You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
My daughter have read them and a large range of other things including the most woke stuff you could imagine. The important thing is the range of what they read. They are perfectly able to see stereotypes and comment on them... The
Interestingly, alot of middle class children have now read Blyton et al - because the rights are cheap, you can get boxed sets of the paper backs of various authors dirt cheap. So a fashion started for putting books in the gift bags that the kids get at their invite-the-whole-class birthday. Buy a set and split it up. The children do a swap thing afterwards, for the ones they've already read.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Good point. That’s how we ended up with Meghan.
Nah, Meghan/Harry is reverse-Rapunzel. She came to us from a foreign land to save our poor imprisoned prince; whisking him away from the evil ones.
I must admit growing up in the 90s I did find the Secret Seven and Famous Five at times hard to read.
Not because of any -isms, but because some of the language used and the world it depicts was quite alien to me.
I knew what neither "ginger beer" was nor what a "lashing" was, for example, but also the portrayal of figures like Quentin's complete indifference to his own child, nieces and nephews.
Surprised there is not more discussion about Warwick University slashing its covid forecasts barely 48 hours after its model was used as justification for delaying the unlock.
Funny old world.
We knew this would happen though, the models have been consistently wrong and underplaying vaccine efficacy to get their desired result of getting lockdowns extended.
The lack of data literacy in the government is shocking. It's stuff that we have been talking about for months.
The people producing these models are very bright indeed. They also know if they get it wrong the other way (Unlock, lots of deaths) everyone will come for their head. Boris doesn't want another christmas disaster, so he'd being overcautious now. Wider considerations aren't getting a look in.
What's bizarre is the same abundance of caution isn't applied to border policy where it really should be. Russia should have been on the red list yesterday - has some new variant been brewed up there or is it just delta doing it's thing ?
The path with India was
Surge starts -> New Variant of interest (Delta) -> Investigate -> Variant of concern -> Red list.
Essentially the data models put in the correct vaccine efficacy stats and the models now show a significantly lower death rate and hospitalisation rate.
It's absolutely shocking that this has been allowed to happen. Why weren't they using the best available inputs in the first place?
Thanks. What are the new predictions and do they seem likely?
The original predictions were patently bullshit.
They 3000 peak hospitalisations per day to 1000, mid point of about 33k deaths to around 10k. Some of the assumptions still look completely ridiculous, they're saying that the hospitalisation rate will be 5% of cases but that makes no sense at all. It will be more like 1-3% with the vast majority coming from unvaccinated cohorts.
I'm surprised* that this reverse ferret by Warwick hasn't got more publicity. It is borderline scandalous, because of the timing.
(*actually, I'm not)
If Johnson has any balls he would hold a press conference brandishing the downgraded advice, apologise on their behalf for their advise and proceed with Freedom Day without further delay.
Do you think he's even aware that the infection inflation rate is nosediving? I don't get the impression that he's on top of the numbers...
He's only on top of whatever selective numbers the scientists brief to them. They will always pick the scariest looking ones to get compliance from politicians. We've got a new unelected class of public health wankers using fear to change the nature of society. COVID is the best thing that has happened for them.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Oh bollocks. I read a load of this stuff when I was a girl. I wrote some as well as a child. It made absolutely no difference to my ambitions. What matters is having parents, especially a father, who believe in their daughter and give her the self-confidence to do and try whatever she wants. And fathers who teach their sons how to behave properly.
It is not stories which limit girls' opportunities but what men do and don't do. Focus on that rather than distractions which conveniently excuse men from looking at their own behaviour.
Essentially the data models put in the correct vaccine efficacy stats and the models now show a significantly lower death rate and hospitalisation rate.
It's absolutely shocking that this has been allowed to happen. Why weren't they using the best available inputs in the first place?
Thanks. What are the new predictions and do they seem likely?
The original predictions were patently bullshit.
They 3000 peak hospitalisations per day to 1000, mid point of about 33k deaths to around 10k. Some of the assumptions still look completely ridiculous, they're saying that the hospitalisation rate will be 5% of cases but that makes no sense at all. It will be more like 1-3% with the vast majority coming from unvaccinated cohorts.
I'm surprised* that this reverse ferret by Warwick hasn't got more publicity. It is borderline scandalous, because of the timing.
(*actually, I'm not)
The scandal is politicians making decisions based on modelled data. When Boris said delaying would save thousands of lives that's modelled data and the politicians have just looked at some numbers, assumed they are true and have high predictive value then made the decision. Most data models have got very poor predictive value, if they didn't the people who make them would be making millions in the city.
As always, the politicians, media and scientists are letting the nation down in different ways. The lack of scepticism shown by all three to modelled data is really shocking.
Its the same as those Remainers reacting to Brexit saying "but the models ..." when they have no other arguments left to wield.
Models depend upon your assumptions. Garbage in, garbage out.
Wow that's really poor. I'm really hoping they extend their partnership with Novavax and help them work out the manufacturing issues. If anything the government should be getting them both in a room and suggesting they help each other as Novavax just looks like they're stuck in paperwork and manufacturing woes because they've never had anything close to a vaccine this good before.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
The fact Covid and Brexit both occurred at the same time means it's impossible to look at any trade figures (outside of NI issues) and say which of them caused which issues.
I think that's about right - -10-15% is about what I predicted. Since EU exports were about 12% of our GDP, that implies a loss of about 1% of GDP in the short term, compared to the 8% forecast by the OBR, mainly from this source. It's also consistent with EU studies that show the Single Market is worth about 1% of GDP to member states.
Though a lost of 10% of trade does not automatically mean a loss of 1% of GDP, since EU imports are technically a negative to GDP and imports were much, much higher than imports.
Yes, and there are multiplier effects, dynamic effects and so on.
What is certain is that the 8% estimate of lost GDP from the OBR looks very unlikely.
Also, for Scottish independence, given that Scottish trade with the rUK is 3-4 times bigger than the UK's with the EU, I'd project a 4-6% loss of Scottish GDP from independence, assuming a similar trade deal is agreed. And something similar from the loss of fiscal subsidies, of course. And probably some more if they switch currency.
It'd be like going through 2020 all over again without the UK Treasury to bail them out.
I don’t believe anyone ever predicted an immediate, 8% hit to GDP.
Brexit is like rust, it accumulates over time.
Then one day you look at your Western European peers and realise they are weirdly much wealthier countries, and that you are the sick man of Europe.
That's why I said "very unlikely" not "impossible". The 8% of GDP was projected to be 15 years after we left iirc, and was based on a number of assumptions about trade, which were always going to be different from what actually happened. However, it could well be an order of magnitude different from what happens, as the EU's own study about the value of the Single Market implies.
Incidentally, we also need to factor in the end of our net contributions to the EU budget, which were around 0.5% of GDP each year.
If we are the sick man of Europe (like Switzerland?) it'll be due to internal economic policies, not because we left the EU.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
I'm no Blyton expert, but my daughters lap up the Mallory Towers/St. Clare's oeuvre. In which there are quite a range of what we in the 21st century might deem vaguely positive role models. The sporty one, the cheerful one, the brainy one, etc. Stereotypes, yes, but not fairytale princesses.
It is, to my ears, utter dross written in the highly irritating tongue of upper-upper-middle class 1950s schoolgirls. I particularly loathe the word 'horrid'. But as Casino said, I'm not really the target market.
If I can tune out the language, I actually quite like the Faraway Tree set. I was particularly interested that the protagonists were so keen to move to an isolated cottage in the country, and how obvious it was felt to be that this would be the case - 'how they hated the town!' - a window into the 1950s view of town and country. Notably, the protagonists in these books very clearly aren't middle class.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
As I said at the time, this has nothing to do with data. Because there wasn't any. This is about maintaining state coercion because of what might happen not because of what is. It is a significant ratcheting up which is why I was so annoyed about it and why I'm concerned about 19 July. The government is slipping bit by bit towards a zero-Covid response.
Enid Blyton never appealed to me that much, although there were plenty of non-woke authors like C S Lewis, Roald Dahl, Tolkien, R M Ballantine, G M Fraser (I started reading Flashman at 11) who did.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Ransome's Pigeon Post is a masterpiece of construction. As close to perfectly written as a novel (for children) can be.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
As I said at the time, this has nothing to do with data. Because there wasn't any. This is about maintaining state coercion because of what might happen not because of what is. It is a significant ratcheting up which is why I was so annoyed about it and why I'm concerned about 19 July. The government is slipping bit by bit towards a zero-Covid response.
As I said upthread, the 'abundance of caution' thing is basically at the whim of the PM. It's impossible to discern any consistent principle, though there does seem to have been a seriously belated drift towards the frit side of things.
Essentially the data models put in the correct vaccine efficacy stats and the models now show a significantly lower death rate and hospitalisation rate.
It's absolutely shocking that this has been allowed to happen. Why weren't they using the best available inputs in the first place?
Thanks. What are the new predictions and do they seem likely?
The original predictions were patently bullshit.
They 3000 peak hospitalisations per day to 1000, mid point of about 33k deaths to around 10k. Some of the assumptions still look completely ridiculous, they're saying that the hospitalisation rate will be 5% of cases but that makes no sense at all. It will be more like 1-3% with the vast majority coming from unvaccinated cohorts.
I'm surprised* that this reverse ferret by Warwick hasn't got more publicity. It is borderline scandalous, because of the timing.
(*actually, I'm not)
If Johnson has any balls he would hold a press conference brandishing the downgraded advice, apologise on their behalf for their advise and proceed with Freedom Day without further delay.
Do you think he's even aware that the infection inflation rate is nosediving? I don't get the impression that he's on top of the numbers...
He's only on top of whatever selective numbers the scientists brief to them. They will always pick the scariest looking ones to get compliance from politicians. We've got a new unelected class of public health wankers using fear to change the nature of society. COVID is the best thing that has happened for them.
As I keep saying, that's what happens when you give a government emergency powers to deal with something that isn't an emergency. Powerful interest groups do anything they can to keep their power.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Second, such predictions were made with two assumptions which turned out not to be the case:
1. That we would exercise A50 immediately. Only Corbyn called for that
2. That the BoE would not step in and pump QE into the system.
In any case, short-term predictions (like recession) depend more on quite tricky assumptions about investor and business sentiment, rather than longer term economic modelling.
Shouldawouldacoulda.
The arguments were fanciful scaremongering.
The challenges of Brexit are political, with some border trade friction issues on top.
That's it.
An intriguing historical counter factual: J-Corbz comes out early for Brexit on the grounds I’ve described. Before Gove and BJ. What do they do then? What happens if Vote Leave is instead being led by the Corbyn Labour Party?
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
Comprehensive report on the efficacy of facemasks in various settings.
Face masks effectively limit the probability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/05/19/science.abg6296 Airborne transmission by droplets and aerosols is important for the spread of viruses. Face masks are a well-established preventive measure, but their effectiveness for mitigating SARS-CoV-2 transmission is still under debate. We show that variations in mask efficacy can be explained by different regimes of virus abundance and related to population-average infection probability and reproduction number. For SARS-CoV-2, the viral load of infectious individuals can vary by orders of magnitude. We find that most environments and contacts are under conditions of low virus abundance (virus-limited) where surgical masks are effective at preventing virus spread. More advanced masks and other protective equipment are required in potentially virus-rich indoor environments including medical centers and hospitals. Masks are particularly effective in combination with other preventive measures like ventilation and distancing.
Stuff like this will make a huge difference in future pandemic planning.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Good work there from Greg Clark and Aaron Bell.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
Ursula von der Leyen now has no constitutional role in my country.
She never did
Oh really?
Do you think Biden has no constitutional role in Texas?
Oh dear, award for this years False Comparison Prize. What next, comparing the EU to the Nazis, or perhaps comparing Bozo to Winston Churchill?
How is it a false comparison?
The European Union laws and courts are supreme over its member states and UVDL is President of that.
If you want to compare the EU to Nazis then you can do that, but to deny that the President of the European Union has any constitutional role in EU member states is just dishonest pure and simple.
I need to do some work, but I will answer you as best and politely as I can. The sovereignty argument as put forward by those in favour of Brexit was always specious. The reality is that all nation states of the EU have sovereign supremacy over the EU because they can unilaterally choose to leave and because of our 2016 referendum we chose to do that. I do not believe that is the case with Texas, nor, as another example is it the case with Scotland within the UK. The POTUS has significant (though not unrestricted) executive power in the US that not even the most integrationist of EU zealots would dream of for the President of the European Commission (she is not President of the European Union ). The Commission gains it's power from the Council of Ministers, which as I am sure you know, is the leaders of the 27, which are independent and sovereign. They choose to pool their sovereignty on certain matters.
Therefore POTUS=President of EU Commission is a ludicrous comparison.
Saying you are sovereign because you can leave is only meaningful if you do leave. Otherwise its meaningless.
Its perversely like saying that someone in a bad relationship is OK because they can leave, but then saying they shouldn't leave and using the fact they can leave as a reason why they shouldn't.
Either the relationship is good, in which case argue that on its merits and explain why the loss of sovereignty is worthwhile and why we shouldn't leave, or the relationship is not good in which case we should and did correctly exercise our right to leave and reclaim our sovereignty and choose our own future.
We have chosen not to pool our sovereignty. That is a perfectly valid choice. Choosing to pool it is valid too, but if you want that then don't pretend it isn't pooled and there's no sovereignty issue from doing so - explain why it is worth doing despite the sovereignty issue that pooling entails.
Logic fail here. If being able to leave a relationship is meaningless, it follows that a relationship where you can't leave is no more captive than one where you can. Which is a clear nonsense. Being able to leave is fundamentally different to being unable to leave, whether you choose to leave or not.
Being able to leave is an important theoretical right, but unless you exercise it, it isn't very meaningful.
Saying that UvdL had no constitutional role in the UK, since we could leave, is like saying that your boss at work has no role in your worklife since you can quit if you want to do so.
It's not a theoretical right it's an actual right. This is the case whether you exercise it or not. And having this right is different to not having it. This is specifically the point I needed to clarify.
The right is meaningless unless you're prepared to exercise it. If you're not willing to do so, then its only theoretical.
If you work for an employer where you are in your own eyes the hardest working employee there, but you are paid less than your colleagues, you don't feel like you are treated with respect, and if you bring concerns to your employer they say "yes but you need the job don't you?" and then adds mockingly "You know where the door is" - then do you think "oh well, I can leave if I want to, so everything's fine I should stay in this job" or do you think "screw this, I'm off"
The fact you can leave is not a reason to stay. The reason to stay should be that it is worth staying.
I'm not saying it's a reason to stay. I'm simply debunking your assertion that an option to do something is meaningless unless you do it. The correct assertion is that it's meaningless if you can't do it. The convoluted workplace analogy isn't helpful. In EU terms, we have left and others haven't. We decided as a free sovereign nation that the cons of membership outweighed the pros. Others haven't reached this conclusion as yet, but they could do in the future. They have the option. The meaningful option. Their right to leave isn't meaningless just because they haven't left. That's a clear nonsense.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
It depends who you're reading it for.
Would I read Blyton for myself? No. Would I introduce it to my children and read it to my children, or get them reading it? Why not?
For me Enid Blyton is for young children, it doesn't have re-readability as you grow up that other authors have. But it doesn't need to either, its for that age group and it works for that age group.
Although it is quite dated now, that's another matter.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Over-confidence in poor and un-verified models is the curse of modern scientific practice and where they determine public policy, grrr...
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
Never liked Blyton; couldn't relate to her world. Arthur Ransome though, and 'messing about in boats', was much more my style.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Good work there from Greg Clark and Aaron Bell.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
I wonder if Aaron could get on the Football Index and Bet12 scandals? waves
...and no I didn't lose any money in Football Index.
Wow that's really poor. I'm really hoping they extend their partnership with Novavax and help them work out the manufacturing issues. If anything the government should be getting them both in a room and suggesting they help each other as Novavax just looks like they're stuck in paperwork and manufacturing woes because they've never had anything close to a vaccine this good before.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Good point. That’s how we ended up with Meghan.
By which I take it you don't think it's a good point.
You could get the same in a Liverpool pub about Manchester if they were about to face each other in the Champions League. Or FA Cup. Or its a Saturday.
Banter is rarely anything other than cover for racism, sexism and bigotry.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Many care workers are not actually paid by their employers, but by the state. By this I mean that there are quite a few care companies, whether residential or home care, which rely on contracts or similar from Government (including Local) contracts. So until we, the state, are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund such contracts, wages for the staff cannot rise.
Or, alternatively, the companies can take the higher wage costs out of director bonuses or corporate profits. Not everything has to lead to higher taxes.
Some could, indeed, but not all. And if you have 100 staff and your directors bonuses add up to 25k, that's not not going to make a big difference.
Surprised there is not more discussion about Warwick University slashing its covid forecasts barely 48 hours after its model was used as justification for delaying the unlock.
Funny old world.
We knew this would happen though, the models have been consistently wrong and underplaying vaccine efficacy to get their desired result of getting lockdowns extended.
The lack of data literacy in the government is shocking. It's stuff that we have been talking about for months.
The modelling has been an utter disgrace. If only because it repeatedly fails the simple "stand back and just think about that for a minute" test.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Not really. Any writer will want to respond to criticism, and there is heaps directed at children's authors.
Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and Eric Carle also got plenty. Even the Rev. Awdry.
Surprised there is not more discussion about Warwick University slashing its covid forecasts barely 48 hours after its model was used as justification for delaying the unlock.
Funny old world.
Warwick uni modelling is crap....shocker....some of us keep pointing it out.
Surprised there is not more discussion about Warwick University slashing its covid forecasts barely 48 hours after its model was used as justification for delaying the unlock.
Funny old world.
We knew this would happen though, the models have been consistently wrong and underplaying vaccine efficacy to get their desired result of getting lockdowns extended.
The lack of data literacy in the government is shocking. It's stuff that we have been talking about for months.
The modelling has been an utter disgrace. If only because it repeatedly fails the simple "stand back and just think about that for a minute" test.
Ursula von der Leyen now has no constitutional role in my country.
She never did
Oh really?
Do you think Biden has no constitutional role in Texas?
Oh dear, award for this years False Comparison Prize. What next, comparing the EU to the Nazis, or perhaps comparing Bozo to Winston Churchill?
How is it a false comparison?
The European Union laws and courts are supreme over its member states and UVDL is President of that.
If you want to compare the EU to Nazis then you can do that, but to deny that the President of the European Union has any constitutional role in EU member states is just dishonest pure and simple.
I need to do some work, but I will answer you as best and politely as I can. The sovereignty argument as put forward by those in favour of Brexit was always specious. The reality is that all nation states of the EU have sovereign supremacy over the EU because they can unilaterally choose to leave and because of our 2016 referendum we chose to do that. I do not believe that is the case with Texas, nor, as another example is it the case with Scotland within the UK. The POTUS has significant (though not unrestricted) executive power in the US that not even the most integrationist of EU zealots would dream of for the President of the European Commission (she is not President of the European Union ). The Commission gains it's power from the Council of Ministers, which as I am sure you know, is the leaders of the 27, which are independent and sovereign. They choose to pool their sovereignty on certain matters.
Therefore POTUS=President of EU Commission is a ludicrous comparison.
Saying you are sovereign because you can leave is only meaningful if you do leave. Otherwise its meaningless.
Its perversely like saying that someone in a bad relationship is OK because they can leave, but then saying they shouldn't leave and using the fact they can leave as a reason why they shouldn't.
Either the relationship is good, in which case argue that on its merits and explain why the loss of sovereignty is worthwhile and why we shouldn't leave, or the relationship is not good in which case we should and did correctly exercise our right to leave and reclaim our sovereignty and choose our own future.
We have chosen not to pool our sovereignty. That is a perfectly valid choice. Choosing to pool it is valid too, but if you want that then don't pretend it isn't pooled and there's no sovereignty issue from doing so - explain why it is worth doing despite the sovereignty issue that pooling entails.
Logic fail here. If being able to leave a relationship is meaningless, it follows that a relationship where you can't leave is no more captive than one where you can. Which is a clear nonsense. Being able to leave is fundamentally different to being unable to leave, whether you choose to leave or not.
Being able to leave is an important theoretical right, but unless you exercise it, it isn't very meaningful.
Saying that UvdL had no constitutional role in the UK, since we could leave, is like saying that your boss at work has no role in your worklife since you can quit if you want to do so.
It's not a theoretical right it's an actual right. This is the case whether you exercise it or not. And having this right is different to not having it. This is specifically the point I needed to clarify.
The right is meaningless unless you're prepared to exercise it. If you're not willing to do so, then its only theoretical.
If you work for an employer where you are in your own eyes the hardest working employee there, but you are paid less than your colleagues, you don't feel like you are treated with respect, and if you bring concerns to your employer they say "yes but you need the job don't you?" and then adds mockingly "You know where the door is" - then do you think "oh well, I can leave if I want to, so everything's fine I should stay in this job" or do you think "screw this, I'm off"
The fact you can leave is not a reason to stay. The reason to stay should be that it is worth staying.
I'm not saying it's a reason to stay. I'm simply debunking your assertion that an option to do something is meaningless unless you do it. The correct assertion is that it's meaningless if you can't do it. The convoluted workplace analogy isn't helpful. In EU terms, we have left and others haven't. We decided as a free sovereign nation that the cons of membership outweighed the pros. Others haven't reached this conclusion as yet, but they could do in the future. They have the option. The meaningful option. Their right to leave isn't meaningless just because they haven't left. That's a clear nonsense.
You're missing the point.
Absolutely they have the right to leave, but unless or until they exercise that right, the EU and UvdL or her successors is part of their constitutional setup.
Just as Westminster and Boris or his successors is part of Northern Ireland or Scotland's constitutional setup even though we explicitly recognise Northern Ireland's right to self-determination and to leave via a United Ireland if they ever choose to exercise that right.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
I'm very keen on Alan Garner. Not least because it's my geography he's describing.
Surprised there is not more discussion about Warwick University slashing its covid forecasts barely 48 hours after its model was used as justification for delaying the unlock.
Funny old world.
We knew this would happen though, the models have been consistently wrong and underplaying vaccine efficacy to get their desired result of getting lockdowns extended.
The lack of data literacy in the government is shocking. It's stuff that we have been talking about for months.
The modelling has been an utter disgrace. If only because it repeatedly fails the simple "stand back and just think about that for a minute" test.
Shame Johnson is incapable of doing that...
I am more concerned why people on SAGE, with their scientific training, are incapable of doing this? They are supposed to filter the garbage.
I mean Witty and Valance at times have stood in front of charts which some of us with some mathematical modelling experience have straight away gone hold on a second there...look at your confidence intervals, that can't be right.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
my seven year old loves the Famous 5 and Secret 7 - yes they are a bit posh kids having fun as wonderfully satirised by Rik Mayall etc in the Comic Strip - not sure in what way they are racist - they are against ALL foreigners because they might be spying on Uncle Quentin's vital experiments, race doesn't come into it.
Mostly it's posh kids being allowed to behave in fantastically dangerous ways by totally inadequate and awful parents - and appeals to kids for that reason - She'll leave them behind and go on to other more modern writers who are also cancelled for one reason or another - when my sister got me a Biggles book for my 50th birthday (as I had every single one as a boy) I was a bit gobsmacked - WE Johns is definitely a writer whose children's books can be safely left in the past - astonishingly racist.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Good work there from Greg Clark and Aaron Bell.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
I wonder if Aaron could get on the Football Index and Bet12 scandals? waves
...and no I didn't lose any money in Football Index.
For the sake of his own career, he’d be wise to steer clear of gambling regulation debates, imo.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
I rather think it is a gap in scientific behaviour. Since the PHE numbers are not peer review, established science, they don't exists. They are too preliminary. So only the modelled numbers exist.
It's somewhat analogous to the lateral test issue - when you see scientists interviewed, some of them practically squirm in horror at the idea of an inexact test. Even though rapid and inexact vs slow and exact maybe what you want. That's not to say that lateral tests are unquestionable - just that this kind of pavlovian reaction is.... interesting.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
As I said at the time, this has nothing to do with data. Because there wasn't any. This is about maintaining state coercion because of what might happen not because of what is. It is a significant ratcheting up which is why I was so annoyed about it and why I'm concerned about 19 July. The government is slipping bit by bit towards a zero-Covid response.
This is getting important now because other nations are now starting to go in different directions. Last night the US Federal Reserve signalled that, whilst zero policy is OK for now and so is debt support, that will not be the case for ever.
Why wouldn't they, when many US states are full open and inflationary pressures are rising very considerably?
Investors will start to differentiate between those states that are moving beyond covid and those that are stuck in the holding pattern.
The UK is extremely vulnerable to shift of this nature right now. Endless dithering is going to be severely, severely punished one day.
It looks like the tories, with unbelievable stupidity, want to be left holding the government baby when that punishment comes.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Good work there from Greg Clark and Aaron Bell.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
I wonder if Aaron could get on the Football Index and Bet12 scandals? waves
...and no I didn't lose any money in Football Index.
For the sake of his own career, he’d be wise to steer clear of gambling regulation debates, imo.
Football Index has cost lots of people £10 millions....its a huge scandal.....and would be popular with football fans. Loads of in particular youngish people have been taken in what some allege is a ponzi scheme.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Yes. Because my daughter very much knows her own mind, and is perfectly able to distinguish between a fantasy make-believe love story and reality. The rest of your post is just weird - you do know no-one normal thinks like that, right?
Children aren't programmable drones, and nor do they view everything through a prism of intersectionality. In fact, they don't notice it at all.
It's very telling that Guardianistas think they are - presumably because they'd like to try and do a bit of programming themselves.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Not really. Any writer will want to respond to criticism, and there is heaps directed at children's authors.
Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and Eric Carle also got plenty. Even the Rev. Awdry.
Away with them.
None of them got the near universal verdict that Blyton gets and deserves. You say you haven't seen the case made. Watch Five Go Mad in Dorset for a perfect presentation of it.
Surprised there is not more discussion about Warwick University slashing its covid forecasts barely 48 hours after its model was used as justification for delaying the unlock.
Funny old world.
We knew this would happen though, the models have been consistently wrong and underplaying vaccine efficacy to get their desired result of getting lockdowns extended.
The lack of data literacy in the government is shocking. It's stuff that we have been talking about for months.
The modelling has been an utter disgrace. If only because it repeatedly fails the simple "stand back and just think about that for a minute" test.
Shame Johnson is incapable of doing that...
I am more concerned why people on SAGE, with their scientific training, are incapable of doing this? They are supposed to filter the garbage.
I mean Witty and Valance at times have stood in front of charts which some of us with some mathematical modelling experience have straight away gone hold on a second there...look at your confidence intervals, that can't be right.
I think you're looking at it the wrong way around. There are two types of policy-relevant economic model: those that start from the conclusions you want, and work back so you set the inputs accordingly, and those that set reasonable inputs, then work out what the conclusions are. The former is much more common than you'd think, and the more I hear about these models, the more I think they are of that kind.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Good work there from Greg Clark and Aaron Bell.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
I wonder if Aaron could get on the Football Index and Bet12 scandals? waves
...and no I didn't lose any money in Football Index.
There must be a few of his constituents that did though. £80m was the last figure I heard, mostly losing three figure numbers, rather than just a few high rollers losing tens of thousands.
GC really isn’t fit for purpose, the briefest description of what Football Index were doing told you it was a Ponzi scheme, it was only a question of when, rather then if, it all went tits up.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
Never liked Blyton; couldn't relate to her world. Arthur Ransome though, and 'messing about in boats', was much more my style.
Exactly. Ransome is what Blyton would be if she had any talent.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Not really. Any writer will want to respond to criticism, and there is heaps directed at children's authors.
Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and Eric Carle also got plenty. Even the Rev. Awdry.
Away with them.
None of them got the near universal verdict that Blyton gets and deserves. You say you haven't seen the case made. Watch Five Go Mad in Dorset for a perfect presentation of it.
It isn't a near universal verdict. It's the verdict of snobs who think she's a populist.
If it were she wouldn't have sold any books, or been one of the most popular children's authors of all time.
You could get the same in a Liverpool pub about Manchester if they were about to face each other in the Champions League. Or FA Cup. Or its a Saturday.
Banter is rarely anything other than cover for racism, sexism and bigotry.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Many care workers are not actually paid by their employers, but by the state. By this I mean that there are quite a few care companies, whether residential or home care, which rely on contracts or similar from Government (including Local) contracts. So until we, the state, are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund such contracts, wages for the staff cannot rise.
Or, alternatively, the companies can take the higher wage costs out of director bonuses or corporate profits. Not everything has to lead to higher taxes.
Some could, indeed, but not all. And if you have 100 staff and your directors bonuses add up to 25k, that's not not going to make a big difference.
Though that's speculation, the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines still seem pretty effective against the recent variants, so the explanation that CureVac was facing tougher hurdles (though true) doesn't really seem valid.
Second, such predictions were made with two assumptions which turned out not to be the case:
1. That we would exercise A50 immediately. Only Corbyn called for that
2. That the BoE would not step in and pump QE into the system.
In any case, short-term predictions (like recession) depend more on quite tricky assumptions about investor and business sentiment, rather than longer term economic modelling.
Shouldawouldacoulda.
The arguments were fanciful scaremongering.
The challenges of Brexit are political, with some border trade friction issues on top.
That's it.
An intriguing historical counter factual: J-Corbz comes out early for Brexit on the grounds I’ve described. Before Gove and BJ. What do they do then? What happens if Vote Leave is instead being led by the Corbyn Labour Party?
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
A couple of years ago now I reread the Sword in the Stone. The final chapter when Arthur gets to fly with the geese is just an astonishing piece of writing, full of pathos, humanity and compassion. Nearly all of which of course passed me by when I first read it 50 years ago.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Not really. Any writer will want to respond to criticism, and there is heaps directed at children's authors.
Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and Eric Carle also got plenty. Even the Rev. Awdry.
Away with them.
None of them got the near universal verdict that Blyton gets and deserves. You say you haven't seen the case made. Watch Five Go Mad in Dorset for a perfect presentation of it.
It isn't a near universal verdict. It's the verdict of snobs who think she's a populist.
If it were she wouldn't have sold any books, or been one of the most popular children's authors of all time.
Quite a lot of circularity there.
The Bay City Rollers were also very popular back in the day.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Oh bollocks. I read a load of this stuff when I was a girl. I wrote some as well as a child. It made absolutely no difference to my ambitions. What matters is having parents, especially a father, who believe in their daughter and give her the self-confidence to do and try whatever she wants. And fathers who teach their sons how to behave properly.
It is not stories which limit girls' opportunities but what men do and don't do. Focus on that rather than distractions which conveniently excuse men from looking at their own behaviour.
Just had a vaccine, in and out all very professional etc etc, but more critical is in passing a coffee shop just outside, a sandwich board proclaims 'coffee life - support for humans'.
Either a weird slogan I'm not getting, hallucination being an immediate side effect or Leon is right that the aliens are here - and so many we have to specify which shops they can use.
I am surprised it has taken so long to get Blyton cancelled...
This bloke got cancelled after having a NY Times bestseller and all round widely praised book from all the usual outlets only 5 years ago....for one passage in his semi-autobiographical book, where he made the sin of using SeanT type hyperbole when saying his girlfriend was different most women in SF.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
my seven year old loves the Famous 5 and Secret 7 - yes they are a bit posh kids having fun as wonderfully satirised by Rik Mayall etc in the Comic Strip - not sure in what way they are racist - they are against ALL foreigners because they might be spying on Uncle Quentin's vital experiments, race doesn't come into it.
Mostly it's posh kids being allowed to behave in fantastically dangerous ways by totally inadequate and awful parents - and appeals to kids for that reason - She'll leave them behind and go on to other more modern writers who are also cancelled for one reason or another - when my sister got me a Biggles book for my 50th birthday (as I had every single one as a boy) I was a bit gobsmacked - WE Johns is definitely a writer whose children's books can be safely left in the past - astonishingly racist.
Strangely I never really got into Biggles despite being a war mad little tyke. Buchan was another one with a pretty gamey turn of phrase, though I didn't in fact read him till I was in my 20s, probably about the right age to see him in context.
Comprehensive report on the efficacy of facemasks in various settings.
Face masks effectively limit the probability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/05/19/science.abg6296 Airborne transmission by droplets and aerosols is important for the spread of viruses. Face masks are a well-established preventive measure, but their effectiveness for mitigating SARS-CoV-2 transmission is still under debate. We show that variations in mask efficacy can be explained by different regimes of virus abundance and related to population-average infection probability and reproduction number. For SARS-CoV-2, the viral load of infectious individuals can vary by orders of magnitude. We find that most environments and contacts are under conditions of low virus abundance (virus-limited) where surgical masks are effective at preventing virus spread. More advanced masks and other protective equipment are required in potentially virus-rich indoor environments including medical centers and hospitals. Masks are particularly effective in combination with other preventive measures like ventilation and distancing.
Stuff like this will make a huge difference in future pandemic planning.
Careful. You'll trigger the anti-Susan Michie mob. She predicted we'll keep masks (sorry, face nappies) and social distancing.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Oh bollocks. I read a load of this stuff when I was a girl. I wrote some as well as a child. It made absolutely no difference to my ambitions. What matters is having parents, especially a father, who believe in their daughter and give her the self-confidence to do and try whatever she wants. And fathers who teach their sons how to behave properly.
It is not stories which limit girls' opportunities but what men do and don't do. Focus on that rather than distractions which conveniently excuse men from looking at their own behaviour.
It did seem a bit simplistic a suggestion. I believe in the power of stories, but we shouldn't overestimate it against other things.
Ursula von der Leyen now has no constitutional role in my country.
She never did
Oh really?
Do you think Biden has no constitutional role in Texas?
Oh dear, award for this years False Comparison Prize. What next, comparing the EU to the Nazis, or perhaps comparing Bozo to Winston Churchill?
How is it a false comparison?
The European Union laws and courts are supreme over its member states and UVDL is President of that.
If you want to compare the EU to Nazis then you can do that, but to deny that the President of the European Union has any constitutional role in EU member states is just dishonest pure and simple.
I need to do some work, but I will answer you as best and politely as I can. The sovereignty argument as put forward by those in favour of Brexit was always specious. The reality is that all nation states of the EU have sovereign supremacy over the EU because they can unilaterally choose to leave and because of our 2016 referendum we chose to do that. I do not believe that is the case with Texas, nor, as another example is it the case with Scotland within the UK. The POTUS has significant (though not unrestricted) executive power in the US that not even the most integrationist of EU zealots would dream of for the President of the European Commission (she is not President of the European Union ). The Commission gains it's power from the Council of Ministers, which as I am sure you know, is the leaders of the 27, which are independent and sovereign. They choose to pool their sovereignty on certain matters.
Therefore POTUS=President of EU Commission is a ludicrous comparison.
Saying you are sovereign because you can leave is only meaningful if you do leave. Otherwise its meaningless.
Its perversely like saying that someone in a bad relationship is OK because they can leave, but then saying they shouldn't leave and using the fact they can leave as a reason why they shouldn't.
Either the relationship is good, in which case argue that on its merits and explain why the loss of sovereignty is worthwhile and why we shouldn't leave, or the relationship is not good in which case we should and did correctly exercise our right to leave and reclaim our sovereignty and choose our own future.
We have chosen not to pool our sovereignty. That is a perfectly valid choice. Choosing to pool it is valid too, but if you want that then don't pretend it isn't pooled and there's no sovereignty issue from doing so - explain why it is worth doing despite the sovereignty issue that pooling entails.
Logic fail here. If being able to leave a relationship is meaningless, it follows that a relationship where you can't leave is no more captive than one where you can. Which is a clear nonsense. Being able to leave is fundamentally different to being unable to leave, whether you choose to leave or not.
Being able to leave is an important theoretical right, but unless you exercise it, it isn't very meaningful.
Saying that UvdL had no constitutional role in the UK, since we could leave, is like saying that your boss at work has no role in your worklife since you can quit if you want to do so.
It's not a theoretical right it's an actual right. This is the case whether you exercise it or not. And having this right is different to not having it. This is specifically the point I needed to clarify.
The right is meaningless unless you're prepared to exercise it. If you're not willing to do so, then its only theoretical.
If you work for an employer where you are in your own eyes the hardest working employee there, but you are paid less than your colleagues, you don't feel like you are treated with respect, and if you bring concerns to your employer they say "yes but you need the job don't you?" and then adds mockingly "You know where the door is" - then do you think "oh well, I can leave if I want to, so everything's fine I should stay in this job" or do you think "screw this, I'm off"
The fact you can leave is not a reason to stay. The reason to stay should be that it is worth staying.
I'm not saying it's a reason to stay. I'm simply debunking your assertion that an option to do something is meaningless unless you do it. The correct assertion is that it's meaningless if you can't do it. The convoluted workplace analogy isn't helpful. In EU terms, we have left and others haven't. We decided as a free sovereign nation that the cons of membership outweighed the pros. Others haven't reached this conclusion as yet, but they could do in the future. They have the option. The meaningful option. Their right to leave isn't meaningless just because they haven't left. That's a clear nonsense.
You're missing the point.
Absolutely they have the right to leave, but unless or until they exercise that right, the EU and UvdL or her successors is part of their constitutional setup.
Just as Westminster and Boris or his successors is part of Northern Ireland or Scotland's constitutional setup even though we explicitly recognise Northern Ireland's right to self-determination and to leave via a United Ireland if they ever choose to exercise that right.
I can't be missing the point since I'm merely debunking your nonsense assertion that an option is meaningless unless you exercise it. It was a low bar and I've hopped over it quite comfortably. The rest - eg to what extent Brussels rather than Westminster was our effective government when we were in the EU - would require another tumble entirely. And nobody wants to see that right now. Not today of all days.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Oh bollocks. I read a load of this stuff when I was a girl. I wrote some as well as a child. It made absolutely no difference to my ambitions. What matters is having parents, especially a father, who believe in their daughter and give her the self-confidence to do and try whatever she wants. And fathers who teach their sons how to behave properly.
It is not stories which limit girls' opportunities but what men do and don't do. Focus on that rather than distractions which conveniently excuse men from looking at their own behaviour.
Whilst I agree with that sentiment whole heartedly I am not sure that the parameters of what girls can do should or is set by, "what men do and don't do." Women who are ambitious and capable need also to have the determination and confidence that your father evidently gave to you and which you seem to have passed to your daughter.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
It depends who you're reading it for.
Would I read Blyton for myself? No. Would I introduce it to my children and read it to my children, or get them reading it? Why not?
For me Enid Blyton is for young children, it doesn't have re-readability as you grow up that other authors have. But it doesn't need to either, its for that age group and it works for that age group.
Although it is quite dated now, that's another matter.
Didn’t Blyton have a golliwog character?
Oh my God, can I even type or say g******* these days? 😮
If it’s not okay for white people to black up for black face, is it also not okay for white people to use black face emoji? 👴🏽
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Like Cyclefree, Casino and others I couldn't disagree with this more.
I am perfectly happy for my daughter to think for herself. She's got books which are classic fairytales, as well as a book entirely dedicated to modern feminist takes on the classics, and all sorts of stuff in-between. All I'm particularly interested in is that she's happy, healthy and reading.
My eldest daughter is currently reading a series of books about a girl at school who is half vampire, half fairy. Am I worried when she grows up she's going to want to be a vampire or a fairy? No.
My youngest daughter has learnt the alphabet and is learning to read, and currently wants to grow up to be a butterfly.
@StephenNolan Senior DUP source has told me the party officers are meeting this afternoon in a scheduled meeting . Told me a vote of no confidence in Edwin Poots could , theoretically , be raised then . Source said “ the party is uniting for the first time in a long time ….against Edwin”
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Good work there from Greg Clark and Aaron Bell.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
I wonder if Aaron could get on the Football Index and Bet12 scandals? waves
...and no I didn't lose any money in Football Index.
For the sake of his own career, he’d be wise to steer clear of gambling regulation debates, imo.
Football Index has cost lots of people £10 millions....its a huge scandal.....and would be popular with football fans. Loads of in particular youngish people have been taken in what some allege is a ponzi scheme.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
my seven year old loves the Famous 5 and Secret 7 - yes they are a bit posh kids having fun as wonderfully satirised by Rik Mayall etc in the Comic Strip - not sure in what way they are racist - they are against ALL foreigners because they might be spying on Uncle Quentin's vital experiments, race doesn't come into it.
Mostly it's posh kids being allowed to behave in fantastically dangerous ways by totally inadequate and awful parents - and appeals to kids for that reason - She'll leave them behind and go on to other more modern writers who are also cancelled for one reason or another - when my sister got me a Biggles book for my 50th birthday (as I had every single one as a boy) I was a bit gobsmacked - WE Johns is definitely a writer whose children's books can be safely left in the past - astonishingly racist.
Strangely I never really got into Biggles despite being a war mad little tyke. Buchan was another one with a pretty gamey turn of phrase, though I didn't in fact read him till I was in my 20s, probably about the right age to see him in context.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
Yes, as a child the Faraway Tree and the Enchanted Wood opened up my imagination. I absolutely loved those books, and got lost in them. I intend to buy them again for my daughter.
Kids don't care about the stuff The Guardian like to hand-wring about; they like good stories from any age and any period in history.
Of course the story and quality of the writing is the main thing. Stuff with great role models and diversity and excellent values is no good to anybody if it's also boring and turgid. But OTOH, you have a daughter, would you be happy with her reading loads of the "fairytale princess yearning for handsome prince to come get her" type classics material?
I bet you wouldn't. Why not? Because you recognize how toxic it can be. The assumption that girls are about grace and elegance and beauty, essentially passive, requiring a strong dynamic male to enable and deliver happiness and fulfillment. You can go OTT on this, and some do, but there are real issues here. The more we ditch these stereotypes the better imo. They can be comforting, but it's for the wrong reasons.
Like Cyclefree, Casino and others I couldn't disagree with this more.
I am perfectly happy for my daughter to think for herself. She's got books which are classic fairytales, as well as a book entirely dedicated to modern feminist takes on the classics, and all sorts of stuff in-between. All I'm particularly interested in is that she's happy, healthy and reading.
My eldest daughter is currently reading a series of books about a girl at school who is half vampire, half fairy. Am I worried when she grows up she's going to want to be a vampire or a fairy? No.
My youngest daughter has learnt the alphabet and is learning to read, and currently wants to grow up to be a butterfly.
Let kids be kids, and reading is great.
Wokeristas don't like people to think for themselves!
@StephenNolan Senior DUP source has told me the party officers are meeting this afternoon in a scheduled meeting . Told me a vote of no confidence in Edwin Poots could , theoretically , be raised then . Source said “ the party is uniting for the first time in a long time ….against Edwin”
You could get the same in a Liverpool pub about Manchester if they were about to face each other in the Champions League. Or FA Cup. Or its a Saturday.
Banter is rarely anything other than cover for racism, sexism and bigotry.
Regardless of any other merit, the Sunak interview got GB News into the papers, which was probably its main aim.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 8h This is the most uncomfortable I’ve seen Rishi Sunak in quite a while.
Sunak fans ould pause and watch the clip Dan Hodges has there. Looking well under pressure over £10K bill for new boilers for every family.
As Sunak says, what £10k bill? He rightly pointed out that (a) "costs" always get balanced against "opportunity" and whatever the cost is now won't be the cost by the time they are rolling it out.
Isn't the problem with retrofitting heat pumps that the radiators need to be replaced by bigger ones too, because of the lower operating temperature of the system?
So, opportunity - British design and manufacturing of all these new pumps and radiators, British installation of them. Which will generate a bucket load of money for the economy.
Neil is a dinosaur, asking the tired "how much will it cost" question not interested in "how much will it save" and "how much will doing nothing cost".
The majority of voters, especially the working classes and the Red Wall, care very much about the cost.
It’s also fair to ask why the British consumer is being asked to contribute so much, when the same isn’t true of much larger countries such as the US and China.
Having spent 15 years in a red wall WC town I am aware of this. "We can't afford it" has been drilled into them by opportunistic Tories to destroy Labour as the party who wastes money. Job done, the red wall is blue. Now then, we need to hose the blue wall with money. But "we can't afford it" and "how much will it cost".
I've had punters arguing on Facebook against spending money regenerating their own high street. The more the regen progresses and the more it gets lauded by experts as the model for other towns the more they shriek about the costs.
We either invest in stuff or we stay broken and crap. There is no £10k per household bill and the people asking the question know this. As for "why us and not China" we don't live in China. Our kids don't go to school in China. People have benefited massively from various clean air measures yet so many of our kids still go to schools where they breathe polluted air. Time to do more for their sake and let China do their own thing.
I do sometimes wonder whether a form of self-hatred or Stockholm syndrome has taken over with elements of the English working class. It's like they don't think they deserve any better. Even Brexit - touted as the second peasants' revolt by folk on here, seems to be more about hurting other people (foreigners, Londoners, the 'metropolitan elite') than anything else.
I suspect a lot of them want "higher wages" and by removing a pool of cheap accessible labour from the market they may very well get them.
And people think they're thick....
Yes, indeed they ARE getting them. Wages for the C2s and Ds have risen in a way not seen in the last 20 years.
It's so simple, and has happened time and time again in British history. When there are fewer people to do the skilled labour and/or the grunt work, the wages commanded for that work increase and the lot of those workers improves.
There has been a lot of magical thinking in my lifetime that immigration makes us richer and to say otherwise is somehow taboo. It increases our GDP, sure, because there are more of us. And if you're trying to employ someone you can do it more cheaply. I remember a geography GCSE question in which I was invited to discuss the benefits to the UK of immigration - the drawbacks weren't to be mentioned. But in reality it doesn't do a lot for most individual Britons.
Wages are higher in certain sectors because of a shortage of labour. Thats only partially due to "forriners go home" Brexit effects - the logistics industry is suffering because of IR35 just as much.
The harsh light of day for the British worker is that there are a stack of jobs they just don't want to do. We had to open the door to EU staff in the first place because locals don't want to clean offices or serve coffee or look after the elderly or work in a factory.
Now that some EU workers have left there is a shortage which is driving wages higher - but isn't filling the shortages because people still don't want those jobs.
Living on the backs of cheap EU labour is over, and in the end the pay will have to increase to attract the workers
I think the government will have to come up with immigration schemes for care workers. They have a delivery obligation. Wages will find their own levels elsewhere in the economy. ie GDP will contract in relative terms, to match. Some wages will go up and some will go down, but likely better terms for the low paid at the expense of fewer higher paid jobs. Which may be a desirable thing...
Or how about they just pay care workers more than minimum wage?
Care workers looking after the vulnerable for 12 hours a day, wiping people's bums and dealing with dementia, incontinence, and generally tough work . . . how is it that is a minimum wage job earning less than what eg a waiter earns? Since a waiter will get minimum wage plus tips.
Even pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit ~83% of care staff in the UK were British and half the non-British staff were not EU either so the notion we're reliant upon immigration to fill these roles has never been true. Pay a decent wage for these jobs and they'll get filled.
Many care workers are not actually paid by their employers, but by the state. By this I mean that there are quite a few care companies, whether residential or home care, which rely on contracts or similar from Government (including Local) contracts. So until we, the state, are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund such contracts, wages for the staff cannot rise.
Or, alternatively, the companies can take the higher wage costs out of director bonuses or corporate profits. Not everything has to lead to higher taxes.
Some could, indeed, but not all. And if you have 100 staff and your directors bonuses add up to 25k, that's not not going to make a big difference.
Are variants going to ruin the great vaccine back to normal dream? 😕
Because matching between waves we can go out and enjoy with spells of nice weather we can go out and enjoy is going to be unlikely in the UK. 🌧
Moving on from all the arguments over how delta got seeded, now delta is going up everywhere, should the government be increasing restrictions, such as on travel around the country and on mass gatherings such as sport, to stop it doubling so quickly?
I would say no. Even if it was good thing to do I think the government will say no. But in hindsight would it have been sensible to have been more tougher more quickly on waves to benefit the long run? Do you see what I mean - draconian for a fortnight is better than delaying lifting for months, if short sharp shock do lessen the length of restrictions. So the government should be thinking about locking us down a little bit more this week?
Ursula von der Leyen now has no constitutional role in my country.
She never did
Oh really?
Do you think Biden has no constitutional role in Texas?
Oh dear, award for this years False Comparison Prize. What next, comparing the EU to the Nazis, or perhaps comparing Bozo to Winston Churchill?
How is it a false comparison?
The European Union laws and courts are supreme over its member states and UVDL is President of that.
If you want to compare the EU to Nazis then you can do that, but to deny that the President of the European Union has any constitutional role in EU member states is just dishonest pure and simple.
I need to do some work, but I will answer you as best and politely as I can. The sovereignty argument as put forward by those in favour of Brexit was always specious. The reality is that all nation states of the EU have sovereign supremacy over the EU because they can unilaterally choose to leave and because of our 2016 referendum we chose to do that. I do not believe that is the case with Texas, nor, as another example is it the case with Scotland within the UK. The POTUS has significant (though not unrestricted) executive power in the US that not even the most integrationist of EU zealots would dream of for the President of the European Commission (she is not President of the European Union ). The Commission gains it's power from the Council of Ministers, which as I am sure you know, is the leaders of the 27, which are independent and sovereign. They choose to pool their sovereignty on certain matters.
Therefore POTUS=President of EU Commission is a ludicrous comparison.
Saying you are sovereign because you can leave is only meaningful if you do leave. Otherwise its meaningless.
Its perversely like saying that someone in a bad relationship is OK because they can leave, but then saying they shouldn't leave and using the fact they can leave as a reason why they shouldn't.
Either the relationship is good, in which case argue that on its merits and explain why the loss of sovereignty is worthwhile and why we shouldn't leave, or the relationship is not good in which case we should and did correctly exercise our right to leave and reclaim our sovereignty and choose our own future.
We have chosen not to pool our sovereignty. That is a perfectly valid choice. Choosing to pool it is valid too, but if you want that then don't pretend it isn't pooled and there's no sovereignty issue from doing so - explain why it is worth doing despite the sovereignty issue that pooling entails.
Logic fail here. If being able to leave a relationship is meaningless, it follows that a relationship where you can't leave is no more captive than one where you can. Which is a clear nonsense. Being able to leave is fundamentally different to being unable to leave, whether you choose to leave or not.
Being able to leave is an important theoretical right, but unless you exercise it, it isn't very meaningful.
Saying that UvdL had no constitutional role in the UK, since we could leave, is like saying that your boss at work has no role in your worklife since you can quit if you want to do so.
It's not a theoretical right it's an actual right. This is the case whether you exercise it or not. And having this right is different to not having it. This is specifically the point I needed to clarify.
The right is meaningless unless you're prepared to exercise it. If you're not willing to do so, then its only theoretical.
If you work for an employer where you are in your own eyes the hardest working employee there, but you are paid less than your colleagues, you don't feel like you are treated with respect, and if you bring concerns to your employer they say "yes but you need the job don't you?" and then adds mockingly "You know where the door is" - then do you think "oh well, I can leave if I want to, so everything's fine I should stay in this job" or do you think "screw this, I'm off"
The fact you can leave is not a reason to stay. The reason to stay should be that it is worth staying.
I'm not saying it's a reason to stay. I'm simply debunking your assertion that an option to do something is meaningless unless you do it. The correct assertion is that it's meaningless if you can't do it. The convoluted workplace analogy isn't helpful. In EU terms, we have left and others haven't. We decided as a free sovereign nation that the cons of membership outweighed the pros. Others haven't reached this conclusion as yet, but they could do in the future. They have the option. The meaningful option. Their right to leave isn't meaningless just because they haven't left. That's a clear nonsense.
You're missing the point.
Absolutely they have the right to leave, but unless or until they exercise that right, the EU and UvdL or her successors is part of their constitutional setup.
Just as Westminster and Boris or his successors is part of Northern Ireland or Scotland's constitutional setup even though we explicitly recognise Northern Ireland's right to self-determination and to leave via a United Ireland if they ever choose to exercise that right.
I can't be missing the point since I'm merely debunking your nonsense assertion that an option is meaningless unless you exercise it. It was a low bar and I've hopped over it quite comfortably. The rest - eg to what extent Brussels rather than Westminster was our effective government when we were in the EU - would require another tumble entirely. And nobody wants to see that right now. Not today of all days.
You have missed the point.
The claim, mady by Scott, was that the EU President never had a constitutional role in the UK.
The fact we could leave was meaningless to that claim.
It was true, it was meaningful in the fact that we did leave, but until we left it didn't change the fact that she did have a role.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Good work there from Greg Clark and Aaron Bell.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
You say good work. But they both voted for the continuation of restrictions didn’t they. I’m personally fed up with Greg Clark paying lip service to holding the government to account and then voting with them anyway.
Never read Blyton. My childhood reading was more around Dahl and the Redwall books. I think I heard that the author of those is a racist, which would not entirely surprise me.
@StephenNolan Senior DUP source has told me the party officers are meeting this afternoon in a scheduled meeting . Told me a vote of no confidence in Edwin Poots could , theoretically , be raised then . Source said “ the party is uniting for the first time in a long time ….against Edwin”
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
my seven year old loves the Famous 5 and Secret 7 - yes they are a bit posh kids having fun as wonderfully satirised by Rik Mayall etc in the Comic Strip - not sure in what way they are racist - they are against ALL foreigners because they might be spying on Uncle Quentin's vital experiments, race doesn't come into it.
Mostly it's posh kids being allowed to behave in fantastically dangerous ways by totally inadequate and awful parents - and appeals to kids for that reason - She'll leave them behind and go on to other more modern writers who are also cancelled for one reason or another - when my sister got me a Biggles book for my 50th birthday (as I had every single one as a boy) I was a bit gobsmacked - WE Johns is definitely a writer whose children's books can be safely left in the past - astonishingly racist.
Strangely I never really got into Biggles despite being a war mad little tyke. Buchan was another one with a pretty gamey turn of phrase, though I didn't in fact read him till I was in my 20s, probably about the right age to see him in context.
Let's not mention Dornford Yates...
He was apparently, a truly joy joy person in real life......
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Good work there from Greg Clark and Aaron Bell.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
I wonder if Aaron could get on the Football Index and Bet12 scandals? waves
...and no I didn't lose any money in Football Index.
There must be a few of his constituents that did though. £80m was the last figure I heard, mostly losing three figure numbers, rather than just a few high rollers losing tens of thousands.
GC really isn’t fit for purpose, the briefest description of what Football Index were doing told you it was a Ponzi scheme, it was only a question of when, rather then if, it all went tits up.
There was a huge red flag on that from the very start.
I posted on here I had concerns about something that started portraying itself as gambling/spreads then span itself as a stock market was something those of us who work in financial services regulation are aware as something eyebrow raising.
The next one is NFTs.
The scary thing is top end football clubs and international team are moving into NFTs.
Latest news. Had my LFT test (the hoi polloi I know) and I am all systems go for Ascot tomorrow. Still have a PCR test to do one before and one after. What a fucking palaver.
As for literature, not a Blyton type myself, but Christine Pullein-Thompson, Jill Ferguson and Biggles all featured large. In particular I lapped up the Greyfriars comics/books which I'm pretty sure would land me in prison today if I tried to buy or was seen reading one in public.
Are variants going to ruin the great vaccine back to normal dream? 😕
Because matching between waves we can go out and enjoy with spells of nice weather we can go out and enjoy is going to be unlikely in the UK. 🌧
Moving on from all the arguments over how delta got seeded, now delta is going up everywhere, should the government be increasing restrictions, such as on travel around the country and on mass gatherings such as sport, to stop it doubling so quickly?
I would say no. Even if it was good thing to do I think the government will say no. But in hindsight would it have been sensible to have been more tougher more quickly on waves to benefit the long run? Do you see what I mean - draconian for a fortnight is better than delaying lifting for months, if short sharp shock do lessen the length of restrictions. So the government should be thinking about locking us down a little bit more this week?
I forecast a couple of weeks ago now that the theta variant is going to be an absolute bastard. We'll have to immunize everyone all over again.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
Never liked Blyton; couldn't relate to her world. Arthur Ransome though, and 'messing about in boats', was much more my style.
Exactly. Ransome is what Blyton would be if she had any talent.
Wasn't Arthur Ransome somehow mixed up in the Russian Revolution, with Lenin, Trotsky and so on?
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Fuck me - what a set of absolute bell ends. Why can we see the issues straight away but the effing cabinet can't?
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Fuck me - what a set of absolute bell ends. Why can we see the issues straight away but the effing cabinet can't?
Gove and Johnson are journalists, they don't get numbers, I'm not dissing Classics or PPE as Aaron read PPE but he ended working for companies that required highly numerate people.
You're a Blyton fan then. So who's your favourite Fiver? Not sure who mine is. Certainly not Julian. What an entitled arrogant chap he is. He's the Patriarchy writ large.
I'm a bit torn on Enid Blyton. There is a significant amount of lazy home counties xenophobia in her books, a huge amount of minor public school snobbery as well as out and out racism. I would probably keep the book about the black doll whose nasty black skin was washed clean by the rain out of our house, although I think my kids have enough self-worth not to be negatively affected by it. Her books are lacking in subtlety too. On the other hand, they are well constructed stories and can hold the attention of young kids as they're starting to engage with books. The books are also some of the first to feature an obviously gender-queer character! We have some of her books in our house despite being fully signed up members of the wokerati. In general I am not a fan of banning books or writers, and you can separate writer from art (eg Roald Dahl, right-wing anti-semite but wrote great books for children). It's harder when the work itself is problematic. Kids can figure this out of course, as long as adults are on hand to explain the context and deal with any questions that arise. My favourite books are the Swallows and Amazon's series, which are actually surprisingly free of racism etc as I recall, despite being written almost 100 years ago. Arthur Randsome was quite left wing though, which perhaps explains it. He may have been woke before his time. "Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown" is a parenting style to live by.
She was certainly shit. It's the snobbery which sticks in my mind after 50 years - constant sneers at "day trippers" meaning common people. "Five go mad in Dorset" nailed it.
She wasn't shit. She wrote some of the best children's books ever written.
Apart from people saying "her vocabulary was limited" and "many of her stories had similar structure" I don't think I've ever seen any of this criticism substantiated. So, I'll put it down to snobbery in turn by her critics.
She said, quite rightly, she wasn't interested in the opinion of anyone over the age of 12, and rightly so.
Odd that she felt compelled to make that point, don't you think? There's lots of genuinely great children's lit - Milne, Potter, Lewis - and there's flabbily written drivel.
Read a bit of Blyton when I first started reading but soon moved on, that's what happens when you get the reading bug which is of course a good bug to get. Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
Never liked Blyton; couldn't relate to her world. Arthur Ransome though, and 'messing about in boats', was much more my style.
Exactly. Ransome is what Blyton would be if she had any talent.
Wasn't Arthur Ransome somehow mixed up in the Russian Revolution, with Lenin, Trotsky and so on?
Yes. He was the Guardian Moscow correspondent and married Trotsky's secretary.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Fuck me - what a set of absolute bell ends. Why can we see the issues straight away but the effing cabinet can't?
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Yup it's actually a huge scandal. The scientists are producing garbage data which is leading to massive economic damage. None of them will pay for their incompetence though. What I still don't understand is why they weren't using the best available PHE data in the first place? Why use modelled efficacy instead of real world observed efficacy? You're building a predictive model that also has predicted numbers as input values, it's absolutely worthless.
Just as they were doing last Autumn.
In autumn you could just about forgive it as there was only some trial data for vaccine efficacy so using wide input ranges and getting silly outcomes was fair enough. Now we're not in that position, we have got a gold standard vaccine efficacy series produced by our own bloody government. It's not as though they are being asked to plug in data from Russia or China. The PHE reports in vaccine efficacy really is properly gold standard stuff, just like the ONS weekly infection report. It's used by other countries in their own modelling including most of Europe. No other country has got as detailed and near real time data on vaccine efficacy and yet our own scientists need to be dragged into updating their inputs on vaccine efficacy to whatever the PHE reports say.
It's not as bad as it used to be, at one point we had PHE saying 80% reduction in hospitalisations with one dose of Pfizer or AZ after 3 weeks but the models were using 40% for AZ and 60% for Pfizer. I think these ones were using the old 85% figure with no cumulative reduction factors. The real world is actually about 96% and once cumulative reduction factors are accounted for it's probably above 99% for doubled jabbed.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Fuck me - what a set of absolute bell ends. Why can we see the issues straight away but the effing cabinet can't?
It's starting to smell pretty bad, isn't it?
Iraqi WMD bad?
I suspect if the government had been more honest and said we need four more weeks to vaccinate the young because the delta variant needs two jabs to be properly effective they would have saved them from a world of pain.
Especially if later down the line there's a vaccine evading variant, that needs a booster.
Yikes. It gets even worse. Looks like the government might have known that the data was old and duff... @Tissue_Price MP is on it like a bonnet...
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Fuck me - what a set of absolute bell ends. Why can we see the issues straight away but the effing cabinet can't?
Gove and Johnson are journalists, they don't get numbers, I'm not dissing Classics or PPE as Aaron read PPE but he ended working for companies that required highly numerate people.
I think it is a factor of
- The scientists want to use either peer reviewed, published data (the PHE data is real world but not academic published, yet) OR finger in the air worst cases. - The politicians aren't pushing back on this, because that would be arguing with the experts* on their area of expertise.
Comments
The
Interestingly, alot of middle class children have now read Blyton et al - because the rights are cheap, you can get boxed sets of the paper backs of various authors dirt cheap. So a fashion started for putting books in the gift bags that the kids get at their invite-the-whole-class birthday. Buy a set and split it up. The children do a swap thing afterwards, for the ones they've already read.
Not because of any -isms, but because some of the language used and the world it depicts was quite alien to me.
I knew what neither "ginger beer" was nor what a "lashing" was, for example, but also the portrayal of figures like Quentin's complete indifference to his own child, nieces and nephews.
CureVac’s mRNA vaccine reaches an efficacy level of just 47 percent in a clinical trial
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/16/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-mask#curevac-vaccine
The path with India was
Surge starts -> New Variant of interest (Delta) -> Investigate -> Variant of concern -> Red list.
The red list should be earlier in the process.
https://twitter.com/GBNewsFails/status/1405176003794714625
Start with this training video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMiKyfd6hA0
I have no doubt @CasinoRoyale will do that.
It is not stories which limit girls' opportunities but what men do and don't do. Focus on that rather than distractions which conveniently excuse men from looking at their own behaviour.
Models depend upon your assumptions. Garbage in, garbage out.
For Warwick University's models, that would mean their death estimates could fall from 72,400 to 17,100. While the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there could be 33,200 deaths in an optimistic scenario.
On Wednesday, MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee grilled Dr Susan Hopkins about using out of date data in their modelling.
Committee chair Greg Clark, a former Tory science minister, said: 'Wouldn't it have been possible given the relatively new real world data, to say actually, in the light of this data, we need a few more days to assess it, before we decide what is going to be the right implications of public policy?'
He added that the UK's Covid crisis had been 'beset by uncertainties and difficulties with modelling evidence informing government policy decisions'.
Mr Clark called for the models to be redone as soon as possible 'so that, as the Prime Minister promised, a reappraisal can be made and a change made if it's justified'.
Dr Hopkins said she was in 'no doubt' that SAGE would plug the new figures into heir models.
But Tory MP Aaron Bell suggested it was too late and that the new data may have altered 'the case for the continuation of restrictions'.
He added: 'The models that we seem to be relying on to justify the extension of restrictions don't appear to be using [the PHE] numbers.
'This is really important because the number of deaths that those numbers ultimately forecast, are for people who have had both doses, so if they have been using numbers that are now superseded, doesn't that alter the case for the continuation of restrictions?'
'We are voting in the House of Commons on the basis of those models. And it's obviously very good news. These numbers are coming out so far ahead of even the optimistic scenarios that have been modelled.'
Incidentally, we also need to factor in the end of our net contributions to the EU budget, which were around 0.5% of GDP each year.
If we are the sick man of Europe (like Switzerland?) it'll be due to internal economic policies, not because we left the EU.
It is, to my ears, utter dross written in the highly irritating tongue of upper-upper-middle class 1950s schoolgirls. I particularly loathe the word 'horrid'. But as Casino said, I'm not really the target market.
If I can tune out the language, I actually quite like the Faraway Tree set. I was particularly interested that the protagonists were so keen to move to an isolated cottage in the country, and how obvious it was felt to be that this would be the case - 'how they hated the town!' - a window into the 1950s view of town and country. Notably, the protagonists in these books very clearly aren't middle class.
It's impossible to discern any consistent principle, though there does seem to have been a seriously belated drift towards the frit side of things.
Personally I think the the test is imagining you could go back and read stuff. I can see myself reading Grahame, E. Nesbit, T.H. White, Alan Garner, C. S. Forester and the like if I ever get my taste for reading back, Blyters, no way.
Face masks effectively limit the probability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/05/19/science.abg6296
Airborne transmission by droplets and aerosols is important for the spread of viruses. Face masks are a well-established preventive measure, but their effectiveness for mitigating SARS-CoV-2 transmission is still under debate. We show that variations in mask efficacy can be explained by different regimes of virus abundance and related to population-average infection probability and reproduction number. For SARS-CoV-2, the viral load of infectious individuals can vary by orders of magnitude. We find that most environments and contacts are under conditions of low virus abundance (virus-limited) where surgical masks are effective at preventing virus spread. More advanced masks and other protective equipment are required in potentially virus-rich indoor environments including medical centers and hospitals. Masks are particularly effective in combination with other preventive measures like ventilation and distancing.
Stuff like this will make a huge difference in future pandemic planning.
No surprise it’s those two actually looking at data.
Would I read Blyton for myself? No. Would I introduce it to my children and read it to my children, or get them reading it? Why not?
For me Enid Blyton is for young children, it doesn't have re-readability as you grow up that other authors have. But it doesn't need to either, its for that age group and it works for that age group.
Although it is quite dated now, that's another matter.
...and no I didn't lose any money in Football Index.
https://twitter.com/wanderer_jasnah/status/1405270761124683776
Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and Eric Carle also got plenty. Even the Rev. Awdry.
Away with them.
This, I suspect, will be the new leaver manta - if it's good it's because of Brexit, if it's bad it's because of Covid.
Absolutely they have the right to leave, but unless or until they exercise that right, the EU and UvdL or her successors is part of their constitutional setup.
Just as Westminster and Boris or his successors is part of Northern Ireland or Scotland's constitutional setup even though we explicitly recognise Northern Ireland's right to self-determination and to leave via a United Ireland if they ever choose to exercise that right.
I mean Witty and Valance at times have stood in front of charts which some of us with some mathematical modelling experience have straight away gone hold on a second there...look at your confidence intervals, that can't be right.
Mostly it's posh kids being allowed to behave in fantastically dangerous ways by totally inadequate and awful parents - and appeals to kids for that reason - She'll leave them behind and go on to other more modern writers who are also cancelled for one reason or another - when my sister got me a Biggles book for my 50th birthday (as I had every single one as a boy) I was a bit gobsmacked - WE Johns is definitely a writer whose children's books can be safely left in the past - astonishingly racist.
It's somewhat analogous to the lateral test issue - when you see scientists interviewed, some of them practically squirm in horror at the idea of an inexact test. Even though rapid and inexact vs slow and exact maybe what you want. That's not to say that lateral tests are unquestionable - just that this kind of pavlovian reaction is.... interesting.
Why wouldn't they, when many US states are full open and inflationary pressures are rising very considerably?
Investors will start to differentiate between those states that are moving beyond covid and those that are stuck in the holding pattern.
The UK is extremely vulnerable to shift of this nature right now. Endless dithering is going to be severely, severely punished one day.
It looks like the tories, with unbelievable stupidity, want to be left holding the government baby when that punishment comes.
They deserve it.
Children aren't programmable drones, and nor do they view everything through a prism of intersectionality. In fact, they don't notice it at all.
It's very telling that Guardianistas think they are - presumably because they'd like to try and do a bit of programming themselves.
GC really isn’t fit for purpose, the briefest description of what Football Index were doing told you it was a Ponzi scheme, it was only a question of when, rather then if, it all went tits up.
If it were she wouldn't have sold any books, or been one of the most popular children's authors of all time.
https://twitter.com/wanderer_jasnah/status/1405270761124683776
Though that's speculation, the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines still seem pretty effective against the recent variants, so the explanation that CureVac was facing tougher hurdles (though true) doesn't really seem valid.
The Bay City Rollers were also very popular back in the day.
Bravo.
Either a weird slogan I'm not getting, hallucination being an immediate side effect or Leon is right that the aliens are here - and so many we have to specify which shops they can use.
This bloke got cancelled after having a NY Times bestseller and all round widely praised book from all the usual outlets only 5 years ago....for one passage in his semi-autobiographical book, where he made the sin of using SeanT type hyperbole when saying his girlfriend was different most women in SF.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/5/13/22435266/apple-employees-petition-controversial-antonio-garcia-martinez-new-hire-departure
Oh my God, can I even type or say g******* these days? 😮
If it’s not okay for white people to black up for black face, is it also not okay for white people to use black face emoji? 👴🏽
I am perfectly happy for my daughter to think for herself. She's got books which are classic fairytales, as well as a book entirely dedicated to modern feminist takes on the classics, and all sorts of stuff in-between. All I'm particularly interested in is that she's happy, healthy and reading.
My eldest daughter is currently reading a series of books about a girl at school who is half vampire, half fairy. Am I worried when she grows up she's going to want to be a vampire or a fairy? No.
My youngest daughter has learnt the alphabet and is learning to read, and currently wants to grow up to be a butterfly.
Let kids be kids, and reading is great.
Senior DUP source has told me the party officers are meeting this afternoon in a scheduled meeting .
Told me a vote of no confidence in Edwin Poots could , theoretically , be raised then .
Source said “ the party is uniting for the first time in a long time ….against Edwin”
https://twitter.com/StephenNolan/status/1405496753198145537
Because matching between waves we can go out and enjoy with spells of nice weather we can go out and enjoy is going to be unlikely in the UK. 🌧
Moving on from all the arguments over how delta got seeded, now delta is going up everywhere, should the government be increasing restrictions, such as on travel around the country and on mass gatherings such as sport, to stop it doubling so quickly?
I would say no. Even if it was good thing to do I think the government will say no. But in hindsight would it have been sensible to have been more tougher more quickly on waves to benefit the long run? Do you see what I mean - draconian for a fortnight is better than delaying lifting for months, if short sharp shock do lessen the length of restrictions. So the government should be thinking about locking us down a little bit more this week?
The claim, mady by Scott, was that the EU President never had a constitutional role in the UK.
The fact we could leave was meaningless to that claim.
It was true, it was meaningful in the fact that we did leave, but until we left it didn't change the fact that she did have a role.
I posted on here I had concerns about something that started portraying itself as gambling/spreads then span itself as a stock market was something those of us who work in financial services regulation are aware as something eyebrow raising.
The next one is NFTs.
The scary thing is top end football clubs and international team are moving into NFTs.
https://www.insidersport.com/2021/06/15/french-football-federation-explores-nfts-market-with-sorare/
As for literature, not a Blyton type myself, but Christine Pullein-Thompson, Jill Ferguson and Biggles all featured large. In particular I lapped up the Greyfriars comics/books which I'm pretty sure would land me in prison today if I tried to buy or was seen reading one in public.
Give me a choose your own adventure book anyday,
On the other hand, they are well constructed stories and can hold the attention of young kids as they're starting to engage with books. The books are also some of the first to feature an obviously gender-queer character! We have some of her books in our house despite being fully signed up members of the wokerati.
In general I am not a fan of banning books or writers, and you can separate writer from art (eg Roald Dahl, right-wing anti-semite but wrote great books for children). It's harder when the work itself is problematic. Kids can figure this out of course, as long as adults are on hand to explain the context and deal with any questions that arise.
My favourite books are the Swallows and Amazon's series, which are actually surprisingly free of racism etc as I recall, despite being written almost 100 years ago. Arthur Randsome was quite left wing though, which perhaps explains it. He may have been woke before his time. "Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown" is a parenting style to live by.
I'm desperately trying to work out a headline for the day Hancock is sacked/moved to another job.
HanCock Out and Cummings.
It's not as bad as it used to be, at one point we had PHE saying 80% reduction in hospitalisations with one dose of Pfizer or AZ after 3 weeks but the models were using 40% for AZ and 60% for Pfizer. I think these ones were using the old 85% figure with no cumulative reduction factors. The real world is actually about 96% and once cumulative reduction factors are accounted for it's probably above 99% for doubled jabbed.
https://twitter.com/SimonBruni/status/1405199688400347142
I suspect if the government had been more honest and said we need four more weeks to vaccinate the young because the delta variant needs two jabs to be properly effective they would have saved them from a world of pain.
Especially if later down the line there's a vaccine evading variant, that needs a booster.
https://twitter.com/JournoStephen/status/1405492429252399104?s=20
- The scientists want to use either peer reviewed, published data (the PHE data is real world but not academic published, yet) OR finger in the air worst cases.
- The politicians aren't pushing back on this, because that would be arguing with the experts* on their area of expertise.
*Yes, LOL