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Theresa May is right to slam Johnson and his ministers for maintaining travel bans – politicalbettin

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  • This table shows the importance now of getting double dosed. The difference between one dose vaccine and two doses against Delta is significant.


    Against ‘infection’ or actual sickness?
    Symptomatic. So presumably asymptomatic excluded?
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,316
    edited June 2021

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,983
    edited June 2021
    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Times splash this morning:

    Boris Johnson is considering a four-week delay to the easing of lockdown restrictions on June 21

    The conversation in Govt is increasingly turning to how long the delay will be, rather than whether there will be one

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-ponders-four-week-delay-end-covid-restrictions-cg6kmm290

    And my brother and future sister in law would miss out on their wedding, potentially by two days.

    EDIT: I now see the Independent:

    "Boris Johnson is determined to lift the 30-person limit on weddings on 21 June, even if other lockdown restrictions remain in place, according to reports.

    While the prime minister may decide to keep social distancing precautions remain in place, unlimited guest lists are set to be permitted, although wedding guests will still be required to wear masks when not eating and drinking, according to The Times"

    It's the hope that gets you
    As if the masks thing at weddings is enforceable! Just have a glass in your hand FFS. My wife was furious when she read that: “who would want people in masks at their wedding? And can we dance?”

    The government needs to lift the wedding rules on 21 June and stop already with the petty little caveats. Enough.



    My brother and SIL wouldn't mind.

    Like most people they have a short ceremony, followed by a reception; in their case at the same venue.

    Having guests wear masks at the ceremony is not a big deal. For the rest of the evening will be spent with a glass in hand (alcoholic or not)
    Dancing?

    In any case, the Times today again says weddings limit will be lifted come what may on 21 June. Which is good news.
    So why not for christenings? Or funerals? Or birthday parties? Or barmitzvahs? Or other celebrations? There is absolutely no sense to any of this. It is arbitrary and capricious.
    Because there is a huge Wedding industry that may collapse, I presume (not to mention the big wedding expectation)

    The Christening/Barmitzvah industry is a much smaller affair..... And the funeral industry isn't really based around big funerals....
    Well, there's a bloody great hospitality industry, even bigger than the wedding sector, which is being crucified by this "fuck business" government.

    If there's a month's delay that's the summer season largely gone. The season when hospitality makes its money to survive the winter is March to September. It is already June and hospitality is still not open at full capacity. It has not been open at full capacity since March 24th last year. It has already had 3 winters in a row and now it looks as if it's going to get a 4th one. This is, frankly, unsurvivable.

    My own work - which depends on the abandonment of social distancing - has also collapsed.

    But yes all those with comfy jobs they can do from home while accumulating savings are fine with lockdown and restrictions continuing forever.
    I am trying to get proof of my military service to apply for an Armed Forces railcard. There is simply no one at the relevant department and hasn't been since last March. No one. Not working from home, not long waiting times on the phone. Nothing. For 15 months whoever works at that department has been doing nothing. Probably quite happily.
    Get @Kinabalu to vouch for you, or travel in uniform.
    Like most people many years out of HMF all my uniform is neatly packed, ready to go at a moment's notice for when my country needs me. Just waiting for the call.

    Edit: especially my mess kit. Never know when the country will be low in people able to go to cocktail parties. That would be where I could step in.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    edited June 2021
    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506



    The stupid fat fuck is never going to figure out that eTap Force rear mech. Plenty of flegs though, he'll like that.

    Also, canti brakes = junk.

    Also, also. Square taper bottom bracket. Get to fuck.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    In Polterghost news when I came into the office this morning a small block of wood with two large rusty nails sticking upward was in the middle of the floor. The block is an offcut which like the others had been swept into the corner awaiting final removal as I complete the demolition / removal work of the former bank fittings.

    There is no rational explanation for how it transported itself from one place to the other.

    Hmmmm.... wake us up when all the chairs get stacked on the table.....
    That would be safer than placing rusty nails where I can tread on them!
    Obviously, "The Finn" placed his AI construct in the area of your building works. Find it and leave a bottle of Moskovaskya Crystal next to him as an offering.
    The real high rollers make em out of cocaine ...
    A tiny figure, in the distance in Cyberspace, waves...

    Gibson could really create images in your mind, couldn't he?

    That alley, the laser silently scanning in the snow over the offerings....
    While it lasted. The magic went when he found out what computers are really like, and you swap the blue pyramid of the east coast energy authority for people joining newsgroups on their iBooks.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    isam said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Not having that - you reckon it’s true? They printed it off wiki? No way

    They gave Mrs Biden a first edition copy of a Daphne Du Maurier book.

    I actually subscribed to The Times to check this out, and the article doesn’t say that they printed it off wiki at all. It says

    “ Government officials decided on the photo, taken by Melissa Highton, a dual UK-US national, after spotting it on Douglass’s Wikipedia page. Johnson handed the picture to Biden yesterday to mark their first meeting and Biden’s first foreign trip as president. The mural is painted on a wall at Lower Gilmore Place by the Scottish street artist Ross Blair, who goes by the name Trench-One. A Foreign Office official contacted Highton after seeing the picture.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/picture-of-edinburgh-anti-slavery-mural-given-to-president-biden-by-pm-n3l953nrn
    Considering they got in touch with the original photographer it seems unlikely they then proceeded to print it from Wikipedia. 🤣
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486
    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,005
    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506



    The stupid fat fuck is never going to figure out that eTap Force rear mech. Plenty of flegs though, he'll like that.

    Also, canti brakes = junk.

    Also, also. Square taper bottom bracket. Get to fuck.
    If that is the actual bike then it will never be used. It will end up in a museum somewhere.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited June 2021

    isam said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Not having that - you reckon it’s true? They printed it off wiki? No way

    They gave Mrs Biden a first edition copy of a Daphne Du Maurier book.

    I actually subscribed to The Times to check this out, and the article doesn’t say that they printed it off wiki at all. It says

    “ Government officials decided on the photo, taken by Melissa Highton, a dual UK-US national, after spotting it on Douglass’s Wikipedia page. Johnson handed the picture to Biden yesterday to mark their first meeting and Biden’s first foreign trip as president. The mural is painted on a wall at Lower Gilmore Place by the Scottish street artist Ross Blair, who goes by the name Trench-One. A Foreign Office official contacted Highton after seeing the picture.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/picture-of-edinburgh-anti-slavery-mural-given-to-president-biden-by-pm-n3l953nrn
    Considering they got in touch with the original photographer it seems unlikely they then proceeded to print it from Wikipedia. 🤣
    I find it hard to believe, but Patrick Maguire is the editor of TimesRedBox and he tweeted saying that they did, and linked to the article. He must surely be mistaken. I don’t know how much a first edition book costs, but if they were going to just print the pic off Wikipedia, surely they’d have just got the book off Amazon?!
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,052

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    If it's really a $6k bike I think Boris won't be able to keep it either unless he buys it.

    There was a very good Yes Minister once that turned on this point.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,052
    JohnO said:

    Latest You Gov

    Cons 44 (-2)
    Lab 31 (+1
    Green 9
    LD 7 (+1)

    Can I be the first to sound the Starmer Surge klazon?
  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    edited June 2021
    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    If it's really a $6k bike I think Boris won't be able to keep it either unless he buys it.

    There was a very good Yes Minister once that turned on this point.
    It’ll be worth more than $6k if he later sells it, so he’d be smart to buy it.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,429
    Interesting stat buried in The Times. In his recent Commons appearance Health Sec Hancock said he was warned on January 27 2020 that a reasonable worst case scenario for covid was ‘827,000 UK deaths’

    That’s the REASONABLE worst case scenario

    I remember when *someone* on here was much mocked for his hysterical knicker-wetting, for saying an EXTREME worst case scenario would be 1-2m UK dead

    Ahem.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,316

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,348
    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    In Polterghost news when I came into the office this morning a small block of wood with two large rusty nails sticking upward was in the middle of the floor. The block is an offcut which like the others had been swept into the corner awaiting final removal as I complete the demolition / removal work of the former bank fittings.

    There is no rational explanation for how it transported itself from one place to the other.

    Hmmmm.... wake us up when all the chairs get stacked on the table.....
    That would be safer than placing rusty nails where I can tread on them!
    Obviously, "The Finn" placed his AI construct in the area of your building works. Find it and leave a bottle of Moskovaskya Crystal next to him as an offering.
    The real high rollers make em out of cocaine ...
    A tiny figure, in the distance in Cyberspace, waves...

    Gibson could really create images in your mind, couldn't he?

    That alley, the laser silently scanning in the snow over the offerings....
    While it lasted. The magic went when he found out what computers are really like, and you swap the blue pyramid of the east coast energy authority for people joining newsgroups on their iBooks.
    True. The future is not what we were promised. In another universe I'd be applying for job as quantum mechanic (1st class)....
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited June 2021

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,312
    Ed Milliband making an obvious point - https://twitter.com/ed_miliband/status/1403283289050320898?s=21.

    For all the talk of delaying the lifting of restrictions, will the government also make it clear that it will also delay the removal of support for those businesses affected by the restrictions?

  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,793

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    I know that Johnson wants to stop using the phrase "special relationship" (and hats off to him, it's probably the first thing he's ever said that I agree with) but still, giving someone a picture that you printed off Wikipedia is a fairly blunt way of demonstrating that the relationship is no longer as special as it used to be.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited June 2021
    Fishing said:

    JohnO said:

    Latest You Gov

    Cons 44 (-2)
    Lab 31 (+1
    Green 9
    LD 7 (+1)

    Can I be the first to sound the Starmer Surge klazon?
    Nearly as good a result as Corbyn’s worst GE
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,200
    Dura_Ace said:

    , Brexit becomes a settled issue, move on.

    This is absolutely the last thing the tories want. They are going to be fighting the next GE on a Labour Will Betray Brexit platform so they cannot let it recede in the national consciousness.
    It's with a certain resigned sadness that I have to agree. The government has no incentive to reach pragmatic solutions with the EU on anything. Far better for them to foster an adversarial relationship. Eg this current nonsense of pretending they didn't realize the impact of the NI protocol. What a load of utterly palpable shit. But it's only obvious to geeks like us who follow things in detail. Most people don't and Johnson & Co know this. They also know that as the row develops they can rely on a rousing "Boris battles for the British banger" narrative from our godawful press. A narrative which will be lapped up by the folks who delivered his landslide and who, as long as they stay firm, will make him incredibly hard to shift.

    Really hate writing posts like this. I want to be jaunty. I want to see the sun not the clouds.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,000
    World Beating Vaccination Program

    EXCLUSIVE UK's Raab: No doubt some countries are using vaccines a geopolitical
    tool http://reut.rs/3gqU6oP https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1403287160975937538/photo/1
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,312

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    I know that Johnson wants to stop using the phrase "special relationship" (and hats off to him, it's probably the first thing he's ever said that I agree with) but still, giving someone a picture that you printed off Wikipedia is a fairly blunt way of demonstrating that the relationship is no longer as special as it used to be.
    Why the need to give gifts at all?

    Seems quite unnecessary.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,200
    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Times splash this morning:

    Boris Johnson is considering a four-week delay to the easing of lockdown restrictions on June 21

    The conversation in Govt is increasingly turning to how long the delay will be, rather than whether there will be one

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-ponders-four-week-delay-end-covid-restrictions-cg6kmm290

    And my brother and future sister in law would miss out on their wedding, potentially by two days.

    EDIT: I now see the Independent:

    "Boris Johnson is determined to lift the 30-person limit on weddings on 21 June, even if other lockdown restrictions remain in place, according to reports.

    While the prime minister may decide to keep social distancing precautions remain in place, unlimited guest lists are set to be permitted, although wedding guests will still be required to wear masks when not eating and drinking, according to The Times"

    It's the hope that gets you
    As if the masks thing at weddings is enforceable! Just have a glass in your hand FFS. My wife was furious when she read that: “who would want people in masks at their wedding? And can we dance?”

    The government needs to lift the wedding rules on 21 June and stop already with the petty little caveats. Enough.



    My brother and SIL wouldn't mind.

    Like most people they have a short ceremony, followed by a reception; in their case at the same venue.

    Having guests wear masks at the ceremony is not a big deal. For the rest of the evening will be spent with a glass in hand (alcoholic or not)
    Dancing?

    In any case, the Times today again says weddings limit will be lifted come what may on 21 June. Which is good news.
    So why not for christenings? Or funerals? Or birthday parties? Or barmitzvahs? Or other celebrations? There is absolutely no sense to any of this. It is arbitrary and capricious.
    Because there is a huge Wedding industry that may collapse, I presume (not to mention the big wedding expectation)

    The Christening/Barmitzvah industry is a much smaller affair..... And the funeral industry isn't really based around big funerals....
    Well, there's a bloody great hospitality industry, even bigger than the wedding sector, which is being crucified by this "fuck business" government.

    If there's a month's delay that's the summer season largely gone. The season when hospitality makes its money to survive the winter is March to September. It is already June and hospitality is still not open at full capacity. It has not been open at full capacity since March 24th last year. It has already had 3 winters in a row and now it looks as if it's going to get a 4th one. This is, frankly, unsurvivable.

    My own work - which depends on the abandonment of social distancing - has also collapsed.

    But yes all those with comfy jobs they can do from home while accumulating savings are fine with lockdown and restrictions continuing forever.
    I am trying to get proof of my military service to apply for an Armed Forces railcard. There is simply no one at the relevant department and hasn't been since last March. No one. Not working from home, not long waiting times on the phone. Nothing. For 15 months whoever works at that department has been doing nothing. Probably quite happily.
    Get @Kinabalu to vouch for you, or travel in uniform.
    Delighted to. I even know the rank attained. Full Col ... no, sorry, Captain.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,827

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    I know that Johnson wants to stop using the phrase "special relationship" (and hats off to him, it's probably the first thing he's ever said that I agree with) but still, giving someone a picture that you printed off Wikipedia is a fairly blunt way of demonstrating that the relationship is no longer as special as it used to be.
    The world should be moving on from expected buying of tat. Fewer and cheaper Christmas presents for adults is win -win-win (environment, dont have to find something to buy, dont have to pretend to like what someone bought me), same with these type of gifts imo.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,052

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    The word "liberal" is so vague almost anybody can be called one. Or somebody can say he isn't.

    It's like "democracy" - when the same word is applied to North Korea and Switzerland it's clearly lost all meaning.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,724
    Scott_xP said:

    R4 reported that Johnson's remarks to Biden about the proportion of EU customs checks happening between GB & NI seemed to land home...

    As noted elsewhere, this was the first meeting between BoZo and Biden.

    The first meeting is always the one where BoZo is your best mate, and promises the World.

    Only later do you get confirmation of the lies and betrayal
    You are a Remainer. You have been lying about it ever since the vote was announced and have continued since Brexit happened.... mainly by misrepresentation of the facts.

    Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,201
    edited June 2021
    I've put the efficacies of the various vaccines into my SEIR spreadsheet and we have .... wait for it....

    A current r0 stopping power as a population of.................. 1.7 - 1.8 against the India variant.

    The antivax holdouts may well be stuffed in the long run tbh.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,000
    DUP implosion continues as Emma Little Pengelly steps away from the party joining a stream of others in the wake of the putsch https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/emma-little-pengelly-stepping-away-from-dup-deeply-saddened-over-tensions-in-party-40524630.html
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
  • Scott_xP said:

    DUP implosion continues as Emma Little Pengelly steps away from the party joining a stream of others in the wake of the putsch https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/emma-little-pengelly-stepping-away-from-dup-deeply-saddened-over-tensions-in-party-40524630.html

    The next Assembly elections, which I think need to take place on or before 5 May 2022, will be interesting.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,375
    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Or we just see what happened in Bolton, A surge of cases that ran into a wall of the vaccinated, resulting in a rise in hospitalisations which was easily manageable.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
    No, the land I would build on would attract a premium irrespective of planning regime, unless you want to abolish the national parks. And please don't attribute to me the price of everything, value of nothing money hunger which clearly rules you. My house is not a huge percentage of my assets in the first place, and the less it's worth the less someone can tax me on its value. So hp deflation is fine by me.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
    My understanding of the purpose of the green belt is to prevent urban sprawl. As such, the green belt is around a number of cities and towns in the UK. It is not necessarily the best countryside, but just the countryside immediately next to an urban centre.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486
    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,192
    edited June 2021

    COVID Saga

    Part 7,328 ...

    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/cdc-hold-emergency-meeting-after-100s-suffer-heart-inflammation-following-covid-vaccines

    No-one who has had COVID, with or without symptoms, should be vaccinated. They're immune. Some who haven't had it are also immune. The others probably could benefit, especially if they are either over 70 and/or in very poor health. (The poor health matters more.)

    Anyone who slips through the net should be prescribed Ivermectin, HCQ or other effective medicines, at a cost to the NHS of c. 10 p to £1.

    But it's not about the health of the little people ... so this rational, evidence- and risk-based approach was discarded 18 months ago.

    Sorry but that is scientifically wrong. Studies show that having Covid does give some level of immunity but often for a limited period. It does not give anything like the level of antibody response that two doses of the vaccine do.

    Myocarditis and pericarditis are serious conditions so this should be looked at seriously, but this is not the scare story you are inferring. are you anti-vaxxer?
    Agreed, it is nonsense to claim that prior infection guarantees immunity; it doesn't.

    However, prior infection plus a single vaccination does give much the same degree of protection as two (properly spaced) vaccine doses.
    There is a very strong argument, where vaccine is in short supply, for conducting rapid antibody tests prior to the first vaccination, and if positive moving to a one-and-done vaccine dose.

    The vast majority of myocarditis cases (which seem to be associated with the mRNA vaccines) have been relatively mild, and resolved without problems.

    Ivermectin is pretty well useless, as far as we know.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,793
    Cyclefree said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    I know that Johnson wants to stop using the phrase "special relationship" (and hats off to him, it's probably the first thing he's ever said that I agree with) but still, giving someone a picture that you printed off Wikipedia is a fairly blunt way of demonstrating that the relationship is no longer as special as it used to be.
    Why the need to give gifts at all?

    Seems quite unnecessary.
    That's you off my Christmas list.
    (I agree with you BTW, I hate both giving and receiving gifts, especially the latter).
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    Almost all of any given AONB is developed farmland.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
    My understanding of the purpose of the green belt is to prevent urban sprawl. As such, the green belt is around a number of cities and towns in the UK. It is not necessarily the best countryside, but just the countryside immediately next to an urban centre.
    And with a growing population urban sprawl is a good thing. People need somewhere to live and work.

    The only rational alternative to urban sprawl is enforced deportations to bring population back down. That is of course rightly repugnant.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    Almost all of any given AONB is developed farmland.
    As I said, protect the legitimate AONB.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
    My understanding of the purpose of the green belt is to prevent urban sprawl. As such, the green belt is around a number of cities and towns in the UK. It is not necessarily the best countryside, but just the countryside immediately next to an urban centre.
    And with a growing population urban sprawl is a good thing. People need somewhere to live and work.

    The only rational alternative to urban sprawl is enforced deportations to bring population back down. That is of course rightly repugnant.
    Have you seen Soylent Green?
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,052
    ping said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    If it's really a $6k bike I think Boris won't be able to keep it either unless he buys it.

    There was a very good Yes Minister once that turned on this point.
    It’ll be worth more than $6k if he later sells it, so he’d be smart to buy it.
    Everybody says he's not very good with money though.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    As someone said above, you are a price of everything, value of nothing “economist”.

    There might be technocratic arguments about how well the green belt works etc, but you aren’t interested.

    That there are some (but not me!) who profit materially from its maintenance does not actually invalidate it.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,192
    kinabalu said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    , Brexit becomes a settled issue, move on.

    This is absolutely the last thing the tories want. They are going to be fighting the next GE on a Labour Will Betray Brexit platform so they cannot let it recede in the national consciousness.
    It's with a certain resigned sadness that I have to agree. The government has no incentive to reach pragmatic solutions with the EU on anything. Far better for them to foster an adversarial relationship. Eg this current nonsense of pretending they didn't realize the impact of the NI protocol. What a load of utterly palpable shit. But it's only obvious to geeks like us who follow things in detail. Most people don't and Johnson & Co know this. They also know that as the row develops they can rely on a rousing "Boris battles for the British banger" narrative from our godawful press. A narrative which will be lapped up by the folks who delivered his landslide and who, as long as they stay firm, will make him incredibly hard to shift.

    Really hate writing posts like this. I want to be jaunty. I want to see the sun not the clouds.
    Yes Minister, and the Great British Sausage, has much to answer for.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited June 2021

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state’s refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,192
    Cyclefree said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    I know that Johnson wants to stop using the phrase "special relationship" (and hats off to him, it's probably the first thing he's ever said that I agree with) but still, giving someone a picture that you printed off Wikipedia is a fairly blunt way of demonstrating that the relationship is no longer as special as it used to be.
    Why the need to give gifts at all?

    Seems quite unnecessary.
    It's a tradition as old as civilisation, and therefore quite hard to shrug off.
    However naff.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
    My understanding of the purpose of the green belt is to prevent urban sprawl. As such, the green belt is around a number of cities and towns in the UK. It is not necessarily the best countryside, but just the countryside immediately next to an urban centre.
    And with a growing population urban sprawl is a good thing. People need somewhere to live and work.

    The only rational alternative to urban sprawl is enforced deportations to bring population back down. That is of course rightly repugnant.
    Have you seen Soylent Green?
    LOL! That's another alternative! :grin:

    Set next year.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,080
    isam said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
    I think one PR approach the government should use, and which is true, is vaccination isn't really about you personally, it is about everybody, all your loved ones.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,192
    edited June 2021
    Ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.21.21257595v2
    ...Methods Published and preprint randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing IVM effects on COVID-19 adult patients were searched until March 15, 2021 in five engines. Primary outcomes were all-cause mortality, length of stay (LOS), and adverse events (AE). Secondary outcomes included viral clearance and severe AEs. We evaluated risk of bias (RoB) using the Cochrane RoB 2·0 tool. Inverse variance random effect meta-analyses were performed with quality of evidence (QoE) evaluated using GRADE methodology. Subgroup analyses by severity of disease and RoB, and sensitivity analyses by time of follow-up were conducted.

    Results Ten RCTs (n=1173) were included. Controls were standard of care [SOC] in five RCTs and placebo in five RCTs. RCTs sample size ranged from 24 to 398 patients, mean age from 26 to 56 years-old, and severity of COVID-19 disease was mild in 8 RCTs, moderate in one RCT, and mild and moderate in one RCT. IVM did not reduce all-cause mortality vs. controls (RR 0.37, 95%CI 0.12 to 1.13, very low QoE). IVM did not reduce LOS vs. controls (MD 0.72 days, 95%CI -0.86 to 2.29, very low QoE). AEs, severe AE and viral clearance were similar between IVM and controls (low QoE for these three outcomes). Subgroups by severity of COVID-19 or RoB were mostly consistent with main analyses; all-cause mortality in three RCTs at high RoB was reduced with IVM. Sensitivity analyses excluding RCTs with follow up < 21 days showed no difference in all-cause mortality.

    Conclusions In comparison to SOC or placebo, IVM did not reduce all-cause mortality, length of stay or viral clearance in RCTs in COVID-19 patients with mostly mild disease. IVM did not have effect on AEs or SAEs. IVM is not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    As someone said above, you are a price of everything, value of nothing “economist”.

    There might be technocratic arguments about how well the green belt works etc, but you aren’t interested.

    That there are some (but not me!) who profit materially from its maintenance does not actually invalidate it.
    Except that's not true. As I've said for legitimate AONB, forests etc, etc, etc I support maintaining protection over them.

    The green belt as a tool to be exploited for nefarious other reasons though is not justified.

    What is wrong with that?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,761
    Leon said:

    Interesting stat buried in The Times. In his recent Commons appearance Health Sec Hancock said he was warned on January 27 2020 that a reasonable worst case scenario for covid was ‘827,000 UK deaths’

    That’s the REASONABLE worst case scenario

    I remember when *someone* on here was much mocked for his hysterical knicker-wetting, for saying an EXTREME worst case scenario would be 1-2m UK dead

    Ahem.

    The warning came from a Ferguson/UCL model I suspect.

    So take a cheshire cave full of salt before ingesting.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,375

    Scott_xP said:

    DUP implosion continues as Emma Little Pengelly steps away from the party joining a stream of others in the wake of the putsch https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/emma-little-pengelly-stepping-away-from-dup-deeply-saddened-over-tensions-in-party-40524630.html

    The next Assembly elections, which I think need to take place on or before 5 May 2022, will be interesting.
    I think one could see the UUP overhaul the DUP, gaining more moderate DUP voters, and some votes back from Alliance, form unionists unhappy with their wokeness.
  • ChameleonChameleon Posts: 4,264

    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
    My understanding of the purpose of the green belt is to prevent urban sprawl. As such, the green belt is around a number of cities and towns in the UK. It is not necessarily the best countryside, but just the countryside immediately next to an urban centre.
    And with a growing population urban sprawl is a good thing. People need somewhere to live and work.

    The only rational alternative to urban sprawl is enforced deportations to bring population back down. That is of course rightly repugnant.
    Or we can kick our low density housing addiction.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Jersey has simplified its travel/testing requirements for arrivals from the UK - the "Amber" criterion has gone and areas are either Red or Green:


  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,348
    isam said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state’s refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
    The number of anti-vaxxers is smaller than their friends hope.

    Unless they are all under 49, or something.....

    Age Band First Second
    Under 30 21.64% 11.96%
    30-34 47.06% 16.91%
    35-39 60.23% 20.20%
    40-44 71.50% 26.61%
    45-49 78.66% 36.04%
    50-54 84.73% 62.87%
    55-59 87.60% 69.82%
    60-64 89.80% 81.57%
    65-69 91.93% 88.28%
    70-74 94.25% 92.21%
    75-79 95.26% 93.38%
    80 plus 95.00% 92.26%
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Chameleon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
    My understanding of the purpose of the green belt is to prevent urban sprawl. As such, the green belt is around a number of cities and towns in the UK. It is not necessarily the best countryside, but just the countryside immediately next to an urban centre.
    And with a growing population urban sprawl is a good thing. People need somewhere to live and work.

    The only rational alternative to urban sprawl is enforced deportations to bring population back down. That is of course rightly repugnant.
    Or we can kick our low density housing addiction.
    We have too much high density housing, not the other way around.

    I'm curious how many people here opposing liberalising construction live in high density flats themselves?
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 8,298
    Sandpit said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Leaving aside the content (which I on balance disagree with), I'm struck by how fluent she is - barely glancing at her notes, she flows in a way she never did as PM. If she was a new backbencher she'd be earmarked for promotion...

    It's noticeable on my local social media (which is full of Tories) that people are fine with most aspects of the current semi-lockdown except for the confusing travel policy. The amber list baffles everyone and the formal definition as being for emergencies has been totally lost.

    A one-month delay to get to 80/60 (1st/2nd) vaccination of adults with some tweaks for weddings etc. seems to me a reasonable line that most people would accept.

    One question is whether a 1 month delay in lifting restrictions is enough?

    Arguably we are already going in the wrong direction & so logically may need to reintroduce some restrictions... but interestingly that doesn't seem to be talked about as a potential option. The 17 May opening up was surely a more dramatic increase to R than whatever additional lifting of restrictions will happen later?

    I'm hoping that's because there's an obvious reason why it's not needed that I'm missing... and not that people are just unwilling to confront the reality of the situation.

    Why would you add more restrictions, when the numbers in hospital are small and not growing at a massive rate?

    We need to move away from raw case numbers, and look at numbers of people who are getting sick.
    If you accept things are going in the wrong direction fast... then just delaying making things worse... doesn't seem to be enough?

    You clearly don't think things are going in the wrong direction fast... time will tell I guess.
  • rural_voterrural_voter Posts: 2,038

    COVID Saga

    Part 7,328 ...

    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/cdc-hold-emergency-meeting-after-100s-suffer-heart-inflammation-following-covid-vaccines

    No-one who has had COVID, with or without symptoms, should be vaccinated. They're immune. Some who haven't had it are also immune. The others probably could benefit, especially if they are either over 70 and/or in very poor health. (The poor health matters more.)

    Anyone who slips through the net should be prescribed Ivermectin, HCQ or other effective medicines, at a cost to the NHS of c. 10 p to £1.

    But it's not about the health of the little people ... so this rational, evidence- and risk-based approach was discarded 18 months ago.

    Sorry but that is scientifically wrong. Studies show that having Covid does give some level of immunity but often for a limited period. It does not give anything like the level of antibody response that two doses of the vaccine do.

    Myocarditis and pericarditis are serious conditions so this should be looked at seriously, but this is not the scare story you are inferring. are you anti-vaxxer?
    No, I'm in favour of scientific experiments and free debate ... which shut down esp. in the UK in March 2020 so that practising doctors who dissent are threatened with disciplinary action or the sack. There isn't such a thing as 'the science', it appears to be code for a new religion and dissenters are punished.

    Listen to experts like Dr. John Lee, a retired professor of pathology.

    Read a wider range of websites and try some of the non-MSM.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    '' It is almost as though they enjoy all the powers they have over us''

    Wow. About a year later than me, but welcome, nevertheless.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,080
    The over anlysis of a gift or a fleeting moment between Biden and Boris....the big thing that is clear is grown ups are now back in charge of the levers of power in the US, which means stuff gets organized in the months leading up to these big conferences and everybody knows sleepy joe is a professional politician who understands this process and isn't going to take his bat and ball home because he gets served the wrong sparkling water and stomp off on AirForce 1 ripping up all the primilary work.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 17,208
    Leon said:

    Interesting stat buried in The Times. In his recent Commons appearance Health Sec Hancock said he was warned on January 27 2020 that a reasonable worst case scenario for covid was ‘827,000 UK deaths’

    That’s the REASONABLE worst case scenario

    I remember when *someone* on here was much mocked for his hysterical knicker-wetting, for saying an EXTREME worst case scenario would be 1-2m UK dead

    Ahem.

    It's the probability of it happening that is reasonable rather than the scenario itself. I think plausible worst case scenario is a better way of putting it.

    I would also say 800 000 deaths is on the high side but it was that order of magnitude. That the deaths were "only" 100 000 or so is due to the various measures that government and individuals took to limit infections.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,378
    AlistairM said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506



    The stupid fat fuck is never going to figure out that eTap Force rear mech. Plenty of flegs though, he'll like that.

    Also, canti brakes = junk.

    Also, also. Square taper bottom bracket. Get to fuck.
    If that is the actual bike then it will never be used. It will end up in a museum somewhere.
    Boris hasn't got the six grand to pay for it, even if he wanted it.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    isam said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
    I think one PR approach the government should use, and which is true, is vaccination isn't really about you personally, it is about everybody, all your loved ones.
    Not sure I’d force u25s to have the jab though. At what age does double jabbed oldie = unjabbed youth in terms of lack of damage if you did get Covid? Surely the u25s can try for herd immunity by all catching it if they like? It’s not going to overwhelm the NHS and they probably won’t get that ill
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    As someone said above, you are a price of everything, value of nothing “economist”.

    There might be technocratic arguments about how well the green belt works etc, but you aren’t interested.

    That there are some (but not me!) who profit materially from its maintenance does not actually invalidate it.
    Except that's not true. As I've said for legitimate AONB, forests etc, etc, etc I support maintaining protection over them.

    The green belt as a tool to be exploited for nefarious other reasons though is not justified.

    What is wrong with that?
    Well you are just reduced to logical redundancies here. Nobody is going to agree with “nefarious reasons” whatever those are.

    As to your concrete proposals, they don’t actually protect the outskirts of metros (ie prevent urban sprawl). So it’s not a green belt at all.

    It’s fine, just say you are in favour of urban sprawl (which has environmental as well as aesthetic costs) but don’t pretend the whole thing is a rort.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,348
    Fishing said:

    ping said:

    Fishing said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    If it's really a $6k bike I think Boris won't be able to keep it either unless he buys it.

    There was a very good Yes Minister once that turned on this point.
    It’ll be worth more than $6k if he later sells it, so he’d be smart to buy it.
    Everybody says he's not very good with money though.
    In addition, I believe that if you buy the gift, it has to assessed at a fair price.

    Any such assessment would have to include the context of the gift, which would probably (as you say) create an inflated future value.

    For some reason that reminds me of the Rowan Atkinson story - he discovered that he could buy super cars, crash them (he seems to have bad luck with his driving), get them repaired multiple times, then sell them at a big profit, as owned by R.A.....
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,201

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    By July 20th it is.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,689
    It sounds like the Commission is afraid of losing the sausage PR war:

    @tconnellyRTE
    The UK is widely expected to unilaterally extend a grace period, agreed with the EU in December, which delays the ban on chilled meats entering Northern Ireland from GB, and which expires on July 1.

    However, it’s understood the EU’s main interlocutor @MarosSefcovic has advised member states the EU should avoid immediately responding with hard-hitting legal action, or even to retaliate by introducing tariffs or other measures through the Trade and Cooperation Agreement


    https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1403289735255183363
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    Chameleon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.

    The state interfering in the market to inflate prices is illiberal economics pure and simple.
    "Nothing to do with protecting the countryside" is just nonsense. You can have an argument about the conflict between two conflicting goods - nice countryside Vs decent housing - but just denying the existence or validity of one good makes you sound petulant and silly. I would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I could just build houses where I wanted. I am very glad I can't.
    No you wouldn't because if everyone could build houses where they wanted the market would find an equilibrium.

    People act as if a liberal construction system would mean houses built everywhere but that's patently nonsense - since if houses were built everywhere then they couldn't be sold.

    The countryside would still exist even without a green belt, or with the green belt originally introduced working as intended, instead of inflating it arbitrarily because you want to profit on other's suffering by inflating your asset prices.
    My understanding of the purpose of the green belt is to prevent urban sprawl. As such, the green belt is around a number of cities and towns in the UK. It is not necessarily the best countryside, but just the countryside immediately next to an urban centre.
    And with a growing population urban sprawl is a good thing. People need somewhere to live and work.

    The only rational alternative to urban sprawl is enforced deportations to bring population back down. That is of course rightly repugnant.
    Or we can kick our low density housing addiction.
    As I say every time this argument comes up.
    I live in London Zone 1 borders. Manhattan it ain’t!
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,080
    edited June 2021
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
    I think one PR approach the government should use, and which is true, is vaccination isn't really about you personally, it is about everybody, all your loved ones.
    Not sure I’d force u25s to have the jab though. At what age does double jabbed oldie = unjabbed youth in terms of lack of damage if you did get Covid? Surely the u25s can try for herd immunity by all catching it if they like? It’s not going to overwhelm the NHS and they probably won’t get that ill
    Well a) looks like Indian variant is more severe, b) taking such approach increaes chance of new mutant variant, c) vaccines are 80-90% effective, so it being rife among 20 year olds, will lead to lots of their parents getting it.

    The best approach is to stamp it out as best we can.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    isam said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state’s refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
    The number of anti-vaxxers is smaller than their friends hope.

    Unless they are all under 49, or something.....

    Age Band First Second
    Under 30 21.64% 11.96%
    30-34 47.06% 16.91%
    35-39 60.23% 20.20%
    40-44 71.50% 26.61%
    45-49 78.66% 36.04%
    50-54 84.73% 62.87%
    55-59 87.60% 69.82%
    60-64 89.80% 81.57%
    65-69 91.93% 88.28%
    70-74 94.25% 92.21%
    75-79 95.26% 93.38%
    80 plus 95.00% 92.26%
    I wonder who is more in danger of bad outcomes from catching Covid now, the average pensioner or the average 40 year old?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,080
    Great batting from Mark Wood.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    As someone said above, you are a price of everything, value of nothing “economist”.

    There might be technocratic arguments about how well the green belt works etc, but you aren’t interested.

    That there are some (but not me!) who profit materially from its maintenance does not actually invalidate it.
    Except that's not true. As I've said for legitimate AONB, forests etc, etc, etc I support maintaining protection over them.

    The green belt as a tool to be exploited for nefarious other reasons though is not justified.

    What is wrong with that?
    Well you are just reduced to logical redundancies here. Nobody is going to agree with “nefarious reasons” whatever those are.

    As to your concrete proposals, they don’t actually protect the outskirts of metros (ie prevent urban sprawl). So it’s not a green belt at all.

    It’s fine, just say you are in favour of urban sprawl (which has environmental as well as aesthetic costs) but don’t pretend the whole thing is a rort.
    I literally said I am in favour of urban sprawl already. Sprawl is better than cramming ever more people into impoverished slums.

    There aren't environmental costs. The solution to the environment is net zero technologies, not getting decision makers living in high price, low density housing telling others to live in high density slums.

    The whole thing is a rort if the reason behind it is to inflate house prices - and if the reason is to inflate house prices then that is nefarious plain and simple.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,346
    Pulpstar said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    IanB2 said:

    Even having called it "freedom day" doesn't look such a bright move by our PM, now, does it?

    Never mind, big wedding celebrations will be allowed, even on days beyond the official ceremony. I wonder why....
    I wonder if “renewing vows” is covered by wedding ceremonies. The concept of police going into large parties and having to determine whether it is or is not a wedding reception, as if somehow this matters, just shows the rabbit hole we’re going down.

    Yesterday I read that the current hospitalisation “hotspot” (however debased that phrase is at the moment) is the West Midlands. Where there is a test match going on with capacity crowds, apparently with no COVID precautions in place at all.
    Dont they need a test before they go to the test? They do for the football, pretty sure it is the same rules so definitely some precautions.

    Sporting events are very eye catching but you are talking about 14,000 outdoors in quite a big area. The tube carries 600,000-700,000 in a cramped poorly ventilated indoor space.
    Seems to be that just makes my argument stronger. The Govt is vacillating about allowing this or that relaxation, when there are far more dangerous activities going on every day. I mean there are still distinctions in Scotland between whether there are two or three household in a group of six ffs!
    Are you allowed a beer in a pub up there now :D ?
    YES
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,429
    rkrkrk said:

    Sandpit said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Leaving aside the content (which I on balance disagree with), I'm struck by how fluent she is - barely glancing at her notes, she flows in a way she never did as PM. If she was a new backbencher she'd be earmarked for promotion...

    It's noticeable on my local social media (which is full of Tories) that people are fine with most aspects of the current semi-lockdown except for the confusing travel policy. The amber list baffles everyone and the formal definition as being for emergencies has been totally lost.

    A one-month delay to get to 80/60 (1st/2nd) vaccination of adults with some tweaks for weddings etc. seems to me a reasonable line that most people would accept.

    One question is whether a 1 month delay in lifting restrictions is enough?

    Arguably we are already going in the wrong direction & so logically may need to reintroduce some restrictions... but interestingly that doesn't seem to be talked about as a potential option. The 17 May opening up was surely a more dramatic increase to R than whatever additional lifting of restrictions will happen later?

    I'm hoping that's because there's an obvious reason why it's not needed that I'm missing... and not that people are just unwilling to confront the reality of the situation.

    Why would you add more restrictions, when the numbers in hospital are small and not growing at a massive rate?

    We need to move away from raw case numbers, and look at numbers of people who are getting sick.
    If you accept things are going in the wrong direction fast... then just delaying making things worse... doesn't seem to be enough?

    You clearly don't think things are going in the wrong direction fast... time will tell I guess.
    Many would ignore a fourth lockdown. I would. I’d probably leave the country

    Just delaying final unlockdown will be wildly unpopular with some. Reimposing restrictions would cross a line. Expect mass civil disobedience especially from the young, and the double vaccinated
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,348
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state’s refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
    The number of anti-vaxxers is smaller than their friends hope.

    Unless they are all under 49, or something.....

    Age Band First Second
    Under 30 21.64% 11.96%
    30-34 47.06% 16.91%
    35-39 60.23% 20.20%
    40-44 71.50% 26.61%
    45-49 78.66% 36.04%
    50-54 84.73% 62.87%
    55-59 87.60% 69.82%
    60-64 89.80% 81.57%
    65-69 91.93% 88.28%
    70-74 94.25% 92.21%
    75-79 95.26% 93.38%
    80 plus 95.00% 92.26%
    I wonder who is more in danger of bad outcomes from catching Covid now, the average pensioner or the average 40 year old?
    Well, we do have this -

    image
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,080
    edited June 2021
    Government have admitted that vaccine roll out has been slowed because not using AZN, but JVCI said AZN should only be sidelined if it DIDN'T slow this down....

    Get on the f##king phone to Sid at the warehouse and start distributiing it. We could be doing mass vaccinations all weekend at stadia across the country to anybody who wants one.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,761
    Leading indie SAGE view on new PHE data - thread just in.


    Deepti Gurdasani
    @dgurdasani1
    ·
    3m
    PHE report on variants just out. Highlights:
    ->90% of cases across England now delta
    -delta ~66% more transmissible
    -Most cases are in school age children
    -30% deaths were among fully vaccinated and 17% in partly vaccinated
    -cases of delta sublineage with K417N mutation

    https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1403293632749264903
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,201
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state’s refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
    The number of anti-vaxxers is smaller than their friends hope.

    Unless they are all under 49, or something.....

    Age Band First Second
    Under 30 21.64% 11.96%
    30-34 47.06% 16.91%
    35-39 60.23% 20.20%
    40-44 71.50% 26.61%
    45-49 78.66% 36.04%
    50-54 84.73% 62.87%
    55-59 87.60% 69.82%
    60-64 89.80% 81.57%
    65-69 91.93% 88.28%
    70-74 94.25% 92.21%
    75-79 95.26% 93.38%
    80 plus 95.00% 92.26%
    I wonder who is more in danger of bad outcomes from catching Covid now, the average pensioner or the average 40 year old?
    Vaccination probably drops your risk level about 30 years ?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,176

    Great batting from Mark Wood.

    As you always say, good job we bat deep.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,902
    The gifts story is meh. As someone who has a major problem judging what gifts are appropriate I have absolute sympathy for anyone whose genuine attempt has been found lacking and then ridiculed in the national media.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    It sounds like the Commission is afraid of losing the sausage PR war:

    @tconnellyRTE
    The UK is widely expected to unilaterally extend a grace period, agreed with the EU in December, which delays the ban on chilled meats entering Northern Ireland from GB, and which expires on July 1.

    However, it’s understood the EU’s main interlocutor @MarosSefcovic has advised member states the EU should avoid immediately responding with hard-hitting legal action, or even to retaliate by introducing tariffs or other measures through the Trade and Cooperation Agreement


    https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1403289735255183363

    Considering that the EU was firmly saying only a few days ago they would, it seems to me the EU have already lost the sausage PR war.

    Well done Boris. Time for all sides now to come up with a workable compromise that results in no border between GB and NI, and no border between NI and Eire, and leaves GB out of the EU's regulatory orbit. Compromise was only ever going to be the logcal endgame.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    As someone said above, you are a price of everything, value of nothing “economist”.

    There might be technocratic arguments about how well the green belt works etc, but you aren’t interested.

    That there are some (but not me!) who profit materially from its maintenance does not actually invalidate it.
    Except that's not true. As I've said for legitimate AONB, forests etc, etc, etc I support maintaining protection over them.

    The green belt as a tool to be exploited for nefarious other reasons though is not justified.

    What is wrong with that?
    Well you are just reduced to logical redundancies here. Nobody is going to agree with “nefarious reasons” whatever those are.

    As to your concrete proposals, they don’t actually protect the outskirts of metros (ie prevent urban sprawl). So it’s not a green belt at all.

    It’s fine, just say you are in favour of urban sprawl (which has environmental as well as aesthetic costs) but don’t pretend the whole thing is a rort.
    I literally said I am in favour of urban sprawl already. Sprawl is better than cramming ever more people into impoverished slums.

    There aren't environmental costs. The solution to the environment is net zero technologies, not getting decision makers living in high price, low density housing telling others to live in high density slums.

    The whole thing is a rort if the reason behind it is to inflate house prices - and if the reason is to inflate house prices then that is nefarious plain and simple.
    You support this government who delight in various schemes expressly designed to inflate house prices.

    Urban sprawl has almost no supporters, because it imposes collective costs - environmental, congestion, and likely psychological - on everyone.

    As for high density slums, are Notting Hill or South Ken slums? They are both high density, certainly for this country.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,346
    Charles said:

    IanB2 said:

    Even having called it "freedom day" doesn't look such a bright move by our PM, now, does it?

    As always its tactically brilliant (mega headlines) and strategically stupid.

    The biggest example of which is playing out at the G7. No, we can't sign a deal for headlines and then renege on it months later. For some unknown reason our friends and future trade deal partners think this behaviour isn't conducive to trust and have told us so clearly.

    As for the comments in the Commons yesterday what is funniest of all is that the former leader of the Tory Party and Prime Minister is a far better leader of the opposition than sirkeir.
    The purpose of the protocol was to preserve peace in Northern Ireland

    Its implementation appears to be putting that under serious strain

    So it is reasonable to say “is there a better way”

    Fetishising “The Deal” is a huge mistake.
    The chuckle brothers were told that at the time but they insisted it was perfect and there would be no checking etc even though they signed up to checking. Only dumb and his dumber negotiator to blame, they deserve the humiliation they are about to get when Biden orders them to get on with it.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,080
    edited June 2021

    Leading indie SAGE view on new PHE data - thread just in.


    Deepti Gurdasani
    @dgurdasani1
    ·
    3m
    PHE report on variants just out. Highlights:
    ->90% of cases across England now delta
    -delta ~66% more transmissible
    -Most cases are in school age children
    -30% deaths were among fully vaccinated and 17% in partly vaccinated
    -cases of delta sublineage with K417N mutation

    https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1403293632749264903

    The death stat is deliberately misleading, it is tiny numbers / sample size.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,201

    Leading indie SAGE view on new PHE data - thread just in.


    Deepti Gurdasani
    @dgurdasani1
    ·
    3m
    PHE report on variants just out. Highlights:
    ->90% of cases across England now delta
    -delta ~66% more transmissible
    -Most cases are in school age children
    -30% deaths were among fully vaccinated and 17% in partly vaccinated
    -cases of delta sublineage with K417N mutation

    https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1403293632749264903

    "30% deaths were among fully vaccinated" given the age skew of vaccination that's amazing.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,689

    It sounds like the Commission is afraid of losing the sausage PR war:

    @tconnellyRTE
    The UK is widely expected to unilaterally extend a grace period, agreed with the EU in December, which delays the ban on chilled meats entering Northern Ireland from GB, and which expires on July 1.

    However, it’s understood the EU’s main interlocutor @MarosSefcovic has advised member states the EU should avoid immediately responding with hard-hitting legal action, or even to retaliate by introducing tariffs or other measures through the Trade and Cooperation Agreement


    https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1403289735255183363

    Considering that the EU was firmly saying only a few days ago they would, it seems to me the EU have already lost the sausage PR war.

    Well done Boris. Time for all sides now to come up with a workable compromise that results in no border between GB and NI, and no border between NI and Eire, and leaves GB out of the EU's regulatory orbit. Compromise was only ever going to be the logcal endgame.
    Ursula von der Leyen could always make it worse for them by banging on about it to Joe Biden.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Great batting from Mark Wood.

    You had to say it!
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,080
    edited June 2021
    I'm sorry lads...I've f##ked that right up didn'tt I...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,348
    edited June 2021

    Leading indie SAGE view on new PHE data - thread just in.


    Deepti Gurdasani
    @dgurdasani1
    ·
    3m
    PHE report on variants just out. Highlights:
    ->90% of cases across England now delta
    -delta ~66% more transmissible
    -Most cases are in school age children
    -30% deaths were among fully vaccinated and 17% in partly vaccinated
    -cases of delta sublineage with K417N mutation

    https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1403293632749264903

    The death stat is deliberately misleading, it is tiny numbers / sample size.
    Yup. Also 5-14 the cases are stable/dropping a bit. It's quite interesting, since all the other age groups are going up (or not going up) in proportion to the vaccination level in that group.

    image
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    As someone said above, you are a price of everything, value of nothing “economist”.

    There might be technocratic arguments about how well the green belt works etc, but you aren’t interested.

    That there are some (but not me!) who profit materially from its maintenance does not actually invalidate it.
    Except that's not true. As I've said for legitimate AONB, forests etc, etc, etc I support maintaining protection over them.

    The green belt as a tool to be exploited for nefarious other reasons though is not justified.

    What is wrong with that?
    Well you are just reduced to logical redundancies here. Nobody is going to agree with “nefarious reasons” whatever those are.

    As to your concrete proposals, they don’t actually protect the outskirts of metros (ie prevent urban sprawl). So it’s not a green belt at all.

    It’s fine, just say you are in favour of urban sprawl (which has environmental as well as aesthetic costs) but don’t pretend the whole thing is a rort.
    I literally said I am in favour of urban sprawl already. Sprawl is better than cramming ever more people into impoverished slums.

    There aren't environmental costs. The solution to the environment is net zero technologies, not getting decision makers living in high price, low density housing telling others to live in high density slums.

    The whole thing is a rort if the reason behind it is to inflate house prices - and if the reason is to inflate house prices then that is nefarious plain and simple.
    You support this government who delight in various schemes expressly designed to inflate house prices.

    Urban sprawl has almost no supporters, because it imposes collective costs - environmental, congestion, and likely psychological - on everyone.

    As for high density slums, are Notting Hill or South Ken slums? They are both high density, certainly for this country.
    I don't support everything this government does. Where I disagree with it, I say so.

    Urban sprawl works and it lowers congestion. Congestion is worse by cramming too many people into too limited a space.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    The lateral flow COVID tests we have to do every day at the #G7 summit are “Made in China”.

    Western powers still need a bit of help from the East.


    https://twitter.com/jackeparrock/status/1403283318318243843?s=20
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    isam said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    PHE says despite Delta Covid cases rising from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, it's "encouraging" to see this "not yet accompanied by a similarly large increase in hospitalisations".
    https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1403275691777474560

    Indeed. What does it matter if people notionally have a positive test but aren't sick with it? Many will be perfectly healthy schoolchildren who would be none the wiser had they not been tested. Similarly you will have a large group who are vaxxed and fail a LFT but are not sick.

    We need to get over this 'cases' thing asap.
    Have they never heard of the 7-10 day lag time between case numbers and hospitalisation?

    Not that I'm saying PHE are wrong but they are probably a week early in their comments.
    1) Cases more than doubled between 17th May and 2nd June
    2) We are not seeing a matching take off in hospitalisations.
    The problem we have is that if this delta variant is that infectious, then lifting restrictions on the 21st is going to turbo charge it, everyone who hasn’t been vaccinated / previously infected with Covid is going to get infected & then infections from the younger populiation (who mostly don’t end up in hospital) will spread into the corners of the older population who for whatever reasons have not been vaccinated.

    Enormous pain to model these risks though. Hospitalisations could stay low for a while, we open up & then three weeks later: boom.

    Get those jabs done people!
    Where do you expect the boom in hospitalisations to come from?

    The young? The antivaxxers?
    The currently un-vaccinated older cohort who will pick it up from the mass-infections of the young. You’d have to do the detailed modelling based on current vaccination rates though.

    (But the higher hospitalisation rates for Delta might mean more younger patients too - PHE is saying that we’re not seeing that here yet, which is good, but also surprisingly at odds with reports from elsewhere. I wonder what’s driving the difference?)
    "the currently un-vaccinated older cohort"

    AKA antivaxxers?
    It would be quite something if it were the action/inaction of the anti vaxxers, who I presume to be anti lockdown, that led to us not being allowed the freedom we were promised. In other words, their policy of wanting to take responsibility for their own health rather than the nanny state interfere, has led to the state’s refusal to open up.

    Bit like hard line Brexiteers refusing to vote for Mays deal. Can’t imagine the anti vaxxers will win though
    Did you see that clip of the old “Health Concern” ex-MP saying that the risk to anti-vaxxed meant in his view that we would have to lockdown under finitely/forever?
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    Philip T says he is a liberal but he is in fact a Tory-supporting libertarian.

    Restriction on green belt building is simply about avoiding a “tragedy of the commons” which threatens to spoil the countryside for everyone.

    There’s nothing inherently illiberal about it.

    Maybe the greenbelt that was originally introduced, though it should have been shrunk with our increasing population since then.

    Instead the greenbelt was expanded dramatically in the decades that followed and it has nothing to do with protecting the countryside and is everything to do with inflating house prices instead.
    Perhaps...it both protects the countryside *and* inflates house prices? There is certainly a cost, but you ignore the benefit, ie the raison d’etre.
    Because I don't believe its the raison d'etre. I believe it is an excuse peddled to protect house prices because people believe inflating house prices is a good thing for themselves. There is a reason when the green belt was originally introduced to protect the countryside it was a fraction of its current size.

    The green belt has been abused in a way that is unjustifiable. Its no different in its economic illiberalism to trade unions in the seventies and other issues in the past. Start off with a decent concept, find out you can profit from it, then abuse it.

    If you believe as I do in liberal market economics then the green belt should solely serve the purpose of protecting the countryside, not house prices. I would protect forests and areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, etc, etc - but developed farmland etc should be no different to brownfield sites.
    As someone said above, you are a price of everything, value of nothing “economist”.

    There might be technocratic arguments about how well the green belt works etc, but you aren’t interested.

    That there are some (but not me!) who profit materially from its maintenance does not actually invalidate it.
    Except that's not true. As I've said for legitimate AONB, forests etc, etc, etc I support maintaining protection over them.

    The green belt as a tool to be exploited for nefarious other reasons though is not justified.

    What is wrong with that?
    Well you are just reduced to logical redundancies here. Nobody is going to agree with “nefarious reasons” whatever those are.

    As to your concrete proposals, they don’t actually protect the outskirts of metros (ie prevent urban sprawl). So it’s not a green belt at all.

    It’s fine, just say you are in favour of urban sprawl (which has environmental as well as aesthetic costs) but don’t pretend the whole thing is a rort.
    I literally said I am in favour of urban sprawl already. Sprawl is better than cramming ever more people into impoverished slums.

    There aren't environmental costs. The solution to the environment is net zero technologies, not getting decision makers living in high price, low density housing telling others to live in high density slums.

    The whole thing is a rort if the reason behind it is to inflate house prices - and if the reason is to inflate house prices then that is nefarious plain and simple.
    You support this government who delight in various schemes expressly designed to inflate house prices.

    Urban sprawl has almost no supporters, because it imposes collective costs - environmental, congestion, and likely psychological - on everyone.

    As for high density slums, are Notting Hill or South Ken slums? They are both high density, certainly for this country.
    I don't support everything this government does. Where I disagree with it, I say so.

    Urban sprawl works and it lowers congestion. Congestion is worse by cramming too many people into too limited a space.
    The entire urban planning profession disagrees with you.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,595
    Cyclefree said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Boris Johnson gave Biden a framed photograph of a mural of Frederick Douglass yesterday. So far so thoughtful.

    Except... the Foreign Office found the free-to-use pic on the *Wikipedia page* for Douglass and then had it printed.

    Biden, meanwhile, gave PM a $6k custom-made bike.

    https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1403257157362069506

    Doesn't American law put a very tight monetary restriction on gifts? I recall something like that from the West Wing. It means that the American President isn't allowed to accept expensive gifts and if they're given they end up in storage.

    A framed photo print of an anti-slavery mural is probably something the President can actually accept and appreciate.
    I know that Johnson wants to stop using the phrase "special relationship" (and hats off to him, it's probably the first thing he's ever said that I agree with) but still, giving someone a picture that you printed off Wikipedia is a fairly blunt way of demonstrating that the relationship is no longer as special as it used to be.
    Why the need to give gifts at all?

    Seems quite unnecessary.
    Old-fashioned diplomatic protocol. There will be small team at the foreign office or DCMS, who have the job of buying gifts for visiting dignitaries and travelling diplomats / politicians / royals.
This discussion has been closed.