Weirdly we're still at an average of 76 days between doses. I'd have thought that would drop as our mix is more mRNA heavy.
Fox Jr got his today, aged 26 as a walk in. Anyone over 18 can get Pfizer in Leicester now.
Rather than drop it a year or two per day, why not just open up to all over 18s and get them booked. It is not as if there is a real risk differential between covid risks at 18 or 30.
Agreed. I also suspect it’s a cadre more likely to be keen on walk in arrangements for both jabs. The plan has worked well, but now it might be time to adapt and just focus on numbers every day.
Has the chose to not give AZ to under 40s slowed the role out at all?
There seems to have been a bit of a dip over the last week 595,000 doses to 490,000 daily average. (and the bank holiday and school half term might be part of that,)
But do we have AZ doses that we are not using?
This (just) under 40 year old snook in under the wire and had AZ. I’ve yet to die of a blood clot, and since we can surely agree that everyone else is less important than me, I think they can ease those restrictions on usage now.
I agree they can, and perhaps they should, but I think the ban of AZ to under 40s is still in place.
I feel like we could be going quicker on the vax rollout, Wales is over 85% of adults for a first dose - they must be getting close to the hesitancy limit tbh.
Not that this stopped the Welsh health minister from flying into a panic over a minuscule cluster of Indian Plague cases in Conwy, to the extent that there was mithering about it possibly derailing the entire exit from lockdown.
As we get closer to the end of this wretched epidemic, ever smaller outbreaks will result in ever louder screaming. By August we'll have various scientists and politicians demanding Melbourne-style snap lockdowns over single cases.
‘Independent’ SAGE have already announced they are going to carry on once this is over but focus On climate change.
As someone who is worried about climate change, but who also thinks it can can dealt with fairly painlessly with the right tech and limited changes from the public, I get scared by zealots like them and Greta.
I get scared because of the risk of them pushing too far and creating a backlash against ANY climate adaptations. They seem to enjoy talking nonsense about global extinction and to be excited by the idea of wearing hair shirts as a penance to stave off the end of the world.
Over egg the case like they do, and you risk losing support for what’s actually needed.
I get the impression the vast majority of people agree with action. It’s just the sensible thing to do. We should recycle more, use renewables, wean off our fossil fuel dependency and take other action. I also agree technology will solve many issues. But I agree, the zealots alienate people. But they seem to have strong advocates on the media who will give them a regular platform and even TV shows. We seem to have groups of single issue lobbyists and charities jumping on the bandwagon. You must do ‘x’ now to stop climate change and it is accepted with little challenge or scrutiny of that specific action.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
Well, the democracy we knew was basically all over as soon as unregulated social media got going. No one has a monopoly over the truth, so the truth can't be discerned any more. The only truth is someones private lived experience etc.
All this won't last very long; we either end up losing most of our freedom and subjugated to some powerful interest, or otherwise defeated and enslaved.
I hope you’re overly pessimistic, but yes, the outlook is dark
Perhaps the aliens will save us
And welcome to PB! We’re a friendly bunch, apart from TSE, who is unwholesomely obsessed with the pelvic flexibility of waterfront prostitutes
Thank you Leon, and good luck sorting out your roof leak. It is not too bad at my end. Having given up on trying to save western civilisation and the enlightenment by turning people against wokeness by posting under pretend names on obscure political betting websites, as well as on the idea of visiting Iceland due to the ongoing uncertainty around Covid bureaucracy, I have booked 3 x train journeys around the UK over the next two months. Going up to do the Far North line and the Isles of Scilly.
The Scillies are magical! Try and make it to the tiniest inhabited isle. St Agnes. It has Britain’s most westerly pub. On a fine summer evening it is SUPERB
The water is crystal clear, the beaches pure white* and the palm trees make it look like the Caribean, but the water is icy cold, straight off the Atlantic.
The gig races are fun, and some interesting neolithic sites on some islands.
* lots of bits washed up from old shipwrecks every day, clay pipes and Chinese porcelain fragments.
Scillies were a wreakers' paradise all right. Just ask the ghost of Sir Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Admiral of the Fleet in 1707 when his flagship and others hit the rocks and sank within minutes.
From his wiki entry -
"Local legend has it that Shovell was alive, at least barely, when he reached the shore of Scilly at Porthellick Cove but was murdered by a woman for the sake of his priceless emerald ring, which had been given to him by a close friend, Captain James Lord Dursley. At that time, the Scillies had a wild and lawless reputation. It is claimed that the murder came to light only some thirty years later when the woman, on her deathbed, confessed to a clergyman to having killed the admiral and produced the stolen ring, which was sent back to Dursley.
Personal salvage was still going on as recently as the last quarter century:
I feel like we could be going quicker on the vax rollout, Wales is over 85% of adults for a first dose - they must be getting close to the hesitancy limit tbh.
Not that this stopped the Welsh health minister from flying into a panic over a minuscule cluster of Indian Plague cases in Conwy, to the extent that there was mithering about it possibly derailing the entire exit from lockdown.
As we get closer to the end of this wretched epidemic, ever smaller outbreaks will result in ever louder screaming. By August we'll have various scientists and politicians demanding Melbourne-style snap lockdowns over single cases.
‘Independent’ SAGE have already announced they are going to carry on once this is over but focus On climate change.
I am struggling to believe that members of indie SAGE actually believe this will ever "be over".
They’re certainly milking their 15 minutes of fame.
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
It’s a matter of medical evidence. Legally, as I said above, in the U.K. you’re disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Same in France I believe. Depends on the evidence she can produce if it comes down to it.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
I don't think that's true. The ideas in the Great Barrington Declaration may not have been the best possible response to the pandemic, but it wasn't the work of a bunch of cranks and loons either. We have the benifit of hindsight now - we know now that a bunch of very high effecacy vaccines turned up, but in a counterfactual where that didn't happen, sooner or later Great Barrington approach (doubtless suitably rebranded) would have been inevitable, and if that was the case, the sooner we got it over and done with the better.
There should have been a proper public debate last summer about this, and how long we hung on with restrictions hoping that the vaccines came good - and for Google to have attempted to block it was frankly appalling.
Incidentally, if all the lockdown enthusiasts could care to explain why lockdown heavy Peru did so badly even compared to Brazil (no lockdowns), I'm all ears, but doubtless that just makes me a conspiracy theorist for thinking that lockdowns don't actually make all that much difference.
See analysis on BBC website of why Peru has high death rate particularly compared to other S American states. All seem very rational.
I read that, but couldn't see much that probably doesn't also apply to Brazil...?
Isn't it as simple as Peru fessing up that they have seriously under reported, due to folk dying at home without being tested, and hospitals overwhelmed, haven't much of a clue by how much in reality, so have gone with excess deaths? That was my impression. Other countries haven't done that.
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
Certainly her personal issues with press conferences are well-established, starting with her win over Sabrina Williams a few years ago (cannot remember which tournament).
Don't think public speaking is the problem, rather press conference interrogation. Apples and oranges?
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
Certainly her personal issues with press conferences are well-established, starting with her win over Sabrina Williams a few years ago (cannot remember which tournament).
Don't think public speaking is the problem, rather press conference interrogation. Apples and oranges?
I saw you call her this a day or two ago. Surely it’s serena Williams? Or is this a nickname?
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
It’s a matter of medical evidence. Legally, as I said above, in the U.K. you’re disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Same in France I believe. Depends on the evidence she can produce if it comes down to it.
If she genuinely has serious mental issues, as the law allows, then I sympathise entirely. The issue is her past behaviour is not consistent on the matter - she is entirely comfortable with doing a post-match interview on her support for BLM but suddenly cites depression as a reason why she can’t do a post match interview regarding the game. It doesn’t point to interviews being the problem, it points to what she prefers to speak about. I would imagine the Tennis associations would easily be able to bring up past interviews as examples if it came to court
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
Certainly her personal issues with press conferences are well-established, starting with her win over Sabrina Williams a few years ago (cannot remember which tournament).
Don't think public speaking is the problem, rather press conference interrogation. Apples and oranges?
I saw you call her this a day or two ago. Surely it’s serena Williams? Or is this a nickname?
I stand corrected! First time this hour!! (Was thinking one thing, but wrote the other.)
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
It’s a matter of medical evidence. Legally, as I said above, in the U.K. you’re disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Same in France I believe. Depends on the evidence she can produce if it comes down to it.
If she genuinely has serious mental issues, as the law allows, then I sympathise entirely. The issue is her past behaviour is not consistent on the matter - she is entirely comfortable with doing a post-match interview on her support for BLM but suddenly cites depression as a reason why she can’t do a post match interview regarding the game. It doesn’t point to interviews being the problem, it points to what she prefers to speak about. I would imagine the Tennis associations would easily be able to bring up past interviews as examples if it came to court
While I disagree with thrust of your argument, certainly true as you & Doug point out, that actual evidence one way AND the other would be critical, to either a court case OR an out of court settlement. Along with existing legal precedents of course.
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
Certainly her personal issues with press conferences are well-established, starting with her win over Sabrina Williams a few years ago (cannot remember which tournament).
Don't think public speaking is the problem, rather press conference interrogation. Apples and oranges?
Well, the Serena Williams incident was terrible for Osaka and totally unjustified - Williams’ behaviour was unacceptable and poor Osaka got the brunt of the crowd’s reaction.
However, it goes back to the point her behaviour has not been consistent. She has given a fair few post match interviews and she made it clear in her social media posts she disagreed with the policy which makes it sound like this is more about what she wants to speak about than speaking per se.
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
Certainly her personal issues with press conferences are well-established, starting with her win over Sabrina Williams a few years ago (cannot remember which tournament).
Don't think public speaking is the problem, rather press conference interrogation. Apples and oranges?
Well, the Serena Williams incident was terrible for Osaka and totally unjustified - Williams’ behaviour was unacceptable and poor Osaka got the brunt of the crowd’s reaction.
However, it goes back to the point her behaviour has not been consistent. She has given a fair few post match interviews and she made it clear in her social media posts she disagreed with the policy which makes it sound like this is more about what she wants to speak about than speaking per se.
Suspect the rather cavalier manner with which the French tennis federation dealt with the matter might NOT be helpful to their side in a courtroom. Note that the Federation itself appears to be backtracking rather furiously, while attempting to maintain a (one suspects) legally-justifiable position.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Based on today’s PHE hospitalisation data there ain’t a hope in hell further relaxation will take place on 21 June. September at earliest and we may go back a tad before then.
Fuck that noise. No one is actually ending up in hospital.
The trend is ominous. First day in a month or so with more than 100 admissions. It’s starting to happen.
80 in England, which is flat. Scotland is distorting things at the low levels we are at. Numbers in hospital in U.K. pretty flat despite the growth of delta and the spikes in places.
I agree. Two things distorting it: school kids and anyone with Scottish accent are testing positive, no one else really. Scottish accent like Connery look. “We got riddle duh dahrg. Each shtime we told it to shit, it wush making a mesh.”
Mind you I haven’t actually looked at any data, just read this site.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Since the year started I have avoided Facebook politics groups and feel the better for it,
Based on today’s PHE hospitalisation data there ain’t a hope in hell further relaxation will take place on 21 June. September at earliest and we may go back a tad before then.
Fuck that noise. No one is actually ending up in hospital.
The trend is ominous. First day in a month or so with more than 100 admissions. It’s starting to happen.
857 people hospitalised in the last week, that's a 3% rise on last week, at this rate it will take 57 weeks before we get back to the level we where at Christmas, 57 weeks!
and 12 million new does expected to be injected in the next 3 weeks.
Based on today’s PHE hospitalisation data there ain’t a hope in hell further relaxation will take place on 21 June. September at earliest and we may go back a tad before then.
Fuck that noise. No one is actually ending up in hospital.
The trend is ominous. First day in a month or so with more than 100 admissions. It’s starting to happen.
My figures are total UK but they are consistent with your figures for England.
The R for the UK is 1.04 i.e. doubling every 4 months from a low base. Hospitalisations are flat. That's fine. Need to keep an eye on it but no need for panic.
In that four months, everybody will have been double jabbed down to age 18. And the vulnerable will have their autumn booster for whatever variant we are supposed to be worrying about then.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
Well, the democracy we knew was basically all over as soon as unregulated social media got going. No one has a monopoly over the truth, so the truth can't be discerned any more. The only truth is someones private lived experience etc.
All this won't last very long; we either end up losing most of our freedom and subjugated to some powerful interest, or otherwise defeated and enslaved.
Before social media we dealt with stupid people mostly by ignoring them, not by getting into arguments with them. I don't know why we can't do the same thing with them on social media.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
Well, the democracy we knew was basically all over as soon as unregulated social media got going. No one has a monopoly over the truth, so the truth can't be discerned any more. The only truth is someones private lived experience etc.
All this won't last very long; we either end up losing most of our freedom and subjugated to some powerful interest, or otherwise defeated and enslaved.
Before social media we dealt with stupid people mostly by ignoring them, not by getting into arguments with them. I don't know why we can't do the same thing with them on social media.
Its worse than that, with the media desperate for clicks, the bring they people into the mainstream by putting them on our screens / quoting their nonsense, and they never contradict somebodies anecdotal (claimed) lived experience with facts that relate to the whole population.
Dara O'Briain has a funny bit in his stand up with you wouldn't have a bloke from NASA on and then a flat earther and treat them having equal standing. But lots of other issues that's exactly what the media do.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Maybe Twitter and Instagram should require the same sort of documentation to open an account as betting firms demand; Passport photos, bank statements etc. The account holder could still post under a pseudonym, but once they had been banned once they’d struggle to get another one
Or maybe people should have to use/prove their real names?
I read that Gareth Southgate got 4,000 letters slagging him off after his Euro96 pen miss though, so it’s not new or just a race/sex thing
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Is she an employee (or, here, a worker) though? I’d have thought she was a person who had entered a competition, which had a set of rules. Or am I wrong and they get paid something per day to show up?
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Since the year started I have avoided Facebook politics groups and feel the better for it,
I have never regretted deleting Twitter either. You get some news less quickly, but you avoid all the nasty chatter.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Maybe Twitter and Instagram should require the same sort of documentation to open an account as betting firms demand; Passport photos, bank statements etc. The account holder could still post under a pseudonym, but once they had been banned once they’d struggle to get another one
Or maybe people should have to use/prove their real names?
I read that Gareth Southgate got 4,000 letters slagging him off after his Euro96 pen miss though, so it’s not new or just a race/sex thing
Use of real names would leave many professions unable to use it. Which come to think of it may not be a bad thing.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Is she an employee (or, here, a worker) though? I’d have thought she was a person who had entered a competition, which had a set of rules. Or am I wrong and they get paid something per day to show up?
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Absolutely. And if Twitter is causing mental disturbance don't go on it. Leave FB groups which are unhealthy. Social media is relatively new. Folk haven't twigged that they have control. It just takes discipline.
. . . . Though Roland-Garros takes place in France, the tournament’s brusque treatment of Osaka would have likely run afoul of the disability discrimination laws had it taken place in the U.S.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 bans discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the workplace or in places of public accommodation, meaning any business or enterprise that opens its doors to the general public. The ADA covers both physical disabilities and various mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. . . .
Is a reasonable accommodation possible for Osaka, or would it “fundamentally alter” the game of tennis to allow her to step away from press conferences?
The Supreme Court took up this exact issue in May 2001 when it decided the case of Casey Martin, a professional golfer with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber Syndrome, a condition that caused progressive degeneration of his right leg and made it painful for him to walk. . . . [T]he PGA Tour refused to allow him to use one during its tournament, citing the rules of that particular contest. Martin filed a lawsuit in Oregon federal court, claiming the PGA Tour discriminated against him based on his disability. . . . .
In a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s ruling and found that the PGA Tour was required under the ADA to grant Martin a reasonable accommodation based on his disability. . . .
. . . [T]he Court said that a reasonable accommodation could fundamentally alter the game by giving the accommodated individual an unfair advantage. In Martin’s case, the Court said there was no evidence that the walking rule had any serious impact on the game of golf in that way. Even under the most grueling conditions, it was still far from physically demanding. Many competitors saw it as a way to blow off steam or get to know the course. Skipping the walk between holes gave Martin no clear advantage over competitors, the Court found.
The Court further noted that the walking rule was “not an indispensable feature of tournament golf,” and that the fundamental aspect of the game is shot-making, or “using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.”
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. . . .
While the French Open is not subject to American laws, the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments would have to be circumspect about rash actions like this one in an American tournament, as they carry the risk of a successful challenge in federal court.
That is a bad ruling. Under the most gruelling conditions, lets say 35 degree heat and sunshine for several days on a hilly course tournament golf is both physically and mentally demanding. Mickelson's recent win was notable because very few golfer past early forties could concentrate as consistently in those conditions and faded at the end of the tournaments as a result.
Your view is interesting, though I personally disagree. But neither of our opinions in a binding legal precedent.
It may not be physically demanding to the extent of physical exhaustion but the slight physical deterioration has a significant impact on a game where the margins between a good and bad swing are so fine. It is a clear advantage to use a buggy instead of walking in the most gruelling conditions.
Again, neither here nor there re: legal ruling by SCOTUS.
Under this standard, it is nearly impossible to argue that a press conference is an indispensable feature of tennis. In fact, the walking rule in golf has a much stronger argument in its favor; it is at least integral to game time and requires physical endurance. A press conference has neither quality. It is not remotely athletic in nature.
AND note this except from the Forbes commentator:
"It is also difficult to conceive how failing to participate in a press conference would give one tennis player an advantage over another. At its core, tennis is also about shot-making, or using tennis rackets to move a ball into an opponent’s court in a way that prevents them from making a valid return. Speaking to the media is totally separate from gameplay and has no discernible impact on the outcome of a tournament. One could even argue that forcing athletes with mental disabilities such as anxiety or depression to participate in press conferences could actually give players without those disabilities an unfair advantage."
More to the point, sports press conferences rarely provide anything more than platitudes and clichés. They are hardly riving viewing.
When news broke that Naomi Osaka was exiting French Open, immediate reaction by number of PBers was that she was violating her contract obligation. BUT if the contract, in the sense of mandatory press conference attendance despite her disability (a pre-existing condition) is NOT valid IF it contravenes the law on workplace disability, then THAT is a whole different kettle o' fish.
Regardless of what the court of sporting AND public opinion says, which also appears to be on her side.
That’s quite right. It’s a given that statutory employment (or workplace more broadly in this case) protections override contracts
You are assuming her condition is a disability. It may well be but (1) has she registered as such before so that there is clear evidence and (2) should we accept her word as Gospel.
Last summer, she was very vocal and upfront at attending political rallies and using her fame to support causes. For some reason, her “disability” didn’t seem to cause her problems then but now seems to have flared up when it’s an issue with which she is not comfortable.
There is also a more serious point here. I don’t know Osaka’s true mental state, and nor does anyone else on here, but this behaviour where she goes “I can’t do an interview because of mental issues” risks undermining general support for those with mental health problems. If the perception grows that mental health is used as a handy excuse to get out of situations people don’t like, then that is negative - most of all, for people with mental health problems.
Certainly her personal issues with press conferences are well-established, starting with her win over Sabrina Williams a few years ago (cannot remember which tournament).
Don't think public speaking is the problem, rather press conference interrogation. Apples and oranges?
Well, the Serena Williams incident was terrible for Osaka and totally unjustified - Williams’ behaviour was unacceptable and poor Osaka got the brunt of the crowd’s reaction.
However, it goes back to the point her behaviour has not been consistent. She has given a fair few post match interviews and she made it clear in her social media posts she disagreed with the policy which makes it sound like this is more about what she wants to speak about than speaking per se.
Suspect the rather cavalier manner with which the French tennis federation dealt with the matter might NOT be helpful to their side in a courtroom. Note that the Federation itself appears to be backtracking rather furiously, while attempting to maintain a (one suspects) legally-justifiable position.
In the second programme examining the political future of the four countries of the UK following Brexit and the local elections, Alex speaks to Jim Shannon the DUP MP for Strangford and to Lord Wigley of Caernarfon the former leader of Plaid Cymru. Jim Shannon reveals some surprising solidarity with his “Celtic cousins” on social and economic issues while Lord Wigley forecasts a new independent relationship emerging post pandemic covering Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wku8h_3ab-4
I've not watched it but if you've got a spare half hour...
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Is she an employee (or, here, a worker) though? I’d have thought she was a person who had entered a competition, which had a set of rules. Or am I wrong and they get paid something per day to show up?
They get paid to play so likely a worker.
If that’s the case, then at the lowest rung of the pyramid I wonder whether their pay hits the NMW reliably? Where there’s blame....
Incidentally, if all the lockdown enthusiasts could care to explain why lockdown heavy Peru did so badly even compared to Brazil (no lockdowns), I'm all ears, but doubtless that just makes me a conspiracy theorist for thinking that lockdowns don't actually make all that much difference.
You are a bright guy.
The reality is that the government response (lockdown or otherwise) is only going to explain part of the number of cases and deaths. And even once you account for that, luck is going to play a massive role. Do you remember when India seemed to have avoided Covid? People postulated that it was all to do with Vitamin D.
You know what it was?
It was luck.
Lockdowns work. If they didn't, countries like Australia and New Zealand wouldn't have been able to use them to actually wipe out Covid.
Now, we can argue about whether the additional benefits of lockdown over either (a) more minimal restrictions (like Sweden or Arizona) or (b) no restrictions at all (like Brazil) are worth the economic and mental health costs. But to suggest that lockdowns (which inhibit social interaction) don't have any impact on the spread of a disease (that spread through...errr... social interaction) is absurd.
Lockdowns obviously should do something - but I'm not sure it's a lot once you already have Covid fairly well seeded through the population. As you'd expect, they seem to have most effect when the numbers of cases are very low, and are mostly being followed up, hence why they have worked in Australia and NZ.
Clearly the Peruvians have been very unlucky, but considering just how much worse they appear to have had it to the obvious comparitor of Brazil (which has also had it badly) does make you wonder just how much extra economic damage the lockdown has caused Peru without any obvious positive return at all.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Maybe Twitter and Instagram should require the same sort of documentation to open an account as betting firms demand; Passport photos, bank statements etc. The account holder could still post under a pseudonym, but once they had been banned once they’d struggle to get another one
Or maybe people should have to use/prove their real names?
I read that Gareth Southgate got 4,000 letters slagging him off after his Euro96 pen miss though, so it’s not new or just a race/sex thing
Use of real names would leave many professions unable to use it. Which come to think of it may not be a bad thing.
Yes, so maybe have them prove their name a la betting accounts, and let them post under a pseudonym. But, if they send out racist/sexist/general abuse, their identity is exposed
It’s too easy to get an account by providing an email address just so they can troll
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Maybe Twitter and Instagram should require the same sort of documentation to open an account as betting firms demand; Passport photos, bank statements etc. The account holder could still post under a pseudonym, but once they had been banned once they’d struggle to get another one
Or maybe people should have to use/prove their real names?
I read that Gareth Southgate got 4,000 letters slagging him off after his Euro96 pen miss though, so it’s not new or just a race/sex thing
Use of real names would leave many professions unable to use it. Which come to think of it may not be a bad thing.
Yes, so maybe have them prove their name a la betting accounts, and let them post under a pseudonym. But, if they send out racist/sexist/general abuse, their identity is exposed
It’s too easy to get an account by providing an email address just so they can troll
Is Twitter in danger of actually making any money yet? If not, the problem might yet solve itself.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Is she an employee (or, here, a worker) though? I’d have thought she was a person who had entered a competition, which had a set of rules. Or am I wrong and they get paid something per day to show up?
They get paid to play so likely a worker.
Do they? I thought they won prize money? So they are paid to win, not to just play. And a first round loser may get money, but they have earned their place by previous wins during the year. At least I thought so.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Maybe Twitter and Instagram should require the same sort of documentation to open an account as betting firms demand; Passport photos, bank statements etc. The account holder could still post under a pseudonym, but once they had been banned once they’d struggle to get another one
Or maybe people should have to use/prove their real names?
I read that Gareth Southgate got 4,000 letters slagging him off after his Euro96 pen miss though, so it’s not new or just a race/sex thing
That just gives Google/Facebook/Twitter even more power to definitely cancel you for posting wrongthink. I can't see this being a good thing.
Why is this a good thing? Surely enclosing people in their own little world is a bad idea. The right thing to do would be to mix it up, so that people all over the country hear a mixture of different accents.
"BBC One will speak to northern viewers in their own accent 'Bespoke' service will employ regional announcers in bid to make corporation feel less London-centric"
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
‘Big tech’ was just trying to protect people from blatant lies and misinformation. It isn’t some big conspiracy in favour of the ‘consensus’. See the US and the attempted pro-Trump insurrection and the QAnon stuff if you allow people to spread dangerous nonsense without fetter.
At the end of the day social media is the enemy of truth and reason with restrictions and without restrictions. They cannot win.
The problems facing social media are an extension of the problem of having an open society and democracy in general: maybe it doesn't work, maybe it isn't the least worst option as we have been taught to believe.
I do sometimes wonder if Democracy can function as we know it, alongside social media
The problem is people don't/won't ignore stupid people on social media when that would be the right strategy.
Maybe Twitter and Instagram should require the same sort of documentation to open an account as betting firms demand; Passport photos, bank statements etc. The account holder could still post under a pseudonym, but once they had been banned once they’d struggle to get another one
Or maybe people should have to use/prove their real names?
I read that Gareth Southgate got 4,000 letters slagging him off after his Euro96 pen miss though, so it’s not new or just a race/sex thing
That just gives Google/Facebook/Twitter even more power to definitely cancel you for posting wrongthink. I can't see this being a good thing.
Maybe, I don’t know
Can’t see why people abuse sportsmen and women/ celebrities for making mistakes or playing badly anyway myself. You could ask why the celebs/sports stars feel the need to be on there I guess. Free advertising of their product (them)
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Is she an employee (or, here, a worker) though? I’d have thought she was a person who had entered a competition, which had a set of rules. Or am I wrong and they get paid something per day to show up?
They get paid to play so likely a worker.
Do they? I thought they won prize money? So they are paid to win, not to just play. And a first round loser may get money, but they have earned their place by previous wins during the year. At least I thought so.
Don’t know is my honest answer at this point. However if you sign a contract that says you have to do a press conference win or lose that element alone, to my mind, makes it a contract under which personal service is provided, and thus falls within the worker category
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Yes its pretty critical, sport of decades ago is pretty amateur almost compared to what it is now so its not really comparable.
As for your suggestion: I thought that's what happened?
The Tournament stressed it was a part of the role and there were penalties for the appearance fees for not taking part - and she chose to withdraw instead.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Is she an employee (or, here, a worker) though? I’d have thought she was a person who had entered a competition, which had a set of rules. Or am I wrong and they get paid something per day to show up?
They get paid to play so likely a worker.
Do they? I thought they won prize money? So they are paid to win, not to just play. And a first round loser may get money, but they have earned their place by previous wins during the year. At least I thought so.
Don’t know is my honest answer at this point. However if you sign a contract that says you have to do a press conference win or lose that element alone, to my mind, makes it a contract under which personal service is provided, and thus falls within the worker category
We should appreciate top tennis stars for their skill mastering their craft, not how they deal with media in their face just after a bad loss. Win or lose, they should have the option wether to do media straight after a result.
But as you say, something has to change big time from how it has been for that to happen.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Yes its pretty critical, sport of decades ago is pretty amateur almost compared to what it is now so its not really comparable.
As for your suggestion: I thought that's what happened?
The Tournament stressed it was a part of the role and there were penalties for the appearance fees for not taking part - and she chose to withdraw instead.
AIUI she jumped before she was pushed. The news report I heard before she pulled out said she was threatened with disqualification
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
IN THE WEST
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
It's a tragedy unfolding in your head more like.
The lab leak theory is a plausible theory. Nothing more, nothing less. Your unwillingness to think in terms of probabilities, instead opining in terms of utter certainty about whatever has most recently crossed your frontal cortex is why no-one is engaging with you on this.
Did you see what he said?
About new religions if little green men exist?
Yes. No way he’d say all this - to the New York Times - unless he felt something big was trundling in our direction. Buckle up
Are some people on social media enjoying their exploiting of the poor media literacy skills of others, such as being able to identify misinformation, or is this stuff, pushing the line governments hiding evidence that aliens have visited earth [or insert anything] just harmless fun?
Is it really wrong and harmful to indulge in such pastime of conspiracy theories ? Are there social consequences? Could conspiracy theories undermine democracy? Undermine internal relations in a country or internationally? If it’s health base conspiracy for example, will it lead to deaths? Undermine trust in authority, where trust is needed?
Does it all work on basis it can’t be proved, but damn hard to utterly disprove too, that is actually part of an absolutist anti-governmentalism agenda to undermine a regulatory state and credentialed experts, leading us to an undemocratic and elitist future?
You, Leon, are pushing two simultaneously - UFO conspiracy - China Virus conspiracy. You do it like you hold all the facts, bare assertions, so it’s open and shut case. Though you obviously haven’t heard the Scientists playing with COVID in the lab used to meet children in subterranean room of a sushi restaurant, in their private life.
Ask yourself, which of the two books you are going to write next, what do people want to read and which gets Hollywood interested - how it was actually impossible for Elizabeth l to keep up the secret she was a man throughout her life and after - or that it’s credible a child under care could die from something and be swapped out with a boy from Bisley? we even have a skeleton.
You appreciate you have a case to answer?
I shall print and frame this comment and put it on the wall of my loo
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Yes its pretty critical, sport of decades ago is pretty amateur almost compared to what it is now so its not really comparable.
As for your suggestion: I thought that's what happened?
The Tournament stressed it was a part of the role and there were penalties for the appearance fees for not taking part - and she chose to withdraw instead.
Tournaments are free to impose these conditions if they like.
And tennis players - en masse - are free to say that they are unacceptable and to boycott those tournaments that impose those requirements.
My guess is that this is what will happen here: there will be a significant number of players who will threaten not to play, and the Roland Garos will change (or more likely loosen) their policy.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Is she an employee (or, here, a worker) though? I’d have thought she was a person who had entered a competition, which had a set of rules. Or am I wrong and they get paid something per day to show up?
They get paid to play so likely a worker.
Do they? I thought they won prize money? So they are paid to win, not to just play. And a first round loser may get money, but they have earned their place by previous wins during the year. At least I thought so.
Don’t know is my honest answer at this point. However if you sign a contract that says you have to do a press conference win or lose that element alone, to my mind, makes it a contract under which personal service is provided, and thus falls within the worker category
We should appreciate top tennis stars for their skill mastering their craft, not how they deal with media in their face just after a bad loss. Win or lose, they should have the option wether to do media straight after a result.
But as you say, something has to change big time from how it has been for that to happen.
I would have thought that Tennis is played, you know, on a TENNIS court, not in a TV studio.
Incidentally, if all the lockdown enthusiasts could care to explain why lockdown heavy Peru did so badly even compared to Brazil (no lockdowns), I'm all ears, but doubtless that just makes me a conspiracy theorist for thinking that lockdowns don't actually make all that much difference.
You are a bright guy.
The reality is that the government response (lockdown or otherwise) is only going to explain part of the number of cases and deaths. And even once you account for that, luck is going to play a massive role. Do you remember when India seemed to have avoided Covid? People postulated that it was all to do with Vitamin D.
You know what it was?
It was luck.
Lockdowns work. If they didn't, countries like Australia and New Zealand wouldn't have been able to use them to actually wipe out Covid.
Now, we can argue about whether the additional benefits of lockdown over either (a) more minimal restrictions (like Sweden or Arizona) or (b) no restrictions at all (like Brazil) are worth the economic and mental health costs. But to suggest that lockdowns (which inhibit social interaction) don't have any impact on the spread of a disease (that spread through...errr... social interaction) is absurd.
Lockdowns obviously should do something - but I'm not sure it's a lot once you already have Covid fairly well seeded through the population. As you'd expect, they seem to have most effect when the numbers of cases are very low, and are mostly being followed up, hence why they have worked in Australia and NZ.
Clearly the Peruvians have been very unlucky, but considering just how much worse they appear to have had it to the obvious comparitor of Brazil (which has also had it badly) does make you wonder just how much extra economic damage the lockdown has caused Peru without any obvious positive return at all.
In the US, those states with the fewest restrictions did worst economically, with the most restrictive next, and those with "mixed" economies did best of all.
Devolving powers to cities and counties seemed to be the best option.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Yes its pretty critical, sport of decades ago is pretty amateur almost compared to what it is now so its not really comparable.
As for your suggestion: I thought that's what happened?
The Tournament stressed it was a part of the role and there were penalties for the appearance fees for not taking part - and she chose to withdraw instead.
Tournaments are free to impose these conditions if they like.
And tennis players - en masse - are free to say that they are unacceptable and to boycott those tournaments that impose those requirements.
My guess is that this is what will happen here: there will be a significant number of players who will threaten not to play, and the Roland Garos will change (or more likely loosen) their policy.
Re: Naomi Osaka, and the argument that her treatment by French Open would be actionable in USA under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are there similar protections in UK and/or EU with respect to workplace disability and discrimination?
Yes, the Equality Act 2010 which contains the provisions that used to be in the Disability Discrimination Act. France should have the similar laws the UK’s enactment covered off our EU obligations in that regard. The equivalent here of “Reasonable Accommodation” is “Reasonable Adjustment”
Interesting. Are there any UK-Euro precedents that would apply to Naomi Osaka situation?
Wonder IF legal eagles for the Grand Slams really gave much (or any) thought to this BEFORE their pronuncimento?
She may not be disabled for the purposes of the legislation. You're disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ' substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Depression can be substantial and long term under that definition but it’s a question of degree.
Sounds like it MIGHT make a very interesting court case IF it comes to that.
And a sorta hoping it does, because seems to me a ruling in her favor would help a LOT of other folks, and I do NOT mean top-dollar sports stars.
The thing is there's no case law here on what forms "reasonable" as far as this is concerned, is there?
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
Erm...yes there is. Loads and loads of it. I get paid to read it.
It was a question.
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Is it a critical part of the job? The French Open happened for many decades without this requirement. An alteration in duties and/or a reduction in hours (often accompanied by a pay cut) is a reasonable adjustment. An employment tribunal would have been more sympathetic to a tournament that agreed a trade off of appearance fees for ducking out of press conferences over throwing her out of the tournament altogether.
Yes its pretty critical, sport of decades ago is pretty amateur almost compared to what it is now so its not really comparable.
As for your suggestion: I thought that's what happened?
The Tournament stressed it was a part of the role and there were penalties for the appearance fees for not taking part - and she chose to withdraw instead.
Tournaments are free to impose these conditions if they like.
And tennis players - en masse - are free to say that they are unacceptable and to boycott those tournaments that impose those requirements.
My guess is that this is what will happen here: there will be a significant number of players who will threaten not to play, and the Roland Garos will change (or more likely loosen) their policy.
In Naomi Osaka case there is specific ground for alleging violation of law(s) against workplace disability discrimination, which would (potentially anyway) override contract terms re: role, appearance fees, penalties, etc, IF there was lack of reasonable accommodation by the Grand Slams.
In other words, "Tournaments are free to impose these conditions if they like" NOT.
Not if the conditions violate fundamental worker protections as per law.
An altogether wilier and at the same time nastier version of Trump.
At least he hasn't locked them out of their parliament yet, as the defeated incumbent did in Samoa.
If the Israeli/Palestinian conflict ends in a bloodbath, I will assign blame four ways:*
20% to Nasser, for being an arrogant tosser and launching a war he couldn’t hope to win; 20% to Sharon, for sparking the second intifada, using it to seize power and then nicking most of the West Bank. 20% to Hamas and Iran basically for being dicks 40% to Netanyahu for using every dirty trick in the book to set people against each other so he could strut around feeling important and inflaming tensions while making reasonable solutions impossible as a result.
More to blame than a bunch of nutters like Ahmadinijed. What a thought.
*Yes, I know, gross oversimplification and there’s plenty of blame to go round one way and another.
Thought this was about Test Cricket - started with "20% to Nasser, arrogant tosser"
Incidentally, if all the lockdown enthusiasts could care to explain why lockdown heavy Peru did so badly even compared to Brazil (no lockdowns), I'm all ears, but doubtless that just makes me a conspiracy theorist for thinking that lockdowns don't actually make all that much difference.
You are a bright guy.
The reality is that the government response (lockdown or otherwise) is only going to explain part of the number of cases and deaths. And even once you account for that, luck is going to play a massive role. Do you remember when India seemed to have avoided Covid? People postulated that it was all to do with Vitamin D.
You know what it was?
It was luck.
Lockdowns work. If they didn't, countries like Australia and New Zealand wouldn't have been able to use them to actually wipe out Covid.
Now, we can argue about whether the additional benefits of lockdown over either (a) more minimal restrictions (like Sweden or Arizona) or (b) no restrictions at all (like Brazil) are worth the economic and mental health costs. But to suggest that lockdowns (which inhibit social interaction) don't have any impact on the spread of a disease (that spread through...errr... social interaction) is absurd.
Lockdowns obviously should do something - but I'm not sure it's a lot once you already have Covid fairly well seeded through the population. As you'd expect, they seem to have most effect when the numbers of cases are very low, and are mostly being followed up, hence why they have worked in Australia and NZ.
Clearly the Peruvians have been very unlucky, but considering just how much worse they appear to have had it to the obvious comparitor of Brazil (which has also had it badly) does make you wonder just how much extra economic damage the lockdown has caused Peru without any obvious positive return at all.
In the US, those states with the fewest restrictions did worst economically, with the most restrictive next, and those with "mixed" economies did best of all.
Devolving powers to cities and counties seemed to be the best option.
How much of that is related to the most restrictive states paying out more government support? I have heard a lot of "lockdowns are necessary because otherwise businesses lose their customers anyway, and don't get government support" type arguments, but of course it doesn't logically follow that just because a government isn't mandating a lockdown it can't provide extra support to various businesses. However, I'd hazard a guess that in the US political climate, those States which haven't mandated lockdowns are probably also run by those most ideologically opposed to state handouts.
So basically to justify this Portugal decision the government are reverting to justifying making decisions based on “fear of the unknown”. By basically bringing a new variant “Nepalese” variant (of which there is one documented case in Nepal - but hey! We know Nepal had it bad so best say it comes from there to increase the fear factor) it allows them to avoid awkward questions about why rising cases in Portugal (from a low base) should be seen as different to rising cases in the UK (which they claim is not the criteria for UK roadmap decisions) or why there is any need to prevent importation of the ‘Indian variant’ that is already well established here.
They say they have no data on this ‘Nepalese’ variant, so better model on the basis that it is highly transmissible, harmful, and of course on the basis that the vaccines won’t work against it. And so we go on...
As for the “traffic light” nonsense itself, I know people are saying that anyone booking any sort of holiday abroad should expect all this - but perhaps people like Shapps should realise that people do listen to the Govt and giving interviews three weeks ago saying that it is absolutely fine to visit “green light” countries (based on a detailed, ha ha, analysis of case numbers and vaccine progress which should indicate a level of certainty and trust that their status will endure) and only expressing caution about “Amber” countries gives people reasonable grounds to be angry that, as usual, the Govt is incapable of thinking more than two weeks into the future at anytime. It of course makes a mockery at claims that the measures taken under the roadmap are considered, cautious, and on the basis of “irreversibility”. Irreversible until they change their mind again, of course.
Pfizer vaccine 'works less well against Indian variant': Vaccine produces fewer antibodies against Covid Delta than other strains increasing likelihood an autumn booster will be needed, study finds
Pfizer vaccine 'works less well against Indian variant': Vaccine produces fewer antibodies against Covid Delta than other strains increasing likelihood an autumn booster will be needed, study finds
No need to worry, the entire country will have been infected with it by the time the booster programme comes round...
Although I might point out in addition that it’s more theories based on how scientists think both what makes the virus harmful, and how vaccines protect against that harm. When ultimately the evidence is the number of people of end up being hospitalised or worse, not the extent of the antibodies they produce to combat it.
Pfizer vaccine 'works less well against Indian variant': Vaccine produces fewer antibodies against Covid Delta than other strains increasing likelihood an autumn booster will be needed, study finds
I'm sorry, but this is typically poor reporting from the Mail.
The same stories came out about the vaccines and the South African variant, and turned out to be completely overdoing it. Why? Because you only need about 5% of the typical antibody response to swamp an infection, *and* this completely ignores T-Cells.
We know exactly how effective, in the real world, the vaccines are against the Indian variant: almost completely.
We know this because there was data released today on the number of people who'd got the Delta variant, and how many were unjabbed, were single jabbed (which includes a lot of people who'd only just got a vaccine), and who were double jabbed.
Double jabbed people make up 50% of the population (give or take), and they make up the 50% of the population with the least effective natural immune systems. And do you know what proportion of those Delta cases had been double jabbed?
2%.
In the real world, against the Delta variant, vaccines were more than 95% effective at preventing symptomatic infection. In fact the efficacy is actually better than against the Kent or South African variants.
Incidentally, if all the lockdown enthusiasts could care to explain why lockdown heavy Peru did so badly even compared to Brazil (no lockdowns), I'm all ears, but doubtless that just makes me a conspiracy theorist for thinking that lockdowns don't actually make all that much difference.
You are a bright guy.
The reality is that the government response (lockdown or otherwise) is only going to explain part of the number of cases and deaths. And even once you account for that, luck is going to play a massive role. Do you remember when India seemed to have avoided Covid? People postulated that it was all to do with Vitamin D.
You know what it was?
It was luck.
Lockdowns work. If they didn't, countries like Australia and New Zealand wouldn't have been able to use them to actually wipe out Covid.
Now, we can argue about whether the additional benefits of lockdown over either (a) more minimal restrictions (like Sweden or Arizona) or (b) no restrictions at all (like Brazil) are worth the economic and mental health costs. But to suggest that lockdowns (which inhibit social interaction) don't have any impact on the spread of a disease (that spread through...errr... social interaction) is absurd.
Lockdowns obviously should do something - but I'm not sure it's a lot once you already have Covid fairly well seeded through the population. As you'd expect, they seem to have most effect when the numbers of cases are very low, and are mostly being followed up, hence why they have worked in Australia and NZ.
Clearly the Peruvians have been very unlucky, but considering just how much worse they appear to have had it to the obvious comparitor of Brazil (which has also had it badly) does make you wonder just how much extra economic damage the lockdown has caused Peru without any obvious positive return at all.
In the US, those states with the fewest restrictions did worst economically, with the most restrictive next, and those with "mixed" economies did best of all.
Devolving powers to cities and counties seemed to be the best option.
How much of that is related to the most restrictive states paying out more government support? I have heard a lot of "lockdowns are necessary because otherwise businesses lose their customers anyway, and don't get government support" type arguments, but of course it doesn't logically follow that just because a government isn't mandating a lockdown it can't provide extra support to various businesses. However, I'd hazard a guess that in the US political climate, those States which haven't mandated lockdowns are probably also run by those most ideologically opposed to state handouts.
Sitting in California, there are (to my knowledge) no State level programmes to support businesses through furlough type arrangements.
The big US subsidy has been Federal - the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) - which basically gave you two months of wages if you could justify that your business had been affected by Covid.
Pfizer vaccine 'works less well against Indian variant': Vaccine produces fewer antibodies against Covid Delta than other strains increasing likelihood an autumn booster will be needed, study finds
I'm sorry, but this is typically poor reporting from the Mail.
The same stories came out about the vaccines and the South African variant, and turned out to be completely overdoing it. Why? Because you only need about 5% of the typical antibody response to swamp an infection, *and* this completely ignores T-Cells.
We know exactly how effective, in the real world, the vaccines are against the Indian variant: almost completely.
We know this because there was data released today on the number of people who'd got the Delta variant, and how many were unjabbed, were single jabbed (which includes a lot of people who'd only just got a vaccine), and who were double jabbed.
Double jabbed people make up 50% of the population (give or take), and they make up the 50% of the population with the least effective natural immune systems. And do you know what proportion of those Delta cases had been double jabbed?
2%.
In the real world, against the Delta variant, vaccines were more than 95% effective at preventing symptomatic infection. In fact the efficacy is actually better than against the Kent or South African variants.
Precisely. As above, there is to much fear mongering and “caution” being pushed on the basis of scientific theories and modelling based on those theories.
There seems an astonishing resistance to using real world numbers as the primary basis of evidence. Scientists like to explain things, and seems to distrust real world numbers if they conflict with their theoretical hypotheses and modelling. Estimating vaccination effectiveness based on measured “antibody response” has been a particularly inaccurate example of this throughout.
First-time buyers in England will be able to apply for a discount of up to 50% on a new-build home under a government scheme.
The First Homes initiative could save buyers £100,000 or more. But some experts say that with demand for these cut-price homes likely to exceed supply, it could spark a scramble for properties and add more fuel to the house price boom.
The government says the scheme is aimed at first-time buyers in the area where the homes are built, many of whom will be keyworkers such as NHS staff and those on the pandemic frontline such as delivery drivers and supermarket staff. It is aimed at helping them on to the property ladder by offering homes at a discount of at least 30% compared with the market price.
However, local authorities will be able to offer a bigger discount – either 40% or 50% – “if they can demonstrate a need for this”.
Crucially, the discount will be passed on with the sale of the property to future first-time buyers, meaning homes will always be sold below market value, thereby “benefiting local communities, keyworkers, and families for generations to come”, the government said.
First-time buyers in England will be able to apply for a discount of up to 50% on a new-build home under a government scheme.
The First Homes initiative could save buyers £100,000 or more. But some experts say that with demand for these cut-price homes likely to exceed supply, it could spark a scramble for properties and add more fuel to the house price boom.
The government says the scheme is aimed at first-time buyers in the area where the homes are built, many of whom will be keyworkers such as NHS staff and those on the pandemic frontline such as delivery drivers and supermarket staff. It is aimed at helping them on to the property ladder by offering homes at a discount of at least 30% compared with the market price.
However, local authorities will be able to offer a bigger discount – either 40% or 50% – “if they can demonstrate a need for this”.
Crucially, the discount will be passed on with the sale of the property to future first-time buyers, meaning homes will always be sold below market value, thereby “benefiting local communities, keyworkers, and families for generations to come”, the government said.
First-time buyers in England will be able to apply for a discount of up to 50% on a new-build home under a government scheme.
The First Homes initiative could save buyers £100,000 or more. But some experts say that with demand for these cut-price homes likely to exceed supply, it could spark a scramble for properties and add more fuel to the house price boom.
The government says the scheme is aimed at first-time buyers in the area where the homes are built, many of whom will be keyworkers such as NHS staff and those on the pandemic frontline such as delivery drivers and supermarket staff. It is aimed at helping them on to the property ladder by offering homes at a discount of at least 30% compared with the market price.
However, local authorities will be able to offer a bigger discount – either 40% or 50% – “if they can demonstrate a need for this”.
Crucially, the discount will be passed on with the sale of the property to future first-time buyers, meaning homes will always be sold below market value, thereby “benefiting local communities, keyworkers, and families for generations to come”, the government said.
Who is making up the difference of £100k? Us the tax payer?
I don't understand how this adds up.
I know I am confused. The scheme Labour had for key workers, where they could got properties at big discount, was that the state took an equity position in the property and so the key workers only owned 30-50% equity in the property, but it doesn't seem like that is the case here.
First-time buyers in England will be able to apply for a discount of up to 50% on a new-build home under a government scheme.
The First Homes initiative could save buyers £100,000 or more. But some experts say that with demand for these cut-price homes likely to exceed supply, it could spark a scramble for properties and add more fuel to the house price boom.
The government says the scheme is aimed at first-time buyers in the area where the homes are built, many of whom will be keyworkers such as NHS staff and those on the pandemic frontline such as delivery drivers and supermarket staff. It is aimed at helping them on to the property ladder by offering homes at a discount of at least 30% compared with the market price.
However, local authorities will be able to offer a bigger discount – either 40% or 50% – “if they can demonstrate a need for this”.
Crucially, the discount will be passed on with the sale of the property to future first-time buyers, meaning homes will always be sold below market value, thereby “benefiting local communities, keyworkers, and families for generations to come”, the government said.
First-time buyers in England will be able to apply for a discount of up to 50% on a new-build home under a government scheme.
The First Homes initiative could save buyers £100,000 or more. But some experts say that with demand for these cut-price homes likely to exceed supply, it could spark a scramble for properties and add more fuel to the house price boom.
The government says the scheme is aimed at first-time buyers in the area where the homes are built, many of whom will be keyworkers such as NHS staff and those on the pandemic frontline such as delivery drivers and supermarket staff. It is aimed at helping them on to the property ladder by offering homes at a discount of at least 30% compared with the market price.
However, local authorities will be able to offer a bigger discount – either 40% or 50% – “if they can demonstrate a need for this”.
Crucially, the discount will be passed on with the sale of the property to future first-time buyers, meaning homes will always be sold below market value, thereby “benefiting local communities, keyworkers, and families for generations to come”, the government said.
Who is making up the difference of £100k? Us the tax payer?
I don't understand how this adds up.
I know I am confused. The scheme Labour had for key workers, where they could got properties at big discount, was that the state took an equity position in the property and so the key workers only owned 30-50% equity in the property, but it doesn't seem like that is the case here.
It will be a con. These properties will be overpriced so instead of a three bed semi being £350,000 it will be £500,000 to start with.
Comments
http://scillymemories.co.uk/articles/mv-cita-wrecked-on-scilly-march-26th-1997/
The competition authorities could certainly make an argument that given the competition is funded by the television studios and resulting sponsorship, that violating the agreement with the studios on this is unreasonable.
I'm not saying I agree with that, just saying its surely not an open and shut case for either side. If it came to it there'd be two sets of lawyers and the outcome is murky.
That was my impression. Other countries haven't done that.
Certainly her personal issues with press conferences are well-established, starting with her win over Sabrina Williams a few years ago (cannot remember which tournament).
Don't think public speaking is the problem, rather press conference interrogation. Apples and oranges?
What case law would apply here out of curiosity? It seems a rather unique situation though perhaps nothing is unique, but if there's been a comparable situation before where appearing on TV was literally a critical part of the job, which was then that was excluded because of health reasons, and that was settled in the courts, then I'd be curious about the details and how it relates.
Not great headlines for the government.
However, it goes back to the point her behaviour has not been consistent. She has given a fair few post match interviews and she made it clear in her social media posts she disagreed with the policy which makes it sound like this is more about what she wants to speak about than speaking per se.
It was really noticeable during the recent Israel / Hamas flair up how much they have never managed to replace the likes of Tim Marshall.
French Tennis Federation Director-General: We regret not having dialogue with Osaka
https://madison.com/video/cnn/news/french-tennis-federation-director-general-we-regret-not-having-dialogue-with-osaka/video_06f4b3f9-792f-54b9-b021-fe0bd31f08e5.html
Scottish accent like Connery look.
“We got riddle duh dahrg. Each shtime we told it to shit, it wush making a mesh.”
Mind you I haven’t actually looked at any data, just read this site.
So it won't have doubled in that four months.
Not sure you need to get PRICK written on it.
Dara O'Briain has a funny bit in his stand up with you wouldn't have a bloke from NASA on and then a flat earther and treat them having equal standing. But lots of other issues that's exactly what the media do.
Or maybe people should have to use/prove their real names?
I read that Gareth Southgate got 4,000 letters slagging him off after his Euro96 pen miss though, so it’s not new or just a race/sex thing
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1400462503847497728
Number of people in hospital with coronavirus in England is FALLING
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-57346640
Labour keep flogging this horse.....poor nag....its animal cruelty.
More seriously I don't get it, it is clear the public don't care. There are loads of other things to go after Boris for that might gain some traction.
Which come to think of it may not be a bad thing.
And if Twitter is causing mental disturbance don't go on it. Leave FB groups which are unhealthy.
Social media is relatively new. Folk haven't twigged that they have control.
It just takes discipline.
In the second programme examining the political future of the four countries of the UK following Brexit and the local elections, Alex speaks to Jim Shannon the DUP MP for Strangford and to Lord Wigley of Caernarfon the former leader of Plaid Cymru. Jim Shannon reveals some surprising solidarity with his “Celtic cousins” on social and economic issues while Lord Wigley forecasts a new independent relationship emerging post pandemic covering Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wku8h_3ab-4
I've not watched it but if you've got a spare half hour...
Clearly the Peruvians have been very unlucky, but considering just how much worse they appear to have had it to the obvious comparitor of Brazil (which has also had it badly) does make you wonder just how much extra economic damage the lockdown has caused Peru without any obvious positive return at all.
Eg.
Political Punter
Mike Smithson
As opposed to BBC stylee:
Mike Smithson
Political Punter
It’s too easy to get an account by providing an email address just so they can troll
So they are paid to win, not to just play.
And a first round loser may get money, but they have earned their place by previous wins during the year.
At least I thought so.
Though Lilac Leopard seems now to be a clothing thing.
Can’t see why people abuse sportsmen and women/ celebrities for making mistakes or playing badly anyway myself. You could ask why the celebs/sports stars feel the need to be on there I guess. Free advertising of their product (them)
As for your suggestion: I thought that's what happened?
The Tournament stressed it was a part of the role and there were penalties for the appearance fees for not taking part - and she chose to withdraw instead.
But as you say, something has to change big time from how it has been for that to happen.
Bowler ended day two with 4-75, but the ECB is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/06/03/ollie-robinson-dropped-england-second-test-wake-racist-tweets/
Are some people on social media enjoying their exploiting of the poor media literacy skills of others, such as being able to identify misinformation, or is this stuff, pushing the line governments hiding evidence that aliens have visited earth [or insert anything] just harmless fun?
Is it really wrong and harmful to indulge in such pastime of conspiracy theories ? Are there social consequences? Could conspiracy theories undermine democracy? Undermine internal relations in a country or internationally? If it’s health base conspiracy for example, will it lead to deaths? Undermine trust in authority, where trust is needed?
Does it all work on basis it can’t be proved, but damn hard to utterly disprove too, that is actually part of an absolutist anti-governmentalism agenda to undermine a regulatory state and credentialed experts, leading us to an undemocratic and elitist future?
You, Leon, are pushing two simultaneously - UFO conspiracy - China Virus conspiracy. You do it like you hold all the facts, bare assertions, so it’s open and shut case. Though you obviously haven’t heard the Scientists playing with COVID in the lab used to meet children in subterranean room of a sushi restaurant, in their private life.
Ask yourself, which of the two books you are going to write next, what do people want to read and which gets Hollywood interested - how it was actually impossible for Elizabeth l to keep up the secret she was a man throughout her life and after - or that it’s credible a child under care could die from something and be swapped out with a boy from Bisley? we even have a skeleton.
You appreciate you have a case to answer?
I shall print and frame this comment and put it on the wall of my loo
I am not @Leon
You are absolutely not Leon, Sir Bob, your replies to his conspiracy stirring are like hydrocortisone to a wasp sting.
I made a right mess at posting in from thread other night. Now just look at the state of this.
(do you really think he hung it in his loo and is worried about conspiracy mongers on social media threatening democracy?)
And tennis players - en masse - are free to say that they are unacceptable and to boycott those tournaments that impose those requirements.
My guess is that this is what will happen here: there will be a significant number of players who will threaten not to play, and the Roland Garos will change (or more likely loosen) their policy.
Devolving powers to cities and counties seemed to be the best option.
Going forward politicians will be treated more like everyone else
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/3/22474738/facebook-ending-political-figure-exemption-moderation-policy
In other words, "Tournaments are free to impose these conditions if they like" NOT.
Not if the conditions violate fundamental worker protections as per law.
The 55+ population must dwarf the 18-34.
However, I'd hazard a guess that in the US political climate, those States which haven't mandated lockdowns are probably also run by those most ideologically opposed to state handouts.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/
Not like.
They say they have no data on this ‘Nepalese’ variant, so better model on the basis that it is highly transmissible, harmful, and of course on the basis that the vaccines won’t work against it. And so we go on...
As for the “traffic light” nonsense itself, I know people are saying that anyone booking any sort of holiday abroad should expect all this - but perhaps people like Shapps should realise that people do listen to the Govt and giving interviews three weeks ago saying that it is absolutely fine to visit “green light” countries (based on a detailed, ha ha, analysis of case numbers and vaccine progress which should indicate a level of certainty and trust that their status will endure) and only expressing caution about “Amber” countries gives people reasonable grounds to be angry that, as usual, the Govt is incapable of thinking more than two weeks into the future at anytime. It of course makes a mockery at claims that the measures taken under the roadmap are considered, cautious, and on the basis of “irreversibility”. Irreversible until they change their mind again, of course.
Pfizer vaccine 'works less well against Indian variant': Vaccine produces fewer antibodies against Covid Delta than other strains increasing likelihood an autumn booster will be needed, study finds
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9650283/Pfizer-vaccine-recipients-lower-antibodies-targeting-Indian-variant-study.html
Although I might point out in addition that it’s more theories based on how scientists think both what makes the virus harmful, and how vaccines protect against that harm. When ultimately the evidence is the number of people of end up being hospitalised or worse, not the extent of the antibodies they produce to combat it.
The same stories came out about the vaccines and the South African variant, and turned out to be completely overdoing it. Why? Because you only need about 5% of the typical antibody response to swamp an infection, *and* this completely ignores T-Cells.
We know exactly how effective, in the real world, the vaccines are against the Indian variant: almost completely.
We know this because there was data released today on the number of people who'd got the Delta variant, and how many were unjabbed, were single jabbed (which includes a lot of people who'd only just got a vaccine), and who were double jabbed.
Double jabbed people make up 50% of the population (give or take), and they make up the 50% of the population with the least effective natural immune systems. And do you know what proportion of those Delta cases had been double jabbed?
2%.
In the real world, against the Delta variant, vaccines were more than 95% effective at preventing symptomatic infection. In fact the efficacy is actually better than against the Kent or South African variants.
The big US subsidy has been Federal - the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) - which basically gave you two months of wages if you could justify that your business had been affected by Covid.
There seems an astonishing resistance to using real world numbers as the primary basis of evidence. Scientists like to explain things, and seems to distrust real world numbers if they conflict with their theoretical hypotheses and modelling. Estimating vaccination effectiveness based on measured “antibody response” has been a particularly inaccurate example of this throughout.
The First Homes initiative could save buyers £100,000 or more. But some experts say that with demand for these cut-price homes likely to exceed supply, it could spark a scramble for properties and add more fuel to the house price boom.
The government says the scheme is aimed at first-time buyers in the area where the homes are built, many of whom will be keyworkers such as NHS staff and those on the pandemic frontline such as delivery drivers and supermarket staff. It is aimed at helping them on to the property ladder by offering homes at a discount of at least 30% compared with the market price.
However, local authorities will be able to offer a bigger discount – either 40% or 50% – “if they can demonstrate a need for this”.
Crucially, the discount will be passed on with the sale of the property to future first-time buyers, meaning homes will always be sold below market value, thereby “benefiting local communities, keyworkers, and families for generations to come”, the government said.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jun/04/first-time-buyers-in-england-offered-new-homes-at-up-to-50-off
Who is making up the difference of £100k? Us the tax payer?
The media's behaviour has been thoroughly appalling.