I think it was Bruce Schneier who pointed out, that for all the security theatre at airports, the one method not used (in the US - and it isn't used here) was the profiling techniques used by the Israelis. Essentially, spot likely individuals, engaged them in a conversation, and rapidly determine the probability of their mental state using carefully designed questions.
This was rejected. Because it would be racist. By the TSA. Who instead strip search black people lots......
The Israelis don't give a damn about looking politcally correct when it comes to security, and happily target who they want for their interrogators to give a grilling. They learnt the hard way and now probably have the safest airlines and airports as a result.
I don't think we'd want to police the UK like that.
Yes I quite agree. The last thing we’d want to do is use policing tactics that improve public safety.
I thought you were one of these "if you trade a bit of liberty for some extra security you deserve neither liberty nor security" merchants?
Or is that only when it's about wearing masks to Tescos?
I'm not sure that argument is relevant here - I don't think less, or even more security is being advocated - simply better targeted.
On which subject, my father in law - who is a scientist, and travels all over the world - was frequently stopped at airport security until he took the decision to start wearing a jacket and tie. No more issues at airports after that, even if he did continue to look like a ginger Lemmy from Motorhead, only wearing a tie. And similarly, I bet if you're brown-skinned, heavily bearded and wear traditional Asian clothing you will be stopped more often than if your white skinned, dress in the style of a conventional westerner and clean shaven. Even if we don't say we target, I bet we do, a bit.
I'd imagine we do, yes. As for liberty v security, I'd say airports are quite a pure example of it. You must submit yourself to various checks if you wish to fly somewhere. You're giving up some liberty there in exchange for a (hopefully) smaller chance of (eg) being blown up.
Yes, as you say, it's a false dichotomy. We all have a balance of the right level of liberty vs security. Mine is probably a little further towards liberty than yours. But - as in so many things - when we disagree, we disagree on exactly where on the scale we should be, often over very small increments, rather than on whether we should go for 'liberty' or 'security'.
Similarly, when I was growing up, political discussions were furious battles of should public spending be 38% of GDP or 42%? All seemed hugely fundamental at the time.
Yes it's just a few stores but these are all in prime-ish sites selling expensive tat to children.
That's sad. We went to the Disney Store in the Trafford Centre the other day, first time going to Trafford since the pandemic began and the kids loved it - though my youngest went to school the next day and told her friends and Reception teacher that she'd been to Disneyland - didn't realise the difference. 😂
Yet you were telling me last night that the end of foreign travel until 2023 was no biggie, and we would replace all the foreign tourists with locals going to London to see The Mousetrap, again and again
THIS is what "no tourism" actually means: thousands of shops and businesses closing down forever, with incalculable ripple effects
Well, up to a point. Some places do very well, some do very badly. And I certainly agree that we should be looking to open up ASAP. But I don't think the Disney stores' market was tourist dominated. Certainly not the Trafford Centre one. I think it's the inevitable response to increasing onlinification of our consumption of tat.
Where lockdown does come into it is that while we're still happy to shop in Tesco's - i.e. shopping to stay alive - lockdown is having a hit on shopping-as-leisure. Any leisure activity where you have to wear a mask is going to look a lot less appealing than, say, sitting on your sofa or in your garden or going for a walk.
The horrible masks don't help but primarily it is the move online that's killing physical retail. It's inevitable. Lockdown has just put rocket boosters under what was already happening.
Not everyone wants to buy everything by mail order though. The situation will stabilise where the number and range of physical shops matches the requirements of the remaining customer base. The Pandemic has wiped out such a large number of stores already that I wouldn't be surprised if we're somewhere not too far from the end point of that process. For example, people who still want to see, feel and try on clothes in a shop, after over a year of this not being allowed, are relatively unlikely to decide that the faff of ordering stuff, waiting for it to turn up, and then posting it back again if they don't want it is something that they'd like to start doing after all.
I think it was Bruce Schneier who pointed out, that for all the security theatre at airports, the one method not used (in the US - and it isn't used here) was the profiling techniques used by the Israelis. Essentially, spot likely individuals, engaged them in a conversation, and rapidly determine the probability of their mental state using carefully designed questions.
This was rejected. Because it would be racist. By the TSA. Who instead strip search black people lots......
The Israelis don't give a damn about looking politcally correct when it comes to security, and happily target who they want for their interrogators to give a grilling. They learnt the hard way and now probably have the safest airlines and airports as a result.
I don't think we'd want to police the UK like that.
Yes I quite agree. The last thing we’d want to do is use policing tactics that improve public safety.
I thought you were one of these "if you trade a bit of liberty for some extra security you deserve neither liberty nor security" merchants?
Or is that only when it's about wearing masks to Tescos?
I don’t tend to go to Tesco’s.
Grown ups should be able to continually balance security and liberty and not take static positions.
At the height of a pandemic of a fast spreading novel virus with an IFR of about 0.5%, wearing a mask in public was a low impact intervention that probably did some net good. Now we are at 86% of the adult population with immunity (biased towards those with higher IFRs) the balance has almost certainly shifted away and probably did some time ago.
For policing of borders, it really depends on whether you care about cross border serious crime, illegal immigration and international terrorism. Or being nice.
Yep, contrary to the notorious quote, security vs liberty can be a valid trade off. Although people will not all agree on where the right balance is.
As for our border police, I don't see why they have to be nasty to be effective. I've noticed a certain widespread male admiration for hardball tactics from security forces (eg like the Israelis are famous for) but I don't really share it. I wonder if it's vicarious in some cases?
The Israeli approach, in this case, is the reverse of "hard ball".
It goes like this -
1) Profile for certain signs, visually at a distance. 2) Speech to the subject in an apparently casual manner, using a series of questions to get information on his/her mind state. 3) If they seem like a threat, then the person in question gets a serious interrogation (which is very rare).
This is far more effective than strip searching all the black people. Or demanding that everyone takes off their shoes..
Ok, I see. Take your word for it but it all sounds a bit Alan Partridge to me.
What is Alana Partridge is that in the name of "we must not profile", the border security profile incompetently and end up harassing minorities.
We are an open trading economy dependent on the free flow of people and cash
You voted to restrict that
We would have coped with Brexit alone just fine. Yes, there would have been pain but there would have been swift bounceback
The combo of Brexit AND Covid is tragically unfortunate. We must pray that my pessimism today is unjustified, and my previous reports on the animal spirits of London are more accurate
Yes, if this bastard virus ruins our Brexit that would be such a bummer.
I think it was Bruce Schneier who pointed out, that for all the security theatre at airports, the one method not used (in the US - and it isn't used here) was the profiling techniques used by the Israelis. Essentially, spot likely individuals, engaged them in a conversation, and rapidly determine the probability of their mental state using carefully designed questions.
This was rejected. Because it would be racist. By the TSA. Who instead strip search black people lots......
The Israelis don't give a damn about looking politcally correct when it comes to security, and happily target who they want for their interrogators to give a grilling. They learnt the hard way and now probably have the safest airlines and airports as a result.
I don't think we'd want to police the UK like that.
Yes I quite agree. The last thing we’d want to do is use policing tactics that improve public safety.
I thought you were one of these "if you trade a bit of liberty for some extra security you deserve neither liberty nor security" merchants?
Or is that only when it's about wearing masks to Tescos?
I don’t tend to go to Tesco’s.
Grown ups should be able to continually balance security and liberty and not take static positions.
At the height of a pandemic of a fast spreading novel virus with an IFR of about 0.5%, wearing a mask in public was a low impact intervention that probably did some net good. Now we are at 86% of the adult population with immunity (biased towards those with higher IFRs) the balance has almost certainly shifted away and probably did some time ago.
For policing of borders, it really depends on whether you care about cross border serious crime, illegal immigration and international terrorism. Or being nice.
Yep, contrary to the notorious quote, security vs liberty can be a valid trade off. Although people will not all agree on where the right balance is.
As for our border police, I don't see why they have to be nasty to be effective. I've noticed a certain widespread male admiration for hardball tactics from security forces (eg like the Israelis are famous for) but I don't really share it. I wonder if it's vicarious in some cases?
The Israeli approach, in this case, is the reverse of "hard ball".
It goes like this -
1) Profile for certain signs, visually at a distance. 2) Speech to the subject in an apparently casual manner, using a series of questions to get information on his/her mind state. 3) If they seem like a threat, then the person in question gets a serious interrogation (which is very rare).
This is far more effective than strip searching all the black people. Or demanding that everyone takes off their shoes..
Ok, I see. Take your word for it but it all sounds a bit Alan Partridge to me.
What is Alana Partridge is that in the name of "we must not profile", the border security profile incompetently and end up harassing minorities.
- Yes.
But what I meant was I can just see 'Alan' interviewing a "crack" security guy in a very reverential but fundamentally ill-informed manner.
Yes it's just a few stores but these are all in prime-ish sites selling expensive tat to children.
That's sad. We went to the Disney Store in the Trafford Centre the other day, first time going to Trafford since the pandemic began and the kids loved it - though my youngest went to school the next day and told her friends and Reception teacher that she'd been to Disneyland - didn't realise the difference. 😂
Yet you were telling me last night that the end of foreign travel until 2023 was no biggie, and we would replace all the foreign tourists with locals going to London to see The Mousetrap, again and again
THIS is what "no tourism" actually means: thousands of shops and businesses closing down forever, with incalculable ripple effects
Well, up to a point. Some places do very well, some do very badly. And I certainly agree that we should be looking to open up ASAP. But I don't think the Disney stores' market was tourist dominated. Certainly not the Trafford Centre one. I think it's the inevitable response to increasing onlinification of our consumption of tat.
Where lockdown does come into it is that while we're still happy to shop in Tesco's - i.e. shopping to stay alive - lockdown is having a hit on shopping-as-leisure. Any leisure activity where you have to wear a mask is going to look a lot less appealing than, say, sitting on your sofa or in your garden or going for a walk.
The horrible masks don't help but primarily it is the move online that's killing physical retail. It's inevitable. Lockdown has just put rocket boosters under what was already happening.
Not everyone wants to buy everything by mail order though. The situation will stabilise where the number and range of physical shops matches the requirements of the remaining customer base. The Pandemic has wiped out such a large number of stores already that I wouldn't be surprised if we're somewhere not too far from the end point of that process. For example, people who still want to see, feel and try on clothes in a shop, after over a year of this not being allowed, are relatively unlikely to decide that the faff of ordering stuff, waiting for it to turn up, and then posting it back again if they don't want it is something that they'd like to start doing after all.
Actually, I think we're in the nice position (as with pubs) that it's the establishments in which there's little actual pleasure in being there which will go under (for comparison shopping - I'll still put up with mundanity in Tesco's). In future, we'll have fewer shops (and indeed pubs) but they will be much nicer places to frequent.
The Disney Store does not fall into the category of 'nice to be in' - at least not for those who are spending the money.
Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English
I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there
‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’
Swedish will extinct within a hundred years. The propensity to gleefully abandon perfectly good Swedish words and phrases for English (sometimes pseudo-English) ones is astonishing. Anyone who objects is ridiculed as a fuddy duddy who’s not down with the kids. It is part of the infamous “opinion corridor”.
I read an article a while back saying that in Italian not just English words but actually English grammar is starting to make an appearance. Quite bizarre.
Rich young Arabs - from the Lebanon or UAE - also speak a kind of ‘Arablish’. They move seamlessly between the two languages, Arabic and English, sometimes in the same sentence. It must drive linguistic purists mad, especially as Arabic is such a beautiful, liquid language, if spoken well (it can also be harsh)
Ditto Germany. Maybe even German will disappear eventually
Very true. The private schools in Arabia teach other subjects in English, whereas the state schools teach English as a language and subjects in Arabic. The private school local kids speak mostly English to each other, and Arabic with their parents!
It’s said that within 50 years the whole world will speak at least one of English and Chinese, that’s probably not far off. Spanish and Russian will stick around for a while though.
1) I enjoy hearing Dutch. It sounds like English, but with made-up words. It's probably the most comfortingly familiar language.
Damn, I never knew that. I used to have a couple of Nigerians in my team at work, that would have made for some funny conversations about Scottish football!
“The number of new coronavirus cases reported stands at 2,167 which is 9.1% of all tests carried out”
Is that 9.1% positivity?!!!
Disaster
I hope I’ve read it wrong
PCR positivity from yesterday - sadly haven't got the Scottish equivalent data - but shows what can happen in an area....
Well some of these areas are pretty high, yes. But none of our regions equivalent in population to Scotland are anywhere close to 9% positivity overall. Not even the North West.
So two options: - Scotland is not testing as much as England, and the position in Scotland is actually much worse than that in England, to a much greater extent than the bald figures of positive tests reveal; or - the BBC report is innumerate nonsense.
The latter strikes me as slightly more plausible. But if anyone can confirm the data I'm happy to be corrected.
I think it was Bruce Schneier who pointed out, that for all the security theatre at airports, the one method not used (in the US - and it isn't used here) was the profiling techniques used by the Israelis. Essentially, spot likely individuals, engaged them in a conversation, and rapidly determine the probability of their mental state using carefully designed questions.
This was rejected. Because it would be racist. By the TSA. Who instead strip search black people lots......
The Israelis don't give a damn about looking politcally correct when it comes to security, and happily target who they want for their interrogators to give a grilling. They learnt the hard way and now probably have the safest airlines and airports as a result.
I don't think we'd want to police the UK like that.
Yes I quite agree. The last thing we’d want to do is use policing tactics that improve public safety.
I thought you were one of these "if you trade a bit of liberty for some extra security you deserve neither liberty nor security" merchants?
Or is that only when it's about wearing masks to Tescos?
I'm not sure that argument is relevant here - I don't think less, or even more security is being advocated - simply better targeted.
On which subject, my father in law - who is a scientist, and travels all over the world - was frequently stopped at airport security until he took the decision to start wearing a jacket and tie. No more issues at airports after that, even if he did continue to look like a ginger Lemmy from Motorhead, only wearing a tie. And similarly, I bet if you're brown-skinned, heavily bearded and wear traditional Asian clothing you will be stopped more often than if your white skinned, dress in the style of a conventional westerner and clean shaven. Even if we don't say we target, I bet we do, a bit.
As a student visiting my grandparents in Guernsey, I knew that Customs always stopped the youngest/scruffiest person on every flight. One day I wasn't attentive enough to what I was wearing and looking around the departure lounge realised it would be me - and it was. Once I started working I always went straight from work in my suit and was never stopped again. This remained true while I was going there regularly from the 1980s to 2000s.
I assume drugs always arrived in a briefcase carried by a smartly dressed courier.
Yes it's just a few stores but these are all in prime-ish sites selling expensive tat to children.
That's sad. We went to the Disney Store in the Trafford Centre the other day, first time going to Trafford since the pandemic began and the kids loved it - though my youngest went to school the next day and told her friends and Reception teacher that she'd been to Disneyland - didn't realise the difference. 😂
Yet you were telling me last night that the end of foreign travel until 2023 was no biggie, and we would replace all the foreign tourists with locals going to London to see The Mousetrap, again and again
THIS is what "no tourism" actually means: thousands of shops and businesses closing down forever, with incalculable ripple effects
Well, up to a point. Some places do very well, some do very badly. And I certainly agree that we should be looking to open up ASAP. But I don't think the Disney stores' market was tourist dominated. Certainly not the Trafford Centre one. I think it's the inevitable response to increasing onlinification of our consumption of tat.
Where lockdown does come into it is that while we're still happy to shop in Tesco's - i.e. shopping to stay alive - lockdown is having a hit on shopping-as-leisure. Any leisure activity where you have to wear a mask is going to look a lot less appealing than, say, sitting on your sofa or in your garden or going for a walk.
The horrible masks don't help but primarily it is the move online that's killing physical retail. It's inevitable. Lockdown has just put rocket boosters under what was already happening.
Not everyone wants to buy everything by mail order though. The situation will stabilise where the number and range of physical shops matches the requirements of the remaining customer base. The Pandemic has wiped out such a large number of stores already that I wouldn't be surprised if we're somewhere not too far from the end point of that process. For example, people who still want to see, feel and try on clothes in a shop, after over a year of this not being allowed, are relatively unlikely to decide that the faff of ordering stuff, waiting for it to turn up, and then posting it back again if they don't want it is something that they'd like to start doing after all.
Actually, I think we're in the nice position (as with pubs) that it's the establishments in which there's little actual pleasure in being there which will go under (for comparison shopping - I'll still put up with mundanity in Tesco's). In future, we'll have fewer shops (and indeed pubs) but they will be much nicer places to frequent.
The Disney Store does not fall into the category of 'nice to be in' - at least not for those who are spending the money.
This is hopefully true. Covid will keep weeding out the poorer outlets for as long as the disease flummery remains in force. When I was last in London, places that had pointless and confusing one way systems (complete with rottweilers to bark at you if you tried to get out through the wrong door) did not benefit from my custom. Welcoming places with nice staff and sensible policies that let you try stuff on were allowed to melt my credit card. When this is all over then, even if the rottweiler establishments are still trading, I'll remember the experience and probably keep avoiding them.
We are an open trading economy dependent on the free flow of people and cash
You voted to restrict that
We would have coped with Brexit alone just fine. Yes, there would have been pain but there would have been swift bounceback
The combo of Brexit AND Covid is tragically unfortunate. We must pray that my pessimism today is unjustified, and my previous reports on the animal spirits of London are more accurate
Yes, if this bastard virus ruins our Brexit that would be such a bummer.
Well as a Leaver covid is a double edged sword.
On one side, I think Brexit would be going considerably better were it not for covid. EVERYTHING would be going considerably better if it weren't for covid.
On the other, it has put some perspective into what the impact of Brexit will be. A model showing under a certain set of assumptions growth of a few tenths of 1% difference seems so much navel fluff after the impact of the last year on the economy.
And it's given us something far more important to worry and fall out about.
Plus, you know, vaccines.
And plus, my view is that covid will push the EU yet further down a route we don't want to go.
To be clear, no part of this is arguing in favour of covid! But had I know covid was around the corner in 2016, and how it would pan out, on balance it would have pushed me slightly further towards leave.
That said, in the famous phrase about the French revolution whose provenance I can't be bothered to look up, it's still too early to tell how it will pan out.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab ASAP.
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
We are an open trading economy dependent on the free flow of people and cash
You voted to restrict that
We would have coped with Brexit alone just fine. Yes, there would have been pain but there would have been swift bounceback
The combo of Brexit AND Covid is tragically unfortunate. We must pray that my pessimism today is unjustified, and my previous reports on the animal spirits of London are more accurate
Yes, if this bastard virus ruins our Brexit that would be such a bummer.
Well as a Leaver covid is a double edged sword.
On one side, I think Brexit would be going considerably better were it not for covid. EVERYTHING would be going considerably better if it weren't for covid.
On the other, it has put some perspective into what the impact of Brexit will be. A model showing under a certain set of assumptions growth of a few tenths of 1% difference seems so much navel fluff after the impact of the last year on the economy.
And it's given us something far more important to worry and fall out about.
Plus, you know, vaccines.
And plus, my view is that covid will push the EU yet further down a route we don't want to go.
To be clear, no part of this is arguing in favour of covid! But had I know covid was around the corner in 2016, and how it would pan out, on balance it would have pushed me slightly further towards leave.
That said, in the famous phrase about the French revolution whose provenance I can't be bothered to look up, it's still too early to tell how it will pan out.
In terms of U.K. domestic politics, Brexit would be a whole lot worse if it weren’t for covid.
One pro-EU pressure group or another would have been headline news to a compliant media, five days a week for the past six months, only pausing for a few days while we buried the Duke of Edinburgh.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid statement was delayed by over half an hour as MSPs expressed significant frustrations about the manner in which the Scottish government does business. While this isn’t new in itself, what’s interesting is how the new presiding officer, Alison Johnstone, is dealing with them.
Johnstone issued a rebuke to ministers for not announcing the Manchester and Salford travel ban in parliament last Thursday
I think it was Bruce Schneier who pointed out, that for all the security theatre at airports, the one method not used (in the US - and it isn't used here) was the profiling techniques used by the Israelis. Essentially, spot likely individuals, engaged them in a conversation, and rapidly determine the probability of their mental state using carefully designed questions.
This was rejected. Because it would be racist. By the TSA. Who instead strip search black people lots......
The Israelis don't give a damn about looking politcally correct when it comes to security, and happily target who they want for their interrogators to give a grilling. They learnt the hard way and now probably have the safest airlines and airports as a result.
I don't think we'd want to police the UK like that.
Yes I quite agree. The last thing we’d want to do is use policing tactics that improve public safety.
I thought you were one of these "if you trade a bit of liberty for some extra security you deserve neither liberty nor security" merchants?
Or is that only when it's about wearing masks to Tescos?
I don’t tend to go to Tesco’s.
Grown ups should be able to continually balance security and liberty and not take static positions.
At the height of a pandemic of a fast spreading novel virus with an IFR of about 0.5%, wearing a mask in public was a low impact intervention that probably did some net good. Now we are at 86% of the adult population with immunity (biased towards those with higher IFRs) the balance has almost certainly shifted away and probably did some time ago.
For policing of borders, it really depends on whether you care about cross border serious crime, illegal immigration and international terrorism. Or being nice.
Yep, contrary to the notorious quote, security vs liberty can be a valid trade off. Although people will not all agree on where the right balance is.
As for our border police, I don't see why they have to be nasty to be effective. I've noticed a certain widespread male admiration for hardball tactics from security forces (eg like the Israelis are famous for) but I don't really share it. I wonder if it's vicarious in some cases?
The Israeli approach, in this case, is the reverse of "hard ball".
It goes like this -
1) Profile for certain signs, visually at a distance. 2) Speech to the subject in an apparently casual manner, using a series of questions to get information on his/her mind state. 3) If they seem like a threat, then the person in question gets a serious interrogation (which is very rare).
This is far more effective than strip searching all the black people. Or demanding that everyone takes off their shoes..
Ok, I see. Take your word for it but it all sounds a bit Alan Partridge to me.
What is Alana Partridge is that in the name of "we must not profile", the border security profile incompetently and end up harassing minorities.
- Yes.
But what I meant was I can just see 'Alan' interviewing a "crack" security guy in a very reverential but fundamentally ill-informed manner.
I was more going for a scene where he is questioning a guy carrying a bazooka, randomly shouting "Alan's Snackbar!" at intervals and completely not noticing.
“The number of new coronavirus cases reported stands at 2,167 which is 9.1% of all tests carried out”
Is that 9.1% positivity?!!!
Disaster
I hope I’ve read it wrong
PCR positivity from yesterday - sadly haven't got the Scottish equivalent data - but shows what can happen in an area....
Well some of these areas are pretty high, yes. But none of our regions equivalent in population to Scotland are anywhere close to 9% positivity overall. Not even the North West.
So two options: - Scotland is not testing as much as England, and the position in Scotland is actually much worse than that in England, to a much greater extent than the bald figures of positive tests reveal; or - the BBC report is innumerate nonsense.
The latter strikes me as slightly more plausible. But if anyone can confirm the data I'm happy to be corrected.
The 9.1% figure is on the Scotland government page. It's genuine. Scotland have consistently done a bit less testing than England, and had higher positivity values.
Andy Burnham is going to have fun with those numbers....
That's a fantastic name for a US politician. Imagine if he were president - the media would get themselves in a right muddle.
This kind of hypocrisy is standard issue in US politics -
- A politician comes out in favour of gun control. He/she owns an arsenal. - A politician starts ranting about immigration. He/she has multiple illegal immigrants working as staff at home. You can bet the mortgage on that.... - etc etc
After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.
Time to emigrate?
What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.
Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder. (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.
We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.
The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.
But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!
I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
No course not. What I'm saying is that it looks like a tag on here to generate some culture war spat and divert the responsibility for a problem in schools to that oh so convenient amorphous blob which is to blame for all the defects of 11 years of Tory government - the woke left.
It's getting stale. It's getting very stale indeed.
1. It’s only just begun
2. It works
Probably correct. In which case the relative economic prospects of the white working class will not improve.
It will if more focus is placed into those areas.
Blair's education policies focused very much on improving the performance of state schools in London in particular and, 20 years on, huge progress has been made there. However, the rest of the country was relegated in importance, with the possible exception of some of the cities.
It might help the left in general if their reaction to reports such as the Education Committee was a bit more introspection and a lot less lashing out and blaming everyone else for how you are perceived. The left's behaviour when anyone brings up issues such as the WWC in schools is starting to look very Trumpian in its manner.
Let's see some real focus on improving the schools in disadvantaged white working class areas then. It's been eleven long years but there's still time.
We've got our best people on it too & made sure they're well resourced. Gavin Williamson and 10% of the estimated funding needed.
That's a fantastic name for a US politician. Imagine if he were president - the media would get themselves in a right muddle.
This kind of hypocrisy is standard issue in US politics -
- A politician comes out in favour of gun control. He/she owns an arsenal. - A politician starts ranting about immigration. He/she has multiple illegal immigrants working as staff at home. You can bet the mortgage on that.... - etc etc
Every time someone uses the "it's their culture" as an excuse - point out that Afrikaners have a long and er... colourful history of cultural traditions involving black people.
Scotland: new target for Level Zero nationwide is now 19 July. Sturgeon wants to get rid of most remaining restrictions by 9 August, according to BBC. Masks to stay in some places thereafter, and WFH to continue. I'm assuming that test, trace and isolate will still be in force for a long time as well, but that isn't mentioned.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
That's a fantastic name for a US politician. Imagine if he were president - the media would get themselves in a right muddle.
This kind of hypocrisy is standard issue in US politics -
- A politician comes out in favour of gun control. He/she owns an arsenal. - A politician starts ranting about immigration. He/she has multiple illegal immigrants working as staff at home. You can bet the mortgage on that.... - etc etc
A politician denounces sexual depravity.....
..then he is having an affair with the illegal immigrant maid.
If he is anti-abortion, he forced her to have an abortion.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
According to this, a PHE study suggested the risk was reduced to 27% after a single dose of AZ. Much lower than you are suggesting.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
Two weeks after my second AZ dose my risk of hospitalization due to Covid will be reduced by > 90%.
Replicated across the country that makes Covid less dangerous than the flu.
Consequently, national emergency over, life back to normal, standard public health advice on reducing the spread of infectious diseases continues.
“If you come at the deputy leader, deputy leader of the opposition, shadow first secretary of state, party chair, shadow chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and shadow secretary of state for the future of work – you best not miss”
One now reads that Wembley is to be allowed to host 60,000 spectators for the final and semi-finals of the European Championships - a figure remarkably close to the capacity of the Puskas Arena in Budapest.
I think it was Bruce Schneier who pointed out, that for all the security theatre at airports, the one method not used (in the US - and it isn't used here) was the profiling techniques used by the Israelis. Essentially, spot likely individuals, engaged them in a conversation, and rapidly determine the probability of their mental state using carefully designed questions.
This was rejected. Because it would be racist. By the TSA. Who instead strip search black people lots......
The Israelis don't give a damn about looking politcally correct when it comes to security, and happily target who they want for their interrogators to give a grilling. They learnt the hard way and now probably have the safest airlines and airports as a result.
I don't think we'd want to police the UK like that.
Yes I quite agree. The last thing we’d want to do is use policing tactics that improve public safety.
I thought you were one of these "if you trade a bit of liberty for some extra security you deserve neither liberty nor security" merchants?
Or is that only when it's about wearing masks to Tescos?
I'm not sure that argument is relevant here - I don't think less, or even more security is being advocated - simply better targeted.
On which subject, my father in law - who is a scientist, and travels all over the world - was frequently stopped at airport security until he took the decision to start wearing a jacket and tie. No more issues at airports after that, even if he did continue to look like a ginger Lemmy from Motorhead, only wearing a tie. And similarly, I bet if you're brown-skinned, heavily bearded and wear traditional Asian clothing you will be stopped more often than if your white skinned, dress in the style of a conventional westerner and clean shaven. Even if we don't say we target, I bet we do, a bit.
As a student visiting my grandparents in Guernsey, I knew that Customs always stopped the youngest/scruffiest person on every flight. One day I wasn't attentive enough to what I was wearing and looking around the departure lounge realised it would be me - and it was. Once I started working I always went straight from work in my suit and was never stopped again. This remained true while I was going there regularly from the 1980s to 2000s.
I assume drugs always arrived in a briefcase carried by a smartly dressed courier.
For a while, back when the PIRA were doing their thing, I was flying to the Netherlands on a regular basis. Once they saw Northern Ireland on my passport, I tended to get a certain level of examination.
On the other hand, when I arrived on the company jet (which they used a shuttle mail plane between the HQ in London and the Hague), customs would practically carry my bag.....
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
Two weeks after my second AZ dose my risk of hospitalization due to Covid will be reduced by > 90%.
Replicated across the country that makes Covid less dangerous than the flu.
Consequently, national emergency over, life back to normal, standard public health advice on reducing the spread of infectious diseases continues.
He will refer you back to the Phase III trials at some stage soon. The cleverest man in the room is incapable of even reading a report. Antivaxxery at its most intelligent.
Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English
I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there
‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’
Swedish will extinct within a hundred years. The propensity to gleefully abandon perfectly good Swedish words and phrases for English (sometimes pseudo-English) ones is astonishing. Anyone who objects is ridiculed as a fuddy duddy who’s not down with the kids. It is part of the infamous “opinion corridor”.
I read an article a while back saying that in Italian not just English words but actually English grammar is starting to make an appearance. Quite bizarre.
Rich young Arabs - from the Lebanon or UAE - also speak a kind of ‘Arablish’. They move seamlessly between the two languages, Arabic and English, sometimes in the same sentence. It must drive linguistic purists mad, especially as Arabic is such a beautiful, liquid language, if spoken well (it can also be harsh)
Ditto Germany. Maybe even German will disappear eventually
Very true. The private schools in Arabia teach other subjects in English, whereas the state schools teach English as a language and subjects in Arabic. The private school local kids speak mostly English to each other, and Arabic with their parents!
It’s said that within 50 years the whole world will speak at least one of English and Chinese, that’s probably not far off. Spanish and Russian will stick around for a while though.
We have a friend who originated in a moderately wealthy family in Morocco (she moved to the UK at 14, naturalized there and now lives in NYC). Her "mother tongue", as spoken by her family among themselves, is French. She can speak Moroccan Arabic, but never well: it was the language for talking to the servants in.
Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English
I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there
‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’
Swedish will extinct within a hundred years. The propensity to gleefully abandon perfectly good Swedish words and phrases for English (sometimes pseudo-English) ones is astonishing. Anyone who objects is ridiculed as a fuddy duddy who’s not down with the kids. It is part of the infamous “opinion corridor”.
I read an article a while back saying that in Italian not just English words but actually English grammar is starting to make an appearance. Quite bizarre.
Rich young Arabs - from the Lebanon or UAE - also speak a kind of ‘Arablish’. They move seamlessly between the two languages, Arabic and English, sometimes in the same sentence. It must drive linguistic purists mad, especially as Arabic is such a beautiful, liquid language, if spoken well (it can also be harsh)
Ditto Germany. Maybe even German will disappear eventually
Very true. The private schools in Arabia teach other subjects in English, whereas the state schools teach English as a language and subjects in Arabic. The private school local kids speak mostly English to each other, and Arabic with their parents!
It’s said that within 50 years the whole world will speak at least one of English and Chinese, that’s probably not far off. Spanish and Russian will stick around for a while though.
1) I enjoy hearing Dutch. It sounds like English, but with made-up words. It's probably the most comfortingly familiar language.
Oh, Dutch is quite closely related to Scots as is Danish. Reminds me of my late friend who was a wartime evacuee in the Scottish Borders and went out to South Africa to work in a university there. The Afrikaners never did realise that he could understand their conversation if he just relaxed and let it wash over him.
Putting aside Chris statement, worth also noting the PHE stats from the last press conference are on the pessimistic side, because they measure 3 weeks from first dose, 2 weeks from second dose then getting a positive test.
But, as we know can take upto a week post infection to show up and loads of people wait it out a few days as its a cold or hey fever before going to get a test. Then add on the fact that AZN protection builds over 12 weeks.
So there are positives in the counted numbers who infected during the 3wk / 2wk window and still weren't at max first or second dose coverage.
98% reduction in chance of serious illness post 2 weeks 2nd dose of Pfizer, you more likely to be getting cancer and basically every other thing that can go wrong healthwise than covid really effecting you
Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English
I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there
‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’
Swedish will extinct within a hundred years. The propensity to gleefully abandon perfectly good Swedish words and phrases for English (sometimes pseudo-English) ones is astonishing. Anyone who objects is ridiculed as a fuddy duddy who’s not down with the kids. It is part of the infamous “opinion corridor”.
I hope not. I think it's important that these languages survive. Using English ought to be discouraged in these countries. In fact I think Danish universities recently decided to stop teaching in English.
Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English
I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there
‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’
Swedish will extinct within a hundred years. The propensity to gleefully abandon perfectly good Swedish words and phrases for English (sometimes pseudo-English) ones is astonishing. Anyone who objects is ridiculed as a fuddy duddy who’s not down with the kids. It is part of the infamous “opinion corridor”.
I read an article a while back saying that in Italian not just English words but actually English grammar is starting to make an appearance. Quite bizarre.
Rich young Arabs - from the Lebanon or UAE - also speak a kind of ‘Arablish’. They move seamlessly between the two languages, Arabic and English, sometimes in the same sentence. It must drive linguistic purists mad, especially as Arabic is such a beautiful, liquid language, if spoken well (it can also be harsh)
Ditto Germany. Maybe even German will disappear eventually
Very true. The private schools in Arabia teach other subjects in English, whereas the state schools teach English as a language and subjects in Arabic. The private school local kids speak mostly English to each other, and Arabic with their parents!
It’s said that within 50 years the whole world will speak at least one of English and Chinese, that’s probably not far off. Spanish and Russian will stick around for a while though.
1) I enjoy hearing Dutch. It sounds like English, but with made-up words. It's probably the most comfortingly familiar language.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
Had my second jabbarooney today. Was noticeably quieter than when i got my first jab.
2 weeks....then I will be knocking down pub doors like Boris in a JCB up and down the country.
One thing that i did notice, neither jab did anybody mention 3wk / 2wk periods. Plenty of these are the side effects, but not once that you aren't protected yet.
I think it was Bruce Schneier who pointed out, that for all the security theatre at airports, the one method not used (in the US - and it isn't used here) was the profiling techniques used by the Israelis. Essentially, spot likely individuals, engaged them in a conversation, and rapidly determine the probability of their mental state using carefully designed questions.
This was rejected. Because it would be racist. By the TSA. Who instead strip search black people lots......
The Israelis don't give a damn about looking politcally correct when it comes to security, and happily target who they want for their interrogators to give a grilling. They learnt the hard way and now probably have the safest airlines and airports as a result.
I don't think we'd want to police the UK like that.
Yes I quite agree. The last thing we’d want to do is use policing tactics that improve public safety.
I thought you were one of these "if you trade a bit of liberty for some extra security you deserve neither liberty nor security" merchants?
Or is that only when it's about wearing masks to Tescos?
I'm not sure that argument is relevant here - I don't think less, or even more security is being advocated - simply better targeted.
On which subject, my father in law - who is a scientist, and travels all over the world - was frequently stopped at airport security until he took the decision to start wearing a jacket and tie. No more issues at airports after that, even if he did continue to look like a ginger Lemmy from Motorhead, only wearing a tie. And similarly, I bet if you're brown-skinned, heavily bearded and wear traditional Asian clothing you will be stopped more often than if your white skinned, dress in the style of a conventional westerner and clean shaven. Even if we don't say we target, I bet we do, a bit.
As a student visiting my grandparents in Guernsey, I knew that Customs always stopped the youngest/scruffiest person on every flight. One day I wasn't attentive enough to what I was wearing and looking around the departure lounge realised it would be me - and it was. Once I started working I always went straight from work in my suit and was never stopped again. This remained true while I was going there regularly from the 1980s to 2000s.
I assume drugs always arrived in a briefcase carried by a smartly dressed courier.
For a while, back when the PIRA were doing their thing, I was flying to the Netherlands on a regular basis. Once they saw Northern Ireland on my passport, I tended to get a certain level of examination.
On the other hand, when I arrived on the company jet (which they used a shuttle mail plane between the HQ in London and the Hague), customs would practically carry my bag.....
I recall flying CWL-BFS just after the ceasefires really "stuck", in 1999. At Cardiff before boarding, there was a South Wales Plod Special Branch officer asking to see pax boarding passes and writing down their names. Passenger before us went off on one to him about how that was outrageous etc etc and was told to stand aside and let everyone else go through (he did get on the flight, last, and with a face like thunder).
The amusing part though, was that back then British Airways (yes, BA used to have domestic flights not involving London!) a) accepted cash payments for tickets (they were still paper then) and b) required no ID for domestic flights. So if you really wanted to, you could have bought a cash ticket and given whatever name you felt like!
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
I make my money out of spotting and calling out people who talk bollox. You are talking bollox.
One suspects we really MUST be coming to the end of this whole shebang if the Scottish Government hasn't shat a brick at today's positive case numbers whilst also announcing that basically August 9 is essentially going to be the end of all legal restrictions, near as dammit.
Fascinating test match in Southampton for the slow cricket connoisseur.
That match is a real shame how it’s played out. For the world final, they should have just allowed it to run to a conclusion, however many days it took.
Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English
I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there
‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’
Swedish will extinct within a hundred years. The propensity to gleefully abandon perfectly good Swedish words and phrases for English (sometimes pseudo-English) ones is astonishing. Anyone who objects is ridiculed as a fuddy duddy who’s not down with the kids. It is part of the infamous “opinion corridor”.
Strong disagree. I work for a Swedish company (whose employees trend young) and have visited Stockholm several times now. Swedish remains the language Swedish people talk to each other in in non-business contexts at work and while socializing. So what if it acquires English loan words? (Insert obligatory ref to James Nicoll's screed on the "purity" of English itself.) That's what languages do.
It's the languages like French that have strongly conservative "governing bodies" always on the lookout to strike out any furrin innovations that are more likely to ossify and die in the long run.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
Talk about cherry-picking. That report says something completely different to what you are implying.
Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English
I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there
‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’
Swedish will extinct within a hundred years. The propensity to gleefully abandon perfectly good Swedish words and phrases for English (sometimes pseudo-English) ones is astonishing. Anyone who objects is ridiculed as a fuddy duddy who’s not down with the kids. It is part of the infamous “opinion corridor”.
I hope not. I think it's important that these languages survive. Using English ought to be discouraged in these countries. In fact I think Danish universities recently decided to stop teaching in English.
I try to discourage it, but I’m fighting a losing battle. I nearly always speak Swedish outwith the home, but we switched to English at home when the youngest was born, and sometime the language mixing within the family takes on surreal and comic levels. Even the basic grammar transmogrifies.
But what worries me is not the immigrants, like me, who use English, but the native Swedes who seem to be on a mission to assassinate their own language.
(For clarification: it is US English they use, not English English.)
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
Took a SF to SeaTac flight in mid 80s. Checked in. Baggage goes. Oops wrong flight. Mine was an hour later. Just picked up my bags going round and round alone at the other end. No one seemed concerned in the slightest.
I see we are back – yet again – to the PB Zerocovidians trashing the vaccine.
Very sad to see.
The thing is once the vaccine rollout is done there's nothing more to stay locked down for. Its a case of we need to get back to normal and if people die, they die.
Shit happens and people die. We can't stop life for that.
Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English
I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there
‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’
Swedish will extinct within a hundred years. The propensity to gleefully abandon perfectly good Swedish words and phrases for English (sometimes pseudo-English) ones is astonishing. Anyone who objects is ridiculed as a fuddy duddy who’s not down with the kids. It is part of the infamous “opinion corridor”.
Strong disagree. I work for a Swedish company (whose employees trend young) and have visited Stockholm several times now. Swedish remains the language Swedish people talk to each other in in non-business contexts at work and while socializing. So what if it acquires English loan words? (Insert obligatory ref to James Nicoll's screed on the "purity" of English itself.) That's what languages do.
It's the languages like French that have strongly conservative "governing bodies" always on the lookout to strike out any furrin innovations that are more likely to ossify and die in the long run.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
Fascinating test match in Southampton for the slow cricket connoisseur.
Should have been timeless. Or at least a minimum of 450 overs. Especially when they gave it to England.
Absolutely agreed.
The first Timeless Test since the war (I think?) would have been a fascinating conclusion and would have been really interesting. Just clear the schedule for a week or two afterwards.
After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.
Time to emigrate?
What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.
Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder. (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.
We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.
The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.
But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!
I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
No course not. What I'm saying is that it looks like a tag on here to generate some culture war spat and divert the responsibility for a problem in schools to that oh so convenient amorphous blob which is to blame for all the defects of 11 years of Tory government - the woke left.
It's getting stale. It's getting very stale indeed.
1. It’s only just begun
2. It works
Probably correct. In which case the relative economic prospects of the white working class will not improve.
It will if more focus is placed into those areas.
Blair's education policies focused very much on improving the performance of state schools in London in particular and, 20 years on, huge progress has been made there. However, the rest of the country was relegated in importance, with the possible exception of some of the cities.
It might help the left in general if their reaction to reports such as the Education Committee was a bit more introspection and a lot less lashing out and blaming everyone else for how you are perceived. The left's behaviour when anyone brings up issues such as the WWC in schools is starting to look very Trumpian in its manner.
Let's see some real focus on improving the schools in disadvantaged white working class areas then. It's been eleven long years but there's still time.
We've got our best people on it too & made sure they're well resourced. Gavin Williamson and 10% of the estimated funding needed.
- Quite so.
Anyway there's a time and a place for pulling punches but sometimes it has to be Owen -
The Tories slashed services, decimated the welfare state, drove children into poverty - and now they’re trying to blame anyone who has mentioned “white privilege” for it.'
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
VE against hospitalisation with Delta was similar to that seen with Alpha: 94% (46-99) after 1 dose and 96% (86-99) after 2 doses of BNT162b2; 71% (51-83) after 1 dose and 92% (75-97) after 2 doses of ChAdOx1 (Table) These findings indicate very high levels of protection against hospitalisation with the Delta variant with 1 or 2 doses of either vaccine.
I see we are back – yet again – to the PB Zerocovidians trashing the vaccine.
Very sad to see.
It's their only way to hold onto restrictions, become anti-vaxxers.
Its the horseshoe effect in politics again.
Far left and far right are pretty indistinguishable from each other in a lot of ways.
The two extremist sides of being extremely pro- and anti- lockdowns are becoming indistinguishable from each other by parroting each others antivaxx lines too.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
According to this, a PHE study suggested the risk was reduced to 27% after a single dose of AZ. Much lower than you are suggesting.
I see we are back – yet again – to the PB Zerocovidians trashing the vaccine.
Very sad to see.
It's their only way to hold onto restrictions, become anti-vaxxers.
There is a very sinister trend among the zerocovidian high priestesses – Pagel and the other woman – to trash the vaccines. It has seemingly begun to filter through to the rank and file.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
I see we are back – yet again – to the PB Zerocovidians trashing the vaccine.
Very sad to see.
It's their only way to hold onto restrictions, become anti-vaxxers.
There is a very sinister trend among the zerocovidian high priestesses – Pagel and the other woman – to trash the vaccines. It has seemingly begun to filter through to the rank and file.
Yes, it's definitely the new talking point, try and make people think that the vaccine they had was useless and they can still die of COVID. Convince enough people and they will support forever restrictions as people are suggesting on here.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
Ping's posts are proof positive that zerocovidianism and antivaxxery are two sides of the same coin.
Eh?
I was excited to get my jab as soon ASAP
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
We've had plenty of real world data on AZ. You just choose to ignore it and slyly trash the vaccine in the process.
Public Health England's latest "real-world" assessment is that after one dose AZ reduces the likelihood of symptomatic infection to about 70% of what it would have been otherwise, and after two doses to about 33%.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
WRONG
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
Comments
Similarly, when I was growing up, political discussions were furious battles of should public spending be 38% of GDP or 42%? All seemed hugely fundamental at the time.
Not everyone wants to buy everything by mail order though. The situation will stabilise where the number and range of physical shops matches the requirements of the remaining customer base. The Pandemic has wiped out such a large number of stores already that I wouldn't be surprised if we're somewhere not too far from the end point of that process. For example, people who still want to see, feel and try on clothes in a shop, after over a year of this not being allowed, are relatively unlikely to decide that the faff of ordering stuff, waiting for it to turn up, and then posting it back again if they don't want it is something that they'd like to start doing after all.
But what I meant was I can just see 'Alan' interviewing a "crack" security guy in a very reverential but fundamentally ill-informed manner.
In future, we'll have fewer shops (and indeed pubs) but they will be much nicer places to frequent.
The Disney Store does not fall into the category of 'nice to be in' - at least not for those who are spending the money.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/
And it's more than just one bad day:
I assume drugs always arrived in a briefcase carried by a smartly dressed courier.
On one side, I think Brexit would be going considerably better were it not for covid. EVERYTHING would be going considerably better if it weren't for covid.
On the other, it has put some perspective into what the impact of Brexit will be. A model showing under a certain set of assumptions growth of a few tenths of 1% difference seems so much navel fluff after the impact of the last year on the economy.
And it's given us something far more important to worry and fall out about.
Plus, you know, vaccines.
And plus, my view is that covid will push the EU yet further down a route we don't want to go.
To be clear, no part of this is arguing in favour of covid! But had I know covid was around the corner in 2016, and how it would pan out, on balance it would have pushed me slightly further towards leave.
That said, in the famous phrase about the French revolution whose provenance I can't be bothered to look up, it's still too early to tell how it will pan out.
I was excited to get my jab ASAP.
I’m just realistic about theoretical claims of vaccine efficacy by interested parties until we have solid real world data. Especially for the jab I’ve had, AstraZeneca.
I’m also not zero COVID. I just think the govt made the right call that 21/6 was not the right point to lift all restrictions.
Hardly controversial. My views are probably majority opinion.
The Klan have themselves some fine traditions....
As for majority opinion... Tyranny of the majority.
One pro-EU pressure group or another would have been headline news to a compliant media, five days a week for the past six months, only pausing for a few days while we buried the Duke of Edinburgh.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid statement was delayed by over half an hour as MSPs expressed significant frustrations about the manner in which the Scottish government does business. While this isn’t new in itself, what’s interesting is how the new presiding officer, Alison Johnstone, is dealing with them.
Johnstone issued a rebuke to ministers for not announcing the Manchester and Salford travel ban in parliament last Thursday
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/jun/22/uk-covid-live-hancock-coronavirus-growth-rate-slowing-scotland-sturgeon-latest-updates?page=with:block-60d1f39f8f0874aebb94dc97#block-60d1f39f8f0874aebb94dc97
And then there's this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCkagYixpuc
- A politician comes out in favour of gun control. He/she owns an arsenal.
- A politician starts ranting about immigration. He/she has multiple illegal immigrants working as staff at home. You can bet the mortgage on that....
- etc etc
Gavin Williamson and 10% of the estimated funding needed.
Given that the trials showed the efficacy against infection in general was less than against symptmoatic infection - in fact only about 50% even against "classic" COVID-19 - it should be obvious how far away from herd immunity we are with only just over half the adult population fully vaccinated, especially now that we have a variant that's probably twice as transmissible as "classic" COVID-19.
But "The Vaccines Will Make It All OK" has become a near-compulsory mantra around here, so I don't expect any statement of the numbers, no matter how clear they are, to do any good.
If he is anti-abortion, he forced her to have an abortion.
https://www.astrazeneca.com/content/dam/az/covid-19/media/factsheets/COVID-19_Vaccine_AstraZeneca_Real-World_Evidence_Summary.pdf
Replicated across the country that makes Covid less dangerous than the flu.
Consequently, national emergency over, life back to normal, standard public health advice on reducing the spread of infectious diseases continues.
Don't tell Mons. Macaron.
Oh, that's a real quote.
Amazing.
Well. Fancy that.
On the other hand, when I arrived on the company jet (which they used a shuttle mail plane between the HQ in London and the Hague), customs would practically carry my bag.....
checks for secretary of state for the future of work ...
...
...
...
...
Edit: I see others have got there before me.
Zerocovidianism and antivaxxery –– two cheeks of the same pompous arse.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/22/solstice-swimmers-around-the-uk-photo-essay
But, as we know can take upto a week post infection to show up and loads of people wait it out a few days as its a cold or hey fever before going to get a test. Then add on the fact that AZN protection builds over 12 weeks.
So there are positives in the counted numbers who infected during the 3wk / 2wk window and still weren't at max first or second dose coverage.
98% reduction in chance of serious illness post 2 weeks 2nd dose of Pfizer, you more likely to be getting cancer and basically every other thing that can go wrong healthwise than covid really effecting you
"Potato, potato, potato - STFU."
https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2021/covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca-effective-against-delta-indian-variant.html
“The very recent emergence of the [delta] variant and the relatively low case numbers meant that it was not possible to estimate vaccine efficacy against severe disease.”
There’s a lot that we just don’t yet know.
I make most of my money betting, by laying overconfidence. One of my skills is sniffing it out.
2 weeks....then I will be knocking down pub doors like Boris in a JCB up and down the country.
One thing that i did notice, neither jab did anybody mention 3wk / 2wk periods. Plenty of these are the side effects, but not once that you aren't protected yet.
The amusing part though, was that back then British Airways (yes, BA used to have domestic flights not involving London!) a) accepted cash payments for tickets (they were still paper then) and b) required no ID for domestic flights. So if you really wanted to, you could have bought a cash ticket and given whatever name you felt like!
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.183248116
Is that his falling asleep face, or one that is equally familiar to Carrie, and numerous other ladies of dubious taste?
It's the languages like French that have strongly conservative "governing bodies" always on the lookout to strike out any furrin innovations that are more likely to ossify and die in the long run.
But what worries me is not the immigrants, like me, who use English, but the native Swedes who seem to be on a mission to assassinate their own language.
(For clarification: it is US English they use, not English English.)
I'm just reading the actual report.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vaccines-highly-effective-against-hospitalisation-from-delta-variant
Oops wrong flight. Mine was an hour later. Just picked up my bags going round and round alone at the other end. No one seemed concerned in the slightest.
Very sad to see.
Especially when they gave it to England.
Shit happens and people die. We can't stop life for that.
Click through the links.
Not sure if the direct link will work via Pb, but here it is;
https://khub.net/documents/135939561/479607266/Effectiveness+of+COVID-19+vaccines+against+hospital+admission+with+the+Delta+(B.1.617.2)+variant.pdf/1c213463-3997-ed16-2a6f-14e5deb0b997?version=1.4&t=1623689315431&download=true
The first Timeless Test since the war (I think?) would have been a fascinating conclusion and would have been really interesting. Just clear the schedule for a week or two afterwards.
Anyway there's a time and a place for pulling punches but sometimes it has to be Owen -
The Tories slashed services, decimated the welfare state, drove children into poverty - and now they’re trying to blame anyone who has mentioned “white privilege” for it.'
https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1407322628604542986
Last day of term for a lotta Scottish kids, what a treat for the weans. Turn the sound up to 1707!
https://twitter.com/leomiklasz/status/1407322921299853317?s=20
92% efficacy against hospitalisation after two doses, higher than it was against Alpha (original) COVID.
Edit - narrower CI as well.
VE against hospitalisation with Delta was similar to that seen with Alpha: 94% (46-99) after 1 dose and 96% (86-99) after 2 doses of BNT162b2; 71% (51-83) after 1 dose and 92% (75-97) after 2 doses of ChAdOx1 (Table)
These findings indicate very high levels of protection against hospitalisation with the Delta variant with 1 or 2 doses of either vaccine.
Far left and far right are pretty indistinguishable from each other in a lot of ways.
The two extremist sides of being extremely pro- and anti- lockdowns are becoming indistinguishable from each other by parroting each others antivaxx lines too.
I realised when I posted that it was pointless, but it's fair to say I didn't realise quite how pointless!
There is a very sinister trend among the zerocovidian high priestesses – Pagel and the other woman – to trash the vaccines. It has seemingly begun to filter through to the rank and file.
What's the interesting betting movement on Batley that you've spotted then?
There was speculation that AZ worked as well as Pfizer, but it took a lot longer to get there (more than the 2 weeks cited).