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.
And the beer (Tsingtao) remains, founded by German brewers. I think there’s an argument to be made that brewing was Germany’s great gift to the world, though sadly many of the brands like Tsingtao have abandoned the Reinheitsgebot brewing purity laws.
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
My takeaway from Philip's figures is that East Europe has had a nightmare. They also have poor vaccination rates. The UK has had one of the worst death rates of the rest.
About a year ago, everyone was talking about how great the Eastern European countries were doing and bemoaning how much worse run the UK was than them. Then they got hit badly by the second wave and suddenly everyone shut up about them. Moral: stop making up narratives purely to fit the facts if you don't really understand the mechanics of why some countries have done better than others. It's complicated, and lots of the factors (% diabetics, age profile, % immunocompromised etc) were out of politician's control.
You make a good point. In my case, I was very impressed by Slovakia and Greece in particular during the first wave. Now Slovakia has gone very bad, while Greece has maintained its good record. If we can hopefully say the music has more or less stopped with vaccinations, which countries can we call out for having managed their Covid interventions well?
Apart from Greece, I would pick out Denmark, Germany and South Korea, probably.
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
And you have to admire Denmark. I'm sure that it's a statistical fluke that their Covid deaths net out with the lives saved by being careful, and Scandi countries have geographical benefits, but it's a helluva score.
I have a horrible gnawing fear we'll all be saying "you have to admire Denmark" tomorrow morning.
Take the 3.65 on Denmark to qualify then.
I've had some of that as insurance.
Exactly, I am either £265 better off or £100 worse off and England have made a major final
To be fair on Keir (and I rarely am!) he has a long and well documented history of being a football fan and player, including attending England games, well before being an MP.
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.
Why the Japanese changed sides is also fascinating. According to an Australian expert (at least, that was how he was introduced) at the River Kwai in Thailand post WWI the USA didn't want the British 'interfering' in North Pacific affairs.
No, that's not what happened.
In the aftermath of WWI, the idea was to remove all the things that had caused WWI. Or rather, the things that people thought had caused WWI
So treaties on the limitation of armaments, and the ending of various military pacts.
The idea was that the UK/Japanese alliance could conceivably threaten the US in the Pacific. Without the alliance, no one power could really threaten the other, providing the naval treaties were held to.
The Japanese government was taken over, starting in the 20s, by ever more extreme and Fascist elements, who regarded anything other than more battleships than everyone else on the planet, plus conquering China plus plus as evil and weak.
The idea that the British and Americans had done the dirty on them was their version of the "stab in the back" myth. The reality was that japan thing to conquer China was a farcical idea. But reality wasn't their strong suit.
In fact, the naval treaties and arms limitation worked in Japans favour. They never had even a fraction of the industrial capability required to build the insane fleet the militarists wanted.
Once the treaties were ditched and the Americans started building ships at economic capacity (not even max'd out!) this was spelled out.
Thanks for that. One of these days I'm going to have a read round the subject. I was on a train trip from Bangkok to Singapore and one of the 'attractions' was a stop at Kanchanaburi, a trip on the river, and a lecture, as I said, from someone whom we were told was an Australian academic working with the Museum.
The thing to understand is that, even by the standards of fascism, the Japanese militarists were demented fuckwits.
Read the Hagakure - a homage to the joy joy of The Samurai, written by a fanatic, long after the real Samurai age had ended. The Japanese fascists loved it.....
Beautiful failure is better than the wrong kind of success is the message. Oh, and long live death!
Read it and you can really understand Banzai charges......
Much obliged. The fact that some of them seriously thought about fighting on after Nagasaki says something about them.
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.
There is no "good" form of communism.
Communism is about having local democratic control of the economy, as opposed to the economic dictatorship of capitalist owners. It is more democracy.
The self-ID Communist countries all had much less democracy. Not more. Cannot then be Communist by any definition of Communism that I recognise.
Communism is about "the dictatorship of the proletariat" not democracy and that is what the Communist countries have all had, by defining themselves as the proletariat.
Because the reality is that democracy and communism are mutually incompatible because when people have the right to vote and choose for themselves they don't choose communism so the only way for communism to actually work is to do what Marx and Engels called for which is to take and keep power by force.
It is true that a mixed economy can easily exist in a capitalist structure, but cannot in a communist structure.
Communism is very much an all or nothing it seems, and the moment cracks appear, it breaks down. Hence the need for authoritarian control.
Beautiful. I am a Labour supporter and Scottish to boot but this doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I might put up our England bunting for the game tonight.
Now the symbol of deep woke, cultural Marxism innit? That’s something all we lefties can take a knee to.
Haiti's President Jovenel Moïse has been killed in an attack on his private residence, according to a statement by interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph.
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
My takeaway from Philip's figures is that East Europe has had a nightmare. They also have poor vaccination rates. The UK has had one of the worst death rates of the rest.
Of the densely populated nations we've done better than Italy and Portugal, and comparable to Belgium and Spain who will finish at or around our figures.
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.
There is no "good" form of communism.
Communism is about having local democratic control of the economy, as opposed to the economic dictatorship of capitalist owners. It is more democracy.
The self-ID Communist countries all had much less democracy. Not more. Cannot then be Communist by any definition of Communism that I recognise.
Communism is about "the dictatorship of the proletariat" not democracy and that is what the Communist countries have all had, by defining themselves as the proletariat.
Because the reality is that democracy and communism are mutually incompatible because when people have the right to vote and choose for themselves they don't choose communism so the only way for communism to actually work is to do what Marx and Engels called for which is to take and keep power by force.
It is true that a mixed economy can easily exist in a capitalist structure, but cannot in a communist structure.
Communism is very much an all or nothing it seems, and the moment cracks appear, it breaks down. Hence the need for authoritarian control.
And LostPassword is very wrong that Marx and Engels literally called for authoritarian control.
Quite simply communism is evil and authoritarian and it doesn't work. Its not that communist countries weren't communist enough.
To be fair on Keir (and I rarely am!) he has a long and well documented history of being a football fan and player, including attending England games, well before being an MP.
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
My takeaway from Philip's figures is that East Europe has had a nightmare. They also have poor vaccination rates. The UK has had one of the worst death rates of the rest.
Of the densely populated nations we've done better than Italy and Portugal, and comparable to Belgium and Spain who will finish at or around our figures.
Germany are the exception not the norm.
There is little correlation in those figures between population density and excess deaths. Denmark is the most egregious example. Netherlands also. You are cherry picking your figures.
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.
There is no "good" form of communism.
Communism is about having local democratic control of the economy, as opposed to the economic dictatorship of capitalist owners. It is more democracy.
The self-ID Communist countries all had much less democracy. Not more. Cannot then be Communist by any definition of Communism that I recognise.
Communism is about "the dictatorship of the proletariat" not democracy and that is what the Communist countries have all had, by defining themselves as the proletariat.
Because the reality is that democracy and communism are mutually incompatible because when people have the right to vote and choose for themselves they don't choose communism so the only way for communism to actually work is to do what Marx and Engels called for which is to take and keep power by force.
Marx thought that some societies, Britain in particular, could bring about communism by wholly democratic and parliamentary means.
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.
They will not have the option after tonight
I think that England will win tonight. Beating the Italian side we saw last night, certainly in the first 90 minutes, is an entirely different proposition.
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.
Why the Japanese changed sides is also fascinating. According to an Australian expert (at least, that was how he was introduced) at the River Kwai in Thailand post WWI the USA didn't want the British 'interfering' in North Pacific affairs.
No, that's not what happened.
In the aftermath of WWI, the idea was to remove all the things that had caused WWI. Or rather, the things that people thought had caused WWI
So treaties on the limitation of armaments, and the ending of various military pacts.
The idea was that the UK/Japanese alliance could conceivably threaten the US in the Pacific. Without the alliance, no one power could really threaten the other, providing the naval treaties were held to.
The Japanese government was taken over, starting in the 20s, by ever more extreme and Fascist elements, who regarded anything other than more battleships than everyone else on the planet, plus conquering China plus plus as evil and weak.
The idea that the British and Americans had done the dirty on them was their version of the "stab in the back" myth. The reality was that japan thing to conquer China was a farcical idea. But reality wasn't their strong suit.
In fact, the naval treaties and arms limitation worked in Japans favour. They never had even a fraction of the industrial capability required to build the insane fleet the militarists wanted.
Once the treaties were ditched and the Americans started building ships at economic capacity (not even max'd out!) this was spelled out.
Thanks for that. One of these days I'm going to have a read round the subject. I was on a train trip from Bangkok to Singapore and one of the 'attractions' was a stop at Kanchanaburi, a trip on the river, and a lecture, as I said, from someone whom we were told was an Australian academic working with the Museum.
The thing to understand is that, even by the standards of fascism, the Japanese militarists were demented fuckwits.
Read the Hagakure - a homage to the joy joy of The Samurai, written by a fanatic, long after the real Samurai age had ended. The Japanese fascists loved it.....
Beautiful failure is better than the wrong kind of success is the message. Oh, and long live death!
Read it and you can really understand Banzai charges......
Much obliged. The fact that some of them seriously thought about fighting on after Nagasaki says something about them.
It wasn't just Nagasaki.
At the famous war council which ended the war, they were faced with the following
- The Americans had sunk basically the entire Japanese Navy - They had also sunk pretty much all the merchant ships - If fact the Americans had stopped building submarines - there was nothing for them to do - American bombers were running out of cities to burn down. - Due to the vast majority of fighting age Japanese males being overseas, the harvest was failing. This meant famine in the 1945 winter - The Russians had invaded through Manchuria and were advancing like a chainsaw through cheese. - The Americans had invented a way (the Bomb) for one aircraft to do the job of 500. - The Americans and allies were due to invade within months.
The considered view of half the war cabinet was that the above meant that they should arm the entire Japanese population with sharpened bamboo and attack the Americans when they invaded (yes, really)
Because it was better for everyone in Japan to die than be defeated.
To be fair on Keir (and I rarely am!) he has a long and well documented history of being a football fan and player, including attending England games, well before being an MP.
A good reason not to vote for him, then.
Why?
Because a proper toff, born to rule, plays/watches Rugby (Union)?
Andy Burnham probably likes Rugby League. The horror!
I have great sympathy with HMG and Boris who are making the most tortuous decision of any PM since the war
I am not going to play partisan politics as I think the decision either way is so difficult and as Boris has made it, despite the isolation of covid contacts until the 16th August, then I just hope that this is the right decision but only time will tell
Of course vaccinations will not stop on the 18th July and I do believe this process has to be at the heart of our endeavours while we also have to accept that many will catch covid, albeit it at lower hospitalisation and death rates
Our son marries two weeks on Saturday and we have as a family made the decision to go into effective lockdown until the Saturday and in our own bubbles
His partner has held here 'Hen' night and my son is not having a stag do
I do believe that the public's behaviour will be one of great caution and it will be interesting to see the behavioural changes as we advance into the Autumn
I've not been following the pandemic in any sort of detail. Just listening to the news and government spokespeople. While our vaccine program was purring like a Ferrari Europe's were limping along like a Lada Riva with a puncture. Tory poster's on here have been crowing about our ingenuity and delighting in our good fortune at being-dare I say it-BRITISH!
1. FIRST in Europe for total number of cases. 2. FIRST in Europe for total number of deaths. 3. FIRST in Europe for total of NEW cases. 4. FIRST in Europe for total number of NEW deaths.
Roger, this is just total nonsense. 1. France and Russia have both had more cases 2. Russia has more deaths, on a per million analysis there are a host of countries ahead of us. 3. Russia has more new cases. And we do massively more testing than anyone else. 4. Total rubbish. In the last 7 days Italy, Germany and France (as well as Russia) have all had more deaths than us.
Why do you write this stuff?
Does the UK do *massively* more testing than *anyone* else?
I can't find national figures but Berlin (4.3% of population) has a capacity of 4.7 million antigen tests a week, and press reports are complaining that there has been a massive drop in tests carried out to just 700000 last week in Berlin - because people no longer need a current test to do things like eat inside a restaurant etc (because the incidence rate is so low). But back of the envelope calculation suggests that even this much reduced testing is much *more* testing than in the UK. But the myth of the UK doing massively more tests than anyone else refuses to die no matter how often debunked.
The key takeaway here is that German establishments have required a lateral flow test before entry, whereas their UK equivalents haven't in general. Which makes for a much more effective testing regime than one where tests are available but optional
Yes, that was true, but falling case numbers (current national 7 day incidence of 5.1 per 100000) mean a lot of those test requirements have been dropped so people have less reason to be tested. There are still a few things you need either a test or proof of being fully vaccinated to do, but a lot less than in previous months - until recently (depending on where you are in Germany) you needed a test from that day to eat inside in a restaurant or go to a non-essential shop or lots of other fairly everyday things, but now you don't. So numbers getting tested are bound to fall, at a point when it would probably be useful if they didn't...
But I imagine the total number of tests done in Germany is more than in the UK because of the enormous amount of antigen testing that has been happening, but I haven't found official figures.
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.
They will not have the option after tonight
I think that England will win tonight. Beating the Italian side we saw last night, certainly in the first 90 minutes, is an entirely different proposition.
Apparently Southgate is concerned about Denmark, such that he might go more defensive again, possibly 3 holding midfielders. My fear is England don't create and we end up with penalties or that they finally concede and then switching from deliberately slow defensive approach to having to up the tempo / attacking footballer is hard.
I've not been following the pandemic in any sort of detail. Just listening to the news and government spokespeople. While our vaccine program was purring like a Ferrari Europe's were limping along like a Lada Riva with a puncture. Tory poster's on here have been crowing about our ingenuity and delighting in our good fortune at being-dare I say it-BRITISH!
1. FIRST in Europe for total number of cases. 2. FIRST in Europe for total number of deaths. 3. FIRST in Europe for total of NEW cases. 4. FIRST in Europe for total number of NEW deaths.
Roger, this is just total nonsense. 1. France and Russia have both had more cases 2. Russia has more deaths, on a per million analysis there are a host of countries ahead of us. 3. Russia has more new cases. And we do massively more testing than anyone else. 4. Total rubbish. In the last 7 days Italy, Germany and France (as well as Russia) have all had more deaths than us.
Why do you write this stuff?
Does the UK do *massively* more testing than *anyone* else?
I can't find national figures but Berlin (4.3% of population) has a capacity of 4.7 million antigen tests a week, and press reports are complaining that there has been a massive drop in tests carried out to just 700000 last week in Berlin - because people no longer need a current test to do things like eat inside a restaurant etc (because the incidence rate is so low). But back of the envelope calculation suggests that even this much reduced testing is much *more* testing than in the UK. But the myth of the UK doing massively more tests than anyone else refuses to die no matter how often debunked.
Myth?
Why don't you try getting some national per capita data and comparing them? Because the data is out there.
Or if you're struggling to find Germany in amongst the other countries its mixed in with then try this head to head comparison.
Who's spreading myths?
You, as I have explained many times.
How many antigen tests have been done in Germany? Can you answer that question?
I've not been following the pandemic in any sort of detail. Just listening to the news and government spokespeople. While our vaccine program was purring like a Ferrari Europe's were limping along like a Lada Riva with a puncture. Tory poster's on here have been crowing about our ingenuity and delighting in our good fortune at being-dare I say it-BRITISH!
1. FIRST in Europe for total number of cases. 2. FIRST in Europe for total number of deaths. 3. FIRST in Europe for total of NEW cases. 4. FIRST in Europe for total number of NEW deaths.
Roger, this is just total nonsense. 1. France and Russia have both had more cases 2. Russia has more deaths, on a per million analysis there are a host of countries ahead of us. 3. Russia has more new cases. And we do massively more testing than anyone else. 4. Total rubbish. In the last 7 days Italy, Germany and France (as well as Russia) have all had more deaths than us.
Why do you write this stuff?
Does the UK do *massively* more testing than *anyone* else?
We squander lots of money on it , world beater at supposedly Test and Trace which is really just a Tory ponzi scheme for their chums
To be fair on Keir (and I rarely am!) he has a long and well documented history of being a football fan and player, including attending England games, well before being an MP.
A good reason not to vote for him, then.
Why?
Because a proper toff, born to rule, plays/watches Rugby (Union)?
Andy Burnham probably likes Rugby League. The horror!
Indeed. There's a lot of crass snobbery about football fans.
To be fair on Keir (and I rarely am!) he has a long and well documented history of being a football fan and player, including attending England games, well before being an MP.
A good reason not to vote for him, then.
Why?
It was a joke; backing up the silent majority who are not into football.
But as someone who is not a football or tennis fan, the current sports-fest is unutterably boring.
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
My takeaway from Philip's figures is that East Europe has had a nightmare. They also have poor vaccination rates. The UK has had one of the worst death rates of the rest.
Of the densely populated nations we've done better than Italy and Portugal, and comparable to Belgium and Spain who will finish at or around our figures.
Germany are the exception not the norm.
The thing to always remember is that the UK is world leading when it comes to counting.
Anyone who believes France's figures is deluded. Many more cases, currently 4 times as many people in hospital with Covid, was sometimes 10 times more, yet less deaths. Do they have a secret new treatment for Covid or are they not counting deaths properly?
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.
Why the Japanese changed sides is also fascinating. According to an Australian expert (at least, that was how he was introduced) at the River Kwai in Thailand post WWI the USA didn't want the British 'interfering' in North Pacific affairs.
No, that's not what happened.
In the aftermath of WWI, the idea was to remove all the things that had caused WWI. Or rather, the things that people thought had caused WWI
So treaties on the limitation of armaments, and the ending of various military pacts.
The idea was that the UK/Japanese alliance could conceivably threaten the US in the Pacific. Without the alliance, no one power could really threaten the other, providing the naval treaties were held to.
The Japanese government was taken over, starting in the 20s, by ever more extreme and Fascist elements, who regarded anything other than more battleships than everyone else on the planet, plus conquering China plus plus as evil and weak.
The idea that the British and Americans had done the dirty on them was their version of the "stab in the back" myth. The reality was that japan thing to conquer China was a farcical idea. But reality wasn't their strong suit.
In fact, the naval treaties and arms limitation worked in Japans favour. They never had even a fraction of the industrial capability required to build the insane fleet the militarists wanted.
Once the treaties were ditched and the Americans started building ships at economic capacity (not even max'd out!) this was spelled out.
Thanks for that. One of these days I'm going to have a read round the subject. I was on a train trip from Bangkok to Singapore and one of the 'attractions' was a stop at Kanchanaburi, a trip on the river, and a lecture, as I said, from someone whom we were told was an Australian academic working with the Museum.
The thing to understand is that, even by the standards of fascism, the Japanese militarists were demented fuckwits.
Read the Hagakure - a homage to the joy joy of The Samurai, written by a fanatic, long after the real Samurai age had ended. The Japanese fascists loved it.....
Beautiful failure is better than the wrong kind of success is the message. Oh, and long live death!
Read it and you can really understand Banzai charges......
Indeed.
The fall of the cherry blossom is one of the great elegiac symbols of Japanese culture.
This is what they gave the name of 'Cherry Blossom':a purpose-designed kamikaze rocket (or jet) missile:
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.
Why the Japanese changed sides is also fascinating. According to an Australian expert (at least, that was how he was introduced) at the River Kwai in Thailand post WWI the USA didn't want the British 'interfering' in North Pacific affairs.
No, that's not what happened.
In the aftermath of WWI, the idea was to remove all the things that had caused WWI. Or rather, the things that people thought had caused WWI
So treaties on the limitation of armaments, and the ending of various military pacts.
The idea was that the UK/Japanese alliance could conceivably threaten the US in the Pacific. Without the alliance, no one power could really threaten the other, providing the naval treaties were held to.
The Japanese government was taken over, starting in the 20s, by ever more extreme and Fascist elements, who regarded anything other than more battleships than everyone else on the planet, plus conquering China plus plus as evil and weak.
The idea that the British and Americans had done the dirty on them was their version of the "stab in the back" myth. The reality was that japan thing to conquer China was a farcical idea. But reality wasn't their strong suit.
In fact, the naval treaties and arms limitation worked in Japans favour. They never had even a fraction of the industrial capability required to build the insane fleet the militarists wanted.
Once the treaties were ditched and the Americans started building ships at economic capacity (not even max'd out!) this was spelled out.
Thanks for that. One of these days I'm going to have a read round the subject. I was on a train trip from Bangkok to Singapore and one of the 'attractions' was a stop at Kanchanaburi, a trip on the river, and a lecture, as I said, from someone whom we were told was an Australian academic working with the Museum.
The thing to understand is that, even by the standards of fascism, the Japanese militarists were demented fuckwits.
Read the Hagakure - a homage to the joy joy of The Samurai, written by a fanatic, long after the real Samurai age had ended. The Japanese fascists loved it.....
Beautiful failure is better than the wrong kind of success is the message. Oh, and long live death!
Read it and you can really understand Banzai charges......
Mishima’s commentary on Hagakure was about the only one of his books I managed to finish (it is short), though I did and still do find him a fascinating figure. Played quite a part in my dissertation on The Death Cult in Art.
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.
And the beer (Tsingtao) remains, founded by German brewers. I think there’s an argument to be made that brewing was Germany’s great gift to the world, though sadly many of the brands like Tsingtao have abandoned the Reinheitsgebot brewing purity laws.
Surely there was sufficient warning of trouble ahead after Commission-v-Germany in 1987 when the CJE ruled that "bier" could not be restricted to products containing barley, hops, yeast and water and absolutely nothing else. We should have paid more attention but we were too busy laughing about sausages. Too late now, of course.
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
*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.
‘north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines’
You seem to have settled in well 🙂
I quite liked Mr Simpson's colleague who complained about the fall in testing at Scottish schools over the period in question ...
Unbelievable the clown did not realise schools had closed two weeks previously. They really have top talent at Holyrood.
Beautiful. I am a Labour supporter and Scottish to boot but this doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I might put up our England bunting for the game tonight.
Although England are doing better than usual so far I was only thinking how few cars I've seen flying the flag. In previous tournaments every third or fourth car had one. I've only seen 2 in total so far this time. Same with houses, tiny fraction of the usual number. No idea if it's the same everywhere.
I think that England will win tonight. Beating the Italian side we saw last night, certainly in the first 90 minutes, is an entirely different proposition.
Apparently Southgate is concerned about Denmark, such that he might go more defensive again, possibly 3 holding midfielders. My fear is England don't create and we end up with penalties or that they finally concede and then switching from deliberately slow defensive approach to having to up the tempo / attacking footballer is hard.
Four at the back, 2 and a half holding midfielders is certainly one option, with Mount prepared to drop deep.
Surely even Mr Southgate won't play five at the back and do that. (It could still be Mount, in a more usual supporting-the-flanks role)
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
My takeaway from Philip's figures is that East Europe has had a nightmare. They also have poor vaccination rates. The UK has had one of the worst death rates of the rest.
Of the densely populated nations we've done better than Italy and Portugal, and comparable to Belgium and Spain who will finish at or around our figures.
Germany are the exception not the norm.
There is little correlation in those figures between population density and excess deaths. Denmark is the most egregious example. Netherlands also. You are cherry picking your figures.
Bullshit, there is an absolutely massive correlation between population density and excess deaths.
Even look at the UK's own data. The biggest single issue that explains Coronavirus excess deaths once you take into account age profile etc is population density.
Locations in the UK with lower levels of population density have had considerably lower 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.
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.
And the beer (Tsingtao) remains, founded by German brewers. I think there’s an argument to be made that brewing was Germany’s great gift to the world, though sadly many of the brands like Tsingtao have abandoned the Reinheitsgebot brewing purity laws.
Surely there was sufficient warning of trouble ahead after Commission-v-Germany in 1987 when the CJE ruled that "bier" could not be restricted to products containing barley, hops, yeast and water and absolutely nothing else. We should have paid more attention but we were too busy laughing about sausages. Too late now, of course.
Tbf German ‘purity laws’ was always going to be a hard sell.
I think that England will win tonight. Beating the Italian side we saw last night, certainly in the first 90 minutes, is an entirely different proposition.
Apparently Southgate is concerned about Denmark, such that he might go more defensive again, possibly 3 holding midfielders. My fear is England don't create and we end up with penalties or that they finally concede and then switching from deliberately slow defensive approach to having to up the tempo / attacking footballer is hard.
Four at the back, 2 and a half holding midfielders is certainly one option, with Mount prepared to drop deep.
Surely even Mr Southgate won't play five at the back and do that. (It could still be Mount, in a more usual supporting-the-flanks role)
The athletic bods were suggesting one possibility being considered is much more defensive with was no Mount, Henderson coming in, with the job of man marking Højbjerg.
So far this tournament they seem to have had the inside track throughout i.e. knowing the lineups / general tactics in advance.
They didn't say this was going to be the approach, just a possibility, because of concern over certain matchups.
*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.
‘north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines’
You seem to have settled in well 🙂
I quite liked Mr Simpson's colleague who complained about the fall in testing at Scottish schools over the period in question ...
Unbelievable the clown did not realise schools had closed two weeks previously. They really have top talent at Holyrood.
Given the current standards in Scottish schools, it probably doesn't make that much difference to the level of education being imparted.
I've not been following the pandemic in any sort of detail. Just listening to the news and government spokespeople. While our vaccine program was purring like a Ferrari Europe's were limping along like a Lada Riva with a puncture. Tory poster's on here have been crowing about our ingenuity and delighting in our good fortune at being-dare I say it-BRITISH!
1. FIRST in Europe for total number of cases. 2. FIRST in Europe for total number of deaths. 3. FIRST in Europe for total of NEW cases. 4. FIRST in Europe for total number of NEW deaths.
Roger, this is just total nonsense. 1. France and Russia have both had more cases 2. Russia has more deaths, on a per million analysis there are a host of countries ahead of us. 3. Russia has more new cases. And we do massively more testing than anyone else. 4. Total rubbish. In the last 7 days Italy, Germany and France (as well as Russia) have all had more deaths than us.
Why do you write this stuff?
Does the UK do *massively* more testing than *anyone* else?
In quantity yes. If you go on to worldometer and highlight the tests per million there are a number of European countries who do more tests per million but they are all small. Denmark and Austria are the arguable exceptions, the others being Cyprus, Gibraltar, Luxembourg. We have done 219m tests. France has done 95m, Italy 72m, Germany 63m. Its hardly surprising that we have more positive results than they do.
Once again, you are comparing UK pcr plus antigen with just pcr (at least as far as Germany is concerned).
That is how the Tories do it , they will be counting the lorry loads that went in the bin as well.
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
I've not been following the pandemic in any sort of detail. Just listening to the news and government spokespeople. While our vaccine program was purring like a Ferrari Europe's were limping along like a Lada Riva with a puncture. Tory poster's on here have been crowing about our ingenuity and delighting in our good fortune at being-dare I say it-BRITISH!
1. FIRST in Europe for total number of cases. 2. FIRST in Europe for total number of deaths. 3. FIRST in Europe for total of NEW cases. 4. FIRST in Europe for total number of NEW deaths.
Roger, this is just total nonsense. 1. France and Russia have both had more cases 2. Russia has more deaths, on a per million analysis there are a host of countries ahead of us. 3. Russia has more new cases. And we do massively more testing than anyone else. 4. Total rubbish. In the last 7 days Italy, Germany and France (as well as Russia) have all had more deaths than us.
Why do you write this stuff?
Does the UK do *massively* more testing than *anyone* else?
I can't find national figures but Berlin (4.3% of population) has a capacity of 4.7 million antigen tests a week, and press reports are complaining that there has been a massive drop in tests carried out to just 700000 last week in Berlin - because people no longer need a current test to do things like eat inside a restaurant etc (because the incidence rate is so low). But back of the envelope calculation suggests that even this much reduced testing is much *more* testing than in the UK. But the myth of the UK doing massively more tests than anyone else refuses to die no matter how often debunked.
Myth?
Why don't you try getting some national per capita data and comparing them? Because the data is out there.
Or if you're struggling to find Germany in amongst the other countries its mixed in with then try this head to head comparison.
Who's spreading myths?
You, as I have explained many times.
How many antigen tests have been done in Germany? Can you answer that question?
A tiny fraction of the amount the UK is doing quite clearly given the data!
The UK is doing about 14x the tests per capita than Germany is.
Over a third of the UK's tests are antigen PCR tests.
So even if you exclude all British non-PCR test and count all German tests of any type at all, then the UK is still doing about 5x the tests per capita that Germany is.
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.
There is no "good" form of communism.
Communism is about having local democratic control of the economy, as opposed to the economic dictatorship of capitalist owners. It is more democracy.
The self-ID Communist countries all had much less democracy. Not more. Cannot then be Communist by any definition of Communism that I recognise.
Communism is about "the dictatorship of the proletariat" not democracy and that is what the Communist countries have all had, by defining themselves as the proletariat.
Because the reality is that democracy and communism are mutually incompatible because when people have the right to vote and choose for themselves they don't choose communism so the only way for communism to actually work is to do what Marx and Engels called for which is to take and keep power by force.
It is true that a mixed economy can easily exist in a capitalist structure, but cannot in a communist structure.
Communism is very much an all or nothing it seems, and the moment cracks appear, it breaks down. Hence the need for authoritarian control.
And LostPassword is very wrong that Marx and Engels literally called for authoritarian control.
Quite simply communism is evil and authoritarian and it doesn't work. Its not that communist countries weren't communist enough.
To understand Marx you have to realize that he thought communism was utterly inevitable - it had to be the case that this would be the final chapter in the history of human economic and social development. You can have revolutions and communist parties, but these simply serve to clear an easier path to what was going to happen anyway. It's a massively flawed theory - capitalism didn't evolve into a system where a tiny number of oligarchs controlled all the means of production - but it does have a certain elegance to it.
The thing to always remember is that the UK is world leading when it comes to counting.
Anyone who believes France's figures is deluded. Many more cases, currently 4 times as many people in hospital with Covid, was sometimes 10 times more, yet less deaths. Do they have a secret new treatment for Covid or are they not counting deaths properly?
They could have "Done a Sweden". Sweden's third wave is characterised by an elevated baseline of Covid deaths (19 a day, about the equivalent of 126 a day in the UK) but no peak following the cases unlike the December peak cases which saw a massive surge of deaths. There was a surge in ICU admissions and occupancy but not deaths
This isn't a "hiding the Covid deaths" thing either as there is no rise in their excess deaths figure.
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.
Why the Japanese changed sides is also fascinating. According to an Australian expert (at least, that was how he was introduced) at the River Kwai in Thailand post WWI the USA didn't want the British 'interfering' in North Pacific affairs.
No, that's not what happened.
In the aftermath of WWI, the idea was to remove all the things that had caused WWI. Or rather, the things that people thought had caused WWI
So treaties on the limitation of armaments, and the ending of various military pacts.
The idea was that the UK/Japanese alliance could conceivably threaten the US in the Pacific. Without the alliance, no one power could really threaten the other, providing the naval treaties were held to.
The Japanese government was taken over, starting in the 20s, by ever more extreme and Fascist elements, who regarded anything other than more battleships than everyone else on the planet, plus conquering China plus plus as evil and weak.
The idea that the British and Americans had done the dirty on them was their version of the "stab in the back" myth. The reality was that japan thing to conquer China was a farcical idea. But reality wasn't their strong suit.
In fact, the naval treaties and arms limitation worked in Japans favour. They never had even a fraction of the industrial capability required to build the insane fleet the militarists wanted.
Once the treaties were ditched and the Americans started building ships at economic capacity (not even max'd out!) this was spelled out.
Thanks for that. One of these days I'm going to have a read round the subject. I was on a train trip from Bangkok to Singapore and one of the 'attractions' was a stop at Kanchanaburi, a trip on the river, and a lecture, as I said, from someone whom we were told was an Australian academic working with the Museum.
The thing to understand is that, even by the standards of fascism, the Japanese militarists were demented fuckwits.
Read the Hagakure - a homage to the joy joy of The Samurai, written by a fanatic, long after the real Samurai age had ended. The Japanese fascists loved it.....
Beautiful failure is better than the wrong kind of success is the message. Oh, and long live death!
Read it and you can really understand Banzai charges......
Indeed.
The fall of the cherry blossom is one of the great elegiac symbols of Japanese culture.
This is what they gave the name of 'Cherry Blossom':a purpose-designed kamikaze rocket (or jet) missile:
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
good point if you think warm rain = good weather.
The "warmest" statistic isn't really that useful for what people actually experience.
The local average temperature is usually calculated using daily (MAX + MIN)/2 and not a running mean. That means that warm nights with cloud cover raise the so called average temperature significantly.
So a clear day with 30C during the day and a short period of 5C at dawn is allegedly the same (17.5C) as a damp day and night with a brief max of 20C and an overnight min of 15C.
Climate change is mostly about warmer nights of course, so it might have some value in monitoring that.
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
To be fair on Keir (and I rarely am!) he has a long and well documented history of being a football fan and player, including attending England games, well before being an MP.
A good reason not to vote for him, then.
Why?
Because a proper toff, born to rule, plays/watches Rugby (Union)?
Andy Burnham probably likes Rugby League. The horror!
He was honorary chairman of Leigh. Being from Culcheth it isn't a surprise.
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
Beautiful. I am a Labour supporter and Scottish to boot but this doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I might put up our England bunting for the game tonight.
Considering putting a Danish flag in my window (I grew up there and the sympathy lingers)
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
good point if you think warm rain = good weather.
No, just that's its not a traditional summer. They're fairly likely to continue to get both warmer and wetter.
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.
There is no "good" form of communism.
Communism is about having local democratic control of the economy, as opposed to the economic dictatorship of capitalist owners. It is more democracy.
The self-ID Communist countries all had much less democracy. Not more. Cannot then be Communist by any definition of Communism that I recognise.
Communism is about "the dictatorship of the proletariat" not democracy and that is what the Communist countries have all had, by defining themselves as the proletariat.
Because the reality is that democracy and communism are mutually incompatible because when people have the right to vote and choose for themselves they don't choose communism so the only way for communism to actually work is to do what Marx and Engels called for which is to take and keep power by force.
It is true that a mixed economy can easily exist in a capitalist structure, but cannot in a communist structure.
Communism is very much an all or nothing it seems, and the moment cracks appear, it breaks down. Hence the need for authoritarian control.
And LostPassword is very wrong that Marx and Engels literally called for authoritarian control.
Quite simply communism is evil and authoritarian and it doesn't work. Its not that communist countries weren't communist enough.
To understand Marx you have to realize that he thought communism was utterly inevitable - it had to be the case that this would be the final chapter in the history of human economic and social development. You can have revolutions and communist parties, but these simply serve to clear an easier path to what was going to happen anyway. It's a massively flawed theory - capitalism didn't evolve into a system where a tiny number of oligarchs controlled all the means of production - but it does have a certain elegance to it.
Yep. They failed to recognise that as labour productivity went up, skilled workers could negotiate for higher wages and this produces a bigger middle class. The modern communist argument that this is due to imperialism or neo-imperialism is actually flipped. The ability to outsource to China and India is actually stopping workers from negotiating higher wages. Hopefully this changes once these places get wealthy enough.
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
*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.
‘north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines’
You seem to have settled in well 🙂
I quite liked Mr Simpson's colleague who complained about the fall in testing at Scottish schools over the period in question ...
As patriotic unionists they think that the English calendar is the only calendar. Hence why the Flag Twattery Day song event was after Scottish schools had broken up. "Why have testing numbers fallen in schools?" they ask. Because its the summer holiday and they're closed you prannock.
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
good point if you think warm rain = good weather.
WRONG
June was also drier than average.
PB Weather Experts strike back.
Nothing else matters outside SE England.....
Indeed – the idea that this summer has been rubbish is entirely based on the fact that the SE corner has been wetter than average. It is not nationwide and indeed the jet should move north next week to create warm conditions in the south.
Remember Anabobazina's Golden Rule:
The PB Weather Experts are always wrong and they never, ever learn.
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
My takeaway from Philip's figures is that East Europe has had a nightmare. They also have poor vaccination rates. The UK has had one of the worst death rates of the rest.
Of the densely populated nations we've done better than Italy and Portugal, and comparable to Belgium and Spain who will finish at or around our figures.
Germany are the exception not the norm.
There is little correlation in those figures between population density and excess deaths. Denmark is the most egregious example. Netherlands also. You are cherry picking your figures.
Bullshit, there is an absolutely massive correlation between population density and excess deaths.
Even look at the UK's own data. The biggest single issue that explains Coronavirus excess deaths once you take into account age profile etc is population density.
Locations in the UK with lower levels of population density have had considerably lower death rates.
There is little correlation in the table that you supplied between population density and Covid deaths, which allow you to discount "low density" countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark from consideration. In fact every country in Western Europe is discounted from your consideration on grounds of population density, except the five ones with the worst death rates.
That's what I mean by cherry-picking your figures.
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
good point if you think warm rain = good weather.
WRONG
June was also drier than average.
PB Weather Experts strike back...
"...south-east England was very wet with more than double the average rainfall for some locations..."
If people are being ruthlessly political about this - as I suppose is only to be expected - then what they need to worry about is not death rates or long COVID, but hospitalisation rates.
The current rate of hospitalisation per positive test 2-3 weeks before is about 3%. The new health secretary says cases may top 100,000 a day. Neil Ferguson says twice that number. Given that - if all mitigation measures are abandoned - the only thing that will stop numbers increasing is herd immunity, both those numbers actually seem optimistic to me, because I don't think we'll get herd imunity without another 20%+ of the population being infected.
20% of the population is 10 million+.
So Javid's number would see us remaining (just) under the January peak in hospital admissions of around 4000 a day. Ferguson's number wouldn't.
On the current rate of increase we get to that peak in about a month from now. If that happens, what does the government do? Bearing in mind that it needs to do something 2-3 weels before that point, otherwise it's too late.
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
*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.
‘north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines’
You seem to have settled in well 🙂
I quite liked Mr Simpson's colleague who complained about the fall in testing at Scottish schools over the period in question ...
As patriotic unionists they think that the English calendar is the only calendar. Hence why the Flag Twattery Day song event was after Scottish schools had broken up. "Why have testing numbers fallen in schools?" they ask. Because its the summer holiday and they're closed you prannock.
Bit too much zeal of the converted going on here? Your initial point is pants because it assumes that the Scots only go abroad in the first two weeks in which they can do so.
Steven Reicher, social psychologist, may well be right that long Covid is about to become an even bigger issue than it is already. Long Covid includes symptoms such as chronic fatigue, poor memory, poor concentration, and insomnia, as well as chest pain, heart palpitations, and laboured breathing.
For some of these symptoms it seems hard to near-impossible to assess the relative contributions of
1) a previous SARSCoV2 infection - which may have been asymptomatic and completely unnoticed - and
2) the emotional stress of lockdown.
Chris Whitty is treated like some kind of god, but I have no idea why after he says he thinks we'll get "a significant amount" of long Covid, he says "particularly in the younger age [group] where the vaccination rates are currently much lower".
Does vaccination reduce the risk of long Covid then? Cite please.
"The chances of having long-term symptoms does not seem to be linked to how ill you are when you first get COVID-19."
So if what does not "seem" to be not true here [sic] actually is true then if vaccination does reduce the risk of long Covid it must achieve that effect by some other means than reducing the severity of standard Covid symptoms. We seem to be well into the territory of advanced speculation here. What does the "data" say? This is what journalists and MPs should be asking.
You may think that the NHS advice on long Covid obviously excludes asymptomatic cases of SARSCov2 infection, because it clearly says "Covid-19" and not "SARSCoV2", and "Covid-19" cannot exist with zero symptoms because it is precisely a collection of symptoms. But the same page also talks of a "COVID-19 infection", so that interpretation would be mistaken.
The context of long Covid is perhaps the best example of why the confusion between Covid and SARSCoV2 is so deplorable. This is not pedantry. What is a person supposed to do if they have never had Covid but they have started to suffer from chronic fatigue and terrible concentration? Should they have a drink at the pub on "Freedom Day" and hope the symptoms go away? Or should they form the view that it's probably long Covid and seek medical attention before they start to get chest pains and difficulties breathing?
Reicher's figure of 40% of those INFECTED getting long Covid is cause for concern, to put it mildly. That could soon be millions of people.
Final point: there may be good reasons for the whole "will we, won't we" thing, but it can feel like a case of Skinnerian "variable reward schedule" behavioural conditioning. A reversal before 19 July is likely to have some unpleasant mass-psychological effects.
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
If Scotland had done better he would be backing them too. It isn't the fault of Boris that Scotland are shite, finished last in their group and went out in the first round.
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
My takeaway from Philip's figures is that East Europe has had a nightmare. They also have poor vaccination rates. The UK has had one of the worst death rates of the rest.
Of the densely populated nations we've done better than Italy and Portugal, and comparable to Belgium and Spain who will finish at or around our figures.
Germany are the exception not the norm.
There is little correlation in those figures between population density and excess deaths. Denmark is the most egregious example. Netherlands also. You are cherry picking your figures.
Bullshit, there is an absolutely massive correlation between population density and excess deaths.
Even look at the UK's own data. The biggest single issue that explains Coronavirus excess deaths once you take into account age profile etc is population density.
Locations in the UK with lower levels of population density have had considerably lower death rates.
There is little correlation in the table that you supplied between population density and Covid deaths, which allow you to discount "low density" countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark from consideration. In fact every country in Western Europe is discounted from your consideration on grounds of population density, except the five ones with the worst death rates.
That's what I mean by cherry-picking your figures.
Of course low density nations like Denmark should not be contrasted with incredibly high density England.
The Netherlands are a high density but small country which is an interesting comparator, though Belgium next door while equally small have death rates comparable to the UKs.
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
Except that June, despite the rain, was the fourth warmest on record.
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
I'm confused. Starmer started by saying we were being reckless. Now he seems to share the concerns of businesses who don't want people to have to self-isolate.
If people are being ruthlessly political about this - as I suppose is only to be expected - then what they need to worry about is not death rates or long COVID, but hospitalisation rates.
The current rate of hospitalisation per positive test 2-3 weeks before is about 3%. The new health secretary says cases may top 100,000 a day. Neil Ferguson says twice that number. Given that - if all mitigation measures are abandoned - the only thing that will stop numbers increasing is herd immunity, both those numbers actually seem optimistic to me, because I don't think we'll get herd imunity without another 20%+ of the population being infected.
20% of the population is 10 million+.
So Javid's number would see us remaining (just) under the January peak in hospital admissions of around 4000 a day. Ferguson's number wouldn't.
On the current rate of increase we get to that peak in about a month from now. If that happens, what does the government do? Bearing in mind that it needs to do something 2-3 weels before that point, otherwise it's too late.
Hospitalisation is faster than 2-3 weeks. 7 days or so is more accurate
I've not been following the pandemic in any sort of detail. Just listening to the news and government spokespeople. While our vaccine program was purring like a Ferrari Europe's were limping along like a Lada Riva with a puncture. Tory poster's on here have been crowing about our ingenuity and delighting in our good fortune at being-dare I say it-BRITISH!
1. FIRST in Europe for total number of cases. 2. FIRST in Europe for total number of deaths. 3. FIRST in Europe for total of NEW cases. 4. FIRST in Europe for total number of NEW deaths.
Roger, this is just total nonsense. 1. France and Russia have both had more cases 2. Russia has more deaths, on a per million analysis there are a host of countries ahead of us. 3. Russia has more new cases. And we do massively more testing than anyone else. 4. Total rubbish. In the last 7 days Italy, Germany and France (as well as Russia) have all had more deaths than us.
Why do you write this stuff?
Does the UK do *massively* more testing than *anyone* else?
We squander lots of money on it , world beater at supposedly Test and Trace which is really just a Tory ponzi scheme for their chums
The daughter of a friend is a primary school teacher who unfortunately managed to catch Covid at the end of term from one of her pupils. Because she was a probationer she is not assured of continued employment at the same school so she got her dad to come into the school with her (before she was aware she was positive) and clear out all of the materials etc that she had built up over the year. So he was a contact. She phoned him up and he started self isolating although he had no symptoms. 5 days later he got a phone call from test and trace advising him to do that.
His daughter had done all the right things, giving her limited number of contacts to T&T straight away. 5 days seems to me an almost pointless amount of time. If he had been infected he would almost certainly have infected those that he was going to before they even contacted him. She, incidentally, in her early 20s, was really quite ill for over a week.
So I would suggest that Scots should be circumspect in criticising T&T in England. Its no better here, possibly worse.
*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.
‘north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines’
You seem to have settled in well 🙂
I quite liked Mr Simpson's colleague who complained about the fall in testing at Scottish schools over the period in question ...
As patriotic unionists they think that the English calendar is the only calendar. Hence why the Flag Twattery Day song event was after Scottish schools had broken up. "Why have testing numbers fallen in schools?" they ask. Because its the summer holiday and they're closed you prannock.
Bit too much zeal of the converted going on here? Your initial point is pants because it assumes that the Scots only go abroad in the first two weeks in which they can do so.
But it makes good sense to do so before the English turn up and compete for flights, hotels etc.
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
If Scotland had done better he would be backing them too. It isn't the fault of Boris that Scotland are shite, finished last in their group and went out in the first round.
Siri, show me an example of someone whose support we couldn’t give a fuck about receiving?
I'm confused. Starmer started by saying we were being reckless. Now he seems to share the concerns of businesses who don't want people to have to self-isolate.
It seems Starmer's whole case is based around wearing face masks and that will prevent the spread
I've not been following the pandemic in any sort of detail. Just listening to the news and government spokespeople. While our vaccine program was purring like a Ferrari Europe's were limping along like a Lada Riva with a puncture. Tory poster's on here have been crowing about our ingenuity and delighting in our good fortune at being-dare I say it-BRITISH!
1. FIRST in Europe for total number of cases. 2. FIRST in Europe for total number of deaths. 3. FIRST in Europe for total of NEW cases. 4. FIRST in Europe for total number of NEW deaths.
Roger, this is just total nonsense. 1. France and Russia have both had more cases 2. Russia has more deaths, on a per million analysis there are a host of countries ahead of us. 3. Russia has more new cases. And we do massively more testing than anyone else. 4. Total rubbish. In the last 7 days Italy, Germany and France (as well as Russia) have all had more deaths than us.
Why do you write this stuff?
Does the UK do *massively* more testing than *anyone* else?
I can't find national figures but Berlin (4.3% of population) has a capacity of 4.7 million antigen tests a week, and press reports are complaining that there has been a massive drop in tests carried out to just 700000 last week in Berlin - because people no longer need a current test to do things like eat inside a restaurant etc (because the incidence rate is so low). But back of the envelope calculation suggests that even this much reduced testing is much *more* testing than in the UK. But the myth of the UK doing massively more tests than anyone else refuses to die no matter how often debunked.
Myth?
Why don't you try getting some national per capita data and comparing them? Because the data is out there.
Or if you're struggling to find Germany in amongst the other countries its mixed in with then try this head to head comparison.
Who's spreading myths?
You, as I have explained many times.
How many antigen tests have been done in Germany? Can you answer that question?
A tiny fraction of the amount the UK is doing quite clearly given the data!
The UK is doing about 14x the tests per capita than Germany is.
Over a third of the UK's tests are antigen PCR tests.
So even if you exclude all British non-PCR test and count all German tests of any type at all, then the UK is still doing about 5x the tests per capita that Germany is.
You are just wrong,, show me a link (not world in data which is only counting PCR tests) with the total number of tests done in Germany.
Here is a news report claiming the week before last the average number of tests (not including PCR tests) per day done in Berlin was over 100000. Berlin is less than a twentieth of Germany's population. Given the article is complaining about test centres having to close in Berlin because of reduced demand, then 2 million antigen tests a day in Germany in recent weeks is probably an underestimate. So not only not a "tiny fraction", but I think actually more than in the UK
It isn't the fault of Boris that Scotland are shite
How many goals did Engerland ship past them?
Oh...
Yes, and that was England's worse result in the tournament, while it was your best. The fact you are crowing about a draw shows how shite Scotland were. Even Wales did better.
I'm confused. Starmer started by saying we were being reckless. Now he seems to share the concerns of businesses who don't want people to have to self-isolate.
Labour are all over the shop in trying too find a political "line". Painfully transparent.
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
Its very simple. Had Wales, or Scotland (stop sniggering) got through, and England knocked out, would we have had the same level of flag twattery? Bozza on a huge Saltaire on Downing Street? Bozza with a Wales shirt encouraging us to learn Land of my Fathers?
Steven Reicher, social psychologist, may well be right that long Covid is about to become an even bigger issue than it is already. Long Covid includes symptoms such as chronic fatigue, poor memory, poor concentration, and insomnia, as well as chest pain, heart palpitations, and laboured breathing.
For some of these symptoms it seems hard to near-impossible to assess the relative contributions of
1) a previous SARSCoV2 infection - which may have been asymptomatic and completely unnoticed - and
2) the emotional stress of lockdown.
Chris Whitty is treated like some kind of god, but I have no idea why after he says he thinks we'll get "a significant amount" of long Covid, he says "particularly in the younger age [group] where the vaccination rates are currently much lower".
Does vaccination reduce the risk of long Covid then? Cite please.
"The chances of having long-term symptoms does not seem to be linked to how ill you are when you first get COVID-19."
So if what does not "seem" to be not true here [sic] actually is true then if vaccination does reduce the risk of long Covid it must achieve that effect by some other means than reducing the severity of standard Covid symptoms. We seem to be well into the territory of advanced speculation here. What does the "data" say? This is what journalists and MPs should be asking.
You may think that the NHS advice on long Covid obviously excludes asymptomatic cases of SARSCov2 infection, because it clearly says "Covid-19" and not "SARSCoV2", and "Covid-19" cannot exist with zero symptoms because it is precisely a collection of symptoms. But the same page also talks of a "COVID-19 infection", so that interpretation would be mistaken.
The context of long Covid is perhaps the best example of why the confusion between Covid and SARSCoV2 is so deplorable. This is not pedantry. What is a person supposed to do if they have never had Covid but they have started to suffer from chronic fatigue and terrible concentration? Should they have a drink at the pub on "Freedom Day" and hope the symptoms go away? Or should they form the view that it's probably long Covid and seek medical attention before they start to get chest pains and difficulties breathing?
Reicher's figure of 40% of those INFECTED getting long Covid is cause for concern, to put it mildly. That could soon be millions of people.
Final point: there may be good reasons for the whole "will we, won't we" thing, but it can feel like a case of Skinnerian "variable reward schedule" behavioural conditioning. A reversal before 19 July is likely to have some unpleasant mass-psychological effects.
The metaphor I use is long covid a moor fire. People do the isolating, feel better, get back to it, but it’s still burning inside them. Not just vascular but cardiovascular and other organs.
To protect the economy in long run we need to limit peak working age infections in short term.
Attacking the govt for opening up but actually was backed into a corner whereby he didn't condemn it. "More ventilation" - what the fuck does that mean?
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.
But we had more warning, and we are an island. We had advantages we did not exploit. We should be nearer the bottom of that table
We fucked up on the borders, on that we can all agree
Not just that. Look at the countries that have done worse than the UK. It's a long list, sure, but "better than Bulgaria and Bosnia" isn't saying much. If you take Western European countries as your comparator, the UK has done about 10% better than Italy and Portugal, slightly worse than Spain. And, with great affection for Spain, Spain is not well run.
The countries that we like to compare ourselves with- that we really ought to compare ourselves with- the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria are all doing an awful lot better at keeping people alive.
The UK is not well run either, I think the last year and a half has made that extremely obvious. Anyone trying to say otherwise should have their head examined.
That’s the bloody point.
The comparison is with Benelux, France, and Germany.
Most countries have fucked this up somehow.
We seem to have fucked up more than we ought, and the blame rests with the government.
My takeaway from Philip's figures is that East Europe has had a nightmare. They also have poor vaccination rates. The UK has had one of the worst death rates of the rest.
Of the densely populated nations we've done better than Italy and Portugal, and comparable to Belgium and Spain who will finish at or around our figures.
Germany are the exception not the norm.
There is little correlation in those figures between population density and excess deaths. Denmark is the most egregious example. Netherlands also. You are cherry picking your figures.
Bullshit, there is an absolutely massive correlation between population density and excess deaths.
Even look at the UK's own data. The biggest single issue that explains Coronavirus excess deaths once you take into account age profile etc is population density.
Locations in the UK with lower levels of population density have had considerably lower death rates.
There is little correlation in the table that you supplied between population density and Covid deaths, which allow you to discount "low density" countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark from consideration. In fact every country in Western Europe is discounted from your consideration on grounds of population density, except the five ones with the worst death rates.
That's what I mean by cherry-picking your figures.
Of course low density nations like Denmark should not be contrasted with incredibly high density England.
The Netherlands are a high density but small country which is an interesting comparator, though Belgium next door while equally small have death rates comparable to the UKs.
And Spain and Portugal, which you allow to be considered, are low density, while UK, Italy and Belgium are high density. All the other countries which have varying degrees of population density, but which all coincidentally have lower death rates, are excluded from your comparison.
So what's your point about population density? (Rhetorical question)
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Which country? That's the problem...
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words. https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
Its very simple. Had Wales, or Scotland (stop sniggering) got through, and England knocked out, would we have had the same level of flag twattery? Bozza on a huge Saltaire on Downing Street? Bozza with a Wales shirt encouraging us to learn Land of my Fathers?
We all know the answer is no.
Was that Downing Street flag put out before or after he knew England was the only team left? If the latter case, it does point to at least some calculation.
*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.
‘north of the wall, the Tory nob cheese Transport spokesman Graham Simpson whines’
You seem to have settled in well 🙂
I quite liked Mr Simpson's colleague who complained about the fall in testing at Scottish schools over the period in question ...
As patriotic unionists they think that the English calendar is the only calendar. Hence why the Flag Twattery Day song event was after Scottish schools had broken up. "Why have testing numbers fallen in schools?" they ask. Because its the summer holiday and they're closed you prannock.
Bit too much zeal of the converted going on here? Your initial point is pants because it assumes that the Scots only go abroad in the first two weeks in which they can do so.
Huh? Thats your straw man not mine. The point is simple. Tory MSPs seemingly unaware of when Scottish school holidays are. Tory MSPs complaining that pox is out of control north of the wall as the policy south of the wall is to let it run out of control.
I post examples of shit politicians wherever I find them. Was laughing at Claudia Webbe earlier.
Reckless to open up but what about all the people who have to isolate?
WTAF? Utter dick.
To be fair to him, at least he's taking the "Opposition" bit of his job seriously at last. Coherence is arguably less important at this stage of the electoral cycle than just challenging whether the Government's thought everything through. Because, um, often it hasn't.
I'm confused. Starmer started by saying we were being reckless. Now he seems to share the concerns of businesses who don't want people to have to self-isolate.
Labour are all over the shop in trying too find a political "line". Painfully transparent.
Starmer has to build a rainbow coalition of angry people ranging from zerocovidians on the one hand to loony libertarians on the other with a few soothing words for antivaxxers into the bargain. How else to win power?
Comments
Apart from Greece, I would pick out Denmark, Germany and South Korea, probably.
The fact that some of them seriously thought about fighting on after Nagasaki says something about them.
Communism is very much an all or nothing it seems, and the moment cracks appear, it breaks down. Hence the need for authoritarian control.
Germany are the exception not the norm.
Quite simply communism is evil and authoritarian and it doesn't work. Its not that communist countries weren't communist enough.
At the famous war council which ended the war, they were faced with the following
- The Americans had sunk basically the entire Japanese Navy
- They had also sunk pretty much all the merchant ships
- If fact the Americans had stopped building submarines - there was nothing for them to do
- American bombers were running out of cities to burn down.
- Due to the vast majority of fighting age Japanese males being overseas, the harvest was failing. This meant famine in the 1945 winter
- The Russians had invaded through Manchuria and were advancing like a chainsaw through cheese.
- The Americans had invented a way (the Bomb) for one aircraft to do the job of 500.
- The Americans and allies were due to invade within months.
The considered view of half the war cabinet was that the above meant that they should arm the entire Japanese population with sharpened bamboo and attack the Americans when they invaded (yes, really)
Because it was better for everyone in Japan to die than be defeated.
Then the Emperor broke the 50:50 tie....
So the nutbags started plotting a coup.....
Andy Burnham probably likes Rugby League. The horror!
I am not going to play partisan politics as I think the decision either way is so difficult and as Boris has made it, despite the isolation of covid contacts until the 16th August, then I just hope that this is the right decision but only time will tell
Of course vaccinations will not stop on the 18th July and I do believe this process has to be at the heart of our endeavours while we also have to accept that many will catch covid, albeit it at lower hospitalisation and death rates
Our son marries two weeks on Saturday and we have as a family made the decision to go into effective lockdown until the Saturday and in our own bubbles
His partner has held here 'Hen' night and my son is not having a stag do
I do believe that the public's behaviour will be one of great caution and it will be interesting to see the behavioural changes as we advance into the Autumn
But I imagine the total number of tests done in Germany is more than in the UK because of the enormous amount of antigen testing that has been happening, but I haven't found official figures.
How many antigen tests have been done in Germany? Can you answer that question?
But as someone who is not a football or tennis fan, the current sports-fest is unutterably boring.
Having said that, I hope England win, if only because it matters to so many people in this country.
Anyone who believes France's figures is deluded. Many more cases, currently 4 times as many people in hospital with Covid, was sometimes 10 times more, yet less deaths. Do they have a secret new treatment for Covid or are they not counting deaths properly?
The fall of the cherry blossom is one of the great elegiac symbols of Japanese culture.
This is what they gave the name of 'Cherry Blossom':a purpose-designed kamikaze rocket (or jet) missile:
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/kugisho-mxy7-ohka-cherry-blossom-22/nasm_A19480180000
Surely even Mr Southgate won't play five at the back and do that. (It could still be Mount, in a more usual supporting-the-flanks role)
Johnson is making a mistake aligning himself so closely with England. He's PM of the UK and while his words might be transferable to other Home Nations, his gestures are not. He should therefore stick to words.
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1412701865872089095
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1412684618143342595
Even look at the UK's own data. The biggest single issue that explains Coronavirus excess deaths once you take into account age profile etc is population density.
Locations in the UK with lower levels of population density have had considerably lower death rates.
So far this tournament they seem to have had the inside track throughout i.e. knowing the lineups / general tactics in advance.
They didn't say this was going to be the approach, just a possibility, because of concern over certain matchups.
June was also drier than average.
PB Weather Experts strike back.
The UK is doing about 14x the tests per capita than Germany is.
Over a third of the UK's tests are antigen PCR tests.
So even if you exclude all British non-PCR test and count all German tests of any type at all, then the UK is still doing about 5x the tests per capita that Germany is.
All good things come from Cambridge.
This isn't a "hiding the Covid deaths" thing either as there is no rise in their excess deaths figure.
It is genuinely mysterious.
(Cases top, ICU admissions middle, deaths bottom)
Which means "Idiot"
Which given the success rate of the stupid things...
The local average temperature is usually calculated using daily (MAX + MIN)/2 and not a running mean. That means that warm nights with cloud cover raise the so called average temperature significantly.
So a clear day with 30C during the day and a short period of 5C at dawn is allegedly the same (17.5C) as a damp day and night with a brief max of 20C and an overnight min of 15C.
Climate change is mostly about warmer nights of course, so it might have some value in monitoring that.
They're fairly likely to continue to get both warmer and wetter.
Hmmm.
Remember Anabobazina's Golden Rule:
The PB Weather Experts are always wrong and they never, ever learn.
That's what I mean by cherry-picking your figures.
The current rate of hospitalisation per positive test 2-3 weeks before is about 3%. The new health secretary says cases may top 100,000 a day. Neil Ferguson says twice that number. Given that - if all mitigation measures are abandoned - the only thing that will stop numbers increasing is herd immunity, both those numbers actually seem optimistic to me, because I don't think we'll get herd imunity without another 20%+ of the population being infected.
20% of the population is 10 million+.
So Javid's number would see us remaining (just) under the January peak in hospital admissions of around 4000 a day. Ferguson's number wouldn't.
On the current rate of increase we get to that peak in about a month from now. If that happens, what does the government do? Bearing in mind that it needs to do something 2-3 weels before that point, otherwise it's too late.
For some of these symptoms it seems hard to near-impossible to assess the relative contributions of
1) a previous SARSCoV2 infection - which may have been asymptomatic and completely unnoticed - and
2) the emotional stress of lockdown.
Chris Whitty is treated like some kind of god, but I have no idea why after he says he thinks we'll get "a significant amount" of long Covid, he says "particularly in the younger age [group] where the vaccination rates are currently much lower".
Does vaccination reduce the risk of long Covid then? Cite please.
Here is the official NHS advice:
"The chances of having long-term symptoms does not seem to be linked to how ill you are when you first get COVID-19."
So if what does not "seem" to be not true here [sic] actually is true then if vaccination does reduce the risk of long Covid it must achieve that effect by some other means than reducing the severity of standard Covid symptoms. We seem to be well into the territory of advanced speculation here. What does the "data" say? This is what journalists and MPs should be asking.
You may think that the NHS advice on long Covid obviously excludes asymptomatic cases of SARSCov2 infection, because it clearly says "Covid-19" and not "SARSCoV2", and "Covid-19" cannot exist with zero symptoms because it is precisely a collection of symptoms. But the same page also talks of a "COVID-19 infection", so that interpretation would be mistaken.
The context of long Covid is perhaps the best example of why the confusion between Covid and SARSCoV2 is so deplorable. This is not pedantry. What is a person supposed to do if they have never had Covid but they have started to suffer from chronic fatigue and terrible concentration? Should they have a drink at the pub on "Freedom Day" and hope the symptoms go away? Or should they form the view that it's probably long Covid and seek medical attention before they start to get chest pains and difficulties breathing?
Reicher's figure of 40% of those INFECTED getting long Covid is cause for concern, to put it mildly. That could soon be millions of people.
Final point: there may be good reasons for the whole "will we, won't we" thing, but it can feel like a case of Skinnerian "variable reward schedule" behavioural conditioning. A reversal before 19 July is likely to have some unpleasant mass-psychological effects.
The Netherlands are a high density but small country which is an interesting comparator, though Belgium next door while equally small have death rates comparable to the UKs.
The money must be very, very good.
His daughter had done all the right things, giving her limited number of contacts to T&T straight away. 5 days seems to me an almost pointless amount of time. If he had been infected he would almost certainly have infected those that he was going to before they even contacted him. She, incidentally, in her early 20s, was really quite ill for over a week.
So I would suggest that Scots should be circumspect in criticising T&T in England. Its no better here, possibly worse.
Reckless to open up but what about all the people who have to isolate?
WTAF? Utter dick.
Oh...
Here is a news report claiming the week before last the average number of tests (not including PCR tests) per day done in Berlin was over 100000. Berlin is less than a twentieth of Germany's population. Given the article is complaining about test centres having to close in Berlin because of reduced demand, then 2 million antigen tests a day in Germany in recent weeks is probably an underestimate. So not only not a "tiny fraction", but I think actually more than in the UK
https://m.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/grosse-kapazitaet-keine-kunden-schnelltestzentren-in-berlin-kaum-ausgelastet-immer-mehr-schliessen/27372046.html
Well you see, we have a world-beating vaccine programme
We all know the answer is no.
“We inoculate while they’re invertebrate”. PM has a new cringe-slogan
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1412732599341137922
It's just embarrassing
To protect the economy in long run we need to limit peak working age infections in short term.
Attacking the govt for opening up but actually was backed into a corner whereby he didn't condemn it. "More ventilation" - what the fuck does that mean?
So what's your point about population density? (Rhetorical question)
I post examples of shit politicians wherever I find them. Was laughing at Claudia Webbe earlier.