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Now a quarantine exemption plan for toffs – the rest of us will have to suffer – politicalbetting.co

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Comments

  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,352
    Scott_xP said:

    None of the Mac users want to big up Pages or Numbers?

    [ducks]

    My wife did a lot of work when we first met, nearly 14 years ago, in Pages, and would often extol its virtues over Word.

    She says Apple ruined it by making it more similar to Word.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,309

    The horrible Scottish numbers suggest she was worried we might close the border into Scotland. She had already made the case for us to do it.

    The differing regimes in England, Scotland, Wales and NI have been stupidity. One virus, one regime to attack that virus.
    Numbers have been dropping for some days, they are just adding backlogs due to bad data previously. She followed the great buffoon far too closely , she should have closed the border several times. Also made many of her own mistakes and let off some right roasters as well.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,895
    Scott_xP said:

    I don't get the "ah but Chromebooks have built in obsolescence dates" argument (and it isn't a dig at you as I've heard it a lot).

    For 7 years you get a device where the OS receives regular OTA updates as does most of the software run on it. At the end of that your device is still perfectly usable with an OS that runs quickly, you just lose the OTA updates.

    The issue is where in the lifecycle you buy. It's not 7 years from date of purchase, it's 7 years from date of design. If you buy it in year 6 you get 1 year of updates...
    So the same as any outdated end of run products. Would be second hand by then as the manufacturers don't sells old designs with no life left on them.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    edited June 2021
    WTF....The Athletic reports, Dominic Calvert-Lewin left out of Gareth Southgate’s #England squad for #EnglandvGermany this afternoon.

    When Harry Kane's ankle goes after 50 mins....

    Waistcoat has gone completely mad.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,978

    So the same as any outdated end of run products. Would be second hand by then as the manufacturers don't sells old designs with no life left on them.

    https://www.pcworld.com/article/3570263/77-chromebooks-you-shouldnt-buy-why-googles-expiration-dates-matter.html
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,242

    Praise for MS:

    I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office. ;)

    But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

    I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

    It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

    And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

    Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

    Excel is the big beast of MS.

    Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.
    Used to use Visicalc on an Apple II to write cash-flow forecasts that were worthy of the Booker Prize.
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,492
    >
    Floater said:

    Utterly stupid idea - what idiot came up with that?

    What counts as "significant economic benefit?

    Why would the other parties want to meet with you anyway - I would refuse a face to face in those circumstances


    I assume its for people like tecnishions who have come form a manifacher of machinery or equipment to fix a machine in a factory, that might otherwise be idol for 2 weeks while they quarantine.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098
    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,858

    dixiedean said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

    Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

    Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

    I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

    I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining
    How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

    What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

    Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.
    Isn't freedom day also the end of term?
    Friends and bush telegraph tells me that end of term in many instances is being curtailed a matter of weeks early as everyone self-isolates. Whole rite of passage experiences just not happening for tens of thousands of children.
    End of term is a rite of passage without which we'd all be scarred?

    You and @contrarian seem to have a very low opinion of the mental resilience of the average 18 year old.
    End of school or uni year or of school or uni itself absolutely is a critical rite of passage.

    And as for the mental resilience of the average 18-yr old, I suggest you listen to some of the news items on the radio in the UK today. Children on anti-depressants = up, children with mental distress = up, children missing on average 115 hours of face to face teaching, children simply going missing from school.

    So yes, Robert and great vid on stopping illegal immigrants, btw, but absofuckinglutely yes, childrens' mental health is being fucked with.
    Do you have children? Do you remember what it was like to be a child?

    Literally the worst time of the entire school year was an enforced assembly while people trooped up to the front.

    The bit that was fun was meeting up with your friends outside of school. Which is - ummm - completely unaffected.

    (It is also worth remembering that "graduation" is a very modern concept. In the old days, you went for study leave and never came back. Which I guess explains why everyone over the age of about 50 is mentally scarred.)
    Robert the instances of damage to children's mental health is being documented today as we speak on just about all news outlets. I won't google it all for you because I'm sure you will be able to do so.

    And after a year or several years of school I could take or leave prize giving and speech day and what have you. I'm sure you the same and if it turned out that your May Ball was cancelled well not to worry your internship at GS was about to start. All perfectly charming.

    But the last 15 months have been hell for hundreds of thousands of children perhaps not so fortunate as you or me or perhaps just as fortunate. And during this time school has often represented an oasis of normality. And people are being denied as I said a rite of passage that is part of growing up.
    You're completely missing my point.

    I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU REGARDNG THE IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN ON KIDS HEALTH.

    I THINK YOU ARE A COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD IF YOU THINK GRADUATION CEREMONIES ARE SOME ESSENTIAL RIGHT OF PASSAGE THAT KIDS ENJOY.
    "COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD" eh?

    And shouting. Hmm, I think this discussion is moving in my direction.

    And again, the graduation ceremonies, which you may or may not have enjoyed are absolutely an "ESSENTIAL RIGHT [sic] OF PASSAGE" for children. As is all the end of school/uni activities. I said at the beginning "End of term activities". Including graduation which formally marks the end of the era of schooling or uni.

    You are simply wrong on this and quite why on the one hand you say lockdown has had an impact and on the other you are unable to see that a critical component of lockdown people are cheering at goodness only knows. I can only imagine something happened at your graduation that was unpleasant otherwise your response is irrational.
    I apologise for shouting and calling you names.

    I just remember the utter misery - both as a parent and a child - of sitting through assemblies - particularly ones where people go up to the front to be presented with a worthless bit of paper. Every time I've thought "this is two hours of my life, two hours of utter tedium, I will never get back."

    Tony Blair, fwiw, agrees with me. He never actually turned up to graduate from Oxford, and therefore is technically not a graduate.
    I skipped mine at Imperial. It was in the Albert Hall but I didn't fancy it.
    Me too. Shelling out for a fancy dress costume to sit in a hall for hours while folk droned on didn't appeal somehow.
    It's really all about the honorary degrees anyway.
    Is it true that everyone gets either a first or a 2:1 now? No-one gets a Desmond anymore?
    Not quite true, but the are arguably far too many getting firsts and 2:1's. having been involved for the last 10 years or so, its not hard to see why. Students on my course spend ages accumulating good grades in course work, where they can dedicate 5 or 10 times the amount of time we expect them too, and this makes up for generally lower marks in set piece exams. We reference performance back to previous years, but its easy to have a drift up of 1 or 2 % a year translate into many more students getting the top two grades. In many ways the ranking as a cohort is a better system, but I would perhaps retain the grade and include where the student came in their cohort.

    Of interest in Pharmacy is that most students take an assessment in 3rd year that is external to the Universities. This is a national competition where students are ranked top to bottom across the piece in order to allocate pre-registration training places. The idea is that the highest ranked gets to choose their first pick and so on. Very revealing for comparing different uni's.
    To be fair, there are non-sinister, natural explanations for why educational standards will have risen – the interwebs; pychologically-valid revision techniques; better teaching – as well as less good reasons like the free market in action, but eventually we run into the question of what exams and grades are intended for. Is it to show that a graduate has reached a particular standard, or is it to tell us who is the 279th-best historian this year?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,392
    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
    In Henman's case the rain did him against Ivanisevic. He would surely have won if it had carried on that night.
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,492
    malcolmg said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

    Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

    Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

    I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

    I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining
    How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

    What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

    Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.
    Isn't freedom day also the end of term?
    End of term was last week in God's country.
    it is quite possible that reported case numbers drop dramatically in Scotland next week, not necessarily because of a drop in cases but because of less mass asymptomatic, testing in schools.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,812

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I thought they had one already? it's worked fine for 333 years, why change?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,309
    eek said:

    ping said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Taking back control-
    Lorry driver shortage: UK government and retailers in emergency talks
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/28/lorry-driver-shortage-uk-government-and-retailers-in-emergency-talks-covid-brexit

    I don’t agree with @Philip_Thompson and assorted other drawbridge brexiteers on much, but this is one area where they have a point.

    The government should not manipulate the market to prevent wage rises. It’s a good thing for the industry to recalibrate to domestic employment, higher wages and slightly higher costs.
    Except that the issue has been caused by a supply shock because of
    - Covid
    - Brexit
    - IR35 etc

    At least two of those are deliberate govt policy, and one of them is an act of god which we presumably wish to mitigate against.

    It might be that simply overseeing a wage spike might have consequences at the grocery tills.
    The bit that the minister studiously ignored at the previous meetings (where she accused the industry of "crying wolf") is that it isn't about money. You could offer drivers a stack of cash per hour and someone is still missing out.

    There aren't enough drivers. Will take time to train new ones (as apparently truck driving lessons / tests haven't taken place at all during Covid) so we either allow EU drivers back in or stuff won't get shifted around.

    Within a few months all this will feed directly into food price inflation (along with the other shortage which is people to work in factories and on farms) which analysts believe will be the biggest spike since 2007. Tesco et al insist they won't be putting up prices so I expect some fun times ahead with price negotiations :D
    That would be the same tesco's who claimed that the shortage of drivers was resulting in 2 lorries worth of food going to waste. Which rather trivialises the issue into Tesco's needing to find a single lorry driver to do 2 shifts.
    Last week it was 50,000 tonnes being wasted by Tesco due to lack of drivers
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,812

    dixiedean said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

    Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

    Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

    I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

    I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining
    How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

    What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

    Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.
    Isn't freedom day also the end of term?
    Friends and bush telegraph tells me that end of term in many instances is being curtailed a matter of weeks early as everyone self-isolates. Whole rite of passage experiences just not happening for tens of thousands of children.
    End of term is a rite of passage without which we'd all be scarred?

    You and @contrarian seem to have a very low opinion of the mental resilience of the average 18 year old.
    End of school or uni year or of school or uni itself absolutely is a critical rite of passage.

    And as for the mental resilience of the average 18-yr old, I suggest you listen to some of the news items on the radio in the UK today. Children on anti-depressants = up, children with mental distress = up, children missing on average 115 hours of face to face teaching, children simply going missing from school.

    So yes, Robert and great vid on stopping illegal immigrants, btw, but absofuckinglutely yes, childrens' mental health is being fucked with.
    Do you have children? Do you remember what it was like to be a child?

    Literally the worst time of the entire school year was an enforced assembly while people trooped up to the front.

    The bit that was fun was meeting up with your friends outside of school. Which is - ummm - completely unaffected.

    (It is also worth remembering that "graduation" is a very modern concept. In the old days, you went for study leave and never came back. Which I guess explains why everyone over the age of about 50 is mentally scarred.)
    Robert the instances of damage to children's mental health is being documented today as we speak on just about all news outlets. I won't google it all for you because I'm sure you will be able to do so.

    And after a year or several years of school I could take or leave prize giving and speech day and what have you. I'm sure you the same and if it turned out that your May Ball was cancelled well not to worry your internship at GS was about to start. All perfectly charming.

    But the last 15 months have been hell for hundreds of thousands of children perhaps not so fortunate as you or me or perhaps just as fortunate. And during this time school has often represented an oasis of normality. And people are being denied as I said a rite of passage that is part of growing up.
    You're completely missing my point.

    I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU REGARDNG THE IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN ON KIDS HEALTH.

    I THINK YOU ARE A COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD IF YOU THINK GRADUATION CEREMONIES ARE SOME ESSENTIAL RIGHT OF PASSAGE THAT KIDS ENJOY.
    "COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD" eh?

    And shouting. Hmm, I think this discussion is moving in my direction.

    And again, the graduation ceremonies, which you may or may not have enjoyed are absolutely an "ESSENTIAL RIGHT [sic] OF PASSAGE" for children. As is all the end of school/uni activities. I said at the beginning "End of term activities". Including graduation which formally marks the end of the era of schooling or uni.

    You are simply wrong on this and quite why on the one hand you say lockdown has had an impact and on the other you are unable to see that a critical component of lockdown people are cheering at goodness only knows. I can only imagine something happened at your graduation that was unpleasant otherwise your response is irrational.
    I apologise for shouting and calling you names.

    I just remember the utter misery - both as a parent and a child - of sitting through assemblies - particularly ones where people go up to the front to be presented with a worthless bit of paper. Every time I've thought "this is two hours of my life, two hours of utter tedium, I will never get back."

    Tony Blair, fwiw, agrees with me. He never actually turned up to graduate from Oxford, and therefore is technically not a graduate.
    I skipped mine at Imperial. It was in the Albert Hall but I didn't fancy it.
    Me too. Shelling out for a fancy dress costume to sit in a hall for hours while folk droned on didn't appeal somehow.
    It's really all about the honorary degrees anyway.
    Is it true that everyone gets either a first or a 2:1 now? No-one gets a Desmond anymore?
    Not quite true, but the are arguably far too many getting firsts and 2:1's. having been involved for the last 10 years or so, its not hard to see why. Students on my course spend ages accumulating good grades in course work, where they can dedicate 5 or 10 times the amount of time we expect them too, and this makes up for generally lower marks in set piece exams. We reference performance back to previous years, but its easy to have a drift up of 1 or 2 % a year translate into many more students getting the top two grades. In many ways the ranking as a cohort is a better system, but I would perhaps retain the grade and include where the student came in their cohort.

    Of interest in Pharmacy is that most students take an assessment in 3rd year that is external to the Universities. This is a national competition where students are ranked top to bottom across the piece in order to allocate pre-registration training places. The idea is that the highest ranked gets to choose their first pick and so on. Very revealing for comparing different uni's.
    To be fair, there are non-sinister, natural explanations for why educational standards will have risen – the interwebs; pychologically-valid revision techniques; better teaching – as well as less good reasons like the free market in action, but eventually we run into the question of what exams and grades are intended for. Is it to show that a graduate has reached a particular standard, or is it to tell us who is the 279th-best historian this year?
    Also huge pressure on unis to avoid dropouts, to ensure government moneys.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    rcs1000 said:

    Humour


    The neighbour was lucky - he could have got Erasure.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,392

    dixiedean said:

    kinabalu said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

    Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

    Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

    I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

    I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining
    How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

    What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

    Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.
    Isn't freedom day also the end of term?
    Friends and bush telegraph tells me that end of term in many instances is being curtailed a matter of weeks early as everyone self-isolates. Whole rite of passage experiences just not happening for tens of thousands of children.
    End of term is a rite of passage without which we'd all be scarred?

    You and @contrarian seem to have a very low opinion of the mental resilience of the average 18 year old.
    End of school or uni year or of school or uni itself absolutely is a critical rite of passage.

    And as for the mental resilience of the average 18-yr old, I suggest you listen to some of the news items on the radio in the UK today. Children on anti-depressants = up, children with mental distress = up, children missing on average 115 hours of face to face teaching, children simply going missing from school.

    So yes, Robert and great vid on stopping illegal immigrants, btw, but absofuckinglutely yes, childrens' mental health is being fucked with.
    Do you have children? Do you remember what it was like to be a child?

    Literally the worst time of the entire school year was an enforced assembly while people trooped up to the front.

    The bit that was fun was meeting up with your friends outside of school. Which is - ummm - completely unaffected.

    (It is also worth remembering that "graduation" is a very modern concept. In the old days, you went for study leave and never came back. Which I guess explains why everyone over the age of about 50 is mentally scarred.)
    Robert the instances of damage to children's mental health is being documented today as we speak on just about all news outlets. I won't google it all for you because I'm sure you will be able to do so.

    And after a year or several years of school I could take or leave prize giving and speech day and what have you. I'm sure you the same and if it turned out that your May Ball was cancelled well not to worry your internship at GS was about to start. All perfectly charming.

    But the last 15 months have been hell for hundreds of thousands of children perhaps not so fortunate as you or me or perhaps just as fortunate. And during this time school has often represented an oasis of normality. And people are being denied as I said a rite of passage that is part of growing up.
    You're completely missing my point.

    I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU REGARDNG THE IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN ON KIDS HEALTH.

    I THINK YOU ARE A COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD IF YOU THINK GRADUATION CEREMONIES ARE SOME ESSENTIAL RIGHT OF PASSAGE THAT KIDS ENJOY.
    "COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD" eh?

    And shouting. Hmm, I think this discussion is moving in my direction.

    And again, the graduation ceremonies, which you may or may not have enjoyed are absolutely an "ESSENTIAL RIGHT [sic] OF PASSAGE" for children. As is all the end of school/uni activities. I said at the beginning "End of term activities". Including graduation which formally marks the end of the era of schooling or uni.

    You are simply wrong on this and quite why on the one hand you say lockdown has had an impact and on the other you are unable to see that a critical component of lockdown people are cheering at goodness only knows. I can only imagine something happened at your graduation that was unpleasant otherwise your response is irrational.
    I apologise for shouting and calling you names.

    I just remember the utter misery - both as a parent and a child - of sitting through assemblies - particularly ones where people go up to the front to be presented with a worthless bit of paper. Every time I've thought "this is two hours of my life, two hours of utter tedium, I will never get back."

    Tony Blair, fwiw, agrees with me. He never actually turned up to graduate from Oxford, and therefore is technically not a graduate.
    I skipped mine at Imperial. It was in the Albert Hall but I didn't fancy it.
    Me too. Shelling out for a fancy dress costume to sit in a hall for hours while folk droned on didn't appeal somehow.
    It's really all about the honorary degrees anyway.
    Is it true that everyone gets either a first or a 2:1 now? No-one gets a Desmond anymore?
    Not quite true, but the are arguably far too many getting firsts and 2:1's. having been involved for the last 10 years or so, its not hard to see why. Students on my course spend ages accumulating good grades in course work, where they can dedicate 5 or 10 times the amount of time we expect them too, and this makes up for generally lower marks in set piece exams. We reference performance back to previous years, but its easy to have a drift up of 1 or 2 % a year translate into many more students getting the top two grades. In many ways the ranking as a cohort is a better system, but I would perhaps retain the grade and include where the student came in their cohort.

    Of interest in Pharmacy is that most students take an assessment in 3rd year that is external to the Universities. This is a national competition where students are ranked top to bottom across the piece in order to allocate pre-registration training places. The idea is that the highest ranked gets to choose their first pick and so on. Very revealing for comparing different uni's.
    To be fair, there are non-sinister, natural explanations for why educational standards will have risen – the interwebs; pychologically-valid revision techniques; better teaching – as well as less good reasons like the free market in action, but eventually we run into the question of what exams and grades are intended for. Is it to show that a graduate has reached a particular standard, or is it to tell us who is the 279th-best historian this year?
    Trouble is I don't believe that the students of today are better informed that those of 20 years ago, but they have learned better how to get the marks they need. There is also a closet conspiracy between the provider (the user) and the customer (the student). Student gets the degree they want, they are happy. Happy students big up the Uni, more students want to attend, because hey, everyone gets a 2:1 or better.
    I know that its a bit like asking who was the better cricketer, WG Grace, Botham or Stokes. No real way to tell as the conditions were so different. But I do think there is a lack of outside scrutiny of how our degrees are policed. Not least because of the system of external examiners - uniformly from other Universities who are also playing the same game.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,522



    Excel is the big beast of MS.

    Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.

    Not really a fan but it's pretty universal in any financial context. But Word is absolutely ubiquitous in all my professional (UK and European) and private contexts. It's fine, it's not very expensive, and I see no reason to look further.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098

    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
    In Henman's case the rain did him against Ivanisevic. He would surely have won if it had carried on that night.
    Yes, that was easily the most irritating of his 4 semi defeats.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,479
    Cookie said:

    My son's primary school has cancelled the Year 6 junior prom and Year 6 pupil-led end of year theatre production, just, er, because, y'know, covid.

    The fact that the entire year has been sat next to each other every day, no social distancing, playing sports, and mingling daily seems to have passed them by.

    Who exactly benefits from this irrational idiocy?

    'er, because, y'know, covid' has become the mantra of the age.

    My year 6 daughter's school is better than many in this regard but, so much is being missed. They are doing a Year 6 production but it is going to be videoed and sent out on DVD rather than have parents watch it. To add to my irritation, the subject of the play appears to be the pandemic of 2020/21. From what I can glean it is a particularly state-sanctioned view in which the likes of Sage are the good guys and the heroes are the NHS first, then 'scientists, then anyone else who worked for the public sector, then food delivery workers.

    Meanwhile her senior school has cancelled its induction day - where she would have got to meet her new classmates - in later July, er, because, y'know, covid. The assumption seems to be in the state sector that freedom day will not happen. Largely, I think, because they don't want it to. They are addicted to being the good guys in their own story.
    Our induction day at secondary has also been cancelled. Beyond ridiculous.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,479

    Praise for MS:

    I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office. ;)

    But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

    I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

    It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

    And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

    Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

    Excel is the big beast of MS.

    Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.
    Numbers on the Mac is vastly superior.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966

    Praise for MS:

    I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office. ;)

    But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

    I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

    It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

    And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

    Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

    Excel is the big beast of MS.

    Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.
    Numbers on the Mac is vastly superior.
    Said nobody ever....
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,591

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,173
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
    In Henman's case the rain did him against Ivanisevic. He would surely have won if it had carried on that night.
    Yes, that was easily the most irritating of his 4 semi defeats.
    Didn't the rain help Henman v Todd Martin in R4?

    Amusing to think that Federer defeated Sampras in R4 and then lost to Henman in the QF. Wimbledon used to be very difficult to win.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,546

    Praise for MS:

    I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office. ;)

    But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

    I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

    It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

    And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

    Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

    Excel is the big beast of MS.

    Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.
    Numbers on the Mac is vastly superior.
    It isn't - as I'd have to lower myself to buying an Apple device. ;)
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,978
    The Star firmly nails another front page.

    One of the few mainstream media outlets that seem to be prepared to take a no holds barred approach to holding Johnson to account.

    #JohnsonOut
    https://twitter.com/TheWordOfCarrie/status/1409767964610646017/photo/1

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    The hyperbolic stories of doom remind me a bit of all the back to Wigan pier stuff over government cuts. When it didn't result in that, people stop listening.

    That isn't to say there aren't problems, extra barriers and difficulties, but the we will starve to death stuff is self defeating.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    England are going to lose this ODI.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,352
    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it.
    I hardly follow football these days except for the international tournaments every two years, so I don't think I know enough to have an opinion on which players would be in the best team, but I do know that the prospect of England playing a back 7 leaves me deflated.

    I much prefer the heroic failure with moments of flamboyance, than a dull timid failure. I want the excitement. That's why Euro '96 >>> Euro '92.

    We're at risk not just of losing, but of being boring. And still losing.
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,242
    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
    You have finally goaded me into putting £2 on Germany to win 3-0 at 50-1. A much better prospect than junior senator Obama was back in 2004.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    edited June 2021
    Scott_xP said:

    The Star firmly nails another front page.

    One of the few mainstream media outlets that seem to be prepared to take a no holds barred approach to holding Johnson to account.

    #JohnsonOut
    twitter.com/TheWordOfCarrie/status/1409767964610646017/photo/1

    "Remainian trapt in Brexitannia" - Sounds like another impartial and balanced source.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

    Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

    Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

    I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

    I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining
    How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

    What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

    Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.
    Isn't freedom day also the end of term?
    Friends and bush telegraph tells me that end of term in many instances is being curtailed a matter of weeks early as everyone self-isolates. Whole rite of passage experiences just not happening for tens of thousands of children.
    End of term is a rite of passage without which we'd all be scarred?

    You and @contrarian seem to have a very low opinion of the mental resilience of the average 18 year old.
    End of school or uni year or of school or uni itself absolutely is a critical rite of passage.

    And as for the mental resilience of the average 18-yr old, I suggest you listen to some of the news items on the radio in the UK today. Children on anti-depressants = up, children with mental distress = up, children missing on average 115 hours of face to face teaching, children simply going missing from school.

    So yes, Robert and great vid on stopping illegal immigrants, btw, but absofuckinglutely yes, childrens' mental health is being fucked with.
    Do you have children? Do you remember what it was like to be a child?

    Literally the worst time of the entire school year was an enforced assembly while people trooped up to the front.

    The bit that was fun was meeting up with your friends outside of school. Which is - ummm - completely unaffected.

    (It is also worth remembering that "graduation" is a very modern concept. In the old days, you went for study leave and never came back. Which I guess explains why everyone over the age of about 50 is mentally scarred.)
    Robert the instances of damage to children's mental health is being documented today as we speak on just about all news outlets. I won't google it all for you because I'm sure you will be able to do so.

    And after a year or several years of school I could take or leave prize giving and speech day and what have you. I'm sure you the same and if it turned out that your May Ball was cancelled well not to worry your internship at GS was about to start. All perfectly charming.

    But the last 15 months have been hell for hundreds of thousands of children perhaps not so fortunate as you or me or perhaps just as fortunate. And during this time school has often represented an oasis of normality. And people are being denied as I said a rite of passage that is part of growing up.
    You're completely missing my point.

    I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU REGARDNG THE IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN ON KIDS HEALTH.

    I THINK YOU ARE A COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD IF YOU THINK GRADUATION CEREMONIES ARE SOME ESSENTIAL RIGHT OF PASSAGE THAT KIDS ENJOY.
    High school graduation… in England?!?

    It’s gone full circle now. You lot are de facto the 51st state.
    Including "Proms" that teenagers seem obliged to attend these days for fear of life-long social exclusion.
    Boke.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,895
    malcolmg said:

    eek said:

    ping said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Taking back control-
    Lorry driver shortage: UK government and retailers in emergency talks
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/28/lorry-driver-shortage-uk-government-and-retailers-in-emergency-talks-covid-brexit

    I don’t agree with @Philip_Thompson and assorted other drawbridge brexiteers on much, but this is one area where they have a point.

    The government should not manipulate the market to prevent wage rises. It’s a good thing for the industry to recalibrate to domestic employment, higher wages and slightly higher costs.
    Except that the issue has been caused by a supply shock because of
    - Covid
    - Brexit
    - IR35 etc

    At least two of those are deliberate govt policy, and one of them is an act of god which we presumably wish to mitigate against.

    It might be that simply overseeing a wage spike might have consequences at the grocery tills.
    The bit that the minister studiously ignored at the previous meetings (where she accused the industry of "crying wolf") is that it isn't about money. You could offer drivers a stack of cash per hour and someone is still missing out.

    There aren't enough drivers. Will take time to train new ones (as apparently truck driving lessons / tests haven't taken place at all during Covid) so we either allow EU drivers back in or stuff won't get shifted around.

    Within a few months all this will feed directly into food price inflation (along with the other shortage which is people to work in factories and on farms) which analysts believe will be the biggest spike since 2007. Tesco et al insist they won't be putting up prices so I expect some fun times ahead with price negotiations :D
    That would be the same tesco's who claimed that the shortage of drivers was resulting in 2 lorries worth of food going to waste. Which rather trivialises the issue into Tesco's needing to find a single lorry driver to do 2 shifts.
    Last week it was 50,000 tonnes being wasted by Tesco due to lack of drivers
    Naah, the PB experts have spoken and they know best. And its not just food, the Federation of Wholesale Distributors CEO points out that delaying "freedom day" heled avoid a disaster as publicans and supermarkets would have tried to stock up at the last minute for booze and found an industry unable to deliver them. At least we have a few weeks to try and solve the driver crisis, no hang on, PB experts again, there is no crisis.
  • borisatsunborisatsun Posts: 188
    Very glad to see some proper international political betting..

    Dominic Raab has bet a case of beer with his German counterpart Heiko Maas on tonight's result!

    https://twitter.com/DominicRaab/status/1409884735279669252
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,112
    edited June 2021
    Selebian said:

    Praise for MS:

    I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office. ;)

    But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

    I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

    It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

    And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

    Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

    As a (mostly) Linux user for the past 15 years or so, I have to agree re Office. I think the LibreOffice issue is that it's (even more than MS Office) a hodge-podge of different cooks over a number of years, including Sun for whom there was no problem that couldn't be made worse by adding a bit more Java and IBM-Sun trench warfare was clearly more fun than fixing up the code. There's also the fact there's not actually that much demand for a better office suite on Linux - commercial users are mostly not using it for desktops and if they are it's pretty basic word processing and spreadsheets and real freetards use LaTeX even for letters to their mum and R/python for adding up a restaurant bill. Those after a free office suite on Windows are also not, generally, doing hugely demanding things.

    Mind you, I do also hate Word and Excel a fair bit. Luckily I do very little in Excel, but I do have the pain of Word for writing up papers with colleagues. But even Word is much better than it was - equation editor doesn't crash it every time now :wink:
    The reality is that most people can use Google Docs for simple stuff. And for the more complex stuff, there's Office.

    Praise for MS:

    I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office. ;)

    But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

    I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

    It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

    And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

    Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

    Excel is the big beast of MS.

    Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.
    Numbers on the Mac is vastly superior.
    Jesus Christ.

    This is literally the stupidest comment on PB, ever. And there is a lot of competition.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    There's some cred on the line for the opposite too. And it's unlikely to ever get settled as to whether Brexit has made us richer or poorer. Unless it's very stark and obvious - which it won't be - there'll be enough wriggle room to build an argument either way. But it's about identity anyway, so who cares.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,479

    Praise for MS:

    I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office. ;)

    But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

    I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

    It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

    And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

    Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

    Excel is the big beast of MS.

    Excel just works and is easily the best version of the software out there in my experience - and to be frank its all that most businesses really, really care about. The rest of Office is not that special, but Excel is the gold standard.
    Numbers on the Mac is vastly superior.
    Said nobody ever....
    I have both, am competent at both, and massively prefer Numbers. For a start, the graphs and tables look a lot better so are much better for incorporating into client reports and proposals.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    Cookie said:

    My son's primary school has cancelled the Year 6 junior prom and Year 6 pupil-led end of year theatre production, just, er, because, y'know, covid.

    The fact that the entire year has been sat next to each other every day, no social distancing, playing sports, and mingling daily seems to have passed them by.

    Who exactly benefits from this irrational idiocy?

    'er, because, y'know, covid' has become the mantra of the age.

    My year 6 daughter's school is better than many in this regard but, so much is being missed. They are doing a Year 6 production but it is going to be videoed and sent out on DVD rather than have parents watch it. To add to my irritation, the subject of the play appears to be the pandemic of 2020/21. From what I can glean it is a particularly state-sanctioned view in which the likes of Sage are the good guys and the heroes are the NHS first, then 'scientists, then anyone else who worked for the public sector, then food delivery workers.

    Meanwhile her senior school has cancelled its induction day - where she would have got to meet her new classmates - in later July, er, because, y'know, covid. The assumption seems to be in the state sector that freedom day will not happen. Largely, I think, because they don't want it to. They are addicted to being the good guys in their own story.
    Our induction day at secondary has also been cancelled. Beyond ridiculous.
    There will be pupils who, without a proper induction day, might go months without speaking to or having contact with people in their class, yet alone their wider year group.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,375
    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
    You have a (hypothetical) choice.

    If England beat Germany, Conservatives will win Batley & Spen (feelgood factor - Boris).
    If Germany beat England, Labour will win Batley & Spen.

    Which is it to be for you?
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,721

    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it.
    I hardly follow football these days except for the international tournaments every two years, so I don't think I know enough to have an opinion on which players would be in the best team, but I do know that the prospect of England playing a back 7 leaves me deflated.

    I much prefer the heroic failure with moments of flamboyance, than a dull timid failure. I want the excitement. That's why Euro '96 >>> Euro '92.

    We're at risk not just of losing, but of being boring. And still losing.
    I popped on the England game last week part way through the first half and was briefly excited to see fluid, confident play as the ball was passed up the field swiftly, amongst an apparently sparse Czech defence. Then I realised that England were in fact playing right to left (or at least, should have been) and they were actually in the process of passing the ball from halfway in the Czech half all the way back to their own keeper, who then did the natural English thing of hoofing it up field to hit try and hit Kane on the noggin.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,344
    kinabalu said:

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    There's some cred on the line for the opposite too. And it's unlikely to ever get settled as to whether Brexit has made us richer or poorer. Unless it's very stark and obvious - which it won't be - there'll be enough wriggle room to build an argument either way. But it's about identity anyway, so who cares.
    In economic terms you're looking at arguments (in terms of growth) of about 0.25% p.a. in either direction.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
    You have a (hypothetical) choice.

    If England beat Germany, Conservatives will win Batley & Spen (feelgood factor - Boris).
    If Germany beat England, Labour will win Batley & Spen.

    Which is it to be for you?
    Is Boris doing a pre match touchline team talk. I do hope so?
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,895

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    It isn't absolutist as you portray. The alternative is a trading partner with the EU - the EEA. Even if an EU member decided they had had enough, they wuldn't be getting Lord Frost on the phone wondering if he could negotiate an exit deal for them like ours.

    Only an absolute lunatic would set out to deliberately torpedo your biggest trading relationship and end up with a chunk of your country no longer in the same customs zone with threat of civil war hanging over it. In Liar's case he didn't understand the detail or care about Mick so its all an accident anyway.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    edited June 2021
    Sun had it right....

    1 Pickford
    2 Walker
    5 Stones
    6 Maguire
    12 Trippier
    14 Phillips
    4 Rice
    3 Shaw
    25 Saka
    9 Kane
    10 Sterling

    Substitutes
    7 Grealish
    8 Henderson
    11 Rashford
    13R amsdale
    15 Mings
    16 Coady
    17 Sancho
    19 Mount
    20 Foden
    23 Johnstone
    24 James
    26 Bellingham
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    edited June 2021
    20,479....23.... 265

    Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    Hmmm no Gnabry starting for Germany. Going with Werner.
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 5,001
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

    Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

    Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

    I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

    I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining
    How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

    What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

    Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.
    Not just death, though, is it?
    The probability of them being so seriously ill that they get hospitalised isn't trivial.
    Nor is the chance of chronic illness and potential long-term organ damage.
    They're not at the level where we can see any realistic chance of the NHS being overwhelmed by such, but we can't really dismiss the concern out of hand.

    Unless they authorise use of vaccines for the under-18s very rapidly and get a whole load more supply, I can't see them getting jabbed in time, so it's not really plausible for them to be protected prior to opening up on the 19th. I can understand some being very worried about that, but it's not likely to cause any realistic delay, I wouldn't have thought. The schools breaking up should help a lot by limiting spread, though.
    Was it you who posted the stats yesterday? Some number, perhaps 60 under 30s had died.

    Shocking obvs but not a reason to seriously fuck with the education and mental health of an entire generation.

    Won't someone think of the children works both ways.
    Why do you persist in ignoring the thousands of hospitalisations of under-18s, and chronic illnesses there?
    I mean, the attitude that if something doesn't promptly kill someone would imply that multiple sclerosis is nothing to worry about, that polio wasn't much of an issue for anyone, that herpes is certainly not worth avoiding, and so forth.

    Several thousand children have been hospitalised.
    Well over a hundred thousand children have ended up with chronic illness.
    That's specifically what I was talking about, so why on Earth completely ignore it to focus solely on the metric that you most prefer?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    Health secretary Humza Yousaf confirmed in Holyrood today that the ban between Scotland and Manchester, Bolton and Salford will lift tomorrow. Yousaf claims the restrictions are being removed “due to changes in the epidemiological position for those areas.” The ban on travel between Scotland and Blackburn will remain in place, however.

    Yeah because that works, putting a ban on travel from one town....
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,009
    Cav!!!!
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,112
    Quick update on the only number that matters: people in hospital with Covid.

    In England, the number is 1,445 which is growth of 11% over last Tuesday. This is the second slowest week-over-week growth number since this wave began, only beaten by last Friday's 10%.

    On current trends the NHS will be overwhelmed with Covid patients... errr... never. Because everyone will have been vaccinated by then.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,784

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The same IMF that rebuked Osborne for austerity and lauded Obama for not despite Obama cutting more than Osborne?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,591

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    It isn't absolutist as you portray. The alternative is a trading partner with the EU - the EEA. Even if an EU member decided they had had enough, they wuldn't be getting Lord Frost on the phone wondering if he could negotiate an exit deal for them like ours.

    Only an absolute lunatic would set out to deliberately torpedo your biggest trading relationship and end up with a chunk of your country no longer in the same customs zone with threat of civil war hanging over it. In Liar's case he didn't understand the detail or care about Mick so its all an accident anyway.
    There would have been absolutely no point in leaving the position we had in order to join the EEA. Brexit only made sense politically as a break from the dogma of the single market and bureaucratic integration.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,747
    Re header:

    Mike ( @MikeSmithson )- surely you're almost the definition of Toff!?

    I know you didn't set out to be so.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    rcs1000 said:

    Quick update on the only number that matters: people in hospital with Covid.

    In England, the number is 1,445 which is growth of 11% over last Tuesday. This is the second slowest week-over-week growth number since this wave began, only beaten by last Friday's 10%.

    On current trends the NHS will be overwhelmed with Covid patients... errr... never. Because everyone will have been vaccinated by then.

    While in Russia...

    Russia reports 652 new coronavirus deaths, the biggest one-day increase on record, and 20,616 new cases
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,344

    20,479....23.... 265

    Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

    I can't see why. Numbers in hospital are up 15%, week on week, the rolling average for admissions is up 10% week on week.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,895

    Scott_xP said:

    The Star firmly nails another front page.

    One of the few mainstream media outlets that seem to be prepared to take a no holds barred approach to holding Johnson to account.

    #JohnsonOut
    twitter.com/TheWordOfCarrie/status/1409767964610646017/photo/1

    "Remainian trapt in Brexitannia" - Sounds like another impartial and balanced source.
    The Daily Star? Since when did newspapers have to be impartial and balanced? What is most interesting about their now long-running series of front pages is that the Ooh Ah Daily Star ordinarily have no interest in politics. Their readers are more interested in Love Island.

    So when they do a politics front page - and keep doing them every more biting and sarcastic - I have to assume that it cuts through to their readership. If it didn't then the editor gets told in no uncertain terms to stop pissing off the people who pay the bills and print stories they want.

    Despite the Robert Buckland "we're popular no-one cares" bluster I get the feeling that dissent and open disdain is bubbling away under the surface. Not saying that is a gimme for Labour (far from it) but it won't take much for another moment of Shagger idiocy to tip people over the edge and him into the bin.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,883
    MaxPB said:

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The same IMF that rebuked Osborne for austerity and lauded Obama for not despite Obama cutting more than Osborne?
    Ha!...experts eh?...who believes them now eh?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,112

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

    But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

    Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    edited June 2021

    Scott_xP said:

    The Star firmly nails another front page.

    One of the few mainstream media outlets that seem to be prepared to take a no holds barred approach to holding Johnson to account.

    #JohnsonOut
    twitter.com/TheWordOfCarrie/status/1409767964610646017/photo/1

    "Remainian trapt in Brexitannia" - Sounds like another impartial and balanced source.
    The Daily Star? Since when did newspapers have to be impartial and balanced? What is most interesting about their now long-running series of front pages is that the Ooh Ah Daily Star ordinarily have no interest in politics. Their readers are more interested in Love Island.

    So when they do a politics front page - and keep doing them every more biting and sarcastic - I have to assume that it cuts through to their readership. If it didn't then the editor gets told in no uncertain terms to stop pissing off the people who pay the bills and print stories they want.

    Despite the Robert Buckland "we're popular no-one cares" bluster I get the feeling that dissent and open disdain is bubbling away under the surface. Not saying that is a gimme for Labour (far from it) but it won't take much for another moment of Shagger idiocy to tip people over the edge and him into the bin.
    No the twitter account....another one of Scott n Paste very narrow twitter sources he downloads every day onto here.

    As for the Daily Star, they are owned by the Mirror now, what should we expect?
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,772
    Sean_F said:

    20,479....23.... 265

    Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

    I can't see why. Numbers in hospital are up 15%, week on week, the rolling average for admissions is up 10% week on week.
    Hospitalisation figures in Manchester (and Bolton, and other NW hotspots) still resolutely failing to alarm:
    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nhstrust&areaName=Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,242

    Health secretary Humza Yousaf confirmed in Holyrood today that the ban between Scotland and Manchester, Bolton and Salford will lift tomorrow. Yousaf claims the restrictions are being removed “due to changes in the epidemiological position for those areas.” The ban on travel between Scotland and Blackburn will remain in place, however.

    Yeah because that works, putting a ban on travel from one town....

    Has anyone asked the people of Blackburn if they want Scots in town? Something of a mixed blessing in my experience.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,344

    rcs1000 said:

    Quick update on the only number that matters: people in hospital with Covid.

    In England, the number is 1,445 which is growth of 11% over last Tuesday. This is the second slowest week-over-week growth number since this wave began, only beaten by last Friday's 10%.

    On current trends the NHS will be overwhelmed with Covid patients... errr... never. Because everyone will have been vaccinated by then.

    While in Russia...

    Russia reports 652 new coronavirus deaths, the biggest one-day increase on record, and 20,616 new cases
    And as a rule of thumb, the number of deaths is actually about three time higher than officially reported in Russia.
  • maaarshmaaarsh Posts: 3,590

    Cav!!!!

    Just about coming down from my primal screaming fit when he did it. Bloody brilliant!
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,112
    Sean_F said:

    20,479....23.... 265

    Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

    I can't see why. Numbers in hospital are up 15%, week on week, the rolling average for admissions is up 10% week on week.
    Is that a UK number? The English number is only up 11% - 1,301 to 1,445.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,664

    Cav!!!!

    Wow. Never thought we'd see that again. There must be a chance he can get to Merckx's total now.

    Can he still get over the mountains? There's plenty more sprint stages...
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    maaarsh said:

    Cav!!!!

    Just about coming down from my primal screaming fit when he did it. Bloody brilliant!
    😂.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,616

    Hmmm no Gnabry starting for Germany. Going with Werner.

    I have two bets on this match, both first goalscorer.

    1) Werner

    and

    2) Maguire
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,169
    BigRich said:

    Pulpstar said:

    The number of new doses administered yesterday is 265,276

    The simple "day gap" has moved down to 73 days now though. That assumes 100% return which won't be the case. The long crawl to ~ 90% by ONS vaccinated begins.
    A month or so ago, IIRC the vaccine minister sead that 94.5% or 95.4% (I cant recall which) of people who had had there first jab where terming up for the second, at the right time, it may change a bit since then, but probably not a lot.

    I think there is a 2 day delay with the Vaccine numbers so todays numbers refer to Sunday.
    Yes, return isn't 100% whatever % return you use the time has been reducing though.

    The 2 day or whatever delay doesn't matter, it won't have changed from specimen to reporting from 8 - 11 weeks ago.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,112
    Cookie said:

    Sean_F said:

    20,479....23.... 265

    Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

    I can't see why. Numbers in hospital are up 15%, week on week, the rolling average for admissions is up 10% week on week.
    Hospitalisation figures in Manchester (and Bolton, and other NW hotspots) still resolutely failing to alarm:
    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nhstrust&areaName=Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
    Growth in hospital numbers in the North West is flattening nicely: it reached 411 almost two weeks ago, and is 479 today. The peak of 498 may never be exceeded.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,591
    rcs1000 said:

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

    But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

    Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.
    I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    Omnium said:

    Re header:

    Mike ( @MikeSmithson )- surely you're almost the definition of Toff!?

    I know you didn't set out to be so.

    Toffs are Other People.

    I am getting by. You are merely affluent. But he is a toff.

    But, of course, you are right.

    pb.com is Toffs betting on Politics.

    And the LibDems are TWA. Toffs With Attitude.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,895
    rcs1000 said:

    Selebian said:

    Praise for MS:

    I'm tight. I don't like spending money. Therefore for personal use, I prefer to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice - at least since I've not been working and can't get someone else to pay for Office. ;)

    But LibreOffice is annoying. During lockdown, when my time was really tight, I stole a few hours to do some of my own work. I created a spreadsheet that was a few hundred rows deep, by five columns. Cells were coloured according to a criteria by hand (no macros).

    I saved the work (autosave was on anyway). I wanted to print it out, so I set the page format to landscape, and reduced the point size slightly. It crashes, taking out the autosave and the main save. So I checked I'm running a stable version and not a beta, got an older copy, did the changes, then altered the font size.

    It crashed again. I'd found a reproducible bug whilst doing a really basic task. The old me would have written up and submitted a bug report. The new me, pi**ed off at having lost a couple of hours of precious time, just went online and got Office.

    And you know what? It works. In fact, it works really well. Yes, it's cost money, but at least I haven't had the experience of it ****** well corrupting my work. It also 'feels' much better than LibreOffice as well - and I've used both extensively.

    Sometimes you just want things that work. MS generally does that.

    As a (mostly) Linux user for the past 15 years or so, I have to agree re Office. I think the LibreOffice issue is that it's (even more than MS Office) a hodge-podge of different cooks over a number of years, including Sun for whom there was no problem that couldn't be made worse by adding a bit more Java and IBM-Sun trench warfare was clearly more fun than fixing up the code. There's also the fact there's not actually that much demand for a better office suite on Linux - commercial users are mostly not using it for desktops and if they are it's pretty basic word processing and spreadsheets and real freetards use LaTeX even for letters to their mum and R/python for adding up a restaurant bill. Those after a free office suite on Windows are also not, generally, doing hugely demanding things.

    Mind you, I do also hate Word and Excel a fair bit. Luckily I do very little in Excel, but I do have the pain of Word for writing up papers with colleagues. But even Word is much better than it was - equation editor doesn't crash it every time now :wink:
    The reality is that most people can use Google Docs for simple stuff. And for the more complex stuff, there's Office.
    Google Workspace holds its own. I haven't yet found anything spreadsheet related that has forced me to revert to Excel, though I'm not remotely a power user. My oft-created "Monster Spreadsheet of Death" crunching a load of parameters to collate onto a simple front page with "adjust here" boxes that affect a stack of work tabs behind it still works just fine on Google Sheets.

    Before I stepped off the Windows mothership completely I roadtested Chrome OS at my last company and increasingly found there were very few things I needed Windows for. Especially when the server did its regular silly buggers, or when (external) IT installed a new update which slowed our £1,000 laptops to a crawl.
  • I see Southgate is playing to type. Cowardly defensive, crap suit wearing, typical FA empty shell.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    edited June 2021

    Omnium said:

    Re header:

    Mike ( @MikeSmithson )- surely you're almost the definition of Toff!?

    I know you didn't set out to be so.

    Toffs are Other People.

    I am getting by. You are merely affluent. But he is a toff.

    But, of course, you are right.

    pb.com is Toffs betting on Politics.

    And the LibDems are TWA. Toffs With Attitude.
    "The rich".....always people who earn more than you and should be paying more tax.....even if you are on £100k+ a year.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,949

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

    Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

    Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

    I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

    I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining
    How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

    What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

    Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.
    Not just death, though, is it?
    The probability of them being so seriously ill that they get hospitalised isn't trivial.
    Nor is the chance of chronic illness and potential long-term organ damage.
    They're not at the level where we can see any realistic chance of the NHS being overwhelmed by such, but we can't really dismiss the concern out of hand.

    Unless they authorise use of vaccines for the under-18s very rapidly and get a whole load more supply, I can't see them getting jabbed in time, so it's not really plausible for them to be protected prior to opening up on the 19th. I can understand some being very worried about that, but it's not likely to cause any realistic delay, I wouldn't have thought. The schools breaking up should help a lot by limiting spread, though.
    Was it you who posted the stats yesterday? Some number, perhaps 60 under 30s had died.

    Shocking obvs but not a reason to seriously fuck with the education and mental health of an entire generation.

    Won't someone think of the children works both ways.
    Why do you persist in ignoring the thousands of hospitalisations of under-18s, and chronic illnesses there?
    I mean, the attitude that if something doesn't promptly kill someone would imply that multiple sclerosis is nothing to worry about, that polio wasn't much of an issue for anyone, that herpes is certainly not worth avoiding, and so forth.

    Several thousand children have been hospitalised.
    Well over a hundred thousand children have ended up with chronic illness.
    That's specifically what I was talking about, so why on Earth completely ignore it to focus solely on the metric that you most prefer?
    Thanks for this Andy apologies could you show me where those stats are? I did a quick google and found this

    https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

    But that can't be the one you mean or I am reading it incorrectly.

    Thanks
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,547

    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
    You have a (hypothetical) choice.

    If England beat Germany, Conservatives will win Batley & Spen (feelgood factor - Boris).
    If Germany beat England, Labour will win Batley & Spen.

    Which is it to be for you?
    Is Boris doing a pre match touchline team talk. I do hope so?
    We know what tactics he will be recommending:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWIUp19bBoA&ab_channel=Ellisaacson
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,112

    rcs1000 said:

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

    But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

    Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.
    I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.
    "If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state"

    That's a strawman argument.

    If the UK grows at 1% a year, and the EU at 2.5% a year (not what I'm forecasting), then it will be a "prosperous modern state", but it won't be a threat to "the EU system" or a notable success. And nor will it be a "fascistic, declining backwater".

    There's a massive fucking middle between disaster and glorious success.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,207
    Case per specimen date

    image
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,895

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    It isn't absolutist as you portray. The alternative is a trading partner with the EU - the EEA. Even if an EU member decided they had had enough, they wuldn't be getting Lord Frost on the phone wondering if he could negotiate an exit deal for them like ours.

    Only an absolute lunatic would set out to deliberately torpedo your biggest trading relationship and end up with a chunk of your country no longer in the same customs zone with threat of civil war hanging over it. In Liar's case he didn't understand the detail or care about Mick so its all an accident anyway.
    There would have been absolutely no point in leaving the position we had in order to join the EEA. Brexit only made sense politically as a break from the dogma of the single market and bureaucratic integration.
    Its a choice! My point is that other countries who may chose to break away from the EU are likely to be less dogmatic as you and the Tories. In considering their options - such as "can we break from bureaucratic integration" - they will probably look at our example where having broken the shackles of bureaucracy and red tape our economy is now bound tight in a fuckton of red tape none of which used to be there before...
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,767

    Omnium said:

    Re header:

    Mike ( @MikeSmithson )- surely you're almost the definition of Toff!?

    I know you didn't set out to be so.

    Toffs are Other People.

    I am getting by. You are merely affluent. But he is a toff.

    But, of course, you are right.

    pb.com is Toffs betting on Politics.

    And the LibDems are TWA. Toffs With Attitude.
    "The rich".....always people who earn more than you and should be paying more tax.....even if you are on £100k+ a year.
    Yes, I think I am the only person on PB who has ever described themselves as rich. (And said I should pay more tax). As I recall I wasn't applauded for my candour.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,207
    Cases per specimen date scaled to 100K

    image
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,308

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    Your Damascene conversion from obsequious Europhile to swiveleyed Eurohater gets more ludicrous with each post you put up. I am beginning to think someone has nicked your log in details. Most of us who were against Brexit did so from a perfectly rational point of view that it was/is pointless and that the methods to achieve the vote were damaging and negative. In order to hold such a view, one does not have to believe the UK is going to decline or become a fascist Putin satellite regime headed by Nigel Farage. I suspect as well, that most of the other members of the Euro club are glad we have gone. A successful UK is unlikely to outperform it's neighbours by much, and even if it does, they really do not care that much. Sorry to disappoint your new self.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,207
    England PCR positivity

    image
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,966
    edited June 2021

    I see Southgate is playing to type. Cowardly defensive, crap suit wearing, typical FA empty shell.

    I can't imagine even Italy of the 90s (known for their defensive play) saying right big game here, Baggio on the bench please lad, next to Zola. We are can't risk any creative players at all....
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,344
    rcs1000 said:

    Sean_F said:

    20,479....23.... 265

    Boris is going to shit his pants in 3 weeks isn't he.

    I can't see why. Numbers in hospital are up 15%, week on week, the rolling average for admissions is up 10% week on week.
    Is that a UK number? The English number is only up 11% - 1,301 to 1,445.
    Yes, the UK number.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,207
    UK case summary

    image
    image
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,547

    Omnium said:

    Re header:

    Mike ( @MikeSmithson )- surely you're almost the definition of Toff!?

    I know you didn't set out to be so.

    Toffs are Other People.

    I am getting by. You are merely affluent. But he is a toff.

    But, of course, you are right.

    pb.com is Toffs betting on Politics.

    And the LibDems are TWA. Toffs With Attitude.
    And that Attitude is "Not where I live you don't!"
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,591
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

    But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

    Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.
    I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.
    "If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state"

    That's a strawman argument.

    If the UK grows at 1% a year, and the EU at 2.5% a year (not what I'm forecasting), then it will be a "prosperous modern state", but it won't be a threat to "the EU system" or a notable success. And nor will it be a "fascistic, declining backwater".

    There's a massive fucking middle between disaster and glorious success.
    I said "looks like", so I was obviously making a point about relative perceptions. You're just wilfully missing the point.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,207
    UK hospitals

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,207
    UK deaths

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,207
    Age related data

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,207
    edited June 2021
    Vaccinations

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  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,043
    Dominic Raab’s mobile number freely available online for last decade
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/29/dominic-raab-mobile-number-freely-available-online

    Sadly, no takers.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

    But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

    Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.
    I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.
    "If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state"

    That's a strawman argument.

    If the UK grows at 1% a year, and the EU at 2.5% a year (not what I'm forecasting), then it will be a "prosperous modern state", but it won't be a threat to "the EU system" or a notable success. And nor will it be a "fascistic, declining backwater".

    There's a massive fucking middle between disaster and glorious success.
    If that happens for a long term then the UK would cease to be that prosperous.

    Which is kind of the issue with why I voted to leave the EU. The EU has ceased to be as prosperous as it used to be and has declined in GDP per capita relative to other developed nations. I see no evidence EU states are more prosperous than comparable non-EU ones, quite the opposite in fact.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,949

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

    But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

    Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.
    I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.
    "If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state"

    That's a strawman argument.

    If the UK grows at 1% a year, and the EU at 2.5% a year (not what I'm forecasting), then it will be a "prosperous modern state", but it won't be a threat to "the EU system" or a notable success. And nor will it be a "fascistic, declining backwater".

    There's a massive fucking middle between disaster and glorious success.
    I said "looks like", so I was obviously making a point about relative perceptions. You're just wilfully missing the point.
    Do. Not. Make. Robert. Angry. Today.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    TimS said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Those undertaking activities with significant economic benefit have always had favourable rules during this pandemic.

    Remember the you can meet up with people in a restaurant if it was for this. Or travel, the plebs can't go on holiday, but business people have been able to travel basically unhindered throughout.

    Given Freedom day is only 3 weeks away, I am not sure it will make a lot of difference.

    I am not sure it will be full Freedom Day, with even Australia restoring lockdown in some states and LA county reimposing a mask wearing request because of the Delta variant I would imagine masks will still be required to be worn in shops and on public transport, the biggest events will still have a capacity limit and quarantine will still be required for visits to red list countries and for the non double vaccinated to amber countries even from the middle of next month.

    I think this new government exemption would therefore certainly be very unpopular if executives returned from a red list country without quarantining
    How can it be freedom day when it is still mooted that children will be kept from school if there is a positive test in the class. While literally hundreds of thousands of people go to sports events, the pub, etc.

    What exactly does no more restrictions mean? It means restrictions the govt decides to keep. Plenty of them. Some idiot on R4 just now saying well children...long covid...can affect them....

    Vanishingly small probability of a child suffering from Covid. Otherwise, given that it has ripped through schools and unis these past few weeks, we would be hearing reports of children dying by the bucketload each day. Doesn't seem to be happening.
    Isn't freedom day also the end of term?
    Friends and bush telegraph tells me that end of term in many instances is being curtailed a matter of weeks early as everyone self-isolates. Whole rite of passage experiences just not happening for tens of thousands of children.
    End of term is a rite of passage without which we'd all be scarred?

    You and @contrarian seem to have a very low opinion of the mental resilience of the average 18 year old.
    End of school or uni year or of school or uni itself absolutely is a critical rite of passage.

    And as for the mental resilience of the average 18-yr old, I suggest you listen to some of the news items on the radio in the UK today. Children on anti-depressants = up, children with mental distress = up, children missing on average 115 hours of face to face teaching, children simply going missing from school.

    So yes, Robert and great vid on stopping illegal immigrants, btw, but absofuckinglutely yes, childrens' mental health is being fucked with.
    Do you have children? Do you remember what it was like to be a child?

    Literally the worst time of the entire school year was an enforced assembly while people trooped up to the front.

    The bit that was fun was meeting up with your friends outside of school. Which is - ummm - completely unaffected.

    (It is also worth remembering that "graduation" is a very modern concept. In the old days, you went for study leave and never came back. Which I guess explains why everyone over the age of about 50 is mentally scarred.)
    Robert the instances of damage to children's mental health is being documented today as we speak on just about all news outlets. I won't google it all for you because I'm sure you will be able to do so.

    And after a year or several years of school I could take or leave prize giving and speech day and what have you. I'm sure you the same and if it turned out that your May Ball was cancelled well not to worry your internship at GS was about to start. All perfectly charming.

    But the last 15 months have been hell for hundreds of thousands of children perhaps not so fortunate as you or me or perhaps just as fortunate. And during this time school has often represented an oasis of normality. And people are being denied as I said a rite of passage that is part of growing up.
    You're completely missing my point.

    I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU REGARDNG THE IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN ON KIDS HEALTH.

    I THINK YOU ARE A COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD IF YOU THINK GRADUATION CEREMONIES ARE SOME ESSENTIAL RIGHT OF PASSAGE THAT KIDS ENJOY.
    High school graduation… in England?!?

    It’s gone full circle now. You lot are de facto the 51st state.
    Including "Proms" that teenagers seem obliged to attend these days for fear of life-long social exclusion.
    The Americans are forever making us change the words for perfectly well established British traditions. I'm surprised we're not talking about the Euro Soccer championships. There have been end of 6th form "balls" for decades. I remember going to our school's which was the unusually named "Austro-Hungarian Society summer ball" (don't ask), and in some cases they've been called debutante balls or debs, but they seem suddenly to have become high school proms in the last few years.

    My children talk about going to the shopping mall (what's wrong with shopping centre or precinct?), and one of my nieces even refers to playing ball games "in the yard" - her large, lawned back garden.

    What they now call high school graduation is essentially speech day.
    We used to have the Caledonian ball which was always popular. Easiest way to marry into a Scottish castle these days 😉
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,308

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    The problem for the DUP is that they have been demanding the end of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    So indeed have the UUP.

    But the UK govt has now conceded that the Northern Ireland Protocol is here to stay.

    Why is that a problem? It gives unionism a long-term political raison d'être.
    I suppose that could be true, but it’s a futile endeavour and therefore a road to irrelevance for unionists.

    They also have no answer to the question, “What replaces the Northern Ireland protocol”?
    It's only futile if you think Brexit will inevitably lead to the relative economic decline of GB. If this doesn't happen then it makes unionists more relevant than they've been for a long time.
    No, it’s futile because the Unionists will not and cannot muster a majority in the Assembly to scrap the Protocol.

    Has nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a Brexit.

    The relative decline has already started anyway; see the IMF’s latest assessment of U.K. GDP.
    The IMF is predicting that the UK will recover faster than the Eurozone. You don't know how the relative economic position will look in a few years' time. A lot of people's credibility depends on the UK being seen to fail, but there's no guarantee this will happen.
    The U.K.s “faster recovery” is simply the mirror of its steeper collapse.

    I am not sure whose credibility rests of the U.K.‘s failure - maybe certain EU negotiators? Suspect this is mostly a phenomenon in the mind of Brexiters.
    If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state, then it will be a constant threat to the sense of inevitability of the EU project. "There is no alternative" doesn't work when people can see the alternative.
    The UK is going to be a prosperous modern state, irrespective of Brexit.

    But your comparison is specious. The UK in 1970 was a prosperous modern state, but it still looked like it was failing relative to the Continental economies.

    Now, do I believe that we will similar again? Probably not. But it's in the hands of the British electorate now.
    I thought it was obvious I was making a comparative point. If the UK is seen to be doing better, in whatever way you choose to measure, then it will be a challenge to the EU system.
    "If Brexit Britain fails to live up to the image that has been painted of a fascistic, declining backwater but instead looks like prosperous modern state"

    That's a strawman argument.

    If the UK grows at 1% a year, and the EU at 2.5% a year (not what I'm forecasting), then it will be a "prosperous modern state", but it won't be a threat to "the EU system" or a notable success. And nor will it be a "fascistic, declining backwater".

    There's a massive fucking middle between disaster and glorious success.
    I said "looks like", so I was obviously making a point about relative perceptions. You're just wilfully missing the point.
    You have wilfully, or perhaps negligently lost your marbles, or perhaps someone on a bot farm has nicked your log in details.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,046

    I'd dispute the notion that senior executives are toffs.

    Some of them are working class, or the grandchildren of immigrant, hardly toffs.

    Can immigrants, never mind their grandkids, not also be toffs?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368

    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    ping said:

    I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion on the euro outright market.

    Germany, at ~7/1, are the value bet.

    I can’t quite bring myself to back them, though!

    England win tonight. You heard it here first.
    No, sorry, I've already said it a few times. We might not be lifting the trophy but we ARE going to the final. I'm very confident of this. And that's really all I want. Just for once, one of these big summer international football finals to have England in it. Used to feel the same about Tim Henman at Wimbledon and in his case it was an itch never scratched. His grass court peak lasted 5 years - and he was good - and yet every single Wimbledon final during that time ended up featuring 2 players who were not Tim Henman. It drove me mad. Guess it did him too.
    You have a (hypothetical) choice.

    If England beat Germany, Conservatives will win Batley & Spen (feelgood factor - Boris).
    If Germany beat England, Labour will win Batley & Spen.

    Which is it to be for you?
    Is Boris doing a pre match touchline team talk. I do hope so?
    We know what tactics he will be recommending:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWIUp19bBoA&ab_channel=Ellisaacson
    I believe Boris would have started Grealish.
This discussion has been closed.