all travel is 'holiday'. A system of non quarantine for the double jabbed should be in place (Flow tests are ok) - it's going to add cost to our contracts abroad if it is still in place at the back end of the year.
@foxy In Shanghai and Beijing you’d be fine in smart places. But really you just get the Google Translate App and that does it all for you with the camera for menus and speaker for drivers. Whether I’d personally recommend China? Some people like it. It’s a big old world out there and I can think of perhaps 150 countries I would rather go to than ever go back to China. Don’t let that stop you though, the Trans Siberian Railway does sound good.
Yes, phone apps can be quite a boon.
I was last in China in 1990 when it was still substantially unmodernised, and I cannot say that I particularly liked it. I do want to do the rail trip though and it seems sensible to take in a few of the more Northern cities. I was in Guangzou before, having caught the night ferry from Macau, which I did like.
The pleasure of travel is in 3 parts: The planning, the doing and the reminiscing. I like to travel independently as have slightly eccentric interests* and I find that poring over maps and guide books planning is a good part of the pleasure.
*strangely, Fox jr1 and 2 didn't want to take in the St Petersberg artillery museum when we were there for the World Cup 🙄
You went to China, hated it, and now propose to spend three weeks in a Chinese train? PB used to have a top travel writer, @SeanT or something, but he is presumably trapped in a five star Covid-quarantine hotel somewhere up the Zambezi as he no longer visits.
Forget China and, like the 2002 World Cup, divide your time between South Korea and Japan (which also has noteworthy trains).
Something I’m considering for next year. Any recommendations/suggestions would be appreciated.
Leaving aside our views of the various governments, personally I've found China and Japan much more interesting than South Korea (which seemed earnest and dull, but perhaps I missed the best bits). The Chinese fast trains are wonderful and spirit you from futuristic Shanghai to places still emerging from the early 20th century. Edmund in Tokyo (who I've not seen here for a while) gave me a delicious meal when I was in Japan and there's obviously plenty to see, and in some ways the culture seems more different from ours than China's. Also consider Vietnam (though it helps there if you like seafood), with everything from cheery freewheeling Ho Chi Minh City to the austere historical places further north.
@foxy In Shanghai and Beijing you’d be fine in smart places. But really you just get the Google Translate App and that does it all for you with the camera for menus and speaker for drivers. Whether I’d personally recommend China? Some people like it. It’s a big old world out there and I can think of perhaps 150 countries I would rather go to than ever go back to China. Don’t let that stop you though, the Trans Siberian Railway does sound good.
Yes, phone apps can be quite a boon.
I was last in China in 1990 when it was still substantially unmodernised, and I cannot say that I particularly liked it. I do want to do the rail trip though and it seems sensible to take in a few of the more Northern cities. I was in Guangzou before, having caught the night ferry from Macau, which I did like.
The pleasure of travel is in 3 parts: The planning, the doing and the reminiscing. I like to travel independently as have slightly eccentric interests* and I find that poring over maps and guide books planning is a good part of the pleasure.
*strangely, Fox jr1 and 2 didn't want to take in the St Petersberg artillery museum when we were there for the World Cup 🙄
Don’t get me wrong, Shanghai is worth a couple of nights for sure. Beijing I never really got on with at all, Tianjin just a short hop is actually quite pleasant. Shanghai locals tend to get in and out of Beijing as soon as possible.
The place in China that I’d describe as both really nice and interesting is Urumqi and surrounds, which from memory the transmongolian train goes through? Just don’t mention the Uigher camps.
I tended to find that the less impacted by Beijing a place was, the better. Tier 3 cities inland by a mile better than Tier 1 or 2 cities, even if the hotels are a bit questionable (places like Hunan, Hebei, Shanxi). But there’s not a huge reason for you to go to those places, on the whole they’re giant stinking factories.
Take some good antibiotics but then you of course already knew that. Avoid domestic flights unless there is no other alternative. They randomly get shut down for a day if a military dignatory wants to use the airport. Don’t know if it’s changed now or not but the bullet trains used to only accept cash or domestic credit cards. They are great but take your own food on board. Watch out for hotels branded as big Western ones but are actually old commie ones with a new nameplate.
I’ve spent a great deal of time in Shanghai and frankly there’s virtually nothing for the Western tourist. A photo of the Bund, a drink on the balcony bar of the Indigo and that’s it. Hangzhou is slightly better. The broad issue is the domestic tourist market in China is so large that there’s never time or space and many of the “sights” are pastiche reconstructions with about as much connection to history as a Barratt house called The Blenheim.
Parts of Sichuan are worth seeing. I like Hong Kong and used to go there for a weekend to get away from the feeling of always being watched. For obvious reasons I haven’t been there recently but friends there tell me it’s changed, even for the non-Chinese.
Part of the interest is that it is not on the mainstream tour party itinerary. I find the idea of the pastiche English Town quite culturally interesting in itself.
Public Health England has presented the first real-world data on vaccine efficacy against B.1.617.2, the variant first found in India.
Efficacy against symptomatic B.1.617.2 was 81% after two doses, much higher than many have feared.
Story:
I'd be surprised if it wasn't higher than that once the final data comes out as this will be based on older people arriving from India. Finger in the air I'd guess at almost no efficacy dilution.
I would have thought that the double vaccinated would be British Contacts of Indian visitors, so not nessicarily older.
There is a new AV for PB to get excited over:
It’s called AV.1 & contains 3 mutations seen in variants of concern: E484K, which is in B1351 South African, & associated with immune escape, N439K, also linked to immune escape, and P681H which is in the Kent variant and linked to greater transmissibility https://t.co/9KFQu3Dm1G
Double vaccinated people are necessarily older given the way the vaccine rolled out.
Tbh, I'm not sure any of these variants will amount to much.
@Maxpb@Cyclefree Don't forget not all travel is 'holiday'. A system of non quarantine for the double jabbed should be in place (Flow tests are ok) - it's going to add cost to our contracts abroad if it is still in place at the back end of the year.
Yes, I think we need to do that at some point when all UK residents have been offered both doses. Probably some time in July.
Public Health England has presented the first real-world data on vaccine efficacy against B.1.617.2, the variant first found in India.
Efficacy against symptomatic B.1.617.2 was 81% after two doses, much higher than many have feared.
Story:
I'd be surprised if it wasn't higher than that once the final data comes out as this will be based on older people arriving from India. Finger in the air I'd guess at almost no efficacy dilution.
I would have thought that the double vaccinated would be British Contacts of Indian visitors, so not nessicarily older.
There is a new AV for PB to get excited over:
It’s called AV.1 & contains 3 mutations seen in variants of concern: E484K, which is in B1351 South African, & associated with immune escape, N439K, also linked to immune escape, and P681H which is in the Kent variant and linked to greater transmissibility https://t.co/9KFQu3Dm1G
Double vaccinated people are necessarily older given the way the vaccine rolled out.
Tbh, I'm not sure any of these variants will amount to much.
I don't think that the older double vaccinated would have been travellers though, because of the timescale. Most would not have had their second dose plus a week before April, so not enough time to travel and get back. They will have been UK contacts of travellers.
Their Own Private Idaho: Five Oregon Counties Back a Plan to Secede In nonbinding elections, parts of eastern Oregon said they wanted to join Idaho. The conservative region has long felt alienated from the liberal politics of Oregon’s population centers.
Someone mentioned this to me a few days ago. I was told it has implications for the number of congressmen the state has. I thought they were off the deep end as I didn't think it was possible for counties to change state. Hopefully Seashanty can explain this to us as he is on the doorstep so to speak.
I hear that California and New York are also due to lose members of congress as they have seen a lot of people (as individuals rather than whole counties) leave their states. In California the population dropped by 182,000 in 2020 alone.
Again 81% against infection, what is just as important, preventing serious illness....if that is still at near 100%, everything else is a rather irrelevant.
@foxy In Shanghai and Beijing you’d be fine in smart places. But really you just get the Google Translate App and that does it all for you with the camera for menus and speaker for drivers. Whether I’d personally recommend China? Some people like it. It’s a big old world out there and I can think of perhaps 150 countries I would rather go to than ever go back to China. Don’t let that stop you though, the Trans Siberian Railway does sound good.
Yes, phone apps can be quite a boon.
I was last in China in 1990 when it was still substantially unmodernised, and I cannot say that I particularly liked it. I do want to do the rail trip though and it seems sensible to take in a few of the more Northern cities. I was in Guangzou before, having caught the night ferry from Macau, which I did like.
The pleasure of travel is in 3 parts: The planning, the doing and the reminiscing. I like to travel independently as have slightly eccentric interests* and I find that poring over maps and guide books planning is a good part of the pleasure.
*strangely, Fox jr1 and 2 didn't want to take in the St Petersberg artillery museum when we were there for the World Cup 🙄
You went to China, hated it, and now propose to spend three weeks in a Chinese train? PB used to have a top travel writer, @SeanT or something, but he is presumably trapped in a five star Covid-quarantine hotel somewhere up the Zambezi as he no longer visits.
Forget China and, like the 2002 World Cup, divide your time between South Korea and Japan (which also has noteworthy trains).
Something I’m considering for next year. Any recommendations/suggestions would be appreciated.
Leaving aside our views of the various governments, personally I've found China and Japan much more interesting than South Korea (which seemed earnest and dull, but perhaps I missed the best bits). The Chinese fast trains are wonderful and spirit you from futuristic Shanghai to places still emerging from the early 20th century. Edmund in Tokyo (who I've not seen here for a while) gave me a delicious meal when I was in Japan and there's obviously plenty to see, and in some ways the culture seems more different from ours than China's. Also consider Vietnam (though it helps there if you like seafood), with everything from cheery freewheeling Ho Chi Minh City to the austere historical places further north.
Did you find booking trains difficult in China? Or did you use a UK agent?
I’m stunned to learn that there are animal products in Mackies. I thought they were all made from cardboard.
I haven't been in a McDonald's for over 10 years...sounds like it hasn't changed.
This is when you can tell that PB is really down to earth and in touch with the people.
Man of the people me....just don't do McDonald's...always seemed very expensive for disappointing food, so not a place I ever think about going in....and they are usually full of chavs ;-)
And there's me, liberal metropolitan scum, who goes to McDonalds at least every once every two weeks. For breakfast usually.
Celebrity American billionaire Warren Buffett famously buys breakfast from McDonalds each morning. You'd think with his money he could at least get it delivered.
@Maxpb@Cyclefree Don't forget not all travel is 'holiday'. A system of non quarantine for the double jabbed should be in place (Flow tests are ok) - it's going to add cost to our contracts abroad if it is still in place at the back end of the year.
Yes, I think we need to do that at some point when all UK residents have been offered both doses. Probably some time in July.
I sometimes think that people forget that not all travel is for frivolous reasons. In my field, we’ve spent the last year burning and not topping up the social capital that we’ve accumulated in the past and it’s beginning to run dry. It’s also one of the reasons that there has been limited new blood coming in and reduced staff turnover.
This isn’t special pleading so much as an observation that “shut all borders” sounds simple and cost-free for the sort of people for whom international travel is for 2 weeks in Spain once a year.
Funny I remember reading how the 'bounce' had already gone a few weeks ago. Did it come back?
Mike keeps predicting the imminent demise of Boris. Yet, Boris best PM leader rating keeps going up. This isn't a temporary bounce, its more permanent than that.
I’m stunned to learn that there are animal products in Mackies. I thought they were all made from cardboard.
I haven't been in a McDonald's for over 10 years...sounds like it hasn't changed.
This is when you can tell that PB is really down to earth and in touch with the people.
Man of the people me....just don't do McDonald's...always seemed very expensive for disappointing food, so not a place I ever think about going in....and they are usually full of chavs ;-)
And there's me, liberal metropolitan scum, who goes to McDonalds at least every once every two weeks. For breakfast usually.
Celebrity American billionaire Warren Buffett famously buys breakfast from McDonalds each morning. You'd think with his money he could at least get it delivered.
I presume he isn't taking his best buds Bill's calls anymore....
@foxy In Shanghai and Beijing you’d be fine in smart places. But really you just get the Google Translate App and that does it all for you with the camera for menus and speaker for drivers. Whether I’d personally recommend China? Some people like it. It’s a big old world out there and I can think of perhaps 150 countries I would rather go to than ever go back to China. Don’t let that stop you though, the Trans Siberian Railway does sound good.
Yes, phone apps can be quite a boon.
I was last in China in 1990 when it was still substantially unmodernised, and I cannot say that I particularly liked it. I do want to do the rail trip though and it seems sensible to take in a few of the more Northern cities. I was in Guangzou before, having caught the night ferry from Macau, which I did like.
The pleasure of travel is in 3 parts: The planning, the doing and the reminiscing. I like to travel independently as have slightly eccentric interests* and I find that poring over maps and guide books planning is a good part of the pleasure.
*strangely, Fox jr1 and 2 didn't want to take in the St Petersberg artillery museum when we were there for the World Cup 🙄
Don’t get me wrong, Shanghai is worth a couple of nights for sure. Beijing I never really got on with at all, Tianjin just a short hop is actually quite pleasant. Shanghai locals tend to get in and out of Beijing as soon as possible.
The place in China that I’d describe as both really nice and interesting is Urumqi and surrounds, which from memory the transmongolian train goes through? Just don’t mention the Uigher camps.
I tended to find that the less impacted by Beijing a place was, the better. Tier 3 cities inland by a mile better than Tier 1 or 2 cities, even if the hotels are a bit questionable (places like Hunan, Hebei, Shanxi). But there’s not a huge reason for you to go to those places, on the whole they’re giant stinking factories.
Take some good antibiotics but then you of course already knew that. Avoid domestic flights unless there is no other alternative. They randomly get shut down for a day if a military dignatory wants to use the airport. Don’t know if it’s changed now or not but the bullet trains used to only accept cash or domestic credit cards. They are great but take your own food on board. Watch out for hotels branded as big Western ones but are actually old commie ones with a new nameplate.
Yes, Beijing after a few tourist sights doesn't sound particularly interesting, but I have a desire to see Nanjing for its Republican and Taiping Rebellion history, and Shanghai for both its 20th and 21st Century history.
There was lots of interest in Beijing until it was built on.
Their Own Private Idaho: Five Oregon Counties Back a Plan to Secede In nonbinding elections, parts of eastern Oregon said they wanted to join Idaho. The conservative region has long felt alienated from the liberal politics of Oregon’s population centers.
Given how radical the Biden agenda is, and how inimical it is to some heavily red states, a serious secession movement in one or more states is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
The Arizona audit is also sparking a rash of election revisionism (which I mention only because it is a fact), with moves afoot in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Fulton Country Georgia.
Trump will be speaking (probably to huge, maskless whooping rallies) over the summer.
November 2020 has done nothing to heal America's divisions. The evidence is it has only widened them. From the outside it looks like there are some very serious problems there.
@foxy In Shanghai and Beijing you’d be fine in smart places. But really you just get the Google Translate App and that does it all for you with the camera for menus and speaker for drivers. Whether I’d personally recommend China? Some people like it. It’s a big old world out there and I can think of perhaps 150 countries I would rather go to than ever go back to China. Don’t let that stop you though, the Trans Siberian Railway does sound good.
Yes, phone apps can be quite a boon.
I was last in China in 1990 when it was still substantially unmodernised, and I cannot say that I particularly liked it. I do want to do the rail trip though and it seems sensible to take in a few of the more Northern cities. I was in Guangzou before, having caught the night ferry from Macau, which I did like.
The pleasure of travel is in 3 parts: The planning, the doing and the reminiscing. I like to travel independently as have slightly eccentric interests* and I find that poring over maps and guide books planning is a good part of the pleasure.
*strangely, Fox jr1 and 2 didn't want to take in the St Petersberg artillery museum when we were there for the World Cup 🙄
You went to China, hated it, and now propose to spend three weeks in a Chinese train? PB used to have a top travel writer, @SeanT or something, but he is presumably trapped in a five star Covid-quarantine hotel somewhere up the Zambezi as he no longer visits.
Forget China and, like the 2002 World Cup, divide your time between South Korea and Japan (which also has noteworthy trains).
Something I’m considering for next year. Any recommendations/suggestions would be appreciated.
Leaving aside our views of the various governments, personally I've found China and Japan much more interesting than South Korea (which seemed earnest and dull, but perhaps I missed the best bits). The Chinese fast trains are wonderful and spirit you from futuristic Shanghai to places still emerging from the early 20th century. Edmund in Tokyo (who I've not seen here for a while) gave me a delicious meal when I was in Japan and there's obviously plenty to see, and in some ways the culture seems more different from ours than China's. Also consider Vietnam (though it helps there if you like seafood), with everything from cheery freewheeling Ho Chi Minh City to the austere historical places further north.
South Korea is good for gamers :-).
You can get quite cosmopolitan in parts of Sydney. When I was there in 2018 there were restaurants around where no English was available.
Their Own Private Idaho: Five Oregon Counties Back a Plan to Secede In nonbinding elections, parts of eastern Oregon said they wanted to join Idaho. The conservative region has long felt alienated from the liberal politics of Oregon’s population centers.
Someone mentioned this to me a few days ago. I was told it has implications for the number of congressmen the state has. I thought they were off the deep end as I didn't think it was possible for counties to change state. Hopefully Seashanty can explain this to us as he is on the doorstep so to speak.
I hear that California and New York are also due to lose members of congress as they have seen a lot of people (as individuals rather than whole counties) leave their states. In California the population dropped by 182,000 in 2020 alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment covers the census changes which occur every 10 years California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia all lost a seat, Texas gained 2, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon all gained one.
So I suspect while they may change State the impact wouldn't be until 2030.
Their Own Private Idaho: Five Oregon Counties Back a Plan to Secede In nonbinding elections, parts of eastern Oregon said they wanted to join Idaho. The conservative region has long felt alienated from the liberal politics of Oregon’s population centers.
Someone mentioned this to me a few days ago. I was told it has implications for the number of congressmen the state has. I thought they were off the deep end as I didn't think it was possible for counties to change state. Hopefully Seashanty can explain this to us as he is on the doorstep so to speak.
I hear that California and New York are also due to lose members of congress as they have seen a lot of people (as individuals rather than whole counties) leave their states. In California the population dropped by 182,000 in 2020 alone.
It’s possible but it’s not a case of ‘vote and it happens.’
Article 4 section 3 of the Constitution reads as follows:
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
(From this point of view the creation of West Virginia was legally dodgy, but it’s happened and nobody seems to be disputing it.)
So a little bit like with Scotland, it has to be agreed by the relevant national body and organised and agreed at a local level. In this case (1) Congress (2) the Idaho state legislature (3) the Oregon state legislature.
I suppose (2) might happen in theory.
One and three will happen only when Satan is skating to work.
Their Own Private Idaho: Five Oregon Counties Back a Plan to Secede In nonbinding elections, parts of eastern Oregon said they wanted to join Idaho. The conservative region has long felt alienated from the liberal politics of Oregon’s population centers.
Someone mentioned this to me a few days ago. I was told it has implications for the number of congressmen the state has. I thought they were off the deep end as I didn't think it was possible for counties to change state. Hopefully Seashanty can explain this to us as he is on the doorstep so to speak.
I hear that California and New York are also due to lose members of congress as they have seen a lot of people (as individuals rather than whole counties) leave their states. In California the population dropped by 182,000 in 2020 alone.
California passed a law around income taxes for contract workers last year, that’s led to a lot of writers and comedians leaving for Texas or Florida. The pandemic showed that a lot of creatives don’t need to base themselves in the most expensive place to live in the country. Joe Rogan is using some of his big Spotify cheque to open a new comedy club in Austin, TX.
Did you find booking trains difficult in China? Or did you use a UK agent?
It's a few years back but as I recall I just bought a ticket at the station - I'm sure I didn't use a UK agent. But it may have changed so don't rely on me.
The latest YouGov/Times voting intention figures see the Conservative Party widen their lead over Labour to 18 points, the highest since 6 May last year. They now have 46% of the vote (+1), while Labour are down to 28% (-2).
Elsewhere, the Liberal Democrats are on 8% (+1), the Greens 8% (n/c) and Reform UK have 2% of the vote (n/c).
So having spent the last year complaining that lockdowns weren't introduced quickly enough Mike is now complaining that oldies aren't allowed to go on foreign holidays.
So no one should question the wisdom of the blessed Boris?
Its easy to make rational criticism of this government.
But instead we're often treated to scattergun self-serving whining.
Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing Vaccinating people with both the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Pfizer–BioNTech #COVID19 vaccines produces a potent immune response against the virus SARS-CoV-2, researchers conducting a study in Spain have found.
That is almost unbelievably stupid. That's a quite usless certificate, with essentially nothing being done to stop people forging them or to allow for authentication. Whoever came up with that clearly isn't competent to do the job.
To be expected, supporters of the Government are in chipper if not cocky mood after an 18-point poll lead and you can't blame them for that.
There's no point sugar coating it if you aren't a Government supporter - the vaccination programme has gone very well, there is a clear mood of anticipation and optimism and if I were in New Orleans I would sum up the public mood as "Laissez les bon temps rouler".
A summer of "fun" and "parties" await with hugging in extremis and so on and so forth. Life will once again be for living and many will they have a lot of living with which to catch up and that's also understandable. No one will think about politics and if they do it will be to remember how "Boris saved us all".
The thing with moods is they don't last and those of us not in lockstep support with the Conservative Party or the Prime Minister need to be patient and await the real return of "normal" in the autumn. Somebody has to clear up the mess after the last guest has left and once Government returns to "business as usual", we'll be back to see how the small things become big crises and how the Government responds to the test of managing the day-to-day expectations and the commitments they proffered prior to and during the last election.
So having spent the last year complaining that lockdowns weren't introduced quickly enough Mike is now complaining that oldies aren't allowed to go on foreign holidays.
So no one should question the wisdom of the blessed Boris?
Its easy to make rational criticism of this government.
But instead we're often treated to scattergun self-serving whining.
*Everyone else* should be welded into a small metal box until 10,000 years after all COVID is gone. All dissenters should be crucified, while listening to the wisdom of Piers Morgan and Piers Corbyn. Then set on fire.
*I* need to go on holiday, without a mask. Because I'm special.
That is almost unbelievably stupid. That's a quite usless certificate, with essentially nothing being done to stop people forging them or to allow for authentication. Whoever came up with that clearly isn't competent to do the job.
While they should have prevented it from being easy to modify, is there any file format for a document like this that you can't edit/fake? If they aren't linked to a database for validation they are pretty useless at verifying someone has had it.
Lol at the PL negotiating the penalty with the perpetrators.
The penalty should be a £500m per club cost of exiting the league or joining a different one without majority permission to stay in force for the next 20 years. Or pay £100m now.
To be expected, supporters of the Government are in chipper if not cocky mood after an 18-point poll lead and you can't blame them for that.
There's no point sugar coating it if you aren't a Government supporter - the vaccination programme has gone very well, there is a clear mood of anticipation and optimism and if I were in New Orleans I would sum up the public mood as "Laissez les bon temps rouler".
A summer of "fun" and "parties" await with hugging in extremis and so on and so forth. Life will once again be for living and many will they have a lot of living with which to catch up and that's also understandable. No one will think about politics and if they do it will be to remember how "Boris saved us all".
The thing with moods is they don't last and those of us not in lockstep support with the Conservative Party or the Prime Minister need to be patient and await the real return of "normal" in the autumn. Somebody has to clear up the mess after the last guest has left and once Government returns to "business as usual", we'll be back to see how the small things become big crises and how the Government responds to the test of managing the day-to-day expectations and the commitments they proffered prior to and during the last election.
Just a polite question but do you really think we will be back to normal by the Autumn
And judging by figures released yesterday, if we are the economy will have taken off and the feel good factor should be extraordinary and likely to continue well into 2022
To be expected, supporters of the Government are in chipper if not cocky mood after an 18-point poll lead and you can't blame them for that.
There's no point sugar coating it if you aren't a Government supporter - the vaccination programme has gone very well, there is a clear mood of anticipation and optimism and if I were in New Orleans I would sum up the public mood as "Laissez les bon temps rouler".
A summer of "fun" and "parties" await with hugging in extremis and so on and so forth. Life will once again be for living and many will they have a lot of living with which to catch up and that's also understandable. No one will think about politics and if they do it will be to remember how "Boris saved us all".
The thing with moods is they don't last and those of us not in lockstep support with the Conservative Party or the Prime Minister need to be patient and await the real return of "normal" in the autumn. Somebody has to clear up the mess after the last guest has left and once Government returns to "business as usual", we'll be back to see how the small things become big crises and how the Government responds to the test of managing the day-to-day expectations and the commitments they proffered prior to and during the last election.
The only problem there is that in reality Labour have been waiting years for their time to return. I mean every time there's a slight decline in the Tory vote share it is 'the day the polls turned' on here. It would help if the site was a little less obviously partisan and we'd get more rational assessment in the headers. The reality is that Labour has a mountain to climb. ATM they are going in the wrong direction.
That is almost unbelievably stupid. That's a quite usless certificate, with essentially nothing being done to stop people forging them or to allow for authentication. Whoever came up with that clearly isn't competent to do the job.
While they should have prevented it from being easy to modify, is there any file format for a document like this that you can't edit/fake? If they aren't linked to a database for validation they are pretty useless at verifying someone has had it.
Its a bit like streaming video...you ultimately can't stop somebody ripping the contents, no matter how complex your encoding protection is, as the weak link is that ultimately you have to decode it and show it on screen.
I can just hear the cyrto lot, saying solution to this...blockchain....blockchain...blockchain.
I’ve spent a great deal of time in Shanghai and frankly there’s virtually nothing for the Western tourist. A photo of the Bund, a drink on the balcony bar of the Indigo and that’s it. Hangzhou is slightly better. The broad issue is the domestic tourist market in China is so large that there’s never time or space and many of the “sights” are pastiche reconstructions with about as much connection to history as a Barratt house called The Blenheim.
Parts of Sichuan are worth seeing. I like Hong Kong and used to go there for a weekend to get away from the feeling of always being watched. For obvious reasons I haven’t been there recently but friends there tell me it’s changed, even for the non-Chinese.
Part of the interest is that it is not on the mainstream tour party itinerary. I find the idea of the pastiche English Town quite culturally interesting in itself.
We all look for different things so we should say what it is that we like (or dislike). My comments are all superficial, based on 4 visits of a week or so on business 8 years ago, so take with a pinch of salt.
Shanghai appeals to me because of its mixture of ultra-modern architecture (which I love) and Chinese twists on Western metro-culture - I remember coming across a jazz street orchestra outside a shopping arcade, which looked simultaneously very familiar and very strange. Hangzhou has the lovely Western Lake, which must be perfect for romantic strolls if you're in the right company and, um, the pollution isn't too intense - it was one of those places in transition with very modern sectors and traditional little streets with tiny shops. Hong Kong city was too much of the latter for me - zillions of tiny shops selling every possible variety of trinket - but I've heard it's great if you go outside the city (or if you like zillions of tiny shops, of course). Beijing is worthy and the Forbidden City is well-preserved, but it all seemed unexciting - Bonn to Shanghai's Berlin - except for the modestly daring 798 Art Zone.
I never got into the further interior provinces - what are they like?
To bring together the China and MacDonald's threads, one of the few times I have been to MDs was in Beijing on a school trip; we had only just arrived in the city after four weeks in Mongolia and the students wanted something familiar to eat.
Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing Vaccinating people with both the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Pfizer–BioNTech #COVID19 vaccines produces a potent immune response against the virus SARS-CoV-2, researchers conducting a study in Spain have found.
Yes, it could turn out that mixing vaccine types will produce the best outcome as the immune system sees slightly different versions of the spike protein which may give slightly less specific antibodies and t-cells that work very well with all variants. Those lucky few thousand under 40s who got AZ first and are now being offered Pfizer may end up having the best overall immunity.
Lol at the PL negotiating the penalty with the perpetrators.
The penalty should be a £500m per club cost of exiting the league or joining a different one without majority permission to stay in force for the next 20 years. Or pay £100m now.
Ban them all from Europe next season and make them start on -30 points.
Re China...I have heard that given their move to cashless society + government oversight, becoming harder and harder to do things like buy train tickets without your wechat / linked to your id, and that non-chinese are not by default accepted by the systems, as they are set up without thought that foreigners will be using them.
Their Own Private Idaho: Five Oregon Counties Back a Plan to Secede In nonbinding elections, parts of eastern Oregon said they wanted to join Idaho. The conservative region has long felt alienated from the liberal politics of Oregon’s population centers.
Someone mentioned this to me a few days ago. I was told it has implications for the number of congressmen the state has. I thought they were off the deep end as I didn't think it was possible for counties to change state. Hopefully Seashanty can explain this to us as he is on the doorstep so to speak.
I hear that California and New York are also due to lose members of congress as they have seen a lot of people (as individuals rather than whole counties) leave their states. In California the population dropped by 182,000 in 2020 alone.
Can't speak for the politics, but legally it's not supposed to be possible for counties to unilaterally change state (the Virginian Counties that formed West Virginia started a whole new state recognised by Congress under Article IV, Section 3 so slightly different) but instead the state governments of the two states concerned (Washington and Idaho here) would have to both agree, probably by each passing suitable legislation, and then ask Congress to make it official IIRC. So no realistic chance of it happening in his instance.
Lol at the PL negotiating the penalty with the perpetrators.
The penalty should be a £500m per club cost of exiting the league or joining a different one without majority permission to stay in force for the next 20 years. Or pay £100m now.
Ban them all from Europe next season and make them start on -30 points.
That increases the chance they leave the PL sooner or later rather than reduces it.
I think that, yes, the weather is playing a part in the urgent desire for travel, hence the problem OGH describes. It IS an issue. Most of my double-jabbed friends are superkeen to go somewhere sunny, ASAP
Because this May really IS like November:
Last November: mean max 12.9; Mean min 8.1; overall mean 10.5; rain: 58mm
This May to date: mean max 13.9; mean min 7.7; overall mean 10.6; rain: 64mm
Note the LOWER minimums this May than last November
Hold your phone up to the QR Track & Trace scanner and proceed. No one ever checks if you actually have the App installed .... It's a ruse which is doing the rounds as I heard it from three separate people on Wednesday. And it works.
Or so I'm, cough, told.
I do the paper thing - no one ever follows up and the data goes nowhere
I’ve gone back to the NHS scanner - see how many pubs I can chalk up between now and 21 June.
Their Own Private Idaho: Five Oregon Counties Back a Plan to Secede In nonbinding elections, parts of eastern Oregon said they wanted to join Idaho. The conservative region has long felt alienated from the liberal politics of Oregon’s population centers.
Given how radical the Biden agenda is, and how inimical it is to some heavily red states, a serious secession movement in one or more states is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
The Arizona audit is also sparking a rash of election revisionism (which I mention only because it is a fact), with moves afoot in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Fulton Country Georgia.
Trump will be speaking (probably to huge, maskless whooping rallies) over the summer.
November 2020 has done nothing to heal America's divisions. The evidence is it has only widened them. From the outside it looks like there are some very serious problems there.
Gap between Rep and Dem % vote bigger than at the 2000 Election, which was very tight!
Prof Peston take on chemical engineering I think was up there....
I enjoyed his new take on light and reflection.... Surely, the Nobel Committee must be considering him seriously?
If I was as serially incompoent and wrong as Peston, I would be so broke I would have to eat in McDonald's....
You’d have thought that the news organisations would want their £300-£500k star journalists to actually spend their time researching stuff to make sure they were right, and not making basic factual errors pretty much every day. But apparently not, the media bosses seem to be totally fine with having their Lobby hacks spouting bollocks and asking the most inane questions of government ministers.
Genuinely surprised that one of them didn’t swap out the politics hack, for a science or medicine journalist at some point.
To be expected, supporters of the Government are in chipper if not cocky mood after an 18-point poll lead and you can't blame them for that.
There's no point sugar coating it if you aren't a Government supporter - the vaccination programme has gone very well, there is a clear mood of anticipation and optimism and if I were in New Orleans I would sum up the public mood as "Laissez les bon temps rouler".
A summer of "fun" and "parties" await with hugging in extremis and so on and so forth. Life will once again be for living and many will they have a lot of living with which to catch up and that's also understandable. No one will think about politics and if they do it will be to remember how "Boris saved us all".
The thing with moods is they don't last and those of us not in lockstep support with the Conservative Party or the Prime Minister need to be patient and await the real return of "normal" in the autumn. Somebody has to clear up the mess after the last guest has left and once Government returns to "business as usual", we'll be back to see how the small things become big crises and how the Government responds to the test of managing the day-to-day expectations and the commitments they proffered prior to and during the last election.
Just a polite question but do you really think we will be back to normal by the Autumn
And judging by figures released yesterday, if we are the economy will have taken off and the feel good factor should be extraordinary and likely to continue well into 2022
Inflation, that grim reaper of governments down the ages, looms.
Johnson's conduct since May 06 suggests he is aware of the the huge problems the gargantuan economic gambles of the past year could cause. Countering them is moving swiftly up his agenda. Is that what's driving his newfound courage to face down SAGE? something is.
While they should have prevented it from being easy to modify, is there any file format for a document like this that you can't edit/fake? If they aren't linked to a database for validation they are pretty useless at verifying someone has had it.
Sending an easily modified document is stupid, but there's simply nothing done to allow for authentication. No QR code, no magic number, nothing. You can use the document as a template to forge certificates all day long, and nobody can do anything to check them.
Lol at the PL negotiating the penalty with the perpetrators.
The penalty should be a £500m per club cost of exiting the league or joining a different one without majority permission to stay in force for the next 20 years. Or pay £100m now.
Ban them all from Europe next season and make them start on -30 points.
That increases the chance they leave the PL sooner or later rather than reduces it.
Boris must be hoping that his numbers recover from this mid-term shellacking he is getting.
Sorry, did I say Boris? Meant Starmer..... Oh. Really? That's not how it works?
Is that poll pretty much unprecedented for a part in power in mid term? must be close to it.
It certainly reflects the stunning success of the vaccinations and Starmer's implosion.
I also think that it is because the government have discovered that they can throw money at every problem and avoid most hard decisions. Personally, I preferred Mrs Thatcher's approach of taking hard decisions at the start of a Parliament, then hoping the public reward you by the end of it, rather than running in campaign mode all the time.
However, you can't argue with an 18-point lead in mid-term.
I think that, yes, the weather is playing a part in the urgent desire for travel, hence the problem OGH describes. It IS an issue. Most of my double-jabbed friends are superkeen to go somewhere sunny, ASAP
Because this May really IS like November:
Last November: mean max 12.9; Mean min 8.1; overall mean 10.5; rain: 58mm
This May to date: mean max 13.9; mean min 7.7; overall mean 10.6; rain: 64mm
Note the LOWER minimums this May than last November
Interesting. I was wondering if you had any opinions on Handelsblatt or UFOs?
Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing Vaccinating people with both the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Pfizer–BioNTech #COVID19 vaccines produces a potent immune response against the virus SARS-CoV-2, researchers conducting a study in Spain have found.
Yes, it could turn out that mixing vaccine types will produce the best outcome as the immune system sees slightly different versions of the spike protein which may give slightly less specific antibodies and t-cells that work very well with all variants. Those lucky few thousand under 40s who got AZ first and are now being offered Pfizer may end up having the best overall immunity.
I would happily have AZN for my second dose, especially if it meant I could get it faster.
The good news is the class system is dead, long live the class system.
Instead of Upper, Middle, Lower Middle, Lower, Working and all the rest of that nonsense which sounds like a bunch of villages in rural England, we now have Double Vaccinated, Single Vaccinated, Awaiting Vaccination and Anti-Vaccination (to name but four).
The "confusion" OGH cites was apparent from the cruise companies when the new "let's sail round Britain looking for some sunshine" cruises were launched. Some companies required proof of vaccination, others didn't, some wanted tests even from those who had been vaccinated - I presume it was a question of demographics and risk management.
If all I have read about the efficacy of vaccines is true, I can't understand why someone who has been doubly vaccinated should need any form of test. I can just about understand for those with a single vaccination but we know even one vaccination affords a high level of immunity. Beyond that, yes, for those not yet eligible for testing, it's hopefully a short-term inconvenience.
That leaves the Unvaccinated - for the tiny number who cannot have the vaccine for health reasons, I have every sympathy and understanding.
In Newham, there are 153,435 people aged 40 or over. Of those, 96,240 have had a first vaccination and 41,177 have received a second vaccination. That's 62.7% with first vaccinations and 27% with both.
Among those aged over 70, first vaccinations are 80.3% and second vaccinations are 70.5%.
In crude terms, 57,000 adults aged over 40 in Newham have not been vaccinated and that includes 3,500 over 70. We still have a long way to go in my part of the world.
Mrs Stodge and I get our second vaccinations next week.
Prof Peston take on chemical engineering I think was up there....
I enjoyed his new take on light and reflection.... Surely, the Nobel Committee must be considering him seriously?
If I was as serially incompoent and wrong as Peston, I would be so broke I would have to eat in McDonald's....
You’d have thought that the news organisations would want their £300-£500k star journalists to actually spend their time researching stuff to make sure they were right, and not making basic factual errors pretty much every day. But apparently not, the media bosses seem to be totally fine with having their Lobby hacks spouting bollocks and asking the most inane questions of government ministers.
Genuinely surprised that one of them didn’t swap out the politics hack, for a science or medicine journalist at some point.
I think Michael Grade criticism of the BBC goes for the wider media...they believe by default their own opinion is always right and differing opinions have to be wrong and that too many are untouchable / invincible in their position.
And now we have the problem of the media Twitter circle jerk, where one tweets something and it is taken as fact, copied and pasted as a new article for their publication and within 24hrs its fact the government is spending a trillion quid on covid testing equipment, all quoting one another as source.
Boris must be hoping that his numbers recover from this mid-term shellacking he is getting.
Sorry, did I say Boris? Meant Starmer..... Oh. Really? That's not how it works?
Is that poll pretty much unprecedented for a part in power in mid term? must be close to it.
It certainly reflects the stunning success of the vaccinations and Starmer's implosion.
I also think that it is because the government have discovered that they can throw money at every problem and avoid most hard decisions. Personally, I preferred Mrs Thatcher's approach of taking hard decisions at the start of a Parliament, then hoping the public reward you by the end of it, rather than running in campaign mode all the time.
However, you can't argue with an 18-point lead in mid-term.
Indeed but hasn't there been a change of gear from Johnson this month? He knows, or he's been told, that the economic chickens are coming home to roost.
I think that, yes, the weather is playing a part in the urgent desire for travel, hence the problem OGH describes. It IS an issue. Most of my double-jabbed friends are superkeen to go somewhere sunny, ASAP
Because this May really IS like November:
Last November: mean max 12.9; Mean min 8.1; overall mean 10.5; rain: 58mm
This May to date: mean max 13.9; mean min 7.7; overall mean 10.6; rain: 64mm
Note the LOWER minimums this May than last November
Interesting. I was wondering if you had any opinions on Handelsblatt or UFOs?
To be fair, weather is actually ON topic (for once)
Why are we all desperate to travel? That's why this could be an issue for HMG
Mike "Jehovah" Smithson. smiter of subsamples, is right
I think that, yes, the weather is playing a part in the urgent desire for travel, hence the problem OGH describes. It IS an issue. Most of my double-jabbed friends are superkeen to go somewhere sunny, ASAP
Because this May really IS like November:
Last November: mean max 12.9; Mean min 8.1; overall mean 10.5; rain: 58mm
This May to date: mean max 13.9; mean min 7.7; overall mean 10.6; rain: 64mm
Note the LOWER minimums this May than last November
Interesting. I was wondering if you had any opinions on Handelsblatt or UFOs?
To be fair, weather is actually ON topic (for once)
Why are we all desperate to travel? That's why this could be an issue for HMG
Mike "Jehovah" Smithson. smiter of subsamples, is right
@foxy In Shanghai and Beijing you’d be fine in smart places. But really you just get the Google Translate App and that does it all for you with the camera for menus and speaker for drivers. Whether I’d personally recommend China? Some people like it. It’s a big old world out there and I can think of perhaps 150 countries I would rather go to than ever go back to China. Don’t let that stop you though, the Trans Siberian Railway does sound good.
Yes, phone apps can be quite a boon.
I was last in China in 1990 when it was still substantially unmodernised, and I cannot say that I particularly liked it. I do want to do the rail trip though and it seems sensible to take in a few of the more Northern cities. I was in Guangzou before, having caught the night ferry from Macau, which I did like.
The pleasure of travel is in 3 parts: The planning, the doing and the reminiscing. I like to travel independently as have slightly eccentric interests* and I find that poring over maps and guide books planning is a good part of the pleasure.
*strangely, Fox jr1 and 2 didn't want to take in the St Petersberg artillery museum when we were there for the World Cup 🙄
Don’t get me wrong, Shanghai is worth a couple of nights for sure. Beijing I never really got on with at all, Tianjin just a short hop is actually quite pleasant. Shanghai locals tend to get in and out of Beijing as soon as possible.
The place in China that I’d describe as both really nice and interesting is Urumqi and surrounds, which from memory the transmongolian train goes through? Just don’t mention the Uigher camps.
I tended to find that the less impacted by Beijing a place was, the better. Tier 3 cities inland by a mile better than Tier 1 or 2 cities, even if the hotels are a bit questionable (places like Hunan, Hebei, Shanxi). But there’s not a huge reason for you to go to those places, on the whole they’re giant stinking factories.
Take some good antibiotics but then you of course already knew that. Avoid domestic flights unless there is no other alternative. They randomly get shut down for a day if a military dignatory wants to use the airport. Don’t know if it’s changed now or not but the bullet trains used to only accept cash or domestic credit cards. They are great but take your own food on board. Watch out for hotels branded as big Western ones but are actually old commie ones with a new nameplate.
Yes, Beijing after a few tourist sights doesn't sound particularly interesting, but I have a desire to see Nanjing for its Republican and Taiping Rebellion history, and Shanghai for both its 20th and 21st Century history.
Yunnan, especially Yunnanese Tibet, is just sensational. Incredible Himalayan peaks that plunge to humid jungle ravines. Old Silk Road towns. Tribal people everywhere. Red pandas. Alpine lakes, Weird food, which is often great
I nearly missed my plane out of Shangri-la because there was a Yak on the motorway
I think that, yes, the weather is playing a part in the urgent desire for travel, hence the problem OGH describes. It IS an issue. Most of my double-jabbed friends are superkeen to go somewhere sunny, ASAP
Because this May really IS like November:
Last November: mean max 12.9; Mean min 8.1; overall mean 10.5; rain: 58mm
This May to date: mean max 13.9; mean min 7.7; overall mean 10.6; rain: 64mm
Note the LOWER minimums this May than last November
Interesting. I was wondering if you had any opinions on Handelsblatt or UFOs?
To be fair, weather is actually ON topic (for once)
Why are we all desperate to travel? That's why this could be an issue for HMG
Mike "Jehovah" Smithson. smiter of subsamples, is right
Sorry - that was a little uncalled for from me.
Don't apologise! I'm not exactly unpunchy myself
I am also in a benign mood (despite the weather). I sense an end to this horror. I'm sorting my first trip abroad since last September
According to the Dept of Int’l Trade, the Australian FTA is projected to boost U.K. exports to Australia by 7.3% while Ozzie exports to the U.K. should rise 83.2%
I think that, yes, the weather is playing a part in the urgent desire for travel, hence the problem OGH describes. It IS an issue. Most of my double-jabbed friends are superkeen to go somewhere sunny, ASAP
Because this May really IS like November:
Last November: mean max 12.9; Mean min 8.1; overall mean 10.5; rain: 58mm
This May to date: mean max 13.9; mean min 7.7; overall mean 10.6; rain: 64mm
Note the LOWER minimums this May than last November
Interesting. I was wondering if you had any opinions on Handelsblatt or UFOs?
No.
I log on to theweatherincamdentown.com for one reason only. If I wanted politics or UFO chat I would take my business elsewhere!
That was with Blair as leader.. let's not forget 2001 and 2005 WITH BLAIR as leader and PM... .. you think Starmer can do that from the position of LOTO? LMAO.... is more like it.
According to the Dept of Int’l Trade, the Australian FTA is projected to boost U.K. exports to Australia by 7.3% while Ozzie exports to the U.K. should rise 83.2%
We are seriously fucked up in this country.
You are consistent but maybe quote the actual figures
Prof Peston take on chemical engineering I think was up there....
I enjoyed his new take on light and reflection.... Surely, the Nobel Committee must be considering him seriously?
If I was as serially incompoent and wrong as Peston, I would be so broke I would have to eat in McDonald's....
You’d have thought that the news organisations would want their £300-£500k star journalists to actually spend their time researching stuff to make sure they were right, and not making basic factual errors pretty much every day. But apparently not, the media bosses seem to be totally fine with having their Lobby hacks spouting bollocks and asking the most inane questions of government ministers.
Genuinely surprised that one of them didn’t swap out the politics hack, for a science or medicine journalist at some point.
I think Michael Grade criticism of the BBC goes for the wider media...they believe by default their own opinion is always right and differing opinions have to be wrong and that too many are untouchable / invincible in their position.
And now we have the problem of the media Twitter circle jerk, where one tweets something and it is taken as fact, copied and pasted as a new article for their publication and within 24hrs its fact the government is spending a trillion quid on covid testing equipment, all quoting one another as source.
Yep. I know it’s been said a thousand times, but they really do all need to get off Twitter.
Will be very interesting to see how GB News go about things, there’s theoretically a huge gap in the market for an organisation that tells things straight.
According to the Dept of Int’l Trade, the Australian FTA is projected to boost U.K. exports to Australia by 7.3% while Ozzie exports to the U.K. should rise 83.2%
We are seriously fucked up in this country.
If we're buying Australian wine and beef instead of from France or Ireland, it wouldn't even affect the balance of trade.
You can't look at trade statistics in isolation and argue that something is 'fucked up', otherwise you would never have advocated membership of the EU.
< Just a polite question but do you really think we will be back to normal by the Autumn
And judging by figures released yesterday, if we are the economy will have taken off and the feel good factor should be extraordinary and likely to continue well into 2022
A polite question deserves a reasoned answer - it depends on what you mean by "normal". If you mean, will life return in its entirety to how things were on January 1st 2020, no. "Hybrid" working, that is, working in an office 1-2 days per week and at home otherwise is, I believe, going to become the norm for many office workers after an initial "splurge" of returns. Those clamouring for us to return to offices often have a strong vested interest (property developers) in that happening so I take their arguments with a barrel of salt.
As for the economy, I don't share a lot of the optimism on here and I look forward to being proved wrong. The unemployment numbers and retail sales numbers suggest, as we all knew, a lot of pent-up demand and that will be "splurged" out through the summer. The problem for me is a tight labour market and an excess of demand over supply looks a recipe for inflation and there were signs of that in the latest economic data.
Essentially, if the economy is a car, Covid was the equivalent of an emergency stop. Since then, we have been slowly revving up while keeping the hand brake on (like a hot rod or an American teen movie) and now we are letting the hand brake go and careering away. The hot rod doesn't maintain acceleration or direction indefinitely and the same will be true of the economy once the froth is out of the system.
As in the late 80s, strong demand and full employment are going to cause problems - we're already seeing sterling appreciate against the greenback and those who cheered the devaluation of sterling after the 2016 Referendum (rightly in terms of exports) will now have to argue how an appreciating currency impacts. We could raise interest rates (the traditional response) to help exporters but inflation is in the background and the last thing we should be doing is constantly pumping money into the economy to fuel yet more demand.
To be expected, supporters of the Government are in chipper if not cocky mood after an 18-point poll lead and you can't blame them for that.
There's no point sugar coating it if you aren't a Government supporter - the vaccination programme has gone very well, there is a clear mood of anticipation and optimism and if I were in New Orleans I would sum up the public mood as "Laissez les bon temps rouler".
A summer of "fun" and "parties" await with hugging in extremis and so on and so forth. Life will once again be for living and many will they have a lot of living with which to catch up and that's also understandable. No one will think about politics and if they do it will be to remember how "Boris saved us all".
The thing with moods is they don't last and those of us not in lockstep support with the Conservative Party or the Prime Minister need to be patient and await the real return of "normal" in the autumn. Somebody has to clear up the mess after the last guest has left and once Government returns to "business as usual", we'll be back to see how the small things become big crises and how the Government responds to the test of managing the day-to-day expectations and the commitments they proffered prior to and during the last election.
Just a polite question but do you really think we will be back to normal by the Autumn
And judging by figures released yesterday, if we are the economy will have taken off and the feel good factor should be extraordinary and likely to continue well into 2022
Inflation, that grim reaper of governments down the ages, looms.
Johnson's conduct since May 06 suggests he is aware of the the huge problems the gargantuan economic gambles of the past year could cause. Countering them is moving swiftly up his agenda. Is that what's driving his newfound courage to face down SAGE? something is.
Or alternatively there is no "newfound courage to face down SAGE" because the roadmap has never been in danger.
Comments
There is a new AV for PB to get excited over:
It’s called AV.1 & contains 3 mutations seen in variants of concern: E484K, which is in B1351 South African, & associated with immune escape, N439K, also linked to immune escape, and P681H which is in the Kent variant and linked to greater transmissibility https://t.co/9KFQu3Dm1G
Fronting the new channel’s morning show will be Nana Akua, Kirsty Gallacher, Rebecca Hutson, Inaya Folarin Iman, Darren McCaffrey and Rosie Wright.
Seems like everything has to be called Great British ... these days.
Tbh, I'm not sure any of these variants will amount to much.
I hear that California and New York are also due to lose members of congress as they have seen a lot of people (as individuals rather than whole counties) leave their states. In California the population dropped by 182,000 in 2020 alone.
This isn’t special pleading so much as an observation that “shut all borders” sounds simple and cost-free for the sort of people for whom international travel is for 2 weeks in Spain once a year.
This isn't a temporary bounce, its more permanent than that.
'The only programme broadcast from the heart of Westminster'
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2021/05/monaco-pre-qualifying-2021.html
Too close to call.
https://news.sky.com/story/super-league-rebel-clubs-talks-with-premier-league-head-for-penalties-12313461
The Arizona audit is also sparking a rash of election revisionism (which I mention only because it is a fact), with moves afoot in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Fulton Country Georgia.
Trump will be speaking (probably to huge, maskless whooping rallies) over the summer.
November 2020 has done nothing to heal America's divisions. The evidence is it has only widened them. From the outside it looks like there are some very serious problems there.
You can get quite cosmopolitan in parts of Sydney. When I was there in 2018 there were restaurants around where no English was available. Westminster ahs a heart?
Sorry, did I say Boris? Meant Starmer..... Oh. Really? That's not how it works?
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1396003181151272963?s=20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment covers the census changes which occur every 10 years California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia all lost a seat, Texas gained 2, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon all gained one.
So I suspect while they may change State the impact wouldn't be until 2030.
Article 4 section 3 of the Constitution reads as follows:
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
(From this point of view the creation of West Virginia was legally dodgy, but it’s happened and nobody seems to be disputing it.)
So a little bit like with Scotland, it has to be agreed by the relevant national body and organised and agreed at a local level. In this case (1) Congress (2) the Idaho state legislature (3) the Oregon state legislature.
I suppose (2) might happen in theory.
One and three will happen only when Satan is skating to work.
@cricketwyvern
·
3h
Not good
@itvnews
:
The
@peston
piece against easing restrictions more was based on an obvious, easily-checked factual error: that Bolton cases up but testing isn’t.
Pointed out yesterday, yet article & accompanying thread still up nearly 24 hours later.
https://itv.com/news/2021-05-21/boltons-infections-data-does-not-support-boris-johnsons-unlocking-optimism
But instead we're often treated to scattergun self-serving whining.
Labour Tory
54. 27
55. 27
49. 29
55. 29
53. 29
51. 27
@DrEricDing
Vaccinating people with both the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Pfizer–BioNTech #COVID19 vaccines produces a potent immune response against the virus SARS-CoV-2, researchers conducting a study in Spain have found.
https://nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01359-3?utm_source=twt_nat&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nature
If you wanted cutting edge informed opinion, you could reprint the views offered up here by paying Mike about, what, a tenth of what Peston is on....?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/13/robert-peston-paid-more-than-a-third-more-at-itv-than-bbc
To be expected, supporters of the Government are in chipper if not cocky mood after an 18-point poll lead and you can't blame them for that.
There's no point sugar coating it if you aren't a Government supporter - the vaccination programme has gone very well, there is a clear mood of anticipation and optimism and if I were in New Orleans I would sum up the public mood as "Laissez les bon temps rouler".
A summer of "fun" and "parties" await with hugging in extremis and so on and so forth. Life will once again be for living and many will they have a lot of living with which to catch up and that's also understandable. No one will think about politics and if they do it will be to remember how "Boris saved us all".
The thing with moods is they don't last and those of us not in lockstep support with the Conservative Party or the Prime Minister need to be patient and await the real return of "normal" in the autumn. Somebody has to clear up the mess after the last guest has left and once Government returns to "business as usual", we'll be back to see how the small things become big crises and how the Government responds to the test of managing the day-to-day expectations and the commitments they proffered prior to and during the last election.
*I* need to go on holiday, without a mask. Because I'm special.
Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/22/america-has-chosen-free-hasnt-britain/
And judging by figures released yesterday, if we are the economy will have taken off and the feel good factor should be extraordinary and likely to continue well into 2022
I can just hear the cyrto lot, saying solution to this...blockchain....blockchain...blockchain.
Shanghai appeals to me because of its mixture of ultra-modern architecture (which I love) and Chinese twists on Western metro-culture - I remember coming across a jazz street orchestra outside a shopping arcade, which looked simultaneously very familiar and very strange. Hangzhou has the lovely Western Lake, which must be perfect for romantic strolls if you're in the right company and, um, the pollution isn't too intense - it was one of those places in transition with very modern sectors and traditional little streets with tiny shops. Hong Kong city was too much of the latter for me - zillions of tiny shops selling every possible variety of trinket - but I've heard it's great if you go outside the city (or if you like zillions of tiny shops, of course). Beijing is worthy and the Forbidden City is well-preserved, but it all seemed unexciting - Bonn to Shanghai's Berlin - except for the modestly daring 798 Art Zone.
I never got into the further interior provinces - what are they like?
Because this May really IS like November:
Last November: mean max 12.9; Mean min 8.1; overall mean 10.5; rain: 58mm
This May to date: mean max 13.9; mean min 7.7; overall mean 10.6; rain: 64mm
Note the LOWER minimums this May than last November
Genuinely surprised that one of them didn’t swap out the politics hack, for a science or medicine journalist at some point.
Johnson's conduct since May 06 suggests he is aware of the the huge problems the gargantuan economic gambles of the past year could cause. Countering them is moving swiftly up his agenda. Is that what's driving his newfound courage to face down SAGE? something is.
I also think that it is because the government have discovered that they can throw money at every problem and avoid most hard decisions. Personally, I preferred Mrs Thatcher's approach of taking hard decisions at the start of a Parliament, then hoping the public reward you by the end of it, rather than running in campaign mode all the time.
However, you can't argue with an 18-point lead in mid-term.
Instead of Upper, Middle, Lower Middle, Lower, Working and all the rest of that nonsense which sounds like a bunch of villages in rural England, we now have Double Vaccinated, Single Vaccinated, Awaiting Vaccination and Anti-Vaccination (to name but four).
The "confusion" OGH cites was apparent from the cruise companies when the new "let's sail round Britain looking for some sunshine" cruises were launched. Some companies required proof of vaccination, others didn't, some wanted tests even from those who had been vaccinated - I presume it was a question of demographics and risk management.
If all I have read about the efficacy of vaccines is true, I can't understand why someone who has been doubly vaccinated should need any form of test. I can just about understand for those with a single vaccination but we know even one vaccination affords a high level of immunity. Beyond that, yes, for those not yet eligible for testing, it's hopefully a short-term inconvenience.
That leaves the Unvaccinated - for the tiny number who cannot have the vaccine for health reasons, I have every sympathy and understanding.
In Newham, there are 153,435 people aged 40 or over. Of those, 96,240 have had a first vaccination and 41,177 have received a second vaccination. That's 62.7% with first vaccinations and 27% with both.
Among those aged over 70, first vaccinations are 80.3% and second vaccinations are 70.5%.
In crude terms, 57,000 adults aged over 40 in Newham have not been vaccinated and that includes 3,500 over 70. We still have a long way to go in my part of the world.
Mrs Stodge and I get our second vaccinations next week.
Most recent COVID death in Wyre 30th March
Eastbourne 12th March
Rother 9th March
https://twitter.com/BristOliver/status/1395846355432660996
And now we have the problem of the media Twitter circle jerk, where one tweets something and it is taken as fact, copied and pasted as a new article for their publication and within 24hrs its fact the government is spending a trillion quid on covid testing equipment, all quoting one another as source.
Why are we all desperate to travel? That's why this could be an issue for HMG
Mike "Jehovah" Smithson. smiter of subsamples, is right
I nearly missed my plane out of Shangri-la because there was a Yak on the motorway
I am also in a benign mood (despite the weather). I sense an end to this horror. I'm sorting my first trip abroad since last September
We are seriously fucked up in this country.
Conservatives 56%
Labour 20%
Via YouGov
2nd ever lowest figure for labour
I log on to theweatherincamdentown.com for one reason only. If I wanted politics or UFO chat I would take my business elsewhere!
83.2% from what
Boris Johnson: 40%
Keir Starmer: 24%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/05/22/voting-intention-con-46-lab-28-19-20-may?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=vi
Will be very interesting to see how GB News go about things, there’s theoretically a huge gap in the market for an organisation that tells things straight.
You can't look at trade statistics in isolation and argue that something is 'fucked up', otherwise you would never have advocated membership of the EU.
As for the economy, I don't share a lot of the optimism on here and I look forward to being proved wrong. The unemployment numbers and retail sales numbers suggest, as we all knew, a lot of pent-up demand and that will be "splurged" out through the summer. The problem for me is a tight labour market and an excess of demand over supply looks a recipe for inflation and there were signs of that in the latest economic data.
Essentially, if the economy is a car, Covid was the equivalent of an emergency stop. Since then, we have been slowly revving up while keeping the hand brake on (like a hot rod or an American teen movie) and now we are letting the hand brake go and careering away. The hot rod doesn't maintain acceleration or direction indefinitely and the same will be true of the economy once the froth is out of the system.
As in the late 80s, strong demand and full employment are going to cause problems - we're already seeing sterling appreciate against the greenback and those who cheered the devaluation of sterling after the 2016 Referendum (rightly in terms of exports) will now have to argue how an appreciating currency impacts. We could raise interest rates (the traditional response) to help exporters but inflation is in the background and the last thing we should be doing is constantly pumping money into the economy to fuel yet more demand.