Housing analysts agree that it very much short-term fluctuation in demand that influence house prices; with supply only influencing in the long run, and not much either as demand is quite inelastic.
Like Murder on the Orient Express, everything is “to blame” for current house prices but based on what I’ve read the rough order of culprits is something like the following:
1. Repressed interest rates 2. Increased demand (more household formation) 3. Increased demand (immigration) 4. Increased demand (property as asset class) 5. Supply side: lack of public housing 6. Supply side: planning complexity 7. Increased demand (buy to let)
Prices ex South England are actually roughly at historic averages of price:earnings.
They would be probably be at historic lows if it wasn’t for (1) and (2).
Prices in South and especially London have all 7 factors in play.
The best thing we could probably do to bring down to prices is to increase public housing in the South, along with further measures to discourage holding property as an asset versus as a home, and planning reforms to bring down the cost of land.
A couple of new towns in the london periphery may do the trick for now. Built by the government.
Chesham and Amersham sound like ideal candidates for expansion.
We still don't know whether the London population is going to recover after Covid. At present any panic is most likely generated by the insane Stamp Duty holiday. This is all rather panicky.
If London does recover a couple of new towns - unless they are 1/4 million each - won't even scratch the itch. We would need to use some of the poor quality parts of the London Green Belt.
If you want an orderly housing market, stop shovelling nearly £30bn a year into the gaping maws of the wealthier parts of society - house owners - every year in CGT tax breaks, which inflate prices. Then see what that does over 10 years.
Then implement the Proportional Property Tax to take Stamp Duty completely out of the picture.
£30bn will cover Social Care Reforms several times over. And to get the money from a small levy on unearned housing profits seems logical.
Though obviously wealthier people squeal like a million live piglets being turned into pork scratchings at the prospect of losing any of their tax breaks.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
This isn't about me, YOU are the one blithely talking irresponsible wank. Closing down one of our most important industries, just like that. Millions of lives blighted. Multiple suicides. Just because
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
I don't support the idea but that's a nonsense.
Had we put in severe travel restrictions and quarantining last summer, while eliminating domestic restrictions, and said that this was the long-haul until the countries we travel to are vaccinated too, with furlough or other support simply for travel firms, then that would have cost a fraction of what furlough etc has cost for much of the entire frigging economy.
Plus we have a major tourism deficit. If central London etc were 100% open like Auckland is, but with travel restrictions, then domestic tourists would have gone to places like London etc etc to see shows and do other touristy stuff rather than going to Europe for one year.
I don't support this, its not necessary, but it would have been far cleaner than what we have had keeping the entire damned country locked down just because we couldn't control the frigging border of an island.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
Absolutely idiotic and the so called scientists need to be put back in their box
As I said earlier today I am want to see Boris replaced as soon as possible
He cannot make a decision - scientists advise, politicians decide
Hard to avoid the conclusion that Hancock and Johnson lied when they said that we would open up once the vulnerable had been vaccinated.
Is it lying? I think Boris's eyes glaze over at the sight of graphs, numbers and Professor Whitty's next slide. I would be tempted to say Boris is functionally innumerate except that term might have a technical meaning that is not quite right here.
I would be very interested in knowing what the highest level quantitative qualification is that Johnson has, and at what grade. O level maths, perhaps? In my only personal interaction with him, where the subject was economics, I had the strong sense of someone for whom numbers, and indeed objective reality, were at best loosely grasped. It helps to explain the lying too, of course.
Also the very messy personal finances.
And also the campaigning talent.
Much easier to spout forth on stuff if it's just words with no hint of an underlying meaning.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
They need to open source the models and have them peer reviewed. Annoyingly like what Dom Cummings wanted.
A bloody depressing day at work today. Waiting lists longer than I have known in my 3 decades in the NHS. Staff shortages with many either sick or left, Social Distancing meaning each day the lists gow longer. We are in a hole and still digging it deeper.
I'm sorry to hear that. Just as with many illnesses, the long and slow rehabilitation after the pandemic may be more painful and dispiriting than the crisis itself. I'd love to hear that the government intends to take it as seriously (and pay as freely) as they did procurement of the vaccine, but I fear it will take a while before public opinion forces them into that, if ever.
--AS
What would be the Cherry on the cake is the pension tax proposals in the DT today. Lots more would hand in their notice of retirement including myself.
Keep heart. Pension tax relief changes, or other ways of squeezing the same lemon, have been mooted so many times that it's probably best to ignore the kite-flying. I think effect on the NHS is actually one of the strongest arguments against.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
This isn't about me, YOU are the one blithely talking irresponsible wank. Closing down one of our most important industries, just like that. Millions of lives blighted. Multiple suicides. Just because
Airlines are not one of our most important industries and that's all that would be really shut down.
Domestic tourism would see a boom not a crash as people had no alternative but to see the sights in the UK.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
Not sure what the interest of the country is if it includes the loss of millions of jobs, 5-10% off GDP, the death of our major cities and a huge Depression.
How do you measure that against the only deaths that matter - Covid deaths*
*(as measured by those who die within 28 days of a positive test)
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
Which scientists, exactly? What form do you think such a "reckoning" would take?
--AS
A Star Chamber which can recommend jury trials, if necessary
These scientists are exercising extraordinary power over our lives - and, in some cases, clearly relishing it. With extraordinary power comes extraordinary consequences, if you get it wrong. There HAS to be a price to pay, they can't just slink away into the shadows, some must face criminal charges
I'd start with Peter Daszak and the editors of The Lancet, who blatantly lied back in February 2020. They are now quietly trying to hide these lies
"We invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests. Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for this letter and two other pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet. See http://hubs.li/H0QHbrM0."
But as to the other scientists such as those on SAGE, what do you think the consequences would be for the next pandemic if those who advised on this one (most of them for free) had to pay to defend themselves in a trial, and suffer a trial by media?
--AS
Millions have died. Our economy is in tatters. They got it hopelessly wrong on masks, and many other things. And the UK scientific elite either lied or conspired about "lab leak" - which you conveniently choose to ignore
Put the worst offenders in the dock and let a jury decide. They can have legal aid
It's the government that should be in the dock. There's a wide range of scientific opinion - some turns out to be right, some wrong.
The government has taken the decisions, some of which were shockers.
Yes indeed. If twats like Cummings were in charge of the office and no one put in the late nights studying the balance between medical and economic aspects of the crisis, then only one person is responsible. Too busy financing wallpaper, eating gourmet takeaways and doing fancy dress photo opportunities to do his homework.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
Which scientists, exactly? What form do you think such a "reckoning" would take?
--AS
A Star Chamber which can recommend jury trials, if necessary
These scientists are exercising extraordinary power over our lives - and, in some cases, clearly relishing it. With extraordinary power comes extraordinary consequences, if you get it wrong. There HAS to be a price to pay, they can't just slink away into the shadows, some must face criminal charges
I'd start with Peter Daszak and the editors of The Lancet, who blatantly lied back in February 2020. They are now quietly trying to hide these lies
"We invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests. Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for this letter and two other pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet. See http://hubs.li/H0QHbrM0."
But as to the other scientists such as those on SAGE, what do you think the consequences would be for the next pandemic if those who advised on this one (most of them for free) had to pay to defend themselves in a trial, and suffer a trial by media?
--AS
Millions have died. Our economy is in tatters. They got it hopelessly wrong on masks, and many other things. And the UK scientific elite either lied or conspired about "lab leak" - which you conveniently choose to ignore
Put the worst offenders in the dock and let a jury decide. They can have legal aid
Get your arguments in order. The deaths and economic consequences are not primarily because of the scientists, as well you know, but because of a novel pathogen.
I ignore the lab leak because I don't know the truth of the situation. If people have intentionally lied they should be held accountable.
That aside, I think some scientists made mistakes (including the Warwick models). But if you put them in the dock, then in the next pandemic you'll hope for a vaccine only to find nobody step forward for fear of liability if something goes wrong. You'll want for clinical trials of treatments, but why would anyone run one, if drawing a wrong conclusion (always a statistical possibility, no matter how well-designed the trial) means facing a jury afterwards? You'll look for evidence about transmission, likely spread, impact of different mitigations. You won't get them.
Or perhaps the power-hungry, the publicity-hungry, and the risk-takers amongst the scientists will step forward. Then you'll get the advice you seek, and it will be infinitely worse.
What you're really saying is that you're unhappy about the situation and want to take it out on someone. Thankfully, you don't have the power to implement the thoughtless revenge you seek.
--AS
I'm not after revenge. I'm saying scientists must accept the burden of power, given the powers they now exercise. And some exercise them keenly
And the "lab leak hypothesis" is key here, but you simply don't understand it. There is ample prima facie evidence that the highest levels of British science, from the Lancet and Nature to the Wellcome Trust, conspired to crush this hypothesis at birth, for whatever reason.
This cannot stand, or, the next time, we won't trust what the scientists say, nor what the Lancet tells us, as it is enjoys its Chinese funding
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
They need to open source the models and have them peer reviewed. Annoyingly like what Dom Cummings wanted.
A bloody depressing day at work today. Waiting lists longer than I have known in my 3 decades in the NHS. Staff shortages with many either sick or left, Social Distancing meaning each day the lists gow longer. We are in a hole and still digging it deeper.
I'm sorry to hear that. Just as with many illnesses, the long and slow rehabilitation after the pandemic may be more painful and dispiriting than the crisis itself. I'd love to hear that the government intends to take it as seriously (and pay as freely) as they did procurement of the vaccine, but I fear it will take a while before public opinion forces them into that, if ever.
--AS
What would be the Cherry on the cake is the pension tax proposals in the DT today. Lots more would hand in their notice of retirement including myself.
Keep heart. Pension tax relief changes, or other ways of squeezing the same lemon, have been mooted so many times that it's probably best to ignore the kite-flying. I think effect on the NHS is actually one of the strongest arguments against.
--AS
Yeah, they get trailed every year. Soon I plan to take the money and return part time.
Might as well bin the amber list, delta is 99% here now. Just keep the red list for other variant countries.
Is the objective of the amber list to keep out the delta variant?
Or is it to keep out the omega variant?
Red list is to keep variants out.
Yes but so too surely is amber list? Its just not as strict as the red list, but if people are quarantining when they return home then that should suppress any spread of variants too.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
Not sure what the interest of the country is if it includes the loss of millions of jobs, 5-10% off GDP, the death of our major cities and a huge Depression.
How do you measure that against the only deaths that matter - Covid deaths*
*(as measured by those who die within 28 days of a positive test)
None of what you quote will happen. It is important to reflect the pandemic and take moderate precautions to put the welfare of the population first.
Absolutely idiotic and the so called scientists need to be put back in their box
As I said earlier today I am want to see Boris replaced as soon as possible
He cannot make a decision - scientists advise, politicians decide
Hard to avoid the conclusion that Hancock and Johnson lied when they said that we would open up once the vulnerable had been vaccinated.
Is it lying? I think Boris's eyes glaze over at the sight of graphs, numbers and Professor Whitty's next slide. I would be tempted to say Boris is functionally innumerate except that term might have a technical meaning that is not quite right here.
I would be very interested in knowing what the highest level quantitative qualification is that Johnson has, and at what grade. O level maths, perhaps? In my only personal interaction with him, where the subject was economics, I had the strong sense of someone for whom numbers, and indeed objective reality, were at best loosely grasped. It helps to explain the lying too, of course.
True, but is not the same true of Ed Davey, or Keir Starmer, or Nicola Sturgeon, or most politicians? I doubt if any of them more than 'O level' maths.
Politics is kid-ology. You are kidding the voters, or kidding the party faithful, or kidding the easiest person of all to kid, yourself.
I mean by kidding not so much actual lying, but optimistically viewing the world, or your policies, or elections, or yourself in the most generous way possible. All politicians have the ability to loosely grasp objective reality in a favourable way.
So, COVID is like something they have never met. You can't kid COVID. You can't bluff it.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
This isn't about me, YOU are the one blithely talking irresponsible wank. Closing down one of our most important industries, just like that. Millions of lives blighted. Multiple suicides. Just because
Time for your nap I think. Have a rest and come back tomorrow.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
This isn't about me, YOU are the one blithely talking irresponsible wank. Closing down one of our most important industries, just like that. Millions of lives blighted. Multiple suicides. Just because
Airlines are not one of our most important industries and that's all that would be really shut down.
Domestic tourism would see a boom not a crash as people had no alternative but to see the sights in the UK.
Foreign Tourists and Domestic tourists want to see different things. Which is why you don't see Japanese tourists in Skeggy, or British tourists buying tat on Oxford Street.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
This isn't about me, YOU are the one blithely talking irresponsible wank. Closing down one of our most important industries, just like that. Millions of lives blighted. Multiple suicides. Just because
Airlines are not one of our most important industries and that's all that would be really shut down.
Domestic tourism would see a boom not a crash as people had no alternative but to see the sights in the UK.
Mind you, I can see that the foreign travel restrictions must limit the opportunities for travel writers.
Surely just a coincidence that @Leon is so animated about this?
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Do you understand the basic concept of "economic activity"?
Absolutely idiotic and the so called scientists need to be put back in their box
As I said earlier today I am want to see Boris replaced as soon as possible
He cannot make a decision - scientists advise, politicians decide
Hard to avoid the conclusion that Hancock and Johnson lied when they said that we would open up once the vulnerable had been vaccinated.
Is it lying? I think Boris's eyes glaze over at the sight of graphs, numbers and Professor Whitty's next slide. I would be tempted to say Boris is functionally innumerate except that term might have a technical meaning that is not quite right here.
I would be very interested in knowing what the highest level quantitative qualification is that Johnson has, and at what grade. O level maths, perhaps? In my only personal interaction with him, where the subject was economics, I had the strong sense of someone for whom numbers, and indeed objective reality, were at best loosely grasped. It helps to explain the lying too, of course.
True, but is not the same true of Ed Davey, or Keir Starmer, or Nicola Sturgeon, or most politicians? I doubt if any of them more than 'O level' maths.
Politics is kid-ology. You are kidding the voters, or kidding the party faithful, or kidding the easiest person of all to kid, yourself.
I mean by kidding not so much actual lying, but optimistically viewing the world, or your policies, or elections, or yourself in the most generous way possible. All politicians have the ability to loosely grasp objective reality in a favourable way.
So, COVID is like something they have never met. You can't kid COVID. You can't bluff it.
Davey has an MSc in Economics from Birkbeck, gained whilst he was doing Economic Policy research as an aide to Alan Beith.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Do you understand the basic concept of "economic activity"?
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
Not sure what the interest of the country is if it includes the loss of millions of jobs, 5-10% off GDP, the death of our major cities and a huge Depression.
How do you measure that against the only deaths that matter - Covid deaths*
*(as measured by those who die within 28 days of a positive test)
None of what you quote will happen. It is important to reflect the pandemic and take moderate precautions to put the welfare of the population first.
Come off it - it’s a ridiculous elevation of a dangerous, but hardly unprecedentedly so, virus above almost all other considerations, and in total disregard of the consequences. And a virus for which we now have hugely effective vaccines and (inevitably) increasingly improved treatments against all currently known variants. And the ability in future to scale up new vaccines at unprecedented speed.
And you are arguing that we can not even see the end of this pandemic but are barely half way through. To the extent that despite being 15 months in, probably seen the vast majority of the deaths we will see in this country (to the extent that in future they will be far more correlated with more moderate levels of illness aligned with eg bad flu seasons), we should already be writing off the next 18 months to 2 years before realistically thinking we can escape this.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
Love you too Leon. It's important to put the interest of the country first.
See you in Cornwall ♥️
Not sure what the interest of the country is if it includes the loss of millions of jobs, 5-10% off GDP, the death of our major cities and a huge Depression.
How do you measure that against the only deaths that matter - Covid deaths*
*(as measured by those who die within 28 days of a positive test)
None of what you quote will happen. It is important to reflect the pandemic and take moderate precautions to put the welfare of the population first.
Come off it - it’s a ridiculous elevation of a dangerous, but hardly unprecedentedly so, virus above almost all other considerations, and in total disregard of the consequences. And a virus for which we now have hugely effective vaccines and (inevitably) increasingly improved treatments against all currently known variants. And the ability in future to scale up new vaccines at unprecedented speed.
And you are arguing that we can not even see the end of this pandemic but are barely half way through. To the extent that despite being 15 months in, probably seen the vast majority of the deaths we will see in this country (to the extent that in future they will be far more correlated with more moderate levels of illness aligned with eg bad flu seasons), we should already be writing off the next 18 months to 2 years before realistically thinking we can escape this.
Again I haven't said any of this.
It's still a significant problem. We will sort it out. Why throw the progress away?
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
Which scientists, exactly? What form do you think such a "reckoning" would take?
--AS
A Star Chamber which can recommend jury trials, if necessary
These scientists are exercising extraordinary power over our lives - and, in some cases, clearly relishing it. With extraordinary power comes extraordinary consequences, if you get it wrong. There HAS to be a price to pay, they can't just slink away into the shadows, some must face criminal charges
I'd start with Peter Daszak and the editors of The Lancet, who blatantly lied back in February 2020. They are now quietly trying to hide these lies
"We invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests. Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for this letter and two other pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet. See http://hubs.li/H0QHbrM0."
But as to the other scientists such as those on SAGE, what do you think the consequences would be for the next pandemic if those who advised on this one (most of them for free) had to pay to defend themselves in a trial, and suffer a trial by media?
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
I wouldn't' assume that necessarily to be the case. Some might but others will, like me, hold on to their travel budgets till they can go abroad again. This summer most UK holiday destinations will be overpriced, overcrowded, frequently wet and miserable and the car journey to get there and back will be horrendous. I'm betting millions won't bother till they can get to the sun again
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
Indeed. They're just too fucking dumb to understand this. Embarrassing
There's almost no point in addressing this Level of Stupid, but well done for trying
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
Absolutely idiotic and the so called scientists need to be put back in their box
As I said earlier today I am want to see Boris replaced as soon as possible
He cannot make a decision - scientists advise, politicians decide
Hard to avoid the conclusion that Hancock and Johnson lied when they said that we would open up once the vulnerable had been vaccinated.
Is it lying? I think Boris's eyes glaze over at the sight of graphs, numbers and Professor Whitty's next slide. I would be tempted to say Boris is functionally innumerate except that term might have a technical meaning that is not quite right here.
I would be very interested in knowing what the highest level quantitative qualification is that Johnson has, and at what grade. O level maths, perhaps? In my only personal interaction with him, where the subject was economics, I had the strong sense of someone for whom numbers, and indeed objective reality, were at best loosely grasped. It helps to explain the lying too, of course.
True, but is not the same true of Ed Davey, or Keir Starmer, or Nicola Sturgeon, or most politicians? I doubt if any of them more than 'O level' maths.
Politics is kid-ology. You are kidding the voters, or kidding the party faithful, or kidding the easiest person of all to kid, yourself.
I mean by kidding not so much actual lying, but optimistically viewing the world, or your policies, or elections, or yourself in the most generous way possible. All politicians have the ability to loosely grasp objective reality in a favourable way.
So, COVID is like something they have never met. You can't kid COVID. You can't bluff it.
Davey has an MSc in Economics from Birkbeck, gained whilst he was doing Economic Policy research as an aide to Alan Beith.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
A London without a million foreign tourists is a rather more attractive prospect for a visit.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
Which scientists, exactly? What form do you think such a "reckoning" would take?
--AS
A Star Chamber which can recommend jury trials, if necessary
These scientists are exercising extraordinary power over our lives - and, in some cases, clearly relishing it. With extraordinary power comes extraordinary consequences, if you get it wrong. There HAS to be a price to pay, they can't just slink away into the shadows, some must face criminal charges
I'd start with Peter Daszak and the editors of The Lancet, who blatantly lied back in February 2020. They are now quietly trying to hide these lies
"We invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests. Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for this letter and two other pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet. See http://hubs.li/H0QHbrM0."
But as to the other scientists such as those on SAGE, what do you think the consequences would be for the next pandemic if those who advised on this one (most of them for free) had to pay to defend themselves in a trial, and suffer a trial by media?
--AS
They might get something right?
Learning requires a climate where people are willing to admit they don't know or were wrong. It requires a climate where calling other people out is seen not as humiliation for the person called out, but as a gift to help them learn. Shame and blame, penalties and punishments achieve only one thing. At best, they stop learning in its tracks. At worst, they create a culture of lying, hiding and diversion.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
Exactly.
The purpose of any modelling is not to give a point estimate of a prediction.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
A London without a million foreign tourists is a rather more attractive prospect for a visit.
Yes, central London is currently very pleasant. Relatively quiet, yet busy enough to be fun, everything open again. Yet sadly it’s not sustainable: as a stress-free playground for wealthy Londoners it won’t break even.
Absolutely idiotic and the so called scientists need to be put back in their box
As I said earlier today I am want to see Boris replaced as soon as possible
He cannot make a decision - scientists advise, politicians decide
Hard to avoid the conclusion that Hancock and Johnson lied when they said that we would open up once the vulnerable had been vaccinated.
Is it lying? I think Boris's eyes glaze over at the sight of graphs, numbers and Professor Whitty's next slide. I would be tempted to say Boris is functionally innumerate except that term might have a technical meaning that is not quite right here.
I would be very interested in knowing what the highest level quantitative qualification is that Johnson has, and at what grade. O level maths, perhaps? In my only personal interaction with him, where the subject was economics, I had the strong sense of someone for whom numbers, and indeed objective reality, were at best loosely grasped. It helps to explain the lying too, of course.
True, but is not the same true of Ed Davey, or Keir Starmer, or Nicola Sturgeon, or most politicians? I doubt if any of them more than 'O level' maths.
Politics is kid-ology. You are kidding the voters, or kidding the party faithful, or kidding the easiest person of all to kid, yourself.
I mean by kidding not so much actual lying, but optimistically viewing the world, or your policies, or elections, or yourself in the most generous way possible. All politicians have the ability to loosely grasp objective reality in a favourable way.
So, COVID is like something they have never met. You can't kid COVID. You can't bluff it.
Davey has an MSc in Economics from Birkbeck, gained whilst he was doing Economic Policy research as an aide to Alan Beith.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
A London without a million foreign tourists is a rather more attractive prospect for a visit.
But less attractive for, you know, people that own and run tourist destinations in London? From galleries to restaurants to theatres to Madame Tussaud's?
But don't worry, most of them will shut down forever, so you can get your National Londonpubman-bus to the semi-pro Benpointer Theatre, to see the single ongoing West End show, Philip Thompson's Tiny Dancing Autistic Penis With Newbuilds
We don’t need to put scientists on trial, but we do need to hold them to account. How many people know about the big bust on the Warwick forecasts that were used to justify the unlock delay? Why isn’t the press all over it?
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
Which scientists, exactly? What form do you think such a "reckoning" would take?
--AS
A Star Chamber which can recommend jury trials, if necessary
These scientists are exercising extraordinary power over our lives - and, in some cases, clearly relishing it. With extraordinary power comes extraordinary consequences, if you get it wrong. There HAS to be a price to pay, they can't just slink away into the shadows, some must face criminal charges
I'd start with Peter Daszak and the editors of The Lancet, who blatantly lied back in February 2020. They are now quietly trying to hide these lies
"We invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests. Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for this letter and two other pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet. See http://hubs.li/H0QHbrM0."
But as to the other scientists such as those on SAGE, what do you think the consequences would be for the next pandemic if those who advised on this one (most of them for free) had to pay to defend themselves in a trial, and suffer a trial by media?
--AS
They might get something right?
Learning requires a climate where people are willing to admit they don't know or were wrong. It requires a climate where calling other people out is seen not as humiliation for the person called out, but as a gift to help them learn. Shame and blame, penalties and punishments achieve only one thing. At best, they stop learning in its tracks. At worst, they create a culture of lying, hiding and diversion.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
I agree the models are being used incorrectly if they are being to used to make predictions. And if they are being used by the modelers to make predictions, it implies that the modelers really don't understand complex adaptive systems.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
Which scientists, exactly? What form do you think such a "reckoning" would take?
--AS
A Star Chamber which can recommend jury trials, if necessary
These scientists are exercising extraordinary power over our lives - and, in some cases, clearly relishing it. With extraordinary power comes extraordinary consequences, if you get it wrong. There HAS to be a price to pay, they can't just slink away into the shadows, some must face criminal charges
I'd start with Peter Daszak and the editors of The Lancet, who blatantly lied back in February 2020. They are now quietly trying to hide these lies
"We invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests. Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for this letter and two other pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet. See http://hubs.li/H0QHbrM0."
But as to the other scientists such as those on SAGE, what do you think the consequences would be for the next pandemic if those who advised on this one (most of them for free) had to pay to defend themselves in a trial, and suffer a trial by media?
--AS
They might get something right?
Learning requires a climate where people are willing to admit they don't know or were wrong. It requires a climate where calling other people out is seen not as humiliation for the person called out, but as a gift to help them learn. Shame and blame, penalties and punishments achieve only one thing. At best, they stop learning in its tracks. At worst, they create a culture of lying, hiding and diversion.
Right now we have a culture of not learning at all. These same self important wankers have produced the same bullshit models that have yet to be correct. The predictive value of them is as bad as at the beginning of all this. The CI of them is a joke this far in with so much high quality data available from across the world. The UK itself produces two gold standard measures, the weekly infection/antibody prevalence report by the ONS and the monthly vaccine efficacy reports from PHE.
I'd take sacking the lot of them for now and actually getting some new people in who aren't happy with being 5-7x out for a predictive model.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
For the lab leak conspirators, a trial by jury and possible jail is perfectly reasonable. How else can we regain trust in vital journals like the Lancet and Nature, unless apparent malfeasance is punished? Why should they be allowed to get away with such wild deception, which has such grave consequences?
We fiercely criticised Handelsblatt for killing people with journalistic lies. And we were right to do so. We need to be just as harsh on our own, arguably more important sins
For the scientists who just fucked up, they should pay with their jobs, as you say. If you get something badly wrong, time and again, you get sacked. C'est tout. Boffins should not be immune. You want to deter the stupid and promote the good. Crap science should never be rewarded, crap science must come at a price
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
A London without a million foreign tourists is a rather more attractive prospect for a visit.
But less attractive for, you know, people that own and run tourist destinations in London? From galleries to restaurants to theatres to Madame Tussaud's?
But don't worry, most of them will shut down forever, so you can get your National Londonpubman-bus to the semi-pro Benpointer Theatre, to see the single ongoing West End show, Philip Thompson's Tiny Dancing Autistic Penis With Newbuilds
Perhaps rich Londoners should spend some money.
I keep hearing how much money the rich have saved - now's the time to put it back into the economy.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
I agree the models are being used incorrectly if they are being to used to make predictions. And if they are being used by the modelers to make predictions, it implies that the modelers really don't understand complex adaptive systems.
It does imply that, and yet they're still there churning out these predictions of doom based on nothing but their lack of understanding.
We have a serious, serious lack of expertise in data science and predictive modelling at the top of academia in this country. That much has become extremely clear. Random internet people using GCP, tensorflow and a few basic regression analyses are doing better in the private sector. I mean that guy who just put all of the data into a logistic regression model did amazingly well until he got bored and gave up.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
I agree the models are being used incorrectly if they are being to used to make predictions. And if they are being used by the modelers to make predictions, it implies that the modelers really don't understand complex adaptive systems.
It does imply that, and yet they're still there churning out these predictions of doom based on nothing but their lack of understanding.
We have a serious, serious lack of expertise in data science and predictive modelling at the top of academia in this country. That much has become extremely clear. Random internet people using GCP, tensorflow and a few basic regression analyses are doing better in the private sector. I mean that guy who just put all of the data into a logistic regression model did amazingly well until he got bored and gave up.
The problem is that the SAGE community are not spending their own money. If told that their next grant funding will be awarded based on how close to reality their models are, they would get better. Fast.
EDIT: Dominic Cummings would probably want to employ a load of quants to redo the modelling on a success bonus basis. He'd probably do better.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
I agree the models are being used incorrectly if they are being to used to make predictions. And if they are being used by the modelers to make predictions, it implies that the modelers really don't understand complex adaptive systems.
It does imply that, and yet they're still there churning out these predictions of doom based on nothing but their lack of understanding.
We have a serious, serious lack of expertise in data science and predictive modelling at the top of academia in this country. That much has become extremely clear. Random internet people using GCP, tensorflow and a few basic regression analyses are doing better in the private sector. I mean that guy who just put all of the data into a logistic regression model did amazingly well until he got bored and gave up.
It's not just the modellers. Don't forget Jonathan "masks are useless my friend in Hong Kong who always wears a mask totally agrees" Van Tam.
An over-promoted elite of twats. Is what we see, in plain sight
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
Yes.
The key thing is to understand that both models and experience change behaviour. If the bodies are piling up in the morgues, then people will stay home. And people react to published case numbers too, and even to projections of future growth. And that's even before we talk about how models will change the level of restrictions.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
But with both climate and covid, the models have been marched out in front of the decision makers with suitably scary shaped graphs, and presented as predictions of the future, along with grim warnings that amount to "do X right now or the bunny gets it".
That should be greeted with howls of derision every time they try it on. It isn't (yet) on climate because there are too many vested interests in getting the "right" answer. The vested interests (different ones - the public health freaks in this case) are trying it on with Covid, but the dam there is approaching busting point (as evidenced by the derision the Warwick modelling gets on here).
The reputational damage from one really should start bleeding over to the other given the similarities.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
"London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland"
What a condescending snob you can be sometimes.
It doesn't mean he's not right, though.
If you go to London theatre (in non-pandemic times), what proportion of the audience do you think are Londoners? 40%? We're a centre - as is New York - for the performing arts for the world. That's an inherent part of globalisation. And sure, performances and performers tour too, but lots of industries simply wouldn't exist without travel and tourism.
I find it staggering that there are billboards in LA advertising travel to Italy and to Germany (!) for the fully vaccinated American. Too soon? Probably. But those who move quickest will be the ones who benefit.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
A London without a million foreign tourists is a rather more attractive prospect for a visit.
This is the exact reason I am going to Edinburgh this summer - a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit when it is warm and not thronged with American tourists.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
For the lab leak conspirators, a trial by jury and possible jail is perfectly reasonable. How else can we regain trust in vital journals like the Lancet and Nature, unless apparent malfeasance is punished? Why should they be allowed to get away with such wild deception, which has such grave consequences?
We fiercely criticised Handelsblatt for killing people with journalistic lies. And we were right to do so. We need to be just as harsh on our own, arguably more important sins
For the scientists who just fucked up, they should pay with their jobs, as you say. If you get something badly wrong, time and again, you get sacked. C'est tout. Boffins should not be immune. You want to deter the stupid and promote the good. Crap science should never be rewarded, crap science must come at a price
"Beatings will continue until the quality of the scientific advice [provided voluntarily and without recompense] improves! It will deter the stupid!"
I expect and firmly hope that my own area of expertise will never be needed in a national emergency, because if it does it will probably be something horrible related to terrorism. But if it did, how do you think I'd react under the regime you envisage? (I am without question the UK's leading expert on my niche topic -- not a huge boast because it's very niche.) I'd be happy to brief ministers confidentially, but put my job or liberty at risk for the likes of you? To hell with that.
But you're too incoherent to consider the consequences of what you propose. Thankfully, those in power know better. There is plenty of scope to improve SAGE, not least in introducing some form of peer review and challenge, and I hope that this will happen -- calmly -- after the worst of the pandemic is over.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
I agree the models are being used incorrectly if they are being to used to make predictions. And if they are being used by the modelers to make predictions, it implies that the modelers really don't understand complex adaptive systems.
There’s nothing wrong with using the models for predictions as long as the range of uncertainly is published alongside the prediction. The latter is usually omitted by the media - which is not the scientists’ fault
Why is this all about London? Resorts in the NE, such as Whitby, Tynemouth and Seahouses are booming. The kind of places no foreign tourist ever goes anywhere near. Apart from Goths to Whitby 2 weekends a year that is.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
A London without a million foreign tourists is a rather more attractive prospect for a visit.
But less attractive for, you know, people that own and run tourist destinations in London? From galleries to restaurants to theatres to Madame Tussaud's?
But don't worry, most of them will shut down forever, so you can get your National Londonpubman-bus to the semi-pro Benpointer Theatre, to see the single ongoing West End show, Philip Thompson's Tiny Dancing Autistic Penis With Newbuilds
I was in London for a couple of days last week, for the first time in 15 months. I walked round extensively, as advised on here. There were more people than I was expecting, but it was still lacking.
But what struck me as lacking was retail. London is now catering for the uber-rich - and the tat-mongering hordes. Who just aren't there.
What London has lost is a vast swathe of off-beat, interesting stuff to shop for. The retail experience is incredibly dull. I think that if London doesn't properly recover, it won't be Covid that is responsible. It will be the online retail offering.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
For the lab leak conspirators, a trial by jury and possible jail is perfectly reasonable. How else can we regain trust in vital journals like the Lancet and Nature, unless apparent malfeasance is punished? Why should they be allowed to get away with such wild deception, which has such grave consequences?
We fiercely criticised Handelsblatt for killing people with journalistic lies. And we were right to do so. We need to be just as harsh on our own, arguably more important sins
For the scientists who just fucked up, they should pay with their jobs, as you say. If you get something badly wrong, time and again, you get sacked. C'est tout. Boffins should not be immune. You want to deter the stupid and promote the good. Crap science should never be rewarded, crap science must come at a price
"Beatings will continue until the quality of the scientific advice [provided voluntarily and without recompense] improves! It will deter the stupid!"
I expect and firmly hope that my own area of expertise will never be needed in a national emergency, because if it does it will probably be something horrible related to terrorism. But if it did, how do you think I'd react under the regime you envisage? (I am without question the UK's leading expert on my niche topic -- not a huge boast because it's very niche.) I'd be happy to brief ministers confidentially, but put my job or liberty at risk for the likes of you? To hell with that.
But you're too incoherent to consider the consequences of what you propose. Thankfully, those in power know better. There is plenty of scope to improve SAGE, not least in introducing some form of peer review and challenge, and I hope that this will happen -- calmly -- after the worst of the pandemic is over.
--AS
I'll just leave your remark here, without further comment:
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
In normal times Britain is a net importer of tourism services - i.e. more money is spent abroad by UK tourists than in the UK by foreign tourists. If people cannot travel abroad they will travel in the UK.
Britons holidaying at home is not the same thing and would not substitute for foreign tourists. For a start, I can see many of the sights without needing an hotel. There is no pressure to take in sights of secondary interest through FOMO. I don't need to go to the National Gallery because it will still be there next week, whereas the French tourist would need to go, just as I would have only one chance to visit the Louvre during my week in Paris. I don't need to spend money sampling the exotic local cuisine, because I already know what I like. And so on.
A London without a million foreign tourists is a rather more attractive prospect for a visit.
But less attractive for, you know, people that own and run tourist destinations in London? From galleries to restaurants to theatres to Madame Tussaud's?
But don't worry, most of them will shut down forever, so you can get your National Londonpubman-bus to the semi-pro Benpointer Theatre, to see the single ongoing West End show, Philip Thompson's Tiny Dancing Autistic Penis With Newbuilds
Is that the one where Dorothy is trying to warn Faust about the Crocodiles in the water supply? I’ve already seen it. Great night out, catchy tunes
Five little monkeys Sitting in a tree Teasing Mr. Crocodile, "You can't catch me." Along came Mr. Crocodile, Quiet as can be Four little monkeys etc
As Faust was being played by black actor, likely cancelled already 😕
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
I agree that the priority has to be opening up the UK before opening up foreign travel. But people who've been fully vaccinated ought to be able to travel pretty soon as long as there aren't any dangerous new variants in other countries.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
For the lab leak conspirators, a trial by jury and possible jail is perfectly reasonable. How else can we regain trust in vital journals like the Lancet and Nature, unless apparent malfeasance is punished? Why should they be allowed to get away with such wild deception, which has such grave consequences?
We fiercely criticised Handelsblatt for killing people with journalistic lies. And we were right to do so. We need to be just as harsh on our own, arguably more important sins
For the scientists who just fucked up, they should pay with their jobs, as you say. If you get something badly wrong, time and again, you get sacked. C'est tout. Boffins should not be immune. You want to deter the stupid and promote the good. Crap science should never be rewarded, crap science must come at a price
"Beatings will continue until the quality of the scientific advice [provided voluntarily and without recompense] improves! It will deter the stupid!"
I expect and firmly hope that my own area of expertise will never be needed in a national emergency, because if it does it will probably be something horrible related to terrorism. But if it did, how do you think I'd react under the regime you envisage? (I am without question the UK's leading expert on my niche topic -- not a huge boast because it's very niche.) I'd be happy to brief ministers confidentially, but put my job or liberty at risk for the likes of you? To hell with that.
But you're too incoherent to consider the consequences of what you propose. Thankfully, those in power know better. There is plenty of scope to improve SAGE, not least in introducing some form of peer review and challenge, and I hope that this will happen -- calmly -- after the worst of the pandemic is over.
--AS
I'm not sure I'd want to go as far as prosecution, but surely you accept that one shouldn't be able to pedal total nonsense to national decision makers whilst being a supposed expert without consequence.
You are making the rather generous assumption that the Warwick modelers are honest scientists doing their best. The available evidence suggests that either a) They have an agenda and are making stuff up to fit it b) They are so clueless they probably shouldn't be allowed kitchen knives for the sake of their own safety.
Either way, I can't see how anyone can ever take another model they produce seriously.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
So a wealth transfer from the restaurant and theatre owners of London to British people who want to go to London's restaurants and theatres.
And the opposite side of the coin is allowing outward tourism will be detrimental for much of the UK tourist industry.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
I agree that the priority has to be opening up the UK before opening up foreign travel. But people who've been fully vaccinated ought to be able to travel pretty soon as long as there aren't any dangerous new variants in other countries.
Israel reopened to vaccinated tourists who came as part of tour groups back in May. They are now expanding it to all who are vaccinated plus younger children.
This is with no quarantine: it is simply vaccination status plus single negative Covid test.
Israel had... ummm... 16 Covid cases yesterday.
If Israel is able to open their borders to the vaccinated (and including and encouraging tourists at that) without seeing any impact on case numbers, then the question has to be, why is the UK being so cautious?
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
Your agreeing with Leon 😕. You didn’t have to tell us, you could have kept it to yourself. Earlier Philip agreed with Bastani.
One of PBs messiest days.
Politics is so mixed up at the moment. Covid sets libertarians against authoritarians, woke sets the old against the young, Tory majority depends on delivering Boris spending pledges to an expectant mass of traditional Labour heartlands.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
So a wealth transfer from the restaurant and theatre owners of London to British people who want to go to London's restaurants and theatres.
And the opposite side of the coin is allowing outward tourism will be detrimental for much of the UK tourist industry.
That's not what I'm saying.
Imagine demand for performing arts in the UK today is 100 (and - of course - let's not forget that many theatrical performances tour, so it's not really like Norwich doesn't get its fair sure of decent performances).
Of that 100, say 60 is foreign tourists.
If they go away, then overall demand would drop - absent price changes - to 40. Of course, theatres will react with price reductions: actors will accept less, etc. And maybe total UK demand increases by 50%.
In this circumstance, we're still talking about UK performing arts having overall revenue now of 60. That's down 40%.
That's not a wealth transfer from London to the provinces, that's an absolute reduction in demand.
The world also doesn't stay still. Some of those performances might go to New York or to Dublin. Somewhere else might become the centre where new plays and musicals are performed. In which case, you will have British tourists in 2024 travelling abroad to see them, not staying in the UK.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
For the lab leak conspirators, a trial by jury and possible jail is perfectly reasonable. How else can we regain trust in vital journals like the Lancet and Nature, unless apparent malfeasance is punished? Why should they be allowed to get away with such wild deception, which has such grave consequences?
We fiercely criticised Handelsblatt for killing people with journalistic lies. And we were right to do so. We need to be just as harsh on our own, arguably more important sins
For the scientists who just fucked up, they should pay with their jobs, as you say. If you get something badly wrong, time and again, you get sacked. C'est tout. Boffins should not be immune. You want to deter the stupid and promote the good. Crap science should never be rewarded, crap science must come at a price
"Beatings will continue until the quality of the scientific advice [provided voluntarily and without recompense] improves! It will deter the stupid!"
I expect and firmly hope that my own area of expertise will never be needed in a national emergency, because if it does it will probably be something horrible related to terrorism. But if it did, how do you think I'd react under the regime you envisage? (I am without question the UK's leading expert on my niche topic -- not a huge boast because it's very niche.) I'd be happy to brief ministers confidentially, but put my job or liberty at risk for the likes of you? To hell with that.
But you're too incoherent to consider the consequences of what you propose. Thankfully, those in power know better. There is plenty of scope to improve SAGE, not least in introducing some form of peer review and challenge, and I hope that this will happen -- calmly -- after the worst of the pandemic is over.
--AS
I'm not sure I'd want to go as far as prosecution, but surely you accept that one shouldn't be able to pedal total nonsense to national decision makers whilst being a supposed expert without consequence.
You are making the rather generous assumption that the Warwick modelers are honest scientists doing their best. The available evidence suggests that either a) They have an agenda and are making stuff up to fit it b) They are so clueless they probably shouldn't be allowed kitchen knives for the sake of their own safety.
Either way, I can't see how anyone can ever take another model they produce seriously.
There's absolutely no "available evidence" that the Warwick modelers have an agenda and are making stuff up. What rubbish.
Not taking Warwick's subsequent models too seriously is probably good advice. On the other hand, looking back at older SPI-M papers I find it remarkable how *accurate* their collective advice was. The LSHTM models from late last summer predicted the autumn/winter waves extremely closely, within 5000 deaths.
Let's face it, many of the most shrill complaints about recent models are from people who dislike what the models say. I'll note that nobody is actually prepared to come up with a critique of the models themselves (I believe they are all published) and have in recent months moved away from criticizing the model parameters. Instead they criticize the outputs, which is not a very coherent position.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
I agree the models are being used incorrectly if they are being to used to make predictions. And if they are being used by the modelers to make predictions, it implies that the modelers really don't understand complex adaptive systems.
There’s nothing wrong with using the models for predictions as long as the range of uncertainly is published alongside the prediction. The latter is usually omitted by the media - which is not the scientists’ fault
There can be no confidence bars for complex adaptive systems. They are sensitive to initial conditions, and produce emergent properties. They are, simply, unpredictable in any numerical sense.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
Your agreeing with Leon 😕. You didn’t have to tell us, you could have kept it to yourself. Earlier Philip agreed with Bastani.
One of PBs messiest days.
Politics is so mixed up at the moment. Covid sets libertarians against authoritarians, woke sets the old against the young, Tory majority depends on delivering Boris spending pledges to an expectant mass of traditional Labour heartlands.
It’s not going to end well.
Yes. You forgot some of the Rightest of the Right giving Burnham a standing ovation and a rendition of Rule Brittania cos he's gone in studs up on Nicola. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar Mamma.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
So a wealth transfer from the restaurant and theatre owners of London to British people who want to go to London's restaurants and theatres.
And the opposite side of the coin is allowing outward tourism will be detrimental for much of the UK tourist industry.
That's not what I'm saying.
Imagine demand for performing arts in the UK today is 100 (and - of course - let's not forget that many theatrical performances tour, so it's not really like Norwich doesn't get its fair sure of decent performances).
Of that 100, say 60 is foreign tourists.
If they go away, then overall demand would drop - absent price changes - to 40. Of course, theatres will react with price reductions: actors will accept less, etc. And maybe total UK demand increases by 50%.
In this circumstance, we're still talking about UK performing arts having overall revenue now of 60. That's down 40%.
That's not a wealth transfer from London to the provinces, that's an absolute reduction in demand.
The world also doesn't stay still. Some of those performances might go to New York or to Dublin. Somewhere else might become the centre where new plays and musicals are performed. In which case, you will have British tourists in 2024 travelling abroad to see them, not staying in the UK.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
I agree that the priority has to be opening up the UK before opening up foreign travel. But people who've been fully vaccinated ought to be able to travel pretty soon as long as there aren't any dangerous new variants in other countries.
Israel reopened to vaccinated tourists who came as part of tour groups back in May. They are now expanding it to all who are vaccinated plus younger children.
This is with no quarantine: it is simply vaccination status plus single negative Covid test.
Israel had... ummm... 16 Covid cases yesterday.
If Israel is able to open their borders to the vaccinated (and including and encouraging tourists at that) without seeing any impact on case numbers, then the question has to be, why is the UK being so cautious?
Possibly 16 cases v 10000? That and government policy being entirely based on polling.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
Yes.
The key thing is to understand that both models and experience change behaviour. If the bodies are piling up in the morgues, then people will stay home. And people react to published case numbers too, and even to projections of future growth. And that's even before we talk about how models will change the level of restrictions.
Yes. Feedback loops are a key characteristic of why complex adaptive systems are not deterministic, and hence cannot be used for prediction even with confidence bars.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
But with both climate and covid, the models have been marched out in front of the decision makers with suitably scary shaped graphs, and presented as predictions of the future, along with grim warnings that amount to "do X right now or the bunny gets it".
That should be greeted with howls of derision every time they try it on. It isn't (yet) on climate because there are too many vested interests in getting the "right" answer. The vested interests (different ones - the public health freaks in this case) are trying it on with Covid, but the dam there is approaching busting point (as evidenced by the derision the Warwick modelling gets on here).
The reputational damage from one really should start bleeding over to the other given the similarities.
Indeed. I believe that man's activity, especially husbandry and deforestation, have impacted climate. But I rail against how the models are used for predictions and are presented as settled science.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
I agree that the priority has to be opening up the UK before opening up foreign travel. But people who've been fully vaccinated ought to be able to travel pretty soon as long as there aren't any dangerous new variants in other countries.
Israel reopened to vaccinated tourists who came as part of tour groups back in May. They are now expanding it to all who are vaccinated plus younger children.
This is with no quarantine: it is simply vaccination status plus single negative Covid test.
Israel had... ummm... 16 Covid cases yesterday.
If Israel is able to open their borders to the vaccinated (and including and encouraging tourists at that) without seeing any impact on case numbers, then the question has to be, why is the UK being so cautious?
You want to know what the irony is ?
If the airlines and airports (and those who have used them) hadn't done everything they could to ignore restrictions then they'd have a lot less restrictions on them now.
True, but is not the same true of Ed Davey, or Keir Starmer, or Nicola Sturgeon, or most politicians? I doubt if any of them more than 'O level' maths.
FWIW I have a PhD in mathematics. I found (and still find) a knowledge of statistics and logic to be useful. Beyond that, not so much.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
Your agreeing with Leon 😕. You didn’t have to tell us, you could have kept it to yourself. Earlier Philip agreed with Bastani.
One of PBs messiest days.
Politics is so mixed up at the moment. Covid sets libertarians against authoritarians, woke sets the old against the young, Tory majority depends on delivering Boris spending pledges to an expectant mass of traditional Labour heartlands.
It’s not going to end well.
Yes. You forgot some of the Rightest of the Right giving Burnham a standing ovation and a rendition of Rule Brittania cos he's gone in studs up on Nicola. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar Mamma.
Yes, I missed the strange bedfellows as the UK disintegrates. And I deleted the incendiary Brexit sets the Educated against the Thick line, because it’s not entirely true.
To be fair to Burnham, Nicola has been playing a sneaky one, not announcing a policy to the world because it wouldn’t stand up as fair under scrutiny, yet individuals have been put out of pocket by the decision she made without any acknowledgment of that from her. Once aware what was sneakily going on, everyone would have spoken up, even Nicola if same thing was done to her.
Now seeing Nicola as the most devious, two faced untrustworthy sneaky snake in the grass with brass neck politician, I like her even more. Burnham just came across as a bit wet in comparison.
Shocking. I'll say it again, at some point there must be a reckoning for the scientists. From masks to models to lab leak. A litany of failure, idiocy and obfuscation - right up to potential corruption and complicity
The modellers look like being spectacularly wrong on the summer surge. Time for ministers to govern and ignore these models until they are rebuilt and recoded to actually reflect what happens in this pandemic.
Interesting thought of the evening.
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales. It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science. I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson. If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
Any complex adaptive or chaotic system is inherently unpredictable at an epistemological level. Making models of such systems helps us better understand the key drivers within those systems, and so helps to guide policy- and decision-making. But these models should not be used for predictions.
A model with low predictive value such as those used by SAGE will end up giving the end user a worse understanding of the issue at hand than just looking at some real time actual data. The Warwick model predicted 100k cases today, even scaling up the 10.6k for missed cases that's around 5-7x too many cases already. No one benefits from being guided by such a garbage model.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
For the lab leak conspirators, a trial by jury and possible jail is perfectly reasonable. How else can we regain trust in vital journals like the Lancet and Nature, unless apparent malfeasance is punished? Why should they be allowed to get away with such wild deception, which has such grave consequences?
We fiercely criticised Handelsblatt for killing people with journalistic lies. And we were right to do so. We need to be just as harsh on our own, arguably more important sins
For the scientists who just fucked up, they should pay with their jobs, as you say. If you get something badly wrong, time and again, you get sacked. C'est tout. Boffins should not be immune. You want to deter the stupid and promote the good. Crap science should never be rewarded, crap science must come at a price
"Beatings will continue until the quality of the scientific advice [provided voluntarily and without recompense] improves! It will deter the stupid!"
I expect and firmly hope that my own area of expertise will never be needed in a national emergency, because if it does it will probably be something horrible related to terrorism. But if it did, how do you think I'd react under the regime you envisage? (I am without question the UK's leading expert on my niche topic -- not a huge boast because it's very niche.) I'd be happy to brief ministers confidentially, but put my job or liberty at risk for the likes of you? To hell with that.
But you're too incoherent to consider the consequences of what you propose. Thankfully, those in power know better. There is plenty of scope to improve SAGE, not least in introducing some form of peer review and challenge, and I hope that this will happen -- calmly -- after the worst of the pandemic is over.
--AS
I'm not sure I'd want to go as far as prosecution, but surely you accept that one shouldn't be able to pedal total nonsense to national decision makers whilst being a supposed expert without consequence.
You are making the rather generous assumption that the Warwick modelers are honest scientists doing their best. The available evidence suggests that either a) They have an agenda and are making stuff up to fit it b) They are so clueless they probably shouldn't be allowed kitchen knives for the sake of their own safety.
Either way, I can't see how anyone can ever take another model they produce seriously.
There's absolutely no "available evidence" that the Warwick modelers have an agenda and are making stuff up. What rubbish.
Not taking Warwick's subsequent models too seriously is probably good advice. On the other hand, looking back at older SPI-M papers I find it remarkable how *accurate* their collective advice was. The LSHTM models from late last summer predicted the autumn/winter waves extremely closely, within 5000 deaths.
Let's face it, many of the most shrill complaints about recent models are from people who dislike what the models say. I'll note that nobody is actually prepared to come up with a critique of the models themselves (I believe they are all published) and have in recent months moved away from criticizing the model parameters. Instead they criticize the outputs, which is not a very coherent position.
--AS
The "available evidence" is that the Warwick modelers managed to produce a model about 2 weeks ago which projected 100k cases a day now. This seemed quite surprising at the time, and seems very ridiculous now. I would have got a lot closer than they did if you'd asked me to sit down, spend 30 seconds thinking, then take a guess*.
I've no idea if they are just incompetent, or if they have an agenda, but it's difficult to see any other plausible explanations for them being quite so spectacularly wrong.
I'm just fed up with big national decisions being taken on the basis of modeling by people who it seems would struggle to predict the probability of hitting a barn door with a shotgun from ten paces.
*I don't recommend this as a modeling technique, but for someone reasonably well informed it shouldn't be that hard to guess case numbers in two weeks weeks time to within x5 of the correct answer
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
So a wealth transfer from the restaurant and theatre owners of London to British people who want to go to London's restaurants and theatres.
And the opposite side of the coin is allowing outward tourism will be detrimental for much of the UK tourist industry.
That's not what I'm saying.
Imagine demand for performing arts in the UK today is 100 (and - of course - let's not forget that many theatrical performances tour, so it's not really like Norwich doesn't get its fair sure of decent performances).
Of that 100, say 60 is foreign tourists.
If they go away, then overall demand would drop - absent price changes - to 40. Of course, theatres will react with price reductions: actors will accept less, etc. And maybe total UK demand increases by 50%.
In this circumstance, we're still talking about UK performing arts having overall revenue now of 60. That's down 40%.
That's not a wealth transfer from London to the provinces, that's an absolute reduction in demand.
The world also doesn't stay still. Some of those performances might go to New York or to Dublin. Somewhere else might become the centre where new plays and musicals are performed. In which case, you will have British tourists in 2024 travelling abroad to see them, not staying in the UK.
You've got a whole load of ifs in that thesis.
Ultimately, we export performing arts. We export them via foreign tourists coming to the UK.
Now, you can argue against my specific assumptions if you like, but this is not a complicated point. If you prohibit people from consuming our product, then demand will fall, and the quantity produced will fall.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
I agree that the priority has to be opening up the UK before opening up foreign travel. But people who've been fully vaccinated ought to be able to travel pretty soon as long as there aren't any dangerous new variants in other countries.
Israel reopened to vaccinated tourists who came as part of tour groups back in May. They are now expanding it to all who are vaccinated plus younger children.
This is with no quarantine: it is simply vaccination status plus single negative Covid test.
Israel had... ummm... 16 Covid cases yesterday.
If Israel is able to open their borders to the vaccinated (and including and encouraging tourists at that) without seeing any impact on case numbers, then the question has to be, why is the UK being so cautious?
You want to know what the irony is ?
If the airlines and airports (and those who have used them) hadn't done everything they could to ignore restrictions then they'd have a lot less restrictions on them now.
While that's true, the sins of the airline industry should not be vested on the performing arts one.
Britain is to start negotiations to join a free trade area which could grant businesses access to "some of the biggest economies of the present and future", the government has said.
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is made up of 11 nations, including Australia, Canada and Japan.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
So a wealth transfer from the restaurant and theatre owners of London to British people who want to go to London's restaurants and theatres.
And the opposite side of the coin is allowing outward tourism will be detrimental for much of the UK tourist industry.
That's not what I'm saying.
Imagine demand for performing arts in the UK today is 100 (and - of course - let's not forget that many theatrical performances tour, so it's not really like Norwich doesn't get its fair sure of decent performances).
Of that 100, say 60 is foreign tourists.
If they go away, then overall demand would drop - absent price changes - to 40. Of course, theatres will react with price reductions: actors will accept less, etc. And maybe total UK demand increases by 50%.
In this circumstance, we're still talking about UK performing arts having overall revenue now of 60. That's down 40%.
That's not a wealth transfer from London to the provinces, that's an absolute reduction in demand.
The world also doesn't stay still. Some of those performances might go to New York or to Dublin. Somewhere else might become the centre where new plays and musicals are performed. In which case, you will have British tourists in 2024 travelling abroad to see them, not staying in the UK.
You've got a whole load of ifs in that thesis.
Ultimately, we export performing arts. We export them via foreign tourists coming to the UK.
Now, you can argue against my specific assumptions if you like, but this is not a complicated point. If you prohibit people from consuming our product, then demand will fall, and the quantity produced will fall.
And brilliant performers and artists will stack shelves in Tesco’s.
Or would it be like a brain drain? Don’t support science, eggheads go abroad, don’t support entrepreneurs they go abroad, don’t support nurses and doctors they go abroad.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
Your agreeing with Leon 😕. You didn’t have to tell us, you could have kept it to yourself. Earlier Philip agreed with Bastani.
One of PBs messiest days.
Politics is so mixed up at the moment. Covid sets libertarians against authoritarians, woke sets the old against the young, Tory majority depends on delivering Boris spending pledges to an expectant mass of traditional Labour heartlands.
It’s not going to end well.
Yes. You forgot some of the Rightest of the Right giving Burnham a standing ovation and a rendition of Rule Brittania cos he's gone in studs up on Nicola. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar Mamma.
Yes, I missed the strange bedfellows as the UK disintegrates. And I deleted the incendiary Brexit sets the Educated against the Thick line, because it’s not entirely true.
To be fair to Burnham, Nicola has been playing a sneaky one, not announcing a policy to the world because it wouldn’t stand up as fair under scrutiny, yet individuals have been put out of pocket by the decision she made without any acknowledgment of that from her. Once aware what was sneakily going on, everyone would have spoken up, even Nicola if same thing was done to her.
Now seeing Nicola as the most devious, two faced untrustworthy sneaky snake in the grass with brass neck politician, I like her even more. Burnham just came across as a bit wet in comparison.
It's becoming a bit like the WWE Royal Rumble isn't it? Steve Baker hits Boris with a chair. Sturgeon assaults Burnham with a concealed brick. The LDs create havoc in Bucks. Bercow joins the Labour Party. Galloway destroys a perfectly respectable candidate with Palestine. JRM campaigns on council estates. Putin sits in the commentary booth grinning.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
I agree that the priority has to be opening up the UK before opening up foreign travel. But people who've been fully vaccinated ought to be able to travel pretty soon as long as there aren't any dangerous new variants in other countries.
Israel reopened to vaccinated tourists who came as part of tour groups back in May. They are now expanding it to all who are vaccinated plus younger children.
This is with no quarantine: it is simply vaccination status plus single negative Covid test.
Israel had... ummm... 16 Covid cases yesterday.
If Israel is able to open their borders to the vaccinated (and including and encouraging tourists at that) without seeing any impact on case numbers, then the question has to be, why is the UK being so cautious?
You want to know what the irony is ?
If the airlines and airports (and those who have used them) hadn't done everything they could to ignore restrictions then they'd have a lot less restrictions on them now.
While that's true, the sins of the airline industry should not be vested on the performing arts one.
Stuff happens.
You know what ?
Sometimes the world isn't fair.
And instead you have to make the best of a bad deal.
Which is why the endless "I want a foreign holiday" whine needs to be converted into people spending some money in this countries hotels and restaurants and theatres.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
Your agreeing with Leon 😕. You didn’t have to tell us, you could have kept it to yourself. Earlier Philip agreed with Bastani.
One of PBs messiest days.
Politics is so mixed up at the moment. Covid sets libertarians against authoritarians, woke sets the old against the young, Tory majority depends on delivering Boris spending pledges to an expectant mass of traditional Labour heartlands.
It’s not going to end well.
Yes. You forgot some of the Rightest of the Right giving Burnham a standing ovation and a rendition of Rule Brittania cos he's gone in studs up on Nicola. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar Mamma.
Yes, I missed the strange bedfellows as the UK disintegrates. And I deleted the incendiary Brexit sets the Educated against the Thick line, because it’s not entirely true.
To be fair to Burnham, Nicola has been playing a sneaky one, not announcing a policy to the world because it wouldn’t stand up as fair under scrutiny, yet individuals have been put out of pocket by the decision she made without any acknowledgment of that from her. Once aware what was sneakily going on, everyone would have spoken up, even Nicola if same thing was done to her.
Now seeing Nicola as the most devious, two faced untrustworthy sneaky snake in the grass with brass neck politician, I like her even more. Burnham just came across as a bit wet in comparison.
It's becoming a bit like the WWE Royal Rumble isn't it? Steve Baker hits Boris with a chair. Sturgeon assaults Burnham with a concealed brick. The LDs create havoc in Bucks. Bercow joins the Labour Party. Galloway destroys a perfectly respectable candidate with Palestine. JRM campaigns on council estates. Putin sits in the commentary booth grinning.
It is a tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
I agree that the priority has to be opening up the UK before opening up foreign travel. But people who've been fully vaccinated ought to be able to travel pretty soon as long as there aren't any dangerous new variants in other countries.
Israel reopened to vaccinated tourists who came as part of tour groups back in May. They are now expanding it to all who are vaccinated plus younger children.
This is with no quarantine: it is simply vaccination status plus single negative Covid test.
Israel had... ummm... 16 Covid cases yesterday.
If Israel is able to open their borders to the vaccinated (and including and encouraging tourists at that) without seeing any impact on case numbers, then the question has to be, why is the UK being so cautious?
You want to know what the irony is ?
If the airlines and airports (and those who have used them) hadn't done everything they could to ignore restrictions then they'd have a lot less restrictions on them now.
While that's true, the sins of the airline industry should not be vested on the performing arts one.
Stuff happens.
You know what ?
Sometimes the world isn't fair.
And instead you have to make the best of a bad deal.
Which is why the endless "I want a foreign holiday" whine needs to be converted into people spending some money in this countries hotels and restaurants and theatres.
I find theatre a little too live and intimate to be honest, it’s not my preferred medium.
I was at some historic staging, and the couple next to me, who I didn’t know at all, kept saying, yes it’s him, you know, thingy, who was was in what’s it called. God, what’s his name. And the actor looked round across the stage right at me and said, It’s Simon Callow.
And I also feel uncomfortable with the nudity, flesh in the flesh. I don’t want to come all over Mary Whitehouse - but there is just too much on stage nudity, just far too close. I had this neighbour who would often tell of a rainy Saturday afternoon in Stratford, Ewan McGregor’s penis kept slapping her in the face.
Maybe the imminent death of theatreland isn’t such a bad thing.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
Absurd
That means the end of the UK foreign travel industry forever. No way they can sustain complete shutdown over several years. It means the loss of millions of jobs and maybe 5-10% GDP. Close Gatwick and Stansted, and so on
If it is reciprocated - and no foreign tourists come here, either - it means the death of central London (likewise Edinburgh, Bath, Cambridge, etc etc etc) and another 5% off GDP. It means a huge Depression
Zero Covidians like you are worse than the disease itself
What utter bollocks. If nobody travelled abroad for two more years foreign travel would still pick up again as soon as restrictions lifted.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
You and Philip do not understand basic economics. If you subtract a huge amount of economic activity, then the economy will shrink. That's it. London theatres will not suddenly turn into year-long pantos pleasing visitors from Southend and Sunderland
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Apart from the insult that non-London UK tourists are less sophisticated, it is simply untrue that home tourists do not patronise London theatres. And an expanded home market will flood into London.
God I hate agreeing with @Leon, but yes, sure, of course some more people from outside London will come to London to watch the theatre.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
Your agreeing with Leon 😕. You didn’t have to tell us, you could have kept it to yourself. Earlier Philip agreed with Bastani.
One of PBs messiest days.
Politics is so mixed up at the moment. Covid sets libertarians against authoritarians, woke sets the old against the young, Tory majority depends on delivering Boris spending pledges to an expectant mass of traditional Labour heartlands.
It’s not going to end well.
Yes. You forgot some of the Rightest of the Right giving Burnham a standing ovation and a rendition of Rule Brittania cos he's gone in studs up on Nicola. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar Mamma.
Yes, I missed the strange bedfellows as the UK disintegrates. And I deleted the incendiary Brexit sets the Educated against the Thick line, because it’s not entirely true.
To be fair to Burnham, Nicola has been playing a sneaky one, not announcing a policy to the world because it wouldn’t stand up as fair under scrutiny, yet individuals have been put out of pocket by the decision she made without any acknowledgment of that from her. Once aware what was sneakily going on, everyone would have spoken up, even Nicola if same thing was done to her.
Now seeing Nicola as the most devious, two faced untrustworthy sneaky snake in the grass with brass neck politician, I like her even more. Burnham just came across as a bit wet in comparison.
It's becoming a bit like the WWE Royal Rumble isn't it? Steve Baker hits Boris with a chair. Sturgeon assaults Burnham with a concealed brick. The LDs create havoc in Bucks. Bercow joins the Labour Party. Galloway destroys a perfectly respectable candidate with Palestine. JRM campaigns on council estates. Putin sits in the commentary booth grinning.
It is a tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.
This is how the last act begins, where we end up supping with the devil with nothing to look forward to, fully aware being meaningless and temporary.
Something stirs in the Abyss - dark and futile - that will arise, and slouch to Bethlehem.
We need to be realistic. No foreign travel before 2022 maybe 2023 unless absolutely essential.
I agree that the priority has to be opening up the UK before opening up foreign travel. But people who've been fully vaccinated ought to be able to travel pretty soon as long as there aren't any dangerous new variants in other countries.
Israel reopened to vaccinated tourists who came as part of tour groups back in May. They are now expanding it to all who are vaccinated plus younger children.
This is with no quarantine: it is simply vaccination status plus single negative Covid test.
Israel had... ummm... 16 Covid cases yesterday.
If Israel is able to open their borders to the vaccinated (and including and encouraging tourists at that) without seeing any impact on case numbers, then the question has to be, why is the UK being so cautious?
You want to know what the irony is ?
If the airlines and airports (and those who have used them) hadn't done everything they could to ignore restrictions then they'd have a lot less restrictions on them now.
While that's true, the sins of the airline industry should not be vested on the performing arts one.
Stuff happens.
You know what ?
Sometimes the world isn't fair.
And instead you have to make the best of a bad deal.
Which is why the endless "I want a foreign holiday" whine needs to be converted into people spending some money in this countries hotels and restaurants and theatres.
I find theatre a little too live and intimate to be honest, it’s not my preferred medium.
I was at some historic staging, and the couple next to me, who I didn’t know at all, kept saying, yes it’s him, you know, thingy, who was was in what’s it called. God, what’s his name. And the actor looked round across the stage right at me and said, It’s Simon Callow.
And I also feel uncomfortable with the nudity, flesh in the flesh. I don’t want to come all over Mary Whitehouse - but there is just too much on stage nudity, just far too close. I had this neighbour who would often tell of a rainy Saturday afternoon in Stratford, Ewan McGregor’s penis kept slapping her in the face.
Maybe the imminent death of theatreland isn’t such a bad thing.
I've spent several rainy Saturday afternoons in Stratford but never so fortunate. Probably the wrong Stratford. Karma.
How does removing a country's TV drama output increase diversity?
It doesn't.
And not only that, but the story is utter tosh. The Telegraph either (a) should know better, or (b) is being deliberately misleading because its customer base laps it up.
Under moronic EU rules, streaming services could be required to have 25% of catalogs made in the EU. Therefore, under one circumstance, Netflix might decide to get rid of The Crown.
But they wouldn't, because they're not morons. And because they paid about £140m for four seasons of the Crown.
Instead, all they need to do is to have a massive amount of old EU made content sitting (unwatched) in their catalogs. Costs to Netflix or Amazon? Almost nothing. Frankly, they could find EU based YouTubers, and put them n the platform, and therefore fulfil their requirements. It's a typically stupid EU regulation.
But it's also one that has essentially zero real world consequences. One junior employee at Netflix (who will also have about a dozen other responsibilities) will have the job of making sure that all five seasons of Le Grand Raid Le Cap Terre de Feu will be on the channel, as will the TWELVE THOUSAND episodes of Des chiffres et des lettres.
Comments
If London does recover a couple of new towns - unless they are 1/4 million each - won't even scratch the itch. We would need to use some of the poor quality parts of the London Green Belt.
If you want an orderly housing market, stop shovelling nearly £30bn a year into the gaping maws of the wealthier parts of society - house owners - every year in CGT tax breaks, which inflate prices. Then see what that does over 10 years.
Then implement the Proportional Property Tax to take Stamp Duty completely out of the picture.
£30bn will cover Social Care Reforms several times over. And to get the money from a small levy on unearned housing profits seems logical.
Though obviously wealthier people squeal like a million live piglets being turned into pork scratchings at the prospect of losing any of their tax breaks.
Had we put in severe travel restrictions and quarantining last summer, while eliminating domestic restrictions, and said that this was the long-haul until the countries we travel to are vaccinated too, with furlough or other support simply for travel firms, then that would have cost a fraction of what furlough etc has cost for much of the entire frigging economy.
Plus we have a major tourism deficit. If central London etc were 100% open like Auckland is, but with travel restrictions, then domestic tourists would have gone to places like London etc etc to see shows and do other touristy stuff rather than going to Europe for one year.
I don't support this, its not necessary, but it would have been far cleaner than what we have had keeping the entire damned country locked down just because we couldn't control the frigging border of an island.
Foreign tourists in our cities will be replaced by UK-based tourists.
The only reason domestic lockdown easing has been delayed is because foreign travel restrictions were far too lax.
Much easier to spout forth on stuff if it's just words with no hint of an underlying meaning.
--AS
Domestic tourism would see a boom not a crash as people had no alternative but to see the sights in the UK.
How do you measure that against the only deaths that matter - Covid deaths*
*(as measured by those who die within 28 days of a positive test)
And the "lab leak hypothesis" is key here, but you simply don't understand it. There is ample prima facie evidence that the highest levels of British science, from the Lancet and Nature to the Wellcome Trust, conspired to crush this hypothesis at birth, for whatever reason.
This cannot stand, or, the next time, we won't trust what the scientists say, nor what the Lancet tells us, as it is enjoys its Chinese funding
Politics is kid-ology. You are kidding the voters, or kidding the party faithful, or kidding the easiest person of all to kid, yourself.
I mean by kidding not so much actual lying, but optimistically viewing the world, or your policies, or elections, or yourself in the most generous way possible. All politicians have the ability to loosely grasp objective reality in a favourable way.
So, COVID is like something they have never met. You can't kid COVID. You can't bluff it.
"Britain will have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – just under 10% of UK GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, which is around 11% of the total UK number.
"Tourism’s impact is amplified through the economy, so its impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. Deloitte estimates the tourism GVA multiplier to be 2.8 – meaning that for every £1,000 generated in direct tourism GVA there is a further £1,800 that is supported elsewhere in the economy through the supply chain and consumer spending.
"Inbound tourism will continue to be the fastest growing tourism sector – with spend by international visitors forecast to grow by over 6% a year in comparison with domestic spending by UK residents at just over 3%. The value of inbound tourism is forecast to grow from over £21bn in 2013 to £57bn by 2025, with the UK seeing an international tourism balance of payments surplus in 2023, almost forty years since the UK last reported a surplus."
Now take ALL of that away
https://www.visitbritain.org/visitor-economy-facts
Surely just a coincidence that @Leon is so animated about this?
One of the main things that this pandemic has revealed is that "scientific" modelers are basically useless in this sort of field. They can't predict with any accuracy what's going to happen within a couple of weeks, never mind over longer timescales.
It also looks as if it's quite easy to decide what you think will happen, then make your model fit it, and it's certainly not inplausible that some scientists (consciously or otherwise) may be doing just this.
At what point are the continuing failures of the infection modelers in this pandemic going to bleed over into the public perception of that other paradise of dubious modeling - climate science.
I've long suspected that most if not all climate modelling is pretty much bunk, and it very much tends to presenting doomsday scenarios in a similar way to the Covid models. In a further uncanny parallel, all this modeling is also mainly presented to (largely innumerate) politicians and the (even more innumerate) media, who then rush off to reshape our way of life without ever asking if the modeling in question is likely to be right, or if the modelers have any track record of accurately predicting anything.
Currently if you question the recived wisdom about what given levels of Co² emissions will do to the climate, and ask whether banning gas central heating is actually a clever idea you are greeted with much screaming about "settled science" and promptly declared an unperson.
If this pandemic brings modelers into general disrepute (and they seem presently to be working hard towards this goal), it's presumably also going to be a lot easier to take issue with the more outrageous forms of climate modelling. This isn't a bad thing, but the pushback from the various "climate science" vested interests is going to be something else!
A new 7-minute video from John Rentoul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_68NHpA2Gs
My guess is No
Does that count?
And you are arguing that we can not even see the end of this pandemic but are barely half way through. To the extent that despite being 15 months in, probably seen the vast majority of the deaths we will see in this country (to the extent that in future they will be far more correlated with more moderate levels of illness aligned with eg bad flu seasons), we should already be writing off the next 18 months to 2 years before realistically thinking we can escape this.
What a condescending snob you can be sometimes.
It's still a significant problem. We will sort it out. Why throw the progress away?
There's almost no point in addressing this Level of Stupid, but well done for trying
I think Ed Davey (or Keir Starmer or Boris Johnson) would not have fared any better than George Osborne when faced with the same question:
Politicians, like travel writers, are not pro-arithmetic.
The purpose of any modelling is not to give a point estimate of a prediction.
Worse still is that none of these wankers are losing their jobs over it, they just continue to churn out this garbage which SAGE continues to use in its central forecast. I don't understand how they aren't ashamed of themselves. It's genuinely terrible work and yet they brazenly continue to predict doom at every turn. 100k cases, give us a break from their stupidity.
But don't worry, most of them will shut down forever, so you can get your National Londonpubman-bus to the semi-pro Benpointer Theatre, to see the single ongoing West End show, Philip Thompson's Tiny Dancing Autistic Penis With Newbuilds
I'd take sacking the lot of them for now and actually getting some new people in who aren't happy with being 5-7x out for a predictive model.
We fiercely criticised Handelsblatt for killing people with journalistic lies. And we were right to do so. We need to be just as harsh on our own, arguably more important sins
For the scientists who just fucked up, they should pay with their jobs, as you say. If you get something badly wrong, time and again, you get sacked. C'est tout. Boffins should not be immune. You want to deter the stupid and promote the good. Crap science should never be rewarded, crap science must come at a price
I keep hearing how much money the rich have saved - now's the time to put it back into the economy.
We have a serious, serious lack of expertise in data science and predictive modelling at the top of academia in this country. That much has become extremely clear. Random internet people using GCP, tensorflow and a few basic regression analyses are doing better in the private sector. I mean that guy who just put all of the data into a logistic regression model did amazingly well until he got bored and gave up.
EDIT: Dominic Cummings would probably want to employ a load of quants to redo the modelling on a success bonus basis. He'd probably do better.
An over-promoted elite of twats. Is what we see, in plain sight
The key thing is to understand that both models and experience change behaviour. If the bodies are piling up in the morgues, then people will stay home. And people react to published case numbers too, and even to projections of future growth. And that's even before we talk about how models will change the level of restrictions.
London welcomes tourists but of course please respect the rules. 👍
We will get through it if we are sensible and all pull together for the welfare of the people.
That should be greeted with howls of derision every time they try it on. It isn't (yet) on climate because there are too many vested interests in getting the "right" answer. The vested interests (different ones - the public health freaks in this case) are trying it on with Covid, but the dam there is approaching busting point (as evidenced by the derision the Warwick modelling gets on here).
The reputational damage from one really should start bleeding over to the other given the similarities.
If you go to London theatre (in non-pandemic times), what proportion of the audience do you think are Londoners? 40%? We're a centre - as is New York - for the performing arts for the world. That's an inherent part of globalisation. And sure, performances and performers tour too, but lots of industries simply wouldn't exist without travel and tourism.
I find it staggering that there are billboards in LA advertising travel to Italy and to Germany (!) for the fully vaccinated American. Too soon? Probably. But those who move quickest will be the ones who benefit.
I expect and firmly hope that my own area of expertise will never be needed in a national emergency, because if it does it will probably be something horrible related to terrorism. But if it did, how do you think I'd react under the regime you envisage? (I am without question the UK's leading expert on my niche topic -- not a huge boast because it's very niche.) I'd be happy to brief ministers confidentially, but put my job or liberty at risk for the likes of you? To hell with that.
But you're too incoherent to consider the consequences of what you propose. Thankfully, those in power know better. There is plenty of scope to improve SAGE, not least in introducing some form of peer review and challenge, and I hope that this will happen -- calmly -- after the worst of the pandemic is over.
--AS
Resorts in the NE, such as Whitby, Tynemouth and Seahouses are booming.
The kind of places no foreign tourist ever goes anywhere near.
Apart from Goths to Whitby 2 weekends a year that is.
But what struck me as lacking was retail. London is now catering for the uber-rich - and the tat-mongering hordes. Who just aren't there.
What London has lost is a vast swathe of off-beat, interesting stuff to shop for. The retail experience is incredibly dull. I think that if London doesn't properly recover, it won't be Covid that is responsible. It will be the online retail offering.
This is very ordinary supply-demand economics. If you reduce the demand (fewer tourists from abroad), then theatres will react by cutting prices to get people in from outside London. But the market will clear at a much lower volume.
People come to London from all over the world specifically for the theatre and the musicals.
This is not a step function, this is a curve. And if you take tourists away, there will be less demand for the UK's performing arts product.
"Thankfully, those in power know better"
Five little monkeys
Sitting in a tree
Teasing Mr. Crocodile,
"You can't catch me."
Along came Mr. Crocodile,
Quiet as can be
Four little monkeys etc
As Faust was being played by black actor, likely cancelled already 😕
You are making the rather generous assumption that the Warwick modelers are honest scientists doing their best. The available evidence suggests that either
a) They have an agenda and are making stuff up to fit it
b) They are so clueless they probably shouldn't be allowed kitchen knives for the sake of their own safety.
Either way, I can't see how anyone can ever take another model they produce seriously.
And the opposite side of the coin is allowing outward tourism will be detrimental for much of the UK tourist industry.
This is with no quarantine: it is simply vaccination status plus single negative Covid test.
Israel had... ummm... 16 Covid cases yesterday.
If Israel is able to open their borders to the vaccinated (and including and encouraging tourists at that) without seeing any impact on case numbers, then the question has to be, why is the UK being so cautious?
One of PBs messiest days.
Politics is so mixed up at the moment. Covid sets libertarians against authoritarians, woke sets the old against the young, Tory majority depends on delivering Boris spending pledges to an expectant mass of traditional Labour heartlands.
It’s not going to end well.
Imagine demand for performing arts in the UK today is 100 (and - of course - let's not forget that many theatrical performances tour, so it's not really like Norwich doesn't get its fair sure of decent performances).
Of that 100, say 60 is foreign tourists.
If they go away, then overall demand would drop - absent price changes - to 40. Of course, theatres will react with price reductions: actors will accept less, etc. And maybe total UK demand increases by 50%.
In this circumstance, we're still talking about UK performing arts having overall revenue now of 60. That's down 40%.
That's not a wealth transfer from London to the provinces, that's an absolute reduction in demand.
The world also doesn't stay still. Some of those performances might go to New York or to Dublin. Somewhere else might become the centre where new plays and musicals are performed. In which case, you will have British tourists in 2024 travelling abroad to see them, not staying in the UK.
Not taking Warwick's subsequent models too seriously is probably good advice. On the other hand, looking back at older SPI-M papers I find it remarkable how *accurate* their collective advice was. The LSHTM models from late last summer predicted the autumn/winter waves extremely closely, within 5000 deaths.
Let's face it, many of the most shrill complaints about recent models are from people who dislike what the models say. I'll note that nobody is actually prepared to come up with a critique of the models themselves (I believe they are all published) and have in recent months moved away from criticizing the model parameters. Instead they criticize the outputs, which is not a very coherent position.
--AS
"8 complaints....cancelled.
Jess de Wahls: Artist wants apology from Royal Academy over transphobia row
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57552016"
You may be interested in my letter to them. See here - https://twitter.com/cyclefree2/status/1406932018928173057?s=21.
So far only the Charity Commission - currently with an Interim Chair while a permanent head is found, in case anyone is interested - has replied.
Strange days indeed.
Most peculiar Mamma.
That and government policy being entirely based on polling.
Yes. Feedback loops are a key characteristic of why complex adaptive systems are not deterministic, and hence cannot be used for prediction even with confidence bars.
If the airlines and airports (and those who have used them) hadn't done everything they could to ignore restrictions then they'd have a lot less restrictions on them now.
To be fair to Burnham, Nicola has been playing a sneaky one, not announcing a policy to the world because it wouldn’t stand up as fair under scrutiny, yet individuals have been put out of pocket by the decision she made without any acknowledgment of that from her. Once aware what was sneakily going on, everyone would have spoken up, even Nicola if same thing was done to her.
Now seeing Nicola as the most devious, two faced untrustworthy sneaky snake in the grass with brass neck politician, I like her even more. Burnham just came across as a bit wet in comparison.
"The battle between the two Americas
The United States has never been so divided
BY JOEL KOTKIN"
https://unherd.com/2021/06/the-battle-between-the-two-americas/
I've no idea if they are just incompetent, or if they have an agenda, but it's difficult to see any other plausible explanations for them being quite so spectacularly wrong.
I'm just fed up with big national decisions being taken on the basis of modeling by people who it seems would struggle to predict the probability of hitting a barn door with a shotgun from ten paces.
*I don't recommend this as a modeling technique, but for someone reasonably well informed it shouldn't be that hard to guess case numbers in two weeks weeks time to within x5 of the correct answer
Now, you can argue against my specific assumptions if you like, but this is not a complicated point. If you prohibit people from consuming our product, then demand will fall, and the quantity produced will fall.
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is made up of 11 nations, including Australia, Canada and Japan.
Or would it be like a brain drain? Don’t support science, eggheads go abroad, don’t support entrepreneurs they go abroad, don’t support nurses and doctors they go abroad.
Steve Baker hits Boris with a chair. Sturgeon assaults Burnham with a concealed brick. The LDs create havoc in Bucks. Bercow joins the Labour Party. Galloway destroys a perfectly respectable candidate with Palestine. JRM campaigns on council estates.
Putin sits in the commentary booth grinning.
You know what ?
Sometimes the world isn't fair.
And instead you have to make the best of a bad deal.
Which is why the endless "I want a foreign holiday" whine needs to be converted into people spending some money in this countries hotels and restaurants and theatres.
Full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
I was at some historic staging, and the couple next to me, who I didn’t know at all, kept saying, yes it’s him, you know, thingy, who was was in what’s it called. God, what’s his name. And the actor looked round across the stage right at me and said, It’s Simon Callow.
And I also feel uncomfortable with the nudity, flesh in the flesh. I don’t want to come all over Mary Whitehouse - but there is just too much on stage nudity, just far too close. I had this neighbour who would often tell of a rainy Saturday afternoon in Stratford, Ewan McGregor’s penis kept slapping her in the face.
Maybe the imminent death of theatreland isn’t such a bad thing.
Something stirs in the Abyss - dark and futile - that will arise, and slouch to Bethlehem.
I think I’ll make myself a cheese sandwich.
Good night.
Probably the wrong Stratford.
Karma.
Hit shows made in Britain labelled a threat ‘cultural diversity’, as Brussels plans to limit their appearances on TV and streaming services"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/21/eu-moves-limit-streaming-uk-programmes-like-crown-downton-abbey/
How does removing a country's TV drama output increase diversity?
And not only that, but the story is utter tosh. The Telegraph either (a) should know better, or (b) is being deliberately misleading because its customer base laps it up.
Under moronic EU rules, streaming services could be required to have 25% of catalogs made in the EU. Therefore, under one circumstance, Netflix might decide to get rid of The Crown.
But they wouldn't, because they're not morons. And because they paid about £140m for four seasons of the Crown.
Instead, all they need to do is to have a massive amount of old EU made content sitting (unwatched) in their catalogs. Costs to Netflix or Amazon? Almost nothing. Frankly, they could find EU based YouTubers, and put them n the platform, and therefore fulfil their requirements. It's a typically stupid EU regulation.
But it's also one that has essentially zero real world consequences. One junior employee at Netflix (who will also have about a dozen other responsibilities) will have the job of making sure that all five seasons of Le Grand Raid Le Cap Terre de Feu will be on the channel, as will the TWELVE THOUSAND episodes of Des chiffres et des lettres.