That tweet should be deleted from the header. It is outrageous. Completely distorts what Whitty said
You quote it in the article immediately beneath. He says there are TWO ways to minimise long COVID - keep cases down AND vaccinate & the government should push for BOTH of those.
It’s a statement of the bleeding obvious but not some massive division in the government vs scientists
No, if you recommend A+B and I decide to do A and not B, that's a disagreement. The Government has decided that pressure for relaxation, economic considerations and the fact that it's summer so we're more outdoors mean that it's a good idea to allow more Covid now and hopefully get it over with, not less Covid. It's an arguable position and I'm not deriding it, but it's different from Whitty's stated position, as the tweet points out.
We need a bit less outrage in both directions as we get through this maze.
In terms of the public understanding exactly what has been recommended it is good to see that two days ago SAGE released their minutes about the possible lifting of restrictions. The slight problem is that is the minutes from their meeting on 10 December 2020!!!!
Both government and scientists have told the select committees they regret not publicising SAGE advice earlier and that they should have been more open and transparent. Yet the lags and delays in publishing SAGE are increasing, what the hell is going on?
Those rightly criticising indie SAGE, should also criticise whichever of the govt/SAGE (and I can guess which it is) are delaying publications for many months, which creates the void for indie SAGE to get far more coverage than it deserves.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
She hasn't seemed to be on TV so much since Covid cases went up in Scotland
Football taking up much of the news may be a factor - and starting the pox, probabluy since the Ibrox final and ensuing public disorder in Glasgow.
Chris Whitty contradicting what he said at the presser.
Not half. Although probably we need the full exchange.
Whitty was adamant on Monday that getting the exit wave out of the way in summer was best plan. How does that square with hell for leather suppression (which implies total lockdown based on their previous thinking)?
To be honest, Delta looks so infectious that I think only the most severe lockdowns would control it. Minor measures look pointless.
Why have cases fallen off a cliff in India? There is no way a severe lockdown is possible there
Herd immunity against the delta variant perhaps ? I think the UK had perhaps achieved herd immunity against the alpha variant but with the single jab breakthrough and greater infectiousness of the delta the wall didn't hold. We don't have herd immunity against delta yet, it will be achieved via further vaccination (2nd jab catchup), nightclub (un & partially vaccinated 18-30) and school spread (5 - 17)
The following things have been observed in multiple countries, when COVID is allowed to spread
- it dies back, apparently by itself. - contrary to some early reports, antibody survey do not show that even a majority of people in the effected areas got it - after such waves, it takes a considerable time for another wave, despite people returning to normal(ish) behaviour quite rapidly
We had not achieved herd immunity against the alpha variant - what we had was an R below 1 with a combination of vaccines and the restrictions at the time.
The idea that a wave of Covid will die back by itself is defintely hard for people to comprehend. I think its human nature to think there to be a human controlled reason for something happening.
I said "apparently"
I don't *know* why this happens. I have seen no definitive answer, by a qualified scientist, backed by hard data. Just theories.
RCS thinks that it is caused by people self isolating due to fear.
There is much we don't know about this disease.
Isn't it always a combination of a partially immune population and behaviour altered both by the state and individuals ? A sort of pseudo, not true herd immunity kicks in ?
Yes this pattern tells us something about social dynamics rather than about the virus per se.
The question is then - Why, after people relax, it doesn't immediately return?
After the previous waves in India, people went back to doing their thing. Until Delta showed up.....
Each wave is made up of lots of local infection chains. If those chains run out of new people to infect and can’t cross over into an adjacent social bubble, then the chain dies out. My supposition would be that we are much less connected than you would intuitively think.
Yes - the idea we are an amorphous mass of people, bouncing around like atoms in a gas, is simply wrong. Bit like the spherical cow joke....
This is the kind of theory that I tend to, on this. Interesting and plausible enough that investigation should look at it...
Also worth noting this is not just ministers vs scientists. A significant strand of the conservative party wants unlocking and end to restrictions. Rightly or wrongly, their view is it is time for personal responsibility and risk assessment to come to the fore.
Plus its not all scientists. One thing I am frustrated about is while we have a blizzard of data, some is not being put out regularly. How old are the people who are dying of covid currently. I think i found a chart on the corona dashboard that suggests hardly anyone under 60. So the effect of the vaccination is exactly what it was intended - shift the risks from covid to much more like flu. We don't lockdown for flu (you can argue that we might in future do other mitigations such as masks etc) but the time is right now to get the economy moving, to give people the chance of holidays, and frankly to have a large but quick exit wave. Scotland looks like it is over the worst of its wave - might not be that long before England joins it.
It would be interesting to see those figures regularly. Some different stats from the US...
“June 2021 data: 100% of COVID-19 deaths in Maryland occurred in people who were unvaccinated,” tweeted Michael Ricci, communications director for Gov. Larry Hogan (R).
Ricci also said that 95 percent of new COVID-19 cases were in unvaccinated people and 93 percent of new coronavirus hospitalizations consisted of individuals who have not received the vaccine...
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
She hasn't seemed to be on TV so much since Covid cases went up in Scotland
Football taking up much of the news may be a factor - and starting the pox, probabluy since the Ibrox final and ensuing public disorder in Glasgow.
Let's be honest why would a politician go on TV to say - you know that great plan we had well it's failed especially when there isn't any other solution.
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
She hasn't seemed to be on TV so much since Covid cases went up in Scotland
Football taking up much of the news may be a factor - and starting the pox, probabluy since the Ibrox final and ensuing public disorder in Glasgow.
Let's be honest why would a politician go on TV to say - you know that great plan we had well it's failed especially when there isn't any other solution.
AFAIK she's been still doing the daily pressers. It's just that they haven't been broadcast so much. Which must be an editorial choice.
Also possible she was on hols for some time but if she was I didn't notice (not paying much attention to TV anyway).
Chris Whitty contradicting what he said at the presser.
Not half. Although probably we need the full exchange.
Whitty was adamant on Monday that getting the exit wave out of the way in summer was best plan. How does that square with hell for leather suppression (which implies total lockdown based on their previous thinking)?
To be honest, Delta looks so infectious that I think only the most severe lockdowns would control it. Minor measures look pointless.
Why have cases fallen off a cliff in India? There is no way a severe lockdown is possible there
Herd immunity against the delta variant perhaps ? I think the UK had perhaps achieved herd immunity against the alpha variant but with the single jab breakthrough and greater infectiousness of the delta the wall didn't hold. We don't have herd immunity against delta yet, it will be achieved via further vaccination (2nd jab catchup), nightclub (un & partially vaccinated 18-30) and school spread (5 - 17)
The following things have been observed in multiple countries, when COVID is allowed to spread
- it dies back, apparently by itself. - contrary to some early reports, antibody survey do not show that even a majority of people in the effected areas got it - after such waves, it takes a considerable time for another wave, despite people returning to normal(ish) behaviour quite rapidly
We had not achieved herd immunity against the alpha variant - what we had was an R below 1 with a combination of vaccines and the restrictions at the time.
The idea that a wave of Covid will die back by itself is defintely hard for people to comprehend. I think its human nature to think there to be a human controlled reason for something happening.
I said "apparently"
I don't *know* why this happens. I have seen no definitive answer, by a qualified scientist, backed by hard data. Just theories.
RCS thinks that it is caused by people self isolating due to fear.
There is much we don't know about this disease.
Isn't it always a combination of a partially immune population and behaviour altered both by the state and individuals ? A sort of pseudo, not true herd immunity kicks in ?
When we come back and do the analysis on this, I suspect we are going to find that *a lot* more people were isolating a lot more seriously than the noisiest (especially big city-dwelling) people think.
By definition the people who are isolating cautiously at home are not as visible as people going about their business in a normal-ish way.
The latter people will come across other people in the latter group, and think everyone is doing the same as them.
We can see from things like the mobility data that purple don't immediately take advantage of a formal lifting of restrictions, nor do they necessarily wait for one. It's all a lot more messy.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
There seems to be a divide in human instinct that cuts across many aspects of life and which affects our attitudes towards Covid. I would label it organic vs interventionist and it infects arguments about farming practices, healthcare, raising children, economics and many other things. It may be associated with political beliefs but not in a linear way.
I remember chatting with a colleague when Covid began in February 2020. We were both on the surface similar types of person, both doing the same job, both somewhat extrovert, voted the same way in the referendum etc. But she was already stocked up and ready for lockdown. I was instinctively (too) relaxed. The herd immunity idea appealed, even if in my head I knew it was probably very damaging. "Let nature take its course".
In the workplace some people I know have 100 day plans, make lists, have a laser focus on the next goal. I have always been opportunistic, see how things pan out. Then when it comes to
This divide haunts us everywhere. Some other examples: is it good to let children try and fail and make their own mistakes, or do we need to protect them from themselves? is the answer to antibiotic resistance to develop better and novel antibiotics or scale down their use and allow the ecosystem to balance? In a financial crisis do you intervene heavily, with the big bazooka, or is there merit in allowing some creative destruction? Is a bit of dirt a day and not being overly hygienic in the house a good way to avoid allergies? And so on.
Its not really a left right thing and I don't even think it's an authoritarian vs libertarian thing although there may be some of that. I do think it's driving a lot of the visceral reaction to the 19th July, one way or the other.
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
All true! Again I am not an advocate for the SNP having campaigned against them in the election. But look at the source of the criticism. For the Toriss to complain about the SNP performance north of the border when the accusations are that they have done most - but not all - of the Tory cock-ups south of the border is screaming hypocricy.
The SCONs are a pretty annoying bunch and hypocrisy is never far away from politicians.
Also worth noting this is not just ministers vs scientists. A significant strand of the conservative party wants unlocking and end to restrictions. Rightly or wrongly, their view is it is time for personal responsibility and risk assessment to come to the fore.
Plus its not all scientists. One thing I am frustrated about is while we have a blizzard of data, some is not being put out regularly. How old are the people who are dying of covid currently. I think i found a chart on the corona dashboard that suggests hardly anyone under 60. So the effect of the vaccination is exactly what it was intended - shift the risks from covid to much more like flu. We don't lockdown for flu (you can argue that we might in future do other mitigations such as masks etc) but the time is right now to get the economy moving, to give people the chance of holidays, and frankly to have a large but quick exit wave. Scotland looks like it is over the worst of its wave - might not be that long before England joins it.
It would be interesting to see those figures regularly. Some different stats from the US...
“June 2021 data: 100% of COVID-19 deaths in Maryland occurred in people who were unvaccinated,” tweeted Michael Ricci, communications director for Gov. Larry Hogan (R).
Ricci also said that 95 percent of new COVID-19 cases were in unvaccinated people and 93 percent of new coronavirus hospitalizations consisted of individuals who have not received the vaccine...
Because of the very low levels, the graph has become a bit of a mess....
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
The report on a potential treatment for long COVID. It makes a lot of sense from a biological mechanism of how the drug works. @Charles does it seem worth trialling?
It’s a case study of 1 person so no statistic relevance at all. Drug itself has passed P1/1b trials so we know it doesn’t kill people or hurt them too much.
Can’t really say beyond that but if there’s a decent scientific rationale it can’t hurt to find and run a trial
The times has spun this story way beyond the substance though
We aspire to be a one nation government, serving the whole of the UK. It is therefore right that our work from central government continues to reflect that.
Devolution to Cardiff, Holyrood or Stormont should not mean stripping those councils and communities of their direct relationships to the UK Government.
Another focus for my department over the course of this year will be re-establishing those bonds, seeing it’s mission as levelling-up Swansea as much as Southport or Southampton. I look forward to establishing these strong partnerships across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, including with your partner organisations in those nations.
MHCLG has seen itself for too long as an England only department. We are one United Kingdom and MHCLG should aspire to represent and support communities in all parts of the UK
On thread: '40% of those infected get long covid" - is this not, er, utter bollocks? This stretches credibility miles and miles and miles beyond breaking point.
It's complete mince even amongst the unvaxxed. 7 - 15% is what I've seen (And would broadly tie in with my anecdotal experience); it MUST be lower amongst the vaccinated would make no epidemiological sense for it not to be so.
@Nickpalmer9.8% (7.4% to 13.1%) had symptoms at 12 weeks(Figure 1)
If you shake something off quicker than 12 weeks, it's not "long" anything.
Thanks! I really like the style of that first link - lots of hard data and intelligent analysis of the possible reasons why the figures might be too high or too low. That's proper science.
12 weeks seems quite long to me btw, but I agree it's not the "this seems to go on forever" effect that one tends to think of from the term.
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
She hasn't seemed to be on TV so much since Covid cases went up in Scotland
Football taking up much of the news may be a factor - and starting the pox, probabluy since the Ibrox final and ensuing public disorder in Glasgow.
The level of smugness demonstrated by both the SG and indeed some contributors to this board when demographics and the level of minority ethnics were giving Scotland lower levels of infection was palpable. Even more than England (but not Wales, curiously) they took their eyes off the ball in respect of vaccination rates. We are paying the price of that failure and the decision to follow Boris when we are in a significantly worse situation in respect of infections is peculiarly tricky.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
We don't have much choice about supping for the foreseeable future, but I agree.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
She hasn't seemed to be on TV so much since Covid cases went up in Scotland
Football taking up much of the news may be a factor - and starting the pox, probabluy since the Ibrox final and ensuing public disorder in Glasgow.
The level of smugness demonstrated by both the SG and indeed some contributors to this board when demographics and the level of minority ethnics were giving Scotland lower levels of infection was palpable. Even more than England (but not Wales, curiously) they took their eyes off the ball in respect of vaccination rates. We are paying the price of that failure and the decision to follow Boris when we are in a significantly worse situation in respect of infections is peculiarly tricky.
The vaccination thing was because of focussing more systematically on the older groups rather than chasing overall total numbers (which made sense if one focussed on cutting down deaths and hospitalizations). Older population, remember, so demographics works both ways.
However now the total vacs are rather higher than in England with the discrepancy growing with time. Though one should not take that minor differential too seriously as it is so sensitive to the divisor figure of total vaccinable population.
I don't think anyone on PB ever worked out BTW (or I didn't see it) how Wales managed to develop such a systematic invrement over both when presmably having a similar ration of drug per capita.
Long Covid is interesting. I remember some thirty-odd years ago trying to juggle a five-a-side team match at our drug company (I organised it only to ensure I was picked. I was never any good). As we were down to the bare bones, I rang someone who'd been off sick some weeks earlier but was now back.
"Sorry," he said. "I hope to play again soon, but you know what viruses can be like, they can drag on a bit."
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
She hasn't seemed to be on TV so much since Covid cases went up in Scotland
She's already won her re-election now, so less need to be on TV.
On topic it seems like Whitty is getting misquoted and as for Stephen Reicher if we never here from him again it will be too soon. He's an "Independent SAGE" zero covid zealot so lifting lockdown being criticised by him is not news.
The Independent SAGE zealots don't represent all scientists.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
We don't have much choice about supping for the foreseeable future, but I agree.
We need to think strategically about the relationship, look to onshore important manufacturing, find ways to avoid future vulnerabilities (chip manufacture and rare earths for batteries are obvious examples) and basically look to exclude them from our infrastructure. If that means changing our trading relationships or changing the rules on "free trade" so be it.
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
She hasn't seemed to be on TV so much since Covid cases went up in Scotland
That's not down to Covid.
It's down to England's progress in the football....
There does seem to be a hell of a lot of downside for the government in the way they are acting over this. It's a huge gamble.
The piece in Telegraph about UK finances and borrowing might be factor. OBR has warned of massive interest payments looming.
Got to get Britain back to full working speed will be Treasury view and no more spaffing on Track and Lose Trace.
The OBR identifies three key threats to public finances, of which higher interest rates is one.
The other two are climate change (where it suggests that greater action now will actually save government money in the medium term), and covid, where it notes that the government has made no provision for extra spending after this year despite a massive NHS backlog and the likelihood of long covid issues.
The government is generally misunderstood as “high spending”, which it really only is because of Covid. The underlying trajectory set by Rishi is one of further austerity in public services. Levelling up is a fraud.
Boris himself inclined to high spending of course, but his wanton lack of grip suggests that Rishi and the Treasury will dictate fiscal policy.
It will be interesting to see how these tensions play out.
Interesting.
Higher interest rates - yes as a medium term challenge if they don't get a bit of a grip on new borrowing.
Levelling up. We don't know yet. There is scope for strategic levelling, but only tactical done so far.
On climate change we are on target for the -55% enhanced C02 EU 2030 target by 2023. That really should be a huge competitive advantage in many sectors.
There was a really interesting programme on BBc radio recently. Really interesting and recommended about meeting the more general 50%-by-2030 target in many countries, challenges etc. But the BBC totally failed to mention that we met that last year.
I think a further challenge is that the current govt are not up to managing the UK economic interest in a post-Brexit world. Tigger in a Wig won't hack that. They need to get to grips with being more UK-centric. What happened to Cobham questions that.
I wonder if Morrisons will be a canary-in-the-coalmine in the Red Wall? Northern-focused supermarket with a vertically integrated straightforward supply chain, and a decent focus on customers. Sounds like a possible poster-child for the new ideas about food supply. What will the Red Wall say if asset-strippers get it?
On thread: '40% of those infected get long covid" - is this not, er, utter bollocks? This stretches credibility miles and miles and miles beyond breaking point.
It's complete mince even amongst the unvaxxed. 7 - 15% is what I've seen (And would broadly tie in with my anecdotal experience); it MUST be lower amongst the vaccinated would make no epidemiological sense for it not to be so.
@Nickpalmer9.8% (7.4% to 13.1%) had symptoms at 12 weeks(Figure 1)
If you shake something off quicker than 12 weeks, it's not "long" anything.
Thanks! I really like the style of that first link - lots of hard data and intelligent analysis of the possible reasons why the figures might be too high or too low. That's proper science.
12 weeks seems quite long to me btw, but I agree it's not the "this seems to go on forever" effect that one tends to think of from the term.
With long SARS the symptoms often lasted years.
A lot depends on definition. Mrs Foxy still has a degree of anosmia after 8 months, and that is not very unusual. Hard to know about sleep disturbance, too many years working nights...
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
It could be argued that cancelling the football games would have played a considerable part in improving matters.
Anyway, as I have a stinking cold and a chest full of phlegm, I shall be going nowhere other than my garden for the next few days. Fortunately the weather is lovely so this is not a hardship.
And if I do have to go to a shop I will wear a mask out of courtesy to others. Though I imagine going to Tesco when the football is on will be the best time as I will be the only one there.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
Not necessarily a good thing.
She was very naturally an authoritarian and even used the word libertarian as an insult in a party conference speech. If we're giving draconian authoritarian tools to the state the last person I trust to be in charge of that is someone who is naturally an authoritarian and has always wanted those tools but couldn't get away with it.
And they now have quite a bit of real world data from that cohort, with around 9m vaccinated.
I honestly don't understand how the JCVI can come to such a different conclusion based on identical evidence. It's almost as if they're taking advice from Andrew Wakefield.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
Sunak’s comments on China exhibit no more or less glib naivety on the subject than Cameron, Osborne and Johnson. All the same, they exclude him as a serious candidate for PM in my mind.
He was never a serious candidate for PM.
He’s intellectually incurious, and his fascination with Ayn Rand is embarassing.
Long Covid is interesting. I remember some thirty-odd years ago trying to juggle a five-a-side team match at our drug company (I organised it only to ensure I was picked. I was never any good). As we were down to the bare bones, I rang someone who'd been off sick some weeks earlier but was now back.
"Sorry," he said. "I hope to play again soon, but you know what viruses can be like, they can drag on a bit."
They do sometimes, don't they?
People have forgotten about convalescence and seem to think it’s a binary choice - ill or not ill. Viruses can take time to get over but “Long COVID” seems to be used primarily as a means of justifying whatever opinion you had anyway.
*sits back and opens a huge bag of popcorn at south of the wall antics*
Meanwhile north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines "The SNP have taken their eye off the ball and the virus is threatening to spiral out of control in Scotland" - this apparently being a threat to Scottish summer holidays abroad which if he hadn't noticed started the week before last.
I saw on the news that Raigmore hospital in Inverness is on Black alert, the highest level, with elective surgery cancelled.
Which makes my point. It is not lockdowns that create pressure on non covid services and waiting lists, it is pandemic cases themselves.
Its absolutely up here - we've even had a couple of cases in my village. Its the notion from Scottish Tories that unlike the "let it rip" policy south of the wall that the SNP have allowed the pox to "spiral out of control"...
Sturgeon though has bolloxed things in the last few months.
Did she put any restrictions on Scots travelling to and from India ?
After all she was keen on travel restrictions to Lancashire.
But not travel restrictions on football fans going to London.
She hasn't seemed to be on TV so much since Covid cases went up in Scotland
Football taking up much of the news may be a factor - and starting the pox, probabluy since the Ibrox final and ensuing public disorder in Glasgow.
The level of smugness demonstrated by both the SG and indeed some contributors to this board when demographics and the level of minority ethnics were giving Scotland lower levels of infection was palpable. Even more than England (but not Wales, curiously) they took their eyes off the ball in respect of vaccination rates. We are paying the price of that failure and the decision to follow Boris when we are in a significantly worse situation in respect of infections is peculiarly tricky.
To be fair to the Scottish and other governments, they can't jab vaccines they don't have. With a supply constraint, if you don't jab today, you can do more tomorrow. It's fine as long as you don't throw any away or the time from receiving the vaccines to delivering them doesn't extend out. Neither is happening AFAIK. When it moves to a demand constraint, it is up to people who haven't received it yet to turn up.
There are arguments for supplying AZ to younger people to ease the supply pinch but those are separate arguments with ethical and vaccine confidence issues.
Per the header, I don't think the UK government is so much opposing scientists as giving up. Governments, also including Scotland, are exhausted, out of ideas and out of money. Herd Immunity isn't a policy. It's happening be default, because there is no policy.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
Chris Whitty contradicting what he said at the presser.
Not half. Although probably we need the full exchange.
Whitty was adamant on Monday that getting the exit wave out of the way in summer was best plan. How does that square with hell for leather suppression (which implies total lockdown based on their previous thinking)?
To be honest, Delta looks so infectious that I think only the most severe lockdowns would control it. Minor measures look pointless.
Why have cases fallen off a cliff in India? There is no way a severe lockdown is possible there
Herd immunity against the delta variant perhaps ? I think the UK had perhaps achieved herd immunity against the alpha variant but with the single jab breakthrough and greater infectiousness of the delta the wall didn't hold. We don't have herd immunity against delta yet, it will be achieved via further vaccination (2nd jab catchup), nightclub (un & partially vaccinated 18-30) and school spread (5 - 17)
The following things have been observed in multiple countries, when COVID is allowed to spread
- it dies back, apparently by itself. - contrary to some early reports, antibody survey do not show that even a majority of people in the effected areas got it - after such waves, it takes a considerable time for another wave, despite people returning to normal(ish) behaviour quite rapidly
We had not achieved herd immunity against the alpha variant - what we had was an R below 1 with a combination of vaccines and the restrictions at the time.
The idea that a wave of Covid will die back by itself is defintely hard for people to comprehend. I think its human nature to think there to be a human controlled reason for something happening.
We tend not to understand how people connect and are also not connected. I come to the Uni and interact with the same few people everyday, not the whole University (at least in the sense of being likely to be infected). There are networks of people, some vast, some tiny. An infectious strain like covid will rip through a network, but will then run out of links.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
That is a political assertion, with no facts to back it up.
You might be right, but it would have been on the back of her authoritarian personality betrayed as Home Secretary meaning she would have gone for the Chinese "weld them into their homes" style lockdown.
She was also more likely to be swayed by the zero Covid cabal.
Rare for me to say this but in this instance I think the Government are right. In answer to Mike's last question, for far too many people the time will never be right to lift restrictions and I personally think the Government have this one about right.
Indeed. I’m in the same boat Richard. As much as it pains me to admit it, the government have got this spot on. We either ride the exit wave now or face it in the autumn when children are back in school.
Biggest jump in Scotland (+5.6% vs England +3.2%, Wales +3.1, NI +1.8%) and still lowest overall.
Vaccination levels between 14/06 and 20/06 were:
England 79.0% to 81.6% change on previous week +2.4 to +2.9% Wales 87.9% to 88.7% +1.3% to +0.9% Scotland 79.6% to 82.3% +2.8% to + 3.0% N Ireland 76.8% to 78.5% +1.6% to +1.9%
Which would suggest about 40% have acquired immunity in England but only about 15% in Scotland. Which helps explain why Scotland has been hit harder than England by Delta and why in London its only had a marginal effect despite the lower levels of vaccination.
Northern Ireland looks to have anti-bodies than vaccination and previous infection would suggest.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
I forget where I read it, but I found somewhere a suggestion ..... from someone who thought about these things ..... that today's Chinese leaders may describe themselves as Communists, but they are in fact in the long tradition of Emperors, and that they, perhaps subconsciously, believe that the Han are the superior group in humanity, and that everyone else should try to become Han, or to be made Han.
For their own good!
That's not saying that I disagree with Ms Cyclefree, that we should be very, very cautious in our dealing with the Chinese Government. I'm say that we ought to be very careful in our dealing with any Chinese Government, and that caution should take into account the fact that while the current Government may be Communist, it's still Chinese, and remembers the indignities heaped upon the country by 19th & early 20th Century Westerners.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
Even if one accepts TMay = slower vaccination campaign, she would still be well ahead of Boris on saving lives if she had done more to prevent wave 2.
Lockdowns save lives in 2 ways: 1) avoid risk of exceeding NHS capacity 2) delay infections until after vaccination (this is the big one).
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
Yes, Susan "communist" Michie needs to be shown some photos and data from Xinjiang - the collapse in fertility, the re-education camps, the officially sanctioned rapes - and them dismissed from any government role she holds
We would not tolerate an avowed Fascist in SAGE; I see no reason why a communist should get a pass
As far as I can see the ONS report on long covid does not take any account of the impact of vaccinations or attempt to separate the cases into vaccinated or not. It would be surprising to a layman if vaccines significantly reduced infection rates, hospitalisation, death and infectiousness, but did not reduce long covid too. Quite possible but surprising.
One of the huge problems with reporting and modelling generally since this shitshow began was the seeming inability of modellers to even control for vaccinations, let alone segment their results and forecasts by them.
That tweet should be deleted from the header. It is outrageous. Completely distorts what Whitty said
You quote it in the article immediately beneath. He says there are TWO ways to minimise long COVID - keep cases down AND vaccinate & the government should push for BOTH of those.
It’s a statement of the bleeding obvious but not some massive division in the government vs scientists
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
I think the Chinese policy on Uighurs is utterly disgraceful, because of the reported maltreatment and forced reeducation. But I wouldn't call it genocide - that terms relates to an attempt to murder anyone who happens to belong to a particular race, and shouldn't be watered down to mean pushing people into adopting the practices of another population group. If we call that genocide we undermine how we talk about the Holocaust.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
I forget where I read it, but I found somewhere a suggestion ..... from someone who thought about these things ..... that today's Chinese leaders may describe themselves as Communists, but they are in fact in the long tradition of Emperors, and that they, perhaps subconsciously, believe that the Han are the superior group in humanity, and that everyone else should try to become Han, or to be made Han.
For their own good!
That's not saying that I disagree with Ms Cyclefree, that we should be very, very cautious in our dealing with the Chinese Government. I'm say that we ought to be very careful in our dealing with any Chinese Government, and that caution should take into account the fact that while the current Government may be Communist, it's still Chinese, and remembers the indignities heaped upon the country by 19th & early 20th Century Westerners.
And a somewhat belated Good Morning everyone!
Morning! Just reading a history of the siege of the German base in Tsingtao (as it was called then) by the Japanese in WW1. The Germans just rocked up in the 1890s and said 'we'll have our base here, thank you very much' - in the ensuing disputes, they paid serious attention only to the other Western (incl Russia) governments.
Which reminds me, the Japanese also were honorary Westerners. Which puts an interesting light, from the Chine3se point of view, on the current discussions in Japan over whether to deal with the Taiwan issue by allying with the USA.
We aspire to be a one nation government, serving the whole of the UK. It is therefore right that our work from central government continues to reflect that.
Devolution to Cardiff, Holyrood or Stormont should not mean stripping those councils and communities of their direct relationships to the UK Government.
Another focus for my department over the course of this year will be re-establishing those bonds, seeing it’s mission as levelling-up Swansea as much as Southport or Southampton. I look forward to establishing these strong partnerships across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, including with your partner organisations in those nations.
MHCLG has seen itself for too long as an England only department. We are one United Kingdom and MHCLG should aspire to represent and support communities in all parts of the UK
One problem with devolution (and the Sewell convention) is that the U.K. government has effectively exited the scene across key aspects of domestic policy in the devolved nations.
We see this most clearly in our pandemic response. It is downright weird to have the Scottish First Minister ban travel to Manchester, for starters.
There are certain limited aspects where the national government is best-placed to operate. And; a wider levelling up policy is not actually possible without a U.K. government using spending levers across the entire union, beyond just social welfare.
Having said this, it’s not entirely clear what Jenrick intends to do in practice.
And they now have quite a bit of real world data from that cohort, with around 9m vaccinated.
I honestly don't understand how the JCVI can come to such a different conclusion based on identical evidence. It's almost as if they're taking advice from Andrew Wakefield.
JCVI takes in a wider range of issues than safety/efficacy, in particular cost, opportunity cost, supply, logistics etc.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
I think the Chinese policy on Uighurs is utterly disgraceful, because of the reported maltreatment and forced reeducation. But I wouldn't call it genocide - that terms relates to an attempt to murder anyone who happens to belong to a particular race, and shouldn't be watered down to mean pushing people into adopting the practices of another population group. If we call that genocide we undermine how we talk about the Holocaust.
Genocide is an attempt to destroy a group.
That can be via murder but preventing births and forceably relocating children from one group to another in order to destroy the former is another example of genocide.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
The vaccine rollout in the UK is a relative success, compared with peer countries, which nevertheless have had mostly a much lower death rate from Covid. The reason for the very high death rate in England in particular isn't hard to find: the unwillingness of the Johnson government to lock down quickly or effectively enough. Would May have dithered in the same catastrophic way? Don't know obviously, but suspect not.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
That is a political assertion, with no facts to back it up.
You might be right, but it would have been on the back of her authoritarian personality betrayed as Home Secretary meaning she would have gone for the Chinese "weld them into their homes" style lockdown.
She was also more likely to be swayed by the zero Covid cabal.
She wouldn't have shut the borders. None of our politicians would have had the balls to do it.
Recent vaccination rates have been plummeting with combined numbers of 1st and 2nd jabs well below half the peak of a few months ago with a continuing downward trend. We're well past the point when the entire adult population has been eligible for at least the first jab and less than 80k came forward in the last two days. So it seems fairly obvious now that the government is scraping the barrel in its attempt to find people willing to come for their first jab and by definition the 2nd. Hence it's hard to see current measures ever delivering an adult population with more than about 85% coverage of 2nd jabs.
Those unvaccinated people will remain prime spreaders of the disease. Combined with school children and a residual infectivity amongst those who have had the 2nd jab, that remaining vulnerability will be enough to allow evolving highly infectious variants to spread. Let's just pray that in this virulence of 100,000 daily cases a future mutation doesn't erode the shield that vaccines are providing to the rest of us.
What is going to stop the virus now isn't social distancing which has already been effectively abandoned by the population, but getting vaccination rates up to a level that accelerates herd immunity before the virus has a chance to further mutate.
The Government missed a trick by its wholesale abandonment of measures to contain the virus. There is plenty more that could have instead been done, short of compulsion, to make the irresponsible minority face up to a real choice if they persist with their actions. The announcement that those with double jabs will no longer have to self isolate from August is welcome, but I doubt its effectiveness alone. It is a leap of unwarranted faith to assume that committed anti-vaxxers will even have the NHS app installed let alone turned on.
There are numerous sticks that could make life difficult for those who continue to refuse to be vaccinated, sufficiently so to start changing their behaviour and get double jab rates beyond 90%. Things like:
- Announcing now a long term policy that only the double jabbed will be able to avoid taking a Covid test and potentially isolating for 10 days on return from abroad. Why the wait?
- Only allowing football clubs to operate at full capacity if they bring in measures to deactivate new season tickets unless the holder has had 2 jabs by September for most people and say October for 18 year olds.
- From the new school year in September, continuing to send school children home in the case of a Covid outbreak unless all adults in their household have had double jabs.
- Allowing employers generally to discriminate in recruitment to require if they wish proof of double jabs before offering a job, so as to protect the rest of their staff.
etc, etc
Yes, there's a price for exercising a choice to fail to play by the rules, when that choice has implications for others.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
That is a political assertion, with no facts to back it up.
You might be right, but it would have been on the back of her authoritarian personality betrayed as Home Secretary meaning she would have gone for the Chinese "weld them into their homes" style lockdown.
She was also more likely to be swayed by the zero Covid cabal.
The unintended consequences associated with each decision are so complex that presenting any sort of counterfactual is meaningless. Maybe TMay would have locked down earlier and harder. Maybe the upshot of that would have been the the winter wave would have hit us harder, when the NHS was under more strain. Maybe different decisions would have made different variants emerge at different times. If only that butterfly had not flapped its wings, everything would have been ok.
And as I've said previously, lockdown kills people too.
Even retrospectively, it's impossible to say that any given decision would have led to a better outcome.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
The vaccine rollout in the UK is a relative success, compared with peer countries, which nevertheless have had mostly a much lower death rate from Covid. The reason for the very high death rate in England in particular isn't hard to find: the unwillingness of the Johnson government to lock down quickly or effectively enough. Would May have dithered in the same catastrophic way? Don't know obviously, but suspect not.
Except its not true. If you look at excess death figures which are the only honest figures, the UK has a lower death rate than even the USA for instance despite the UK being a much more densely packed nation than the naturally socially distanced America - and population density is strongly correlated with death rates.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
I think the Chinese policy on Uighurs is utterly disgraceful, because of the reported maltreatment and forced reeducation. But I wouldn't call it genocide - that terms relates to an attempt to murder anyone who happens to belong to a particular race, and shouldn't be watered down to mean pushing people into adopting the practices of another population group. If we call that genocide we undermine how we talk about the Holocaust.
Hmm
"Birthrates in Xinjiang fell by almost half in the two years after the Chinese government implemented policies to reduce the number of babies born to Uyghur and other Muslim minority families, new research has claimed.
"The figures show unprecedented declines which were more extreme than any global region at any time in the 71 years of UN fertility data collection, including during genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, according to the authors of the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi)."
This is an attempt to destroy a race, and erase their culture. If it isn't technically "genocide" because they aren't actually gassing them, then we need a new word which sums up the full horror
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
I recall when Trump and Fatty Kim were having their pow wow on Sentosa Island. A card carrying Chinese communist I worked with remarked that it wouldn’t be long before the Americans were doing lots of business in North Korea, as China does already.
I told him, “no it won’t work like that. First Kim has to shut the concentration camps”. He laughed and said “why do you think your governments care about that?”.
Left hanging in the air was our collective willingness to prostrate ourselves in front of Xi, while he busily rounds up millions in concentration camps on an ethnoreligious pretext.
It is interesting spending time with Chinese communists, as I have with quite a few. Teaches you as much about your own society than theirs really. Philip is right, that there are quite spooky parallels to 1930s Germany on this subject. An antagonist against everything we stand for and yet most sit in wonder at their ability to “get things done”.
Biggest jump in Scotland (+5.6% vs England +3.2%, Wales +3.1, NI +1.8%) and still lowest overall.
Vaccination levels between 14/06 and 20/06 were:
England 79.0% to 81.6% change on previous week +2.4 to +2.9% Wales 87.9% to 88.7% +1.3% to +0.9% Scotland 79.6% to 82.3% +2.8% to + 3.0% N Ireland 76.8% to 78.5% +1.6% to +1.9%
Which would suggest about 40% have acquired immunity in England but only about 15% in Scotland. Which helps explain why Scotland has been hit harder than England by Delta and why in London its only had a marginal effect despite the lower levels of vaccination.
Northern Ireland looks to have anti-bodies than vaccination and previous infection would suggest.
That's hugely encouraging - suggests we're probably comfortably over 90% now. Is there data on how many children have antibodies? My finger in the air estimate is about 20%.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
The vaccine rollout in the UK is a relative success, compared with peer countries, which nevertheless have had mostly a much lower death rate from Covid. The reason for the very high death rate in England in particular isn't hard to find: the unwillingness of the Johnson government to lock down quickly or effectively enough. Would May have dithered in the same catastrophic way? Don't know obviously, but suspect not.
Which peer countries have had a much lower death rate than the UK ?
There's Germany (if you fully trust their data) and ...
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
I forget where I read it, but I found somewhere a suggestion ..... from someone who thought about these things ..... that today's Chinese leaders may describe themselves as Communists, but they are in fact in the long tradition of Emperors, and that they, perhaps subconsciously, believe that the Han are the superior group in humanity, and that everyone else should try to become Han, or to be made Han.
For their own good!
That's not saying that I disagree with Ms Cyclefree, that we should be very, very cautious in our dealing with the Chinese Government. I'm say that we ought to be very careful in our dealing with any Chinese Government, and that caution should take into account the fact that while the current Government may be Communist, it's still Chinese, and remembers the indignities heaped upon the country by 19th & early 20th Century Westerners.
And a somewhat belated Good Morning everyone!
Morning! Just reading a history of the siege of the German base in Tsingtao (as it was called then) by the Japanese in WW1. The Germans just rocked up in the 1890s and said 'we'll have our base here, thank you very much' - in the ensuing disputes, they paid serious attention only to the other Western (incl Russia) governments.
Which reminds me, the Japanese also were honorary Westerners. Which puts an interesting light, from the Chine3se point of view, on the current discussions in Japan over whether to deal with the Taiwan issue by allying with the USA.
Not my field, but, AIUI, the Chinese and Japanese have a poorer relationship, historically, than the English do with the French.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
If, say, Jeremy Corbyn were to state that he was not anti-Semitic, do you simply accept his words? Quite rightly you do not. You look at his actions and you compare them to your definition of anti-Semitism and you make your judgement.
When I look at the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc, and I look at the definition of Communism, do I accept their claims to be leaders of Communist countries? No I do not. There is no meaningful way in which China can be described as Communist, except self-ID. But then you'd also have to accept North Korea as democratic.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
I think the Chinese policy on Uighurs is utterly disgraceful, because of the reported maltreatment and forced reeducation. But I wouldn't call it genocide - that terms relates to an attempt to murder anyone who happens to belong to a particular race, and shouldn't be watered down to mean pushing people into adopting the practices of another population group. If we call that genocide we undermine how we talk about the Holocaust.
Hmm
"Birthrates in Xinjiang fell by almost half in the two years after the Chinese government implemented policies to reduce the number of babies born to Uyghur and other Muslim minority families, new research has claimed.
"The figures show unprecedented declines which were more extreme than any global region at any time in the 71 years of UN fertility data collection, including during genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, according to the authors of the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi)."
This is an attempt to destroy a race, and erase their culture. If it isn't technically "genocide" because they aren't actually gassing them, then we need a new word which sums up the full horror
And the west still turns a blind eye so we can have cheap shit.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
Sunak’s comments on China exhibit no more or less glib naivety on the subject than Cameron, Osborne and Johnson. All the same, they exclude him as a serious candidate for PM in my mind.
He was never a serious candidate for PM.
He’s intellectually incurious, and his fascination with Ayn Rand is embarassing.
Given the current Conservative party, of course he's candidate for PM. 'Serious' is beside the point.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
The vaccine rollout in the UK is a relative success, compared with peer countries, which nevertheless have had mostly a much lower death rate from Covid. The reason for the very high death rate in England in particular isn't hard to find: the unwillingness of the Johnson government to lock down quickly or effectively enough. Would May have dithered in the same catastrophic way? Don't know obviously, but suspect not.
Except its not true. If you look at excess death figures which are the only honest figures, the UK has a lower death rate than even the USA for instance despite the UK being a much more densely packed nation than the naturally socially distanced America - and population density is strongly correlated with death rates.
The USA is a poor comparison, for many of the reasons you actually cite.
What about comparing U.K. with its near, and similarly dense, neighbours?
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
If, say, Jeremy Corbyn were to state that he was not anti-Semitic, do you simply accept his words? Quite rightly you do not. You look at his actions and you compare them to your definition of anti-Semitism and you make your judgement.
When I look at the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc, and I look at the definition of Communism, do I accept their claims to be leaders of Communist countries? No I do not. There is no meaningful way in which China can be described as Communist, except self-ID. But then you'd also have to accept North Korea as democratic.
Well that's just ridiculous. These are communist countries. Xi maybe not, but the rest were.
Communism requires central control and central control leads to abuses like this. It is most definitely cause and effect.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
I think the Chinese policy on Uighurs is utterly disgraceful, because of the reported maltreatment and forced reeducation. But I wouldn't call it genocide - that terms relates to an attempt to murder anyone who happens to belong to a particular race, and shouldn't be watered down to mean pushing people into adopting the practices of another population group. If we call that genocide we undermine how we talk about the Holocaust.
Genocide is an attempt to destroy a group.
That can be via murder but preventing births and forceably relocating children from one group to another in order to destroy the former is another example of genocide.
Yes, but clearly there are degrees of genocide, varying from systematic genocide to forced eradication of cultural minorities, the Kurds in Turkey for example.
China is amongst the most egregious at the moment in the world.
Recent vaccination rates have been plummeting with combined numbers of 1st and 2nd jabs well below half the peak of a few months ago with a continuing downward trend. We're well past the point when the entire adult population has been eligible for at least the first jab and less than 80k came forward in the last two days. So it seems fairly obvious now that the government is scraping the barrel in its attempt to find people willing to come for their first jab and by definition the 2nd. Hence it's hard to see current measures ever delivering an adult population with more than about 85% coverage of 2nd jabs.
Those unvaccinated people will remain prime spreaders of the disease. Combined with school children and a residual infectivity amongst those who have had the 2nd jab, that remaining vulnerability will be enough to allow evolving highly infectious variants to spread. Let's just pray that in this virulence of 100,000 daily cases a future mutation doesn't erode the shield that vaccines are providing to the rest of us.
What is going to stop the virus now isn't social distancing which has already been effectively abandoned by the population, but getting vaccination rates up to a level that accelerates herd immunity before the virus has a chance to further mutate.
The Government missed a trick by its wholesale abandonment of measures to contain the virus. There is plenty more that could have instead been done, short of compulsion, to make the irresponsible minority face up to a real choice if they persist with their actions. The announcement that those with double jabs will no longer have to self isolate from August is welcome, but I doubt its effectiveness alone. It is a leap of unwarranted faith to assume that committed anti-vaxxers will even have the NHS app installed let alone turned on.
There are numerous sticks that could make life difficult for those who continue to refuse to be vaccinated, sufficiently so to start changing their behaviour and get double jab rates beyond 90%. Things like:
- Announcing now a long term policy that only the double jabbed will be able to avoid taking a Covid test and potentially isolating for 10 days on return from abroad. Why the wait?
- Only allowing football clubs to operate at full capacity if they bring in measures to deactivate new season tickets unless the holder has had 2 jabs by September for most people and say October for 18 year olds.
- From the new school year in September, continuing to send school children home in the case of a Covid outbreak unless all adults in their household have had double jabs.
- Allowing employers generally to discriminate in recruitment to require if they wish proof of double jabs before offering a job, so as to protect the rest of their staff.
etc, etc
Yes, there's a price for exercising a choice to fail to play by the rules, when that choice has implications for others.
Yes, absolutely. Don't make jabs mandatory but make anti-vaxxery a real fucking hassle. No travel, no fun, no job
This is the future of the nation, and the world, we cannot let humanity be jailed forever because some morons believe Bill Gates puts microchips in your nipple
Clearly, those with medical exemptions would be exempt
Long Covid is interesting. I remember some thirty-odd years ago trying to juggle a five-a-side team match at our drug company (I organised it only to ensure I was picked. I was never any good). As we were down to the bare bones, I rang someone who'd been off sick some weeks earlier but was now back.
"Sorry," he said. "I hope to play again soon, but you know what viruses can be like, they can drag on a bit."
They do sometimes, don't they?
People have forgotten about convalescence and seem to think it’s a binary choice - ill or not ill. Viruses can take time to get over but “Long COVID” seems to be used primarily as a means of justifying whatever opinion you had anyway.
Long Covid is a catch all term which covers a (probably considerable) number of conditions. It will be some time before the medics have fully categorised it.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
I think the Chinese policy on Uighurs is utterly disgraceful, because of the reported maltreatment and forced reeducation. But I wouldn't call it genocide - that terms relates to an attempt to murder anyone who happens to belong to a particular race, and shouldn't be watered down to mean pushing people into adopting the practices of another population group. If we call that genocide we undermine how we talk about the Holocaust.
Hmm
"Birthrates in Xinjiang fell by almost half in the two years after the Chinese government implemented policies to reduce the number of babies born to Uyghur and other Muslim minority families, new research has claimed.
"The figures show unprecedented declines which were more extreme than any global region at any time in the 71 years of UN fertility data collection, including during genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, according to the authors of the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi)."
This is an attempt to destroy a race, and erase their culture. If it isn't technically "genocide" because they aren't actually gassing them, then we need a new word which sums up the full horror
And the west still turns a blind eye so we can have cheap shit.
I was a China hawk long before it was fashionable, so I welcome the new Sino-scepticism on here.
But what’s your suggestion? End all trade with China?
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
I forget where I read it, but I found somewhere a suggestion ..... from someone who thought about these things ..... that today's Chinese leaders may describe themselves as Communists, but they are in fact in the long tradition of Emperors, and that they, perhaps subconsciously, believe that the Han are the superior group in humanity, and that everyone else should try to become Han, or to be made Han.
For their own good!
That's not saying that I disagree with Ms Cyclefree, that we should be very, very cautious in our dealing with the Chinese Government. I'm say that we ought to be very careful in our dealing with any Chinese Government, and that caution should take into account the fact that while the current Government may be Communist, it's still Chinese, and remembers the indignities heaped upon the country by 19th & early 20th Century Westerners.
And a somewhat belated Good Morning everyone!
Morning! Just reading a history of the siege of the German base in Tsingtao (as it was called then) by the Japanese in WW1. The Germans just rocked up in the 1890s and said 'we'll have our base here, thank you very much' - in the ensuing disputes, they paid serious attention only to the other Western (incl Russia) governments.
Which reminds me, the Japanese also were honorary Westerners. Which puts an interesting light, from the Chine3se point of view, on the current discussions in Japan over whether to deal with the Taiwan issue by allying with the USA.
One stat that I was not familiar with until recently was the Chinese killed with biological weapons by the Japanese Empire in WW2. Hundreds of thousands.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
The vaccine rollout in the UK is a relative success, compared with peer countries, which nevertheless have had mostly a much lower death rate from Covid. The reason for the very high death rate in England in particular isn't hard to find: the unwillingness of the Johnson government to lock down quickly or effectively enough. Would May have dithered in the same catastrophic way? Don't know obviously, but suspect not.
Except its not true. If you look at excess death figures which are the only honest figures, the UK has a lower death rate than even the USA for instance despite the UK being a much more densely packed nation than the naturally socially distanced America - and population density is strongly correlated with death rates.
Lower excess death rate than the USA - the issue with not locking down applies even more to them than the UK and they also had a good vaccine rollout. UK Excess death rate 50% more than France and two and a half times Germany:
Recent vaccination rates have been plummeting with combined numbers of 1st and 2nd jabs well below half the peak of a few months ago with a continuing downward trend. We're well past the point when the entire adult population has been eligible for at least the first jab and less than 80k came forward in the last two days. So it seems fairly obvious now that the government is scraping the barrel in its attempt to find people willing to come for their first jab and by definition the 2nd. Hence it's hard to see current measures ever delivering an adult population with more than about 85% coverage of 2nd jabs.
Those unvaccinated people will remain prime spreaders of the disease. Combined with school children and a residual infectivity amongst those who have had the 2nd jab, that remaining vulnerability will be enough to allow evolving highly infectious variants to spread. Let's just pray that in this virulence of 100,000 daily cases a future mutation doesn't erode the shield that vaccines are providing to the rest of us.
What is going to stop the virus now isn't social distancing which has already been effectively abandoned by the population, but getting vaccination rates up to a level that accelerates herd immunity before the virus has a chance to further mutate.
The Government missed a trick by its wholesale abandonment of measures to contain the virus. There is plenty more that could have instead been done, short of compulsion, to make the irresponsible minority face up to a real choice if they persist with their actions. The announcement that those with double jabs will no longer have to self isolate from August is welcome, but I doubt its effectiveness alone. It is a leap of unwarranted faith to assume that committed anti-vaxxers will even have the NHS app installed let alone turned on.
There are numerous sticks that could make life difficult for those who continue to refuse to be vaccinated, sufficiently so to start changing their behaviour and get double jab rates beyond 90%. Things like:
- Announcing now a long term policy that only the double jabbed will be able to avoid taking a Covid test and potentially isolating for 10 days on return from abroad. Why the wait?
- Only allowing football clubs to operate at full capacity if they bring in measures to deactivate new season tickets unless the holder has had 2 jabs by September for most people and say October for 18 year olds.
- From the new school year in September, continuing to send school children home in the case of a Covid outbreak unless all adults in their household have had double jabs.
- Allowing employers generally to discriminate in recruitment to require if they wish proof of double jabs before offering a job, so as to protect the rest of their staff.
etc, etc
Yes, there's a price for exercising a choice to fail to play by the rules, when that choice has implications for others.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
I think the Chinese policy on Uighurs is utterly disgraceful, because of the reported maltreatment and forced reeducation. But I wouldn't call it genocide - that terms relates to an attempt to murder anyone who happens to belong to a particular race, and shouldn't be watered down to mean pushing people into adopting the practices of another population group. If we call that genocide we undermine how we talk about the Holocaust.
Genocide is an attempt to destroy a group.
That can be via murder but preventing births and forceably relocating children from one group to another in order to destroy the former is another example of genocide.
Yes, but clearly there are degrees of genocide, varying from systematic genocide to forced eradication of cultural minorities, the Kurt's in Turkey for example.
According to the Australian academic mainstream, the British practised genocide on the Aborigines.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
Not wanting to do a Godwin but there are alarming parallels between the modern Chinese regime and the Nazi fascists. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that China will seek a 'final solution' for the Uighur and other 'trouble makers'.
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
The current Chinese regime seeks to create unity by imposing a plastic, largely invented, version of Han culture on the whole country. The idea is to create truth-on-the-ground, so that there is no possibility of regional discontent.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
So genocide by amalgamation, like the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generation?
I think the Chinese policy on Uighurs is utterly disgraceful, because of the reported maltreatment and forced reeducation. But I wouldn't call it genocide - that terms relates to an attempt to murder anyone who happens to belong to a particular race, and shouldn't be watered down to mean pushing people into adopting the practices of another population group. If we call that genocide we undermine how we talk about the Holocaust.
Genocide is an attempt to destroy a group.
That can be via murder but preventing births and forceably relocating children from one group to another in order to destroy the former is another example of genocide.
Yes, but clearly there are degrees of genocide, varying from systematic genocide to forced eradication of cultural minorities, the Kurt's in Turkey for example.
According to the Australian academic mainstream, the British practised genocide on the Aborigines.
Certainly so. Explicitly in Tasmania, but similar elsewhere.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
The vaccine rollout in the UK is a relative success, compared with peer countries, which nevertheless have had mostly a much lower death rate from Covid. The reason for the very high death rate in England in particular isn't hard to find: the unwillingness of the Johnson government to lock down quickly or effectively enough. Would May have dithered in the same catastrophic way? Don't know obviously, but suspect not.
Except its not true. If you look at excess death figures which are the only honest figures, the UK has a lower death rate than even the USA for instance despite the UK being a much more densely packed nation than the naturally socially distanced America - and population density is strongly correlated with death rates.
Lower excess death rate than the USA - the issue with not locking down applies even more to them than the UK and they also had a good vaccine rollout. UK Excess death rate 50% more than France and two and a half times Germany:
I think I've spotted the fatal flaw in the government's approach: the idea that it's best to have this wave in summer, when transmission is reduced by people being outside.
Down here on the south coast the weather is awful. My wife has just got out her winter clothes. Few people are venturing out to socialise, and the beer gardens are empty. It's been like this for most of the "summer". Miserable: the opposite of last year.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
Even if one accepts TMay = slower vaccination campaign, she would still be well ahead of Boris on saving lives if she had done more to prevent wave 2.
Lockdowns save lives in 2 ways: 1) avoid risk of exceeding NHS capacity 2) delay infections until after vaccination (this is the big one).
NHS capacity has not been exceeded. Indeed it didn't even come close except in very localised pockets, hence the lack of use of the Nightingale Hospitals.
The second point is indeed the important one but the reality is we would have had the second wave under lockdown just as we are now having a third under lockdown. Would the second wave have been smaller? Maybe. But not if our vaccination program had been 3-4 months behind where it might have been under May.
I think that there are pluses and minuses to Boris's rather more cavalier approach to governance but I do not think that the evidence we would have done better under "roundhead" May is compelling, indeed, I think on balance we would probably have done worse overall.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
I forget where I read it, but I found somewhere a suggestion ..... from someone who thought about these things ..... that today's Chinese leaders may describe themselves as Communists, but they are in fact in the long tradition of Emperors, and that they, perhaps subconsciously, believe that the Han are the superior group in humanity, and that everyone else should try to become Han, or to be made Han.
For their own good!
That's not saying that I disagree with Ms Cyclefree, that we should be very, very cautious in our dealing with the Chinese Government. I'm say that we ought to be very careful in our dealing with any Chinese Government, and that caution should take into account the fact that while the current Government may be Communist, it's still Chinese, and remembers the indignities heaped upon the country by 19th & early 20th Century Westerners.
And a somewhat belated Good Morning everyone!
Morning! Just reading a history of the siege of the German base in Tsingtao (as it was called then) by the Japanese in WW1. The Germans just rocked up in the 1890s and said 'we'll have our base here, thank you very much' - in the ensuing disputes, they paid serious attention only to the other Western (incl Russia) governments.
Which reminds me, the Japanese also were honorary Westerners. Which puts an interesting light, from the Chine3se point of view, on the current discussions in Japan over whether to deal with the Taiwan issue by allying with the USA.
Most people do forget - or never knew - that the Japanese were our allies in WW1. I have a fascinating account by a soldier of the machine gun corps crossing the Mediterranean from Marseille to Egypt in 1918 and their ship being protected by a couple of Japanese destroyers hunting for Austro-Hungarian submarines.
Recent vaccination rates have been plummeting with combined numbers of 1st and 2nd jabs well below half the peak of a few months ago with a continuing downward trend. We're well past the point when the entire adult population has been eligible for at least the first jab and less than 80k came forward in the last two days. So it seems fairly obvious now that the government is scraping the barrel in its attempt to find people willing to come for their first jab and by definition the 2nd. Hence it's hard to see current measures ever delivering an adult population with more than about 85% coverage of 2nd jabs.
Those unvaccinated people will remain prime spreaders of the disease. Combined with school children and a residual infectivity amongst those who have had the 2nd jab, that remaining vulnerability will be enough to allow evolving highly infectious variants to spread. Let's just pray that in this virulence of 100,000 daily cases a future mutation doesn't erode the shield that vaccines are providing to the rest of us.
What is going to stop the virus now isn't social distancing which has already been effectively abandoned by the population, but getting vaccination rates up to a level that accelerates herd immunity before the virus has a chance to further mutate.
The Government missed a trick by its wholesale abandonment of measures to contain the virus. There is plenty more that could have instead been done, short of compulsion, to make the irresponsible minority face up to a real choice if they persist with their actions. The announcement that those with double jabs will no longer have to self isolate from August is welcome, but I doubt its effectiveness alone. It is a leap of unwarranted faith to assume that committed anti-vaxxers will even have the NHS app installed let alone turned on.
There are numerous sticks that could make life difficult for those who continue to refuse to be vaccinated, sufficiently so to start changing their behaviour and get double jab rates beyond 90%. Things like:
- Announcing now a long term policy that only the double jabbed will be able to avoid taking a Covid test and potentially isolating for 10 days on return from abroad. Why the wait?
- Only allowing football clubs to operate at full capacity if they bring in measures to deactivate new season tickets unless the holder has had 2 jabs by September for most people and say October for 18 year olds.
- From the new school year in September, continuing to send school children home in the case of a Covid outbreak unless all adults in their household have had double jabs.
- Allowing employers generally to discriminate in recruitment to require if they wish proof of double jabs before offering a job, so as to protect the rest of their staff.
etc, etc
Yes, there's a price for exercising a choice to fail to play by the rules, when that choice has implications for others.
Yes, absolutely. Don't make jabs mandatory but make anti-vaxxery a real fucking hassle. No travel, no fun, no job
This is the future of the nation, and the world, we cannot let humanity be jailed forever because some morons believe Bill Gates puts microchips in your nipple
Clearly, those with medical exemptions would be exempt
The problem is the mere hint of discrimination or vax passporting to ensure only vaccinated people are allowed to do certain things had the media screaming racist, sexist, .classist etc...... complete with edge case stories of how such a system would be unfair on some individual.
It’s not really the govt v THE experts. It’s the govt versus SOME experts. Others are quite happy with the decision. Even Niall Ferguson was on the news saying he was relaxed about this. You will always find experts who dissent on a course of action in scenarios like this.
There have been numerous models that have been far too pessimistic.
As for the term Long Covid it is meaningless on its own as it covers a huge variety of conditions and adverse reactions to Covid.
The govt are generally right. We have to live with Covid. It is not going away. The area where I think they are wrong is on masks.
I think I've spotted the fatal flaw in the government's approach: the idea that it's best to have this wave in summer, when transmission is reduced by people being outside.
Down here on the south coast the weather is awful. My wife has just got out her winter clothes. Few people are venturing out, and the beer gardens are empty. It's been like this for most of the "summer". Miserable: the opposite of last year.
*typing in my Majorcan garden*
Actually, last summer was pretty mediocre. Your memories are probably coloured by the extraordinarily dry, warm and sunny spell in spring, which continued into June. But then stopped.
This does look like quite a traditional shit British summer, however. I doubt if we will hit 30C again now
And they now have quite a bit of real world data from that cohort, with around 9m vaccinated.
I honestly don't understand how the JCVI can come to such a different conclusion based on identical evidence. It's almost as if they're taking advice from Andrew Wakefield.
JCVI takes in a wider range of issues than safety/efficacy, in particular cost, opportunity cost, supply, logistics etc.
I suspect their reasons lie elsewhere.
Yes, possibly due to us not ordering enough Pfizer for booster vaccinations and teenagers. However, in the media only the safety angle is being reported, so if they advise against vaccinating teenagers for now, due to supply, but don't say so clearly that is why, then they will create an impression of heightened risk to teenagers from the vaccine - making it harder later.
Naturally HMG don't want their great vaccine triumph to be tarnished by later failures, so they will be desperate for people not to think that teenagers are not being vaccinated because they didn't order enough vaccine doses. We risk encouraging anti-vaxxery to protect HMG from its mistake.
The sort of thing an Opposition should be picking up.
There's a good Stargate: SG-1 episode in which a peaceful, high tech alien civilisation becomes mankind's best friend, helps out in all kinds of ways. Only it turns out they're playing a long game and cutting down on our ability to procreate, so they can take over the planet without a fight.
Recent vaccination rates have been plummeting with combined numbers of 1st and 2nd jabs well below half the peak of a few months ago with a continuing downward trend. We're well past the point when the entire adult population has been eligible for at least the first jab and less than 80k came forward in the last two days. So it seems fairly obvious now that the government is scraping the barrel in its attempt to find people willing to come for their first jab and by definition the 2nd. Hence it's hard to see current measures ever delivering an adult population with more than about 85% coverage of 2nd jabs.
Those unvaccinated people will remain prime spreaders of the disease. Combined with school children and a residual infectivity amongst those who have had the 2nd jab, that remaining vulnerability will be enough to allow evolving highly infectious variants to spread. Let's just pray that in this virulence of 100,000 daily cases a future mutation doesn't erode the shield that vaccines are providing to the rest of us.
What is going to stop the virus now isn't social distancing which has already been effectively abandoned by the population, but getting vaccination rates up to a level that accelerates herd immunity before the virus has a chance to further mutate.
The Government missed a trick by its wholesale abandonment of measures to contain the virus. There is plenty more that could have instead been done, short of compulsion, to make the irresponsible minority face up to a real choice if they persist with their actions. The announcement that those with double jabs will no longer have to self isolate from August is welcome, but I doubt its effectiveness alone. It is a leap of unwarranted faith to assume that committed anti-vaxxers will even have the NHS app installed let alone turned on.
There are numerous sticks that could make life difficult for those who continue to refuse to be vaccinated, sufficiently so to start changing their behaviour and get double jab rates beyond 90%. Things like:
- Announcing now a long term policy that only the double jabbed will be able to avoid taking a Covid test and potentially isolating for 10 days on return from abroad. Why the wait?
- Only allowing football clubs to operate at full capacity if they bring in measures to deactivate new season tickets unless the holder has had 2 jabs by September for most people and say October for 18 year olds.
- From the new school year in September, continuing to send school children home in the case of a Covid outbreak unless all adults in their household have had double jabs.
- Allowing employers generally to discriminate in recruitment to require if they wish proof of double jabs before offering a job, so as to protect the rest of their staff.
etc, etc
Yes, there's a price for exercising a choice to fail to play by the rules, when that choice has implications for others.
I know at least two adults who have not yet been jabbed - both are pregnant. Both will get jabbed once they've had their babies, given a few weeks for life to settle down again. No doubt there are other genuine 'haven't done so but will do soon' cases, though I'm not sure what category beside pregnancy those people would fit into. (I reckon probably in the region of 0.25 - 0.5 million adults fall into the 'pregnancy' category so that is getting on for another 1% of adults right there.) So there is at least a dribble of adults still to go.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
I forget where I read it, but I found somewhere a suggestion ..... from someone who thought about these things ..... that today's Chinese leaders may describe themselves as Communists, but they are in fact in the long tradition of Emperors, and that they, perhaps subconsciously, believe that the Han are the superior group in humanity, and that everyone else should try to become Han, or to be made Han.
For their own good!
That's not saying that I disagree with Ms Cyclefree, that we should be very, very cautious in our dealing with the Chinese Government. I'm say that we ought to be very careful in our dealing with any Chinese Government, and that caution should take into account the fact that while the current Government may be Communist, it's still Chinese, and remembers the indignities heaped upon the country by 19th & early 20th Century Westerners.
And a somewhat belated Good Morning everyone!
Morning! Just reading a history of the siege of the German base in Tsingtao (as it was called then) by the Japanese in WW1. The Germans just rocked up in the 1890s and said 'we'll have our base here, thank you very much' - in the ensuing disputes, they paid serious attention only to the other Western (incl Russia) governments.
Which reminds me, the Japanese also were honorary Westerners. Which puts an interesting light, from the Chine3se point of view, on the current discussions in Japan over whether to deal with the Taiwan issue by allying with the USA.
Most people do forget - or never knew - that the Japanese were our allies in WW1. I have a fascinating account by a soldier of the machine gun corps crossing the Mediterranean from Marseille to Egypt in 1918 and their ship being protected by a couple of Japanese destroyers hunting for Austro-Hungarian submarines.
Wasn’t there a Japanese viscount or some such sitting on a board to oversee Bulgarian (or some place) independence under the Treaty of Versailles?
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
It could be argued that cancelling the football games would have played a considerable part in improving matters.
Certainly not allowing crowds at them. Aren't the English being completely irresponsible on insisting playing more and more games whilst the Scottish team did the decent thing? 😉 I fear even tonight will not be enough for them.
Recent vaccination rates have been plummeting with combined numbers of 1st and 2nd jabs well below half the peak of a few months ago with a continuing downward trend. We're well past the point when the entire adult population has been eligible for at least the first jab and less than 80k came forward in the last two days. So it seems fairly obvious now that the government is scraping the barrel in its attempt to find people willing to come for their first jab and by definition the 2nd. Hence it's hard to see current measures ever delivering an adult population with more than about 85% coverage of 2nd jabs.
Those unvaccinated people will remain prime spreaders of the disease. Combined with school children and a residual infectivity amongst those who have had the 2nd jab, that remaining vulnerability will be enough to allow evolving highly infectious variants to spread. Let's just pray that in this virulence of 100,000 daily cases a future mutation doesn't erode the shield that vaccines are providing to the rest of us.
What is going to stop the virus now isn't social distancing which has already been effectively abandoned by the population, but getting vaccination rates up to a level that accelerates herd immunity before the virus has a chance to further mutate.
The Government missed a trick by its wholesale abandonment of measures to contain the virus. There is plenty more that could have instead been done, short of compulsion, to make the irresponsible minority face up to a real choice if they persist with their actions. The announcement that those with double jabs will no longer have to self isolate from August is welcome, but I doubt its effectiveness alone. It is a leap of unwarranted faith to assume that committed anti-vaxxers will even have the NHS app installed let alone turned on.
There are numerous sticks that could make life difficult for those who continue to refuse to be vaccinated, sufficiently so to start changing their behaviour and get double jab rates beyond 90%. Things like:
- Announcing now a long term policy that only the double jabbed will be able to avoid taking a Covid test and potentially isolating for 10 days on return from abroad. Why the wait?
- Only allowing football clubs to operate at full capacity if they bring in measures to deactivate new season tickets unless the holder has had 2 jabs by September for most people and say October for 18 year olds.
- From the new school year in September, continuing to send school children home in the case of a Covid outbreak unless all adults in their household have had double jabs.
- Allowing employers generally to discriminate in recruitment to require if they wish proof of double jabs before offering a job, so as to protect the rest of their staff.
etc, etc
Yes, there's a price for exercising a choice to fail to play by the rules, when that choice has implications for others.
Yes, absolutely. Don't make jabs mandatory but make anti-vaxxery a real fucking hassle. No travel, no fun, no job
This is the future of the nation, and the world, we cannot let humanity be jailed forever because some morons believe Bill Gates puts microchips in your nipple
Clearly, those with medical exemptions would be exempt
The problem is the mere hint of discrimination or vax passporting to ensure only vaccinated people are allowed to do certain things had the media screaming racist, sexist, .classist etc...... complete with edge case stories of how such a system would be unfair on some individual.
The government has to lose its fear of the media. It is largely a paper tiger
Who cares if the Groaniad or the BBC run a thousand hard luck stories, the vast majority of people have done their duty and been jabbed, and they want life to resume if possible, as a result. If this is stopped by vaccine refuseniks, I predict sympathy will be severely limited. Indeed, I bet a fair chunk of the nation would argue for mandatory vaccination
A woman who served me in a shop the week said she had got covid back near the start of the crisis. She had only just started back at work. In that time, she had spent eight months in hospital, having been admitted four times. She still can't walk as much as she used to, and has trouble sleeping.
If true (and I have remembered correctly), then it's clear that Covid, or its effects, can be really bad.
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
The vaccine rollout in the UK is a relative success, compared with peer countries, which nevertheless have had mostly a much lower death rate from Covid. The reason for the very high death rate in England in particular isn't hard to find: the unwillingness of the Johnson government to lock down quickly or effectively enough. Would May have dithered in the same catastrophic way? Don't know obviously, but suspect not.
Except its not true. If you look at excess death figures which are the only honest figures, the UK has a lower death rate than even the USA for instance despite the UK being a much more densely packed nation than the naturally socially distanced America - and population density is strongly correlated with death rates.
The USA is a poor comparison, for many of the reasons you actually cite.
What about comparing U.K. with its near, and similarly dense, neighbours?
Bulgaria 433 Russia 338 Serbia 320 Lithuania 319 North Macedonia 319 Czech Republic 300 Slovakia 270 Poland 264 Bosnia and Herzegovnia 245 Romania 236 Moldova 231 Hungary 228 Albania 206 Portugal 203 Kosovo 200 Italy 197 Slovenia 185 Britain 180 Croatia 176 Spain 170 Belgium 165 Montenegro 154 Latvia 134 Ukraine 133 Georgia 129 Kyrgyzstan 128 France 126 Estonia 124 Netherlands 117 Switzerland 108 Austria 105 Sweden 102 Germany 63 Malta 51 Luxembourg 50 Greece 38 Finland 18 Denmark -1
So the UK is about middle of the pack, despite being on of the densest nations on the planet. Which means in my opinion the UK has done better than you'd expect all else being equal. Certainly without cherry picking exceptions like Germany, it seems the UK has not done worse or led to a "very high" death rate.
Certainly there's no reason we couldn't have been towards the top of that list with a death rate roughly twice what we have got if we really had done "catastrophically" and without vaccines I imagine that would have been very plausible.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
The tables have turned since the 19th century. We now allow China to buy up and modernise our infrastructure, and are reliant on Chinese capital and investment.
My issue with China, apart from the way it treats its own people, is that it advances the authoritarian, anti-democratic surveillance state as a model of development.
Ultimately, that’s a threat to our way of life, or perhaps our children’s way of life.
One of the best things Britain can do, in my opinion, is better uphold democracy, liberty and the rule of law in *this* country, thereby acting as an example to others.
We did this quite well for a hundred years or so.
Fun fact, I was taught by someone later outed as a Chinese spy at University.
Fat chance when we've got Sunak wanting a more "nuanced" relationship with China, "nuanced" meaning "we promise we won't ever criticise you".
We do have to live with China somehow. We can’t wish it away. Therefore, I’m reserving judgment on Sunak’s comments.
I don’t even especially think it necessary for the govt to “criticise” China, but I do want it to promote our values, and protect our strategic industries and technologies.
There is a difference between living with a country and bending over and holding our ankles.
Making pacts with the devil is never a good idea. And yes I do believe China under the current regime is a devil. It is a threat to freedom and liberty and democracy. The more we depend on it, the more that will threaten our freedom, liberty and democracy.
Except that the move is now (albeit slight so far) away from dependence. The recent sharp spike in transport costs, and the massive delays in getting some types of goods out of China, have opened quite a few peoples eyes, irrespective of any human rights objections. Sunak and the government will be judged by their deeds rather than his words; I don't have any great confidence in them either, but we'll see.
I hope so.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
I forget where I read it, but I found somewhere a suggestion ..... from someone who thought about these things ..... that today's Chinese leaders may describe themselves as Communists, but they are in fact in the long tradition of Emperors, and that they, perhaps subconsciously, believe that the Han are the superior group in humanity, and that everyone else should try to become Han, or to be made Han.
For their own good!
That's not saying that I disagree with Ms Cyclefree, that we should be very, very cautious in our dealing with the Chinese Government. I'm say that we ought to be very careful in our dealing with any Chinese Government, and that caution should take into account the fact that while the current Government may be Communist, it's still Chinese, and remembers the indignities heaped upon the country by 19th & early 20th Century Westerners.
And a somewhat belated Good Morning everyone!
Morning! Just reading a history of the siege of the German base in Tsingtao (as it was called then) by the Japanese in WW1. The Germans just rocked up in the 1890s and said 'we'll have our base here, thank you very much' - in the ensuing disputes, they paid serious attention only to the other Western (incl Russia) governments.
Which reminds me, the Japanese also were honorary Westerners. Which puts an interesting light, from the Chine3se point of view, on the current discussions in Japan over whether to deal with the Taiwan issue by allying with the USA.
Most people do forget - or never knew - that the Japanese were our allies in WW1. I have a fascinating account by a soldier of the machine gun corps crossing the Mediterranean from Marseille to Egypt in 1918 and their ship being protected by a couple of Japanese destroyers hunting for Austro-Hungarian submarines.
Every now and then, you meet idiots who try and tell you that the Japanese atrocities in WWII were due to their "culture" and therefore somehow excusable. Such as mis-treating prisoners.
In the Russo-Japanese war and WWI, the Japanese military behaved extremely well, according to the various conventions. In fact their punctilious observance of the laws of war was considered a sign by many observers of their "civilised" status.
They treated German prisoners so well in WWI that a very large percentage opted to stay in Japan after the war was over.
So, if you meet such fools, tell them the above. Then introduce them to some Koreans and leave.....
At the risk of sounding a bit Sheldon Cooperish, Professor Reicher is a psychologist. Why is he sounding off about long Covid? Mission-creep seems an occupational hazard for some experts in other fields.
I can see the scene now ... "Let me through, I've a degree in Expressive Dance.
Yes, we are well used to the media using rent-a-gob backbenchers as a way of apparently giving an insight into Govt policy. It is a very bad development of this pandemic that the media make no attempt to consider an individual’s area of expertise in their rent-a-hobby-scientist approach throughout the pandemic. Simply having an association with an “expert” committee (whether official or unofficial” is deemed sufficient.
It's a general fact of life that a backbencher only gets serious airtime if they're arguing with their party leadership. I took on Mandelson's Millennium Dome in the early days and the media were absolutely all over me - a dozen calls a day. At some point the Government compromised on how it would be funded (I forget the details) and I said that seemed more reasonable. Media enquiries stopped immediately.
LOL. If only our current MPs had such self awareness. Instead there is a group who seem deluded into thinking that what they think actually matters and become addicted to the TV interviews as a way of feeding their massive egos. They become a permanent awkward squad to make sure that they get the attention that they so obviously deserve, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are simply being used to cause controversy and problems for the government they purport to support.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
I doubt she loses much sleep over showing insufficient loyalty to friend Boris, what with all the 'controversy and problems' he caused her government, which he purported to support.
If TMay had still been PM far fewer would have died.
You think? Would she have been bold enough to give a blank cheque to the Covid vaccine group under Kate Bingham? Would she even have had the balls to appoint Bingham in the first place? I seriously doubt it.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
It could be argued that cancelling the football games would have played a considerable part in improving matters.
Certainly not allowing crowds at them. Aren't the English being completely irresponsible on insisting playing more and more games whilst the Scottish team did the decent thing? 😉 I fear even tonight will not be enough for them.
Great article in thr Athletic today about how negative nelly is driven by Steve Holland, whose approach to football was altered from free flowing attacking football to park the bus after working for Jose mourinho at Chelsea.
So if England do go on to win the Euros we can all thank the chosen one.....
Comments
Both government and scientists have told the select committees they regret not publicising SAGE advice earlier and that they should have been more open and transparent. Yet the lags and delays in publishing SAGE are increasing, what the hell is going on?
Those rightly criticising indie SAGE, should also criticise whichever of the govt/SAGE (and I can guess which it is) are delaying publications for many months, which creates the void for indie SAGE to get far more coverage than it deserves.
This is the kind of theory that I tend to, on this. Interesting and plausible enough that investigation should look at it...
Some different stats from the US...
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/561675-maryland-says-100-percent-of-covid-19-deaths-last-month-were-among
...All COVID-19 deaths in Maryland last month were among unvaccinated people, the state said on Tuesday.
“June 2021 data: 100% of COVID-19 deaths in Maryland occurred in people who were unvaccinated,” tweeted Michael Ricci, communications director for Gov. Larry Hogan (R).
Ricci also said that 95 percent of new COVID-19 cases were in unvaccinated people and 93 percent of new coronavirus hospitalizations consisted of individuals who have not received the vaccine...
Also possible she was on hols for some time but if she was I didn't notice (not paying much attention to TV anyway).
The latter people will come across other people in the latter group, and think everyone is doing the same as them.
We can see from things like the mobility data that purple don't immediately take advantage of a formal lifting of restrictions, nor do they necessarily wait for one. It's all a lot more messy.
Not content with persecuting Uighurs in China, it is now going after Uighurs who have managed to escape abroad.
China is IMO an evil regime and we should sup with them with a very long spoon indeed, if we have to sup with them at all.
I remember chatting with a colleague when Covid began in February 2020. We were both on the surface similar types of person, both doing the same job, both somewhat extrovert, voted the same way in the referendum etc. But she was already stocked up and ready for lockdown. I was instinctively (too) relaxed. The herd immunity idea appealed, even if in my head I knew it was probably very damaging. "Let nature take its course".
In the workplace some people I know have 100 day plans, make lists, have a laser focus on the next goal. I have always been opportunistic, see how things pan out. Then when it comes to
This divide haunts us everywhere. Some other examples: is it good to let children try and fail and make their own mistakes, or do we need to protect them from themselves? is the answer to antibiotic resistance to develop better and novel antibiotics or scale down their use and allow the ecosystem to balance? In a financial crisis do you intervene heavily, with the big bazooka, or is there merit in allowing some creative destruction? Is a bit of dirt a day and not being overly hygienic in the house a good way to avoid allergies? And so on.
Its not really a left right thing and I don't even think it's an authoritarian vs libertarian thing although there may be some of that. I do think it's driving a lot of the visceral reaction to the 19th July, one way or the other.
Mrs May is showing alarming tendencies in this direction and she really should know better.
Can’t really say beyond that but if there’s a decent scientific rationale it can’t hurt to find and run a trial
The times has spun this story way beyond the substance though
We aspire to be a one nation government, serving the whole of the UK. It is therefore right that our work from central government continues to reflect that.
Devolution to Cardiff, Holyrood or Stormont should not mean stripping those councils and communities of their direct relationships to the UK Government.
Another focus for my department over the course of this year will be re-establishing those bonds, seeing it’s mission as levelling-up Swansea as much as Southport or Southampton. I look forward to establishing these strong partnerships across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, including with your partner organisations in those nations.
MHCLG has seen itself for too long as an England only department. We are one United Kingdom and MHCLG should aspire to represent and support communities in all parts of the UK
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/local-government-association-annual-conference-2021-secretary-of-states-speech
12 weeks seems quite long to me btw, but I agree it's not the "this seems to go on forever" effect that one tends to think of from the term.
However now the total vacs are rather higher than in England with the discrepancy growing with time. Though one should not take that minor differential too seriously as it is so sensitive to the divisor figure of total vaccinable population.
I don't think anyone on PB ever worked out BTW (or I didn't see it) how Wales managed to develop such a systematic invrement over both when presmably having a similar ration of drug per capita.
Latest @ONS estimates:
England - 89.8% (was 86.6%)
Wales - 91.8% (was 88.7%)
Scotland - 84.7% (was 79.1%)
N. Ireland - 87.2% (was 85.4%)
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1412692724604669952?s=20
Biggest jump in Scotland (+5.6% vs England +3.2%, Wales +3.1, NI +1.8%) and still lowest overall.
"Sorry," he said. "I hope to play again soon, but you know what viruses can be like, they can drag on a bit."
They do sometimes, don't they?
On topic it seems like Whitty is getting misquoted and as for Stephen Reicher if we never here from him again it will be too soon. He's an "Independent SAGE" zero covid zealot so lifting lockdown being criticised by him is not news.
The Independent SAGE zealots don't represent all scientists.
It's down to England's progress in the football....
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7027e2-H.pdf
And they now have quite a bit of real world data from that cohort, with around 9m vaccinated.
Higher interest rates - yes as a medium term challenge if they don't get a bit of a grip on new borrowing.
Levelling up. We don't know yet. There is scope for strategic levelling, but only tactical done so far.
On climate change we are on target for the -55% enhanced C02 EU 2030 target by 2023. That really should be a huge competitive advantage in many sectors.
There was a really interesting programme on BBc radio recently. Really interesting and recommended about meeting the more general 50%-by-2030 target in many countries, challenges etc. But the BBC totally failed to mention that we met that last year.
I think a further challenge is that the current govt are not up to managing the UK economic interest in a post-Brexit world. Tigger in a Wig won't hack that. They need to get to grips with being more UK-centric. What happened to Cobham questions that.
I wonder if Morrisons will be a canary-in-the-coalmine in the Red Wall? Northern-focused supermarket with a vertically integrated straightforward supply chain, and a decent focus on customers. Sounds like a possible poster-child for the new ideas about food supply. What will the Red Wall say if asset-strippers get it?
A lot depends on definition. Mrs Foxy still has a degree of anosmia after 8 months, and that is not very unusual. Hard to know about sleep disturbance, too many years working nights...
Though there's little new there, communism has always been as bad as fascism though we tend to pay less attention to the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. It wouldn't surprise me if years from now Xi is added to that list too.
How people in this day and age can self-identify as communists and not immediately be treated with the same contempt as fascists is beyond me. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
I also think that the current mess in Scotland demonstrates once again that more lockdowns both in time and extent simply aren't the answer. They may defer some deaths, they don't prevent them.
And if I do have to go to a shop I will wear a mask out of courtesy to others. Though I imagine going to Tesco when the football is on will be the best time as I will be the only one there.
Laters.
She was very naturally an authoritarian and even used the word libertarian as an insult in a party conference speech. If we're giving draconian authoritarian tools to the state the last person I trust to be in charge of that is someone who is naturally an authoritarian and has always wanted those tools but couldn't get away with it.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/events-research-programme-phase-i-findings/events-research-programme-phase-i-findings#findings
He’s intellectually incurious, and his fascination with Ayn Rand is embarassing.
There are arguments for supplying AZ to younger people to ease the supply pinch but those are separate arguments with ethical and vaccine confidence issues.
Per the header, I don't think the UK government is so much opposing scientists as giving up. Governments, also including Scotland, are exhausted, out of ideas and out of money. Herd Immunity isn't a policy. It's happening be default, because there is no policy.
Ultimately, the aim is to abolish a separate culture. Tibet will cease (and is a long way towards ceasing) to be anything other than a name. The Uighur will follow....
As long as the tree is in the "right" direction - culture, religion and language getting less each year - the Chinese government will probably not escalate their measures.
WTF? Are we now saying that 19 July won’t go ahead? I mean this is just utterly ridiculous now.
You might be right, but it would have been on the back of her authoritarian personality betrayed as Home Secretary meaning she would have gone for the Chinese "weld them into their homes" style lockdown.
She was also more likely to be swayed by the zero Covid cabal.
Let’s get it done.
England 79.0% to 81.6% change on previous week +2.4 to +2.9%
Wales 87.9% to 88.7% +1.3% to +0.9%
Scotland 79.6% to 82.3% +2.8% to + 3.0%
N Ireland 76.8% to 78.5% +1.6% to +1.9%
Which would suggest about 40% have acquired immunity in England but only about 15% in Scotland. Which helps explain why Scotland has been hit harder than England by Delta and why in London its only had a marginal effect despite the lower levels of vaccination.
Northern Ireland looks to have anti-bodies than vaccination and previous infection would suggest.
For their own good!
That's not saying that I disagree with Ms Cyclefree, that we should be very, very cautious in our dealing with the Chinese Government. I'm say that we ought to be very careful in our dealing with any Chinese Government, and that caution should take into account the fact that while the current Government may be Communist, it's still Chinese, and remembers the indignities heaped upon the country by 19th & early 20th Century Westerners.
And a somewhat belated Good Morning everyone!
Lockdowns save lives in 2 ways: 1) avoid risk of exceeding NHS capacity 2) delay infections until after vaccination (this is the big one).
We would not tolerate an avowed Fascist in SAGE; I see no reason why a communist should get a pass
Which reminds me, the Japanese also were honorary Westerners. Which puts an interesting light, from the Chine3se point of view, on the current discussions in Japan over whether to deal with the Taiwan issue by allying with the USA.
One problem with devolution (and the Sewell convention) is that the U.K. government has effectively exited the scene across key aspects of domestic policy in the devolved nations.
We see this most clearly in our pandemic response. It is downright weird to have the Scottish First Minister ban travel to Manchester, for starters.
There are certain limited aspects where the national government is best-placed to operate. And; a wider levelling up policy is not actually possible without a U.K. government using spending levers across the entire union, beyond just social welfare.
Having said this, it’s not entirely clear what Jenrick intends to do in practice.
I suspect their reasons lie elsewhere.
That can be via murder but preventing births and forceably relocating children from one group to another in order to destroy the former is another example of genocide.
Which suggests they are using an unrepresentative sample and that my calculations previously need changing.
Those unvaccinated people will remain prime spreaders of the disease. Combined with school children and a residual infectivity amongst those who have had the 2nd jab, that remaining vulnerability will be enough to allow evolving highly infectious variants to spread. Let's just pray that in this virulence of 100,000 daily cases a future mutation doesn't erode the shield that vaccines are providing to the rest of us.
What is going to stop the virus now isn't social distancing which has already been effectively abandoned by the population, but getting vaccination rates up to a level that accelerates herd immunity before the virus has a chance to further mutate.
The Government missed a trick by its wholesale abandonment of measures to contain the virus. There is plenty more that could have instead been done, short of compulsion, to make the irresponsible minority face up to a real choice if they persist with their actions. The announcement that those with double jabs will no longer have to self isolate from August is welcome, but I doubt its effectiveness alone. It is a leap of unwarranted faith to assume that committed anti-vaxxers will even have the NHS app installed let alone turned on.
There are numerous sticks that could make life difficult for those who continue to refuse to be vaccinated, sufficiently so to start changing their behaviour and get double jab rates beyond 90%. Things like:
- Announcing now a long term policy that only the double jabbed will be able to avoid taking a Covid test and potentially isolating for 10 days on return from abroad. Why the wait?
- Only allowing football clubs to operate at full capacity if they bring in measures to deactivate new season tickets unless the holder has had 2 jabs by September for most people and say October for 18 year olds.
- From the new school year in September, continuing to send school children home in the case of a Covid outbreak unless all adults in their household have had double jabs.
- Allowing employers generally to discriminate in recruitment to require if they wish proof of double jabs before offering a job, so as to protect the rest of their staff.
etc, etc
Yes, there's a price for exercising a choice to fail to play by the rules, when that choice has implications for others.
Maybe TMay would have locked down earlier and harder. Maybe the upshot of that would have been the the winter wave would have hit us harder, when the NHS was under more strain.
Maybe different decisions would have made different variants emerge at different times.
If only that butterfly had not flapped its wings, everything would have been ok.
And as I've said previously, lockdown kills people too.
Even retrospectively, it's impossible to say that any given decision would have led to a better outcome.
https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1412694415555149828?s=19
https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1412698881616457730?s=19
"Birthrates in Xinjiang fell by almost half in the two years after the Chinese government implemented policies to reduce the number of babies born to Uyghur and other Muslim minority families, new research has claimed.
"The figures show unprecedented declines which were more extreme than any global region at any time in the 71 years of UN fertility data collection, including during genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, according to the authors of the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi)."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/chinese-uyghur-policy-causes-unprecedented-fall-in-xinjiang-birthrates
This is an attempt to destroy a race, and erase their culture. If it isn't technically "genocide" because they aren't actually gassing them, then we need a new word which sums up the full horror
I told him, “no it won’t work like that. First Kim has to shut the concentration camps”. He laughed and said “why do you think your governments care about that?”.
Left hanging in the air was our collective willingness to prostrate ourselves in front of Xi, while he busily rounds up millions in concentration camps on an ethnoreligious pretext.
It is interesting spending time with Chinese communists, as I have with quite a few. Teaches you as much about your own society than theirs really. Philip is right, that there are quite spooky parallels to 1930s Germany on this subject. An antagonist against everything we stand for and yet most sit in wonder at their ability to “get things done”.
Is there data on how many children have antibodies? My finger in the air estimate is about 20%.
There's Germany (if you fully trust their data) and ...
When I look at the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc, and I look at the definition of Communism, do I accept their claims to be leaders of Communist countries? No I do not. There is no meaningful way in which China can be described as Communist, except self-ID. But then you'd also have to accept North Korea as democratic.
'Serious' is beside the point.
What about comparing U.K. with its near, and similarly dense, neighbours?
Communism requires central control and central control leads to abuses like this. It is most definitely cause and effect.
There is no "good" form of communism.
China is amongst the most egregious at the moment in the world.
This is the future of the nation, and the world, we cannot let humanity be jailed forever because some morons believe Bill Gates puts microchips in your nipple
Clearly, those with medical exemptions would be exempt
But what’s your suggestion?
End all trade with China?
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/terrifying-japan-used-biological-weapons-china-during-world-war-ii-51052
Plus the USA letting off Unit 731 from war crimes prosecution in exchange for getting the research.
All needs to be considered in dealing with China. Democracies' hands cannot be claimed to be clean, even when the current cause is right.
https://health.org.uk/publications/long-reads/comparing-g7-countries-are-excess-deaths-an-objective-measure-of-pandemic-performance
Should add excess deaths are poorly correlated with population density, as you point out for the USA. Policy is a much bigger determinant.
Incidentally the government is gradually introducing discrimination in favour of the double jabbed - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57743038
But at some level —- we deeply fucked up.
Down here on the south coast the weather is awful. My wife has just got out her winter clothes. Few people are venturing out to socialise, and the beer gardens are empty. It's been like this for most of the "summer". Miserable: the opposite of last year.
The second point is indeed the important one but the reality is we would have had the second wave under lockdown just as we are now having a third under lockdown. Would the second wave have been smaller? Maybe. But not if our vaccination program had been 3-4 months behind where it might have been under May.
I think that there are pluses and minuses to Boris's rather more cavalier approach to governance but I do not think that the evidence we would have done better under "roundhead" May is compelling, indeed, I think on balance we would probably have done worse overall.
There have been numerous models that have been far too pessimistic.
As for the term Long Covid it is meaningless on its own as it covers a huge variety of conditions and adverse reactions to Covid.
The govt are generally right. We have to live with Covid. It is not going away. The area where I think they are wrong is on masks.
Actually, last summer was pretty mediocre. Your memories are probably coloured by the extraordinarily dry, warm and sunny spell in spring, which continued into June. But then stopped.
This does look like quite a traditional shit British summer, however. I doubt if we will hit 30C again now
Naturally HMG don't want their great vaccine triumph to be tarnished by later failures, so they will be desperate for people not to think that teenagers are not being vaccinated because they didn't order enough vaccine doses. We risk encouraging anti-vaxxery to protect HMG from its mistake.
The sort of thing an Opposition should be picking up.
No doubt there are other genuine 'haven't done so but will do soon' cases, though I'm not sure what category beside pregnancy those people would fit into. (I reckon probably in the region of 0.25 - 0.5 million adults fall into the 'pregnancy' category so that is getting on for another 1% of adults right there.)
So there is at least a dribble of adults still to go.
I may have made all of that up.
Who cares if the Groaniad or the BBC run a thousand hard luck stories, the vast majority of people have done their duty and been jabbed, and they want life to resume if possible, as a result. If this is stopped by vaccine refuseniks, I predict sympathy will be severely limited. Indeed, I bet a fair chunk of the nation would argue for mandatory vaccination
If true (and I have remembered correctly), then it's clear that Covid, or its effects, can be really bad.
Note that many of these countries only have figures up to date for months ago, so some miss the second or third waves.
Bulgaria 433
Russia 338
Serbia 320
Lithuania 319
North Macedonia 319
Czech Republic 300
Slovakia 270
Poland 264
Bosnia and Herzegovnia 245
Romania 236
Moldova 231
Hungary 228
Albania 206
Portugal 203
Kosovo 200
Italy 197
Slovenia 185
Britain 180
Croatia 176
Spain 170
Belgium 165
Montenegro 154
Latvia 134
Ukraine 133
Georgia 129
Kyrgyzstan 128
France 126
Estonia 124
Netherlands 117
Switzerland 108
Austria 105
Sweden 102
Germany 63
Malta 51
Luxembourg 50
Greece 38
Finland 18
Denmark -1
So the UK is about middle of the pack, despite being on of the densest nations on the planet. Which means in my opinion the UK has done better than you'd expect all else being equal. Certainly without cherry picking exceptions like Germany, it seems the UK has not done worse or led to a "very high" death rate.
Certainly there's no reason we couldn't have been towards the top of that list with a death rate roughly twice what we have got if we really had done "catastrophically" and without vaccines I imagine that would have been very plausible.
In the Russo-Japanese war and WWI, the Japanese military behaved extremely well, according to the various conventions. In fact their punctilious observance of the laws of war was considered a sign by many observers of their "civilised" status.
They treated German prisoners so well in WWI that a very large percentage opted to stay in Japan after the war was over.
So, if you meet such fools, tell them the above. Then introduce them to some Koreans and leave.....
So if England do go on to win the Euros we can all thank the chosen one.....