I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Why should we care?
That was before I was even an adult and I've voted in six general elections since then.
Whether a prior generation of politicians, very few of whom are still in Parliament and none of whom hold a senior role in the party anymore, opposed it or not is moot now. The Tories in Parliament today have introduced the Living Wage and uplifted the Minimum Wage faster than inflation.
See my post on 'elected dictatorship'. We have an appalling form of democracy. This is symptomatic of it.
Govt ignore parliament, oppositions oppose everything. There is no real debate.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Originally because they thought that it would price young and unskilled workers out of the market. There’s some evidence of that but not as bad as feared
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
People blamed Labour councils because they had Labour councils. You think people voted UKIP out of gratitude to George Osborne? You have misunderstood and/or not properly engaged with the argument.
Except most people didn't have Labour Councils. 🤦♂️
By 2010 after 13 years of Labour in government, the Tories had won most Councillors across the country. So if people were turning against their local Councillors then the Tories should have been the biggest losers, not the big winners from that.
Is there some magical reason in your eyes that people have turned against Labour Councils in a way that they haven't turned against Tory ones?
Or maybe its just that people turned against Labour as they didn't like what Labour had to say? 🤔
In the early 2010s when austerity was really kicking in and the local government spending settlement was being rolled out, I had to look at how council spending was affected across the UK.
Funding was allocated using Eric Pickles' 'Revenue Spending Power' formula.
By happy accident, no doubt, that formula saw the biggest spending cuts handed to Labour-run councils and the lowest cuts - and in a few cases modest increases - handed to Conservative-run councils.
I live in the Wakefield Council area and they were, IIRC, in the top ten for cuts nationally at the time, despite having some areas of very high deprivation.
The anger at those cuts no doubt fed, mistakenly I obviously think, into the Brexit vote here. And anger at Labour for having to make deep cuts. So for the Conservative point of view, job done. Cooper's seat, where I live, looks vulnerable now.
The allocation then reminds me of this recent deprived town funding from Jenrick that somehow, again another happy accident no doubt, ended up going to Tory towns - or marginals - that were less deprived than many other places that didn't receive any funding.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
but Charles , in your last post you said its better for the country to get covid as a whole now and not in winter? So how is it evil doing something that will facilitate this?
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Why should we care?
That was before I was even an adult and I've voted in six general elections since then.
Whether a prior generation of politicians, very few of whom are still in Parliament and none of whom hold a senior role in the party anymore, opposed it or not is moot now. The Tories in Parliament today have introduced the Living Wage and uplifted the Minimum Wage faster than inflation.
See my post on 'elected dictatorship'. We have an appalling form of democracy. This is symptomatic of it.
Govt ignore parliament, oppositions oppose everything. There is no real debate.
What are you talking about? How is that symptomatic of anything?
In a previous century, a previous generation of politicians lost an argument. They had the argument for good reasons, implemented badly a minimum wage can lead to mass unemployment, but they lost the argument. Future generations of politicians have accepted the new reality and moved on.
But you seem to want to be trapped in a previous century with previous politicians. Why?
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
Charles, the NHS are having to instruct medical staff to delete the NHS Track and Trace App because too many medical staff are being exposed to it.
Not having the app to ping means that they can continue to treat medically vulnerable and seriously ill patients and likely expose them to Covid.
So we're back to two schools of thought. On one hand everyone should already have been jabbed by now, which makes them invulnerable so stop testing and let nature take its course. On the other hand your comments about evil.
I'm glad I am not a medic. Unlike the "pray the pox away" brigade on here they know how bad this is. And your government have put them in the position of don't get pinghed, keep working and likely cause harm, or get pinged, don't work and the hospital is so short of medics that it will likely cause harm.
This is not true for the NHS across the board. It doesn’t exist as a single entity but as many separate trusts with different policies. My wife’s trust expects people when at work to switch off the app and if people are pinged they risk assess.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
R4 reporting the Chancellor will be able to avoid the triple-lock 8% by switching to a measure of "underlying earnings growth" which the ONS has helpfully fished out of a bottom drawer.
He really ought to move to a target percentage of average earnings with a catch up over 10 years or so, but then lock it in to that
Yawn.
The Nasty Party breaks promise by being Nasty. Product A behaving like Product A and thereby reinforcing their well-earned Nasty Party brand.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Originally because they thought that it would price young and unskilled workers out of the market. There’s some evidence of that but not as bad as feared
The way it was implemented with staggered wage tiers was quite smart. That is why it has worked and that is the lesson Osborne drew when he introduced the even higher Living Wage for even older groups.
Prior to 97 most countries typically had flat minimum wages and that does indeed price out the young from the market. Staggered tiers of age groups helps encourage firms to hire the young.
Isolation when double jabbed is complete overkill upon a ping. The only time you need to isolate when double jabbed is i) If you've got corona (You'd do the same for flu) ii) Someone else living in your house has the bug.
Sitting near someone in a restaurant ? The app should suggest 2 lfts at days 3 or 5, same as the double jabbed holiday people do I think.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
But if the thing is one doesn't KNOW one HAS (capital's intended). All you KNOW is that at some point, possibly several days ago, you've been reasonably near someone who almost certainly is infective.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
AZ is very far from a dud. PHE calculate one dose provides 71% efficacy against symptomatic infection, two doses 92% efficacy.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
Charles, the NHS are having to instruct medical staff to delete the NHS Track and Trace App because too many medical staff are being exposed to it.
Not having the app to ping means that they can continue to treat medically vulnerable and seriously ill patients and likely expose them to Covid.
So we're back to two schools of thought. On one hand everyone should already have been jabbed by now, which makes them invulnerable so stop testing and let nature take its course. On the other hand your comments about evil.
I'm glad I am not a medic. Unlike the "pray the pox away" brigade on here they know how bad this is. And your government have put them in the position of don't get pinghed, keep working and likely cause harm, or get pinged, don't work and the hospital is so short of medics that it will likely cause harm.
This is not true for the NHS across the board. It doesn’t exist as a single entity but as many separate trusts with different policies. My wife’s trust expects people when at work to switch off the app and if people are pinged they risk assess.
Yes, my Trust has always had a policy of switching it off at work. The argument is that we are protected by our PPE. I only use the App for entering venues. Most of the time I keep Bluetooth switched off because it drains my battery excessively.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
Charles, the NHS are having to instruct medical staff to delete the NHS Track and Trace App because too many medical staff are being exposed to it.
Not having the app to ping means that they can continue to treat medically vulnerable and seriously ill patients and likely expose them to Covid.
So we're back to two schools of thought. On one hand everyone should already have been jabbed by now, which makes them invulnerable so stop testing and let nature take its course. On the other hand your comments about evil.
I'm glad I am not a medic. Unlike the "pray the pox away" brigade on here they know how bad this is. And your government have put them in the position of don't get pinghed, keep working and likely cause harm, or get pinged, don't work and the hospital is so short of medics that it will likely cause harm.
I’m not talking about the app / self isolation (it seems ridiculous but I’ve only read the headlines).
I’m talking about someone who - in the full knowledge that they have a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease - chooses to expose others to that
You occasionally get stories of people with HIV who knowingly have unprotected sexual with multiple partners without informing them of the facts. Those people get sent to prison, and rightly so. It’s not hugely different in principle
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
AZ is far from a dud and it is most certainly not universally acknowledged to be one.
It still has an extremely high efficacy against hospitalisation for the delta variant, and as a consequence deaths.
The vaccine can, along with others, be tweaked to take account of new variants.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
This disease is causing about 1% of current deaths even though it is widespread. It really isnt something to obsess about to the point of mask wearing , house imprisonment for the crime of being near somebody who may have it etc etc .99% of current deaths are caused by something other than covid- why is 99% (it seems) of government dictaks , media news about covid?
Because we have a runaway infection rate way higher than the rest of the world and have many hospitals unable to cope?
You and others are fed up - we all are. But you've decided that the best way to be clear of Covid is to wish it out of existence. The majority think you are crazy. When you find that you are in the minority tomorrow with most people still "virtue signalling" is going to wind you up?
"Who are these idiots?" you will think about each other.
I don't think people have decided to wish it out of existence. They just think - for their personal levels of acceptable risk - that they'd rather live with the risk and get on with their lives.
Even if you disagree with it, it's a reasonable view atm. An alternative is people fearing Covid so much that we never, ever, get out of the restrictions, even when the hospitalisations and deaths are near-zero.
I'm happy for people to make their own choices at this stage - although the presence of people who cannot be vaccinated (as opposed to refuseniks - is something to be factored in. I'll still be wearing masks for a while, as I don't see it as much of an infringement of my liberties to do so. Others do.
As an aside, a real tragedy of this crisis is that, whilst vaccinations have worked better than I hoped, therapeutics have not.
Personally, I am taking a pragmatic view. Though unlikely to die of it, I do not want it. Losing sense of smell and taste permanently (as Mrs Foxy has partially) would be a significant loss to me.
I won't be going out much to indoor venues from Monday 19th during a time of high prevalence, though will do so once the wave subsides to a few thousand rather than 50 000 cases per day.
I just don't want to be around unmasked people who are ignoring social distancing for a while yet.
A minor point: how do you know if your good wife has lost her sense of smell permanently?
When I had viral meningitis, the effects lingered for about nine months and I now think I have recovered fully (as far as I can tell where memory is concerned). ISTR a certain person on here denying that meningitis has long-term effects ...
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
This time last year we'd have considered a vaccine efficacy of 70% to be great, but even still a double dose of AZ has a vaccine efficacy of over 90%.
R4 reporting the Chancellor will be able to avoid the triple-lock 8% by switching to a measure of "underlying earnings growth" which the ONS has helpfully fished out of a bottom drawer.
He really ought to move to a target percentage of average earnings with a catch up over 10 years or so, but then lock it in to that
Yawn.
The Nasty Party breaks promise by being Nasty. Product A behaving like Product A and thereby reinforcing their well-earned Nasty Party brand.
I’m not sure I understand your ramblings.
There was a problem in that pensions were inadequate. The triple lock was put in place to address that. It has been successful but now is over prioritising pensions at the expense of others. So you shift to a new model.
I personally favour setting pensions as a fixed percent of average earnings. Other models are available.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
Don’t forget Agent 008 Yokel with his yarns from the planet’s security services. You’d almost think it was non-fiction.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
But if the thing is one doesn't KNOW one HAS (capital's intended). All you KNOW is that at some point, possibly several days ago, you've been reasonably near someone who almost certainly is infective.
This isn’t about pinging
My response was to the comment “if I’ve caught COVID I shan’t tell anyone…”
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
People blamed Labour councils because they had Labour councils. You think people voted UKIP out of gratitude to George Osborne? You have misunderstood and/or not properly engaged with the argument.
Except most people didn't have Labour Councils. 🤦♂️
By 2010 after 13 years of Labour in government, the Tories had won most Councillors across the country. So if people were turning against their local Councillors then the Tories should have been the biggest losers, not the big winners from that.
Is there some magical reason in your eyes that people have turned against Labour Councils in a way that they haven't turned against Tory ones?
Or maybe its just that people turned against Labour as they didn't like what Labour had to say? 🤔
The question was why particular towns went deep blue, via purple, from red. The ones on the map. Now, these towns, it turns out, if you look at the other map, are the ones hardest hit by Osborne's austerity, which was not, as you can see, equally spread round the country. The links are given earlier in this thread and at the end of the last. Because Osborne's cuts were to local authority budgets, it was the Labour councils that had to cut facilities and services on the ground, and that is why Labour councils were blamed. Doubtless if these particular places had Official Monster Raving Loony councils, the OMRL Party would have been blamed. But they didn't.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
This time last year we'd have considered a vaccine efficacy of 70% to be great, but even still a double dose of AZ has a vaccine efficacy of over 90%.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
This time last year we'd have considered a vaccine efficacy of 70% to be great, but even still a double dose of AZ has a vaccine efficacy of over 90%.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Why should we care?
That was before I was even an adult and I've voted in six general elections since then.
Whether a prior generation of politicians, very few of whom are still in Parliament and none of whom hold a senior role in the party anymore, opposed it or not is moot now. The Tories in Parliament today have introduced the Living Wage and uplifted the Minimum Wage faster than inflation.
In general I am a massive fan of minimum working rights like minimum wage,pension contributions and holidays as it helps private sector workers given public sector workers always enjoy better rights . Always have to be careful though that the minimum wage and indeed minimum holiday entitlement is not used by employers in a cartel like situation to just put nearly everyone on it and thus suppress average private sector pay in everyday roles
It's called Capitalism as favoured by you.
You know supply and demand, market forces all the things you cherish.
Isolation when double jabbed is complete overkill upon a ping. The only time you need to isolate when double jabbed is i) If you've got corona (You'd do the same for flu) ii) Someone else living in your house has the bug.
Sitting near someone in a restaurant ? The app should suggest 2 lfts at days 3 or 5, same as the double jabbed holiday people do I think.
BiB - Except, you wouldn't unless you felt unwell.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
AZ is very far from a dud. PHE calculate one dose provides 71% efficacy against symptomatic infection, two doses 92% efficacy.
I’m old enough to remember not calling it Oxford AZ was the act of petty Nats.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
Charles, the NHS are having to instruct medical staff to delete the NHS Track and Trace App because too many medical staff are being exposed to it.
Not having the app to ping means that they can continue to treat medically vulnerable and seriously ill patients and likely expose them to Covid.
So we're back to two schools of thought. On one hand everyone should already have been jabbed by now, which makes them invulnerable so stop testing and let nature take its course. On the other hand your comments about evil.
I'm glad I am not a medic. Unlike the "pray the pox away" brigade on here they know how bad this is. And your government have put them in the position of don't get pinghed, keep working and likely cause harm, or get pinged, don't work and the hospital is so short of medics that it will likely cause harm.
I’m not talking about the app / self isolation (it seems ridiculous but I’ve only read the headlines).
I’m talking about someone who - in the full knowledge that they have a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease - chooses to expose others to that
You occasionally get stories of people with HIV who knowingly have unprotected sexual with multiple partners without informing them of the facts. Those people get sent to prison, and rightly so. It’s not hugely different in principle
Indeed. My point is that the border between "I know I have Covid, fuck off" from Cocky and "I may have Covid, I am going to act like I haven't" or better still "YOU may have Covid, I am going to instruct you as my employee to act like you haven't" is a fine one.
Some posters want to pray the pox away. It appears the majority do not - so are being described as "afraid". Yes, they are afraid. A runaway pandemic where once again the UK is at the leading edge of the infection wave does that to you.
"Its just like the flu" in terms of impact and the way we should act is what they keep posting. Most of us have had flu. It isn't a big deal and has a fixed short-term impact. Covid is not flu. It does not have a fixed impact, and the long-term effects for many sound fare more debilitating than the short. Suggest that its long covid that has people afeared.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
You forgot Great Airline Seat Upgrades Wot I Have Experienced.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
Well it is impressive efficacy and those countries are being irrational (certainly if they have not lined up alternatives).
I can't figure out your game on this point - the vaccine most definitely and demonstrably is not a dud and you're not an anti vaxxer so why spread an anti vaxxer argument that it is ineffective when so much evidence shows it isn't?
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
I'd watch that. Let's do it. GB News may be in a forced sale situation soon.
R4 reporting the Chancellor will be able to avoid the triple-lock 8% by switching to a measure of "underlying earnings growth" which the ONS has helpfully fished out of a bottom drawer.
He really ought to move to a target percentage of average earnings with a catch up over 10 years or so, but then lock it in to that
Yawn.
The Nasty Party breaks promise by being Nasty. Product A behaving like Product A and thereby reinforcing their well-earned Nasty Party brand.
I’m not sure I understand your ramblings.
There was a problem in that pensions were inadequate. The triple lock was put in place to address that. It has been successful but now is over prioritising pensions at the expense of others. So you shift to a new model.
I personally favour setting pensions as a fixed percent of average earnings. Other models are available.
The state pension in the UK is absolutely shit. It is the Turd in any rational analysis of rich-country state pensions. Cf nearby Scandinavia for example.
In a brief dose of humanity, a Con government briefly decided to stop behaving like Turdmasters General and triple lock the pensions so that they were slightly less shite. Then came the Farage/Johnson revolution and suddenly they thought being slightly less unpleasant to OAPs causes a worrying lack of funds to chuck at the dodgy government contracts being handed out to their pals.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
People blamed Labour councils because they had Labour councils. You think people voted UKIP out of gratitude to George Osborne? You have misunderstood and/or not properly engaged with the argument.
Except most people didn't have Labour Councils. 🤦♂️
By 2010 after 13 years of Labour in government, the Tories had won most Councillors across the country. So if people were turning against their local Councillors then the Tories should have been the biggest losers, not the big winners from that.
Is there some magical reason in your eyes that people have turned against Labour Councils in a way that they haven't turned against Tory ones?
Or maybe its just that people turned against Labour as they didn't like what Labour had to say? 🤔
The question was why particular towns went deep blue, via purple, from red. The ones on the map. Now, these towns, it turns out, if you look at the other map, are the ones hardest hit by Osborne's austerity, which was not, as you can see, equally spread round the country. The links are given earlier in this thread and at the end of the last. Because Osborne's cuts were to local authority budgets, it was the Labour councils that had to cut facilities and services on the ground, and that is why Labour councils were blamed. Doubtless if these particular places had Official Monster Raving Loony councils, the OMRL Party would have been blamed. But they didn't.
Yep, it was a policy of deliberate targeting and it worked. OK so those areas had a decade of shit, but now they have voted Labour out here comes the cash to make you feel better.
However, some of the Labour-since-the-Danelaw councils really didn't help themselves. Dripping sense of entitlement, "its all the Tories fault", cuts and misery with no vision for how to come out the other side.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
This disease is causing about 1% of current deaths even though it is widespread. It really isnt something to obsess about to the point of mask wearing , house imprisonment for the crime of being near somebody who may have it etc etc .99% of current deaths are caused by something other than covid- why is 99% (it seems) of government dictaks , media news about covid?
Because we have a runaway infection rate way higher than the rest of the world and have many hospitals unable to cope?
You and others are fed up - we all are. But you've decided that the best way to be clear of Covid is to wish it out of existence. The majority think you are crazy. When you find that you are in the minority tomorrow with most people still "virtue signalling" is going to wind you up?
"Who are these idiots?" you will think about each other.
I don't think people have decided to wish it out of existence. They just think - for their personal levels of acceptable risk - that they'd rather live with the risk and get on with their lives.
Even if you disagree with it, it's a reasonable view atm. An alternative is people fearing Covid so much that we never, ever, get out of the restrictions, even when the hospitalisations and deaths are near-zero.
I'm happy for people to make their own choices at this stage - although the presence of people who cannot be vaccinated (as opposed to refuseniks - is something to be factored in. I'll still be wearing masks for a while, as I don't see it as much of an infringement of my liberties to do so. Others do.
As an aside, a real tragedy of this crisis is that, whilst vaccinations have worked better than I hoped, therapeutics have not.
Personally, I am taking a pragmatic view. Though unlikely to die of it, I do not want it. Losing sense of smell and taste permanently (as Mrs Foxy has partially) would be a significant loss to me.
I won't be going out much to indoor venues from Monday 19th during a time of high prevalence, though will do so once the wave subsides to a few thousand rather than 50 000 cases per day.
I just don't want to be around unmasked people who are ignoring social distancing for a while yet.
A minor point: how do you know if your good wife has lost her sense of smell permanently?
When I had viral meningitis, the effects lingered for about nine months and I now think I have recovered fully (as far as I can tell where memory is concerned). ISTR a certain person on here denying that meningitis has long-term effects ...
Well it is 9 months now, and one of my work colleagues still has not regained his after 15 months. Obviously we haven't got much longer follow up than that, but there is good reason to expect it is permanent.
This paper on MRI imaging before and after covid does appear to show permanent damage to the limbic system, which is a primitive part of the brain dealing with smell, memory and emotion.
We will know more in the future, but I am quite happy with my limbic system as it is at present.
On-topic, several PBers smarter than me predicted this would happen. There is iirc some mention of it on the last thread.
As OGH says in the header, HMG should asap ease the self-isolation requirement, or release the new, less sensitive version of the app that it is said to be working on.
Me July 5th:
The one thing which would continue to stop the country dead in its tracks is if they didn't abolish the 10-day isolation. No one could plan to do anything, nor have any certainty of being able to work, if they thought they might be pinged at any time and told to stay at home for 10 days. If it stays the country will be at the mercy of having to put their lives on hold at any time. It is untenable.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
This disease is causing about 1% of current deaths even though it is widespread. It really isnt something to obsess about to the point of mask wearing , house imprisonment for the crime of being near somebody who may have it etc etc .99% of current deaths are caused by something other than covid- why is 99% (it seems) of government dictaks , media news about covid?
Because we have a runaway infection rate way higher than the rest of the world and have many hospitals unable to cope?
You and others are fed up - we all are. But you've decided that the best way to be clear of Covid is to wish it out of existence. The majority think you are crazy. When you find that you are in the minority tomorrow with most people still "virtue signalling" is going to wind you up?
"Who are these idiots?" you will think about each other.
I don't think people have decided to wish it out of existence. They just think - for their personal levels of acceptable risk - that they'd rather live with the risk and get on with their lives.
Even if you disagree with it, it's a reasonable view atm. An alternative is people fearing Covid so much that we never, ever, get out of the restrictions, even when the hospitalisations and deaths are near-zero.
I'm happy for people to make their own choices at this stage - although the presence of people who cannot be vaccinated (as opposed to refuseniks - is something to be factored in. I'll still be wearing masks for a while, as I don't see it as much of an infringement of my liberties to do so. Others do.
As an aside, a real tragedy of this crisis is that, whilst vaccinations have worked better than I hoped, therapeutics have not.
Personally, I am taking a pragmatic view. Though unlikely to die of it, I do not want it. Losing sense of smell and taste permanently (as Mrs Foxy has partially) would be a significant loss to me.
I won't be going out much to indoor venues from Monday 19th during a time of high prevalence, though will do so once the wave subsides to a few thousand rather than 50 000 cases per day.
I just don't want to be around unmasked people who are ignoring social distancing for a while yet.
A minor point: how do you know if your good wife has lost her sense of smell permanently?
When I had viral meningitis, the effects lingered for about nine months and I now think I have recovered fully (as far as I can tell where memory is concerned). ISTR a certain person on here denying that meningitis has long-term effects ...
Well it is 9 months now, and one of my work colleagues still has not regained his after 15 months. Obviously we haven't got much longer follow up than that, but there is good reason to expect it is permanent.
This paper on MRI imaging before and after covid does appear to show permanent damage to the limbic system, which is a primitive part of the brain dealing with smell, memory and emotion.
We will know more in the future, but I am quite happy with my limbic system as it is at present.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
People blamed Labour councils because they had Labour councils. You think people voted UKIP out of gratitude to George Osborne? You have misunderstood and/or not properly engaged with the argument.
Except most people didn't have Labour Councils. 🤦♂️
By 2010 after 13 years of Labour in government, the Tories had won most Councillors across the country. So if people were turning against their local Councillors then the Tories should have been the biggest losers, not the big winners from that.
Is there some magical reason in your eyes that people have turned against Labour Councils in a way that they haven't turned against Tory ones?
Or maybe its just that people turned against Labour as they didn't like what Labour had to say? 🤔
The question was why particular towns went deep blue, via purple, from red. The ones on the map. Now, these towns, it turns out, if you look at the other map, are the ones hardest hit by Osborne's austerity, which was not, as you can see, equally spread round the country. The links are given earlier in this thread and at the end of the last. Because Osborne's cuts were to local authority budgets, it was the Labour councils that had to cut facilities and services on the ground, and that is why Labour councils were blamed. Doubtless if these particular places had Official Monster Raving Loony councils, the OMRL Party would have been blamed. But they didn't.
Yep, it was a policy of deliberate targeting and it worked. OK so those areas had a decade of shit, but now they have voted Labour out here comes the cash to make you feel better.
However, some of the Labour-since-the-Danelaw councils really didn't help themselves. Dripping sense of entitlement, "its all the Tories fault", cuts and misery with no vision for how to come out the other side.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Why should we care?
That was before I was even an adult and I've voted in six general elections since then.
Whether a prior generation of politicians, very few of whom are still in Parliament and none of whom hold a senior role in the party anymore, opposed it or not is moot now. The Tories in Parliament today have introduced the Living Wage and uplifted the Minimum Wage faster than inflation.
See my post on 'elected dictatorship'. We have an appalling form of democracy. This is symptomatic of it.
Govt ignore parliament, oppositions oppose everything. There is no real debate.
What are you talking about? How is that symptomatic of anything?
In a previous century, a previous generation of politicians lost an argument. They had the argument for good reasons, implemented badly a minimum wage can lead to mass unemployment, but they lost the argument. Future generations of politicians have accepted the new reality and moved on.
But you seem to want to be trapped in a previous century with previous politicians. Why?
I think you are missing the point Philip. As happened then and as happens now Govts do what ever they want and opposition opposes regardless of the merits of the argument. There is no constructive debate.
Stamer came up with a logical issue 2 PMQs ago. I raised it at the time. Everyone including you now agrees with him. Boris just tried to ridicule him as would every PM in history regardless of party. It is what a PM is expected to do.
Same in reverse all that time ago on Mon wage and flip to living wage.
In fact same with every issue. Doesn't matter if you are a Tory or Labour. It is the system.
That is the point. The system is broken. There is no constructive debate.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
People blamed Labour councils because they had Labour councils. You think people voted UKIP out of gratitude to George Osborne? You have misunderstood and/or not properly engaged with the argument.
Except most people didn't have Labour Councils. 🤦♂️
By 2010 after 13 years of Labour in government, the Tories had won most Councillors across the country. So if people were turning against their local Councillors then the Tories should have been the biggest losers, not the big winners from that.
Is there some magical reason in your eyes that people have turned against Labour Councils in a way that they haven't turned against Tory ones?
Or maybe its just that people turned against Labour as they didn't like what Labour had to say? 🤔
The question was why particular towns went deep blue, via purple, from red. The ones on the map. Now, these towns, it turns out, if you look at the other map, are the ones hardest hit by Osborne's austerity, which was not, as you can see, equally spread round the country. The links are given earlier in this thread and at the end of the last. Because Osborne's cuts were to local authority budgets, it was the Labour councils that had to cut facilities and services on the ground, and that is why Labour councils were blamed. Doubtless if these particular places had Official Monster Raving Loony councils, the OMRL Party would have been blamed. But they didn't.
Yep, it was a policy of deliberate targeting and it worked. OK so those areas had a decade of shit, but now they have voted Labour out here comes the cash to make you feel better.
However, some of the Labour-since-the-Danelaw councils really didn't help themselves. Dripping sense of entitlement, "its all the Tories fault", cuts and misery with no vision for how to come out the other side.
A mate started feeling ill in March of last year. He decided he had had Covid, and was suffering from long Covid. This went on until recently, when a doctor ordered tests that eventually revealed that he had a rare stage-4 cancer.
He's a few years younger than me, with a family. He says that if it had not been for Covid, he would have got the symptoms checked out much earlier.
The health effects of Covid are going to last a long time, even for many of those who never got Covid...
@Stocky reposted his thread header yesterday. I read a few comments including one from someone who told of a friend of theirs who had had their chemo stopped peremptorily because the NHS was clearing the decks for Covid. That was April 2020. Goodness knows what happened to that friend.
The authorities are in effect telling people to switch Test and Trace off or delete it.
It's the old "8 out of 10 owners say their cats prefer it" manoeuvre.
They're saying it's stopping people going down the pub and going on holiday, and that it's interfering with the operation of the holy NHS. You can't get much of a clearer message than that, not without the royal family standing on the balcony at Buckingham Palace and saying "Turn your epps ORFFF".
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
70% is great for vaccines. Flu is often around 50%
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
I’m glad you had a good time but AZ is not a dud. Far from it. It’s an excellent vaccine. As for “you can’t give away AZ in most countries” that’s just absolute balls. It’s the mainstay of the Indian vaccine programme and the EU just took it to court to make it deliver more. People are recommended to get the flu vaccine when it’s efficacy annually rarely reaches more than 40%.
Just your Andy Murray assertion has been proved to be bollocks (see link below) this trope is just lazily trotted out by the Anglophobic end of Scottish nationalism of which you are a sadly prime exemplar.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
This disease is causing about 1% of current deaths even though it is widespread. It really isnt something to obsess about to the point of mask wearing , house imprisonment for the crime of being near somebody who may have it etc etc .99% of current deaths are caused by something other than covid- why is 99% (it seems) of government dictaks , media news about covid?
Because we have a runaway infection rate way higher than the rest of the world and have many hospitals unable to cope?
You and others are fed up - we all are. But you've decided that the best way to be clear of Covid is to wish it out of existence. The majority think you are crazy. When you find that you are in the minority tomorrow with most people still "virtue signalling" is going to wind you up?
"Who are these idiots?" you will think about each other.
I don't think people have decided to wish it out of existence. They just think - for their personal levels of acceptable risk - that they'd rather live with the risk and get on with their lives.
Even if you disagree with it, it's a reasonable view atm. An alternative is people fearing Covid so much that we never, ever, get out of the restrictions, even when the hospitalisations and deaths are near-zero.
I'm happy for people to make their own choices at this stage - although the presence of people who cannot be vaccinated (as opposed to refuseniks - is something to be factored in. I'll still be wearing masks for a while, as I don't see it as much of an infringement of my liberties to do so. Others do.
As an aside, a real tragedy of this crisis is that, whilst vaccinations have worked better than I hoped, therapeutics have not.
Personally, I am taking a pragmatic view. Though unlikely to die of it, I do not want it. Losing sense of smell and taste permanently (as Mrs Foxy has partially) would be a significant loss to me.
I won't be going out much to indoor venues from Monday 19th during a time of high prevalence, though will do so once the wave subsides to a few thousand rather than 50 000 cases per day.
I just don't want to be around unmasked people who are ignoring social distancing for a while yet.
A minor point: how do you know if your good wife has lost her sense of smell permanently?
When I had viral meningitis, the effects lingered for about nine months and I now think I have recovered fully (as far as I can tell where memory is concerned). ISTR a certain person on here denying that meningitis has long-term effects ...
Well it is 9 months now, and one of my work colleagues still has not regained his after 15 months. Obviously we haven't got much longer follow up than that, but there is good reason to expect it is permanent.
This paper on MRI imaging before and after covid does appear to show permanent damage to the limbic system, which is a primitive part of the brain dealing with smell, memory and emotion.
Very interesting information. Thanks for this. Is this how "long Covid" causes "brain fog", one of the examples of which is memory impairment?
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
You forgot Great Airline Seat Upgrades Wot I Have Experienced.
And of course Soft Fruit Watch.
I sense you're yearning for the summer of 2018.
Here's a few more:
Thai prostitutes review with SeanT. London restaurant update with Byronic. The secret lives of my lifelong friends with Leon.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
I’m glad you had a good time but AZ is not a dud. Far from it. It’s an excellent vaccine. As for “you can’t give away AZ in most countries” that’s just absolute balls. It’s the mainstay of the Indian vaccine programme and the EU just took it to court to make it deliver more. People are recommended to get the flu vaccine when it’s efficacy annually rarely reaches more than 40%.
Just your Andy Murray assertion has been proved to be bollocks (see link below) this trope is just lazily trotted out by the Anglophobic end of Scottish nationalism of which you are a sadly prime exemplar.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
Charles, the NHS are having to instruct medical staff to delete the NHS Track and Trace App because too many medical staff are being exposed to it.
Not having the app to ping means that they can continue to treat medically vulnerable and seriously ill patients and likely expose them to Covid.
So we're back to two schools of thought. On one hand everyone should already have been jabbed by now, which makes them invulnerable so stop testing and let nature take its course. On the other hand your comments about evil.
I'm glad I am not a medic. Unlike the "pray the pox away" brigade on here they know how bad this is. And your government have put them in the position of don't get pinghed, keep working and likely cause harm, or get pinged, don't work and the hospital is so short of medics that it will likely cause harm.
I’m not talking about the app / self isolation (it seems ridiculous but I’ve only read the headlines).
I’m talking about someone who - in the full knowledge that they have a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease - chooses to expose others to that
You occasionally get stories of people with HIV who knowingly have unprotected sexual with multiple partners without informing them of the facts. Those people get sent to prison, and rightly so. It’s not hugely different in principle
Indeed. My point is that the border between "I know I have Covid, fuck off" from Cocky and "I may have Covid, I am going to act like I haven't" or better still "YOU may have Covid, I am going to instruct you as my employee to act like you haven't" is a fine one.
Some posters want to pray the pox away. It appears the majority do not - so are being described as "afraid". Yes, they are afraid. A runaway pandemic where once again the UK is at the leading edge of the infection wave does that to you.
"Its just like the flu" in terms of impact and the way we should act is what they keep posting. Most of us have had flu. It isn't a big deal and has a fixed short-term impact. Covid is not flu. It does not have a fixed impact, and the long-term effects for many sound fare more debilitating than the short. Suggest that its long covid that has people afeared.
Comparatively few people actually get flu… that is a 10 day disease that knocks you right out. Most people get man flu…
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
Charles, the NHS are having to instruct medical staff to delete the NHS Track and Trace App because too many medical staff are being exposed to it.
Not having the app to ping means that they can continue to treat medically vulnerable and seriously ill patients and likely expose them to Covid.
So we're back to two schools of thought. On one hand everyone should already have been jabbed by now, which makes them invulnerable so stop testing and let nature take its course. On the other hand your comments about evil.
I'm glad I am not a medic. Unlike the "pray the pox away" brigade on here they know how bad this is. And your government have put them in the position of don't get pinghed, keep working and likely cause harm, or get pinged, don't work and the hospital is so short of medics that it will likely cause harm.
I’m not talking about the app / self isolation (it seems ridiculous but I’ve only read the headlines).
I’m talking about someone who - in the full knowledge that they have a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease - chooses to expose others to that
You occasionally get stories of people with HIV who knowingly have unprotected sexual with multiple partners without informing them of the facts. Those people get sent to prison, and rightly so. It’s not hugely different in principle
Indeed. My point is that the border between "I know I have Covid, fuck off" from Cocky and "I may have Covid, I am going to act like I haven't" or better still "YOU may have Covid, I am going to instruct you as my employee to act like you haven't" is a fine one.
Some posters want to pray the pox away. It appears the majority do not - so are being described as "afraid". Yes, they are afraid. A runaway pandemic where once again the UK is at the leading edge of the infection wave does that to you.
"Its just like the flu" in terms of impact and the way we should act is what they keep posting. Most of us have had flu. It isn't a big deal and has a fixed short-term impact. Covid is not flu. It does not have a fixed impact, and the long-term effects for many sound fare more debilitating than the short. Suggest that its long covid that has people afeared.
One of the important differences between covid and flu, other than duration of illness, is that flu is mostly infective in the symptomatic period, so the very nature of feeling rough causes people to isolate. Covid in general, and Delta in particular, seems to have peak infectivity and viral shedding in the presymptomatic period, so people spread it before they are aware of being ill.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
70% is great for vaccines. Flu is often around 50%
Yes it is good and it’s efficacy against hospitalisation is far higher.
This is the problem when Ill informed Laymen offer opinions on stuff they know squat about.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
You forgot Great Airline Seat Upgrades Wot I Have Experienced.
And of course Soft Fruit Watch.
I sense you're yearning for the summer of 2018.
Here's a few more:
Thai prostitutes review with SeanT. London restaurant update with Byronic. The secret lives of my lifelong friends with Leon.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
People blamed Labour councils because they had Labour councils. You think people voted UKIP out of gratitude to George Osborne? You have misunderstood and/or not properly engaged with the argument.
Except most people didn't have Labour Councils. 🤦♂️
By 2010 after 13 years of Labour in government, the Tories had won most Councillors across the country. So if people were turning against their local Councillors then the Tories should have been the biggest losers, not the big winners from that.
Is there some magical reason in your eyes that people have turned against Labour Councils in a way that they haven't turned against Tory ones?
Or maybe its just that people turned against Labour as they didn't like what Labour had to say? 🤔
The question was why particular towns went deep blue, via purple, from red. The ones on the map. Now, these towns, it turns out, if you look at the other map, are the ones hardest hit by Osborne's austerity, which was not, as you can see, equally spread round the country. The links are given earlier in this thread and at the end of the last. Because Osborne's cuts were to local authority budgets, it was the Labour councils that had to cut facilities and services on the ground, and that is why Labour councils were blamed. Doubtless if these particular places had Official Monster Raving Loony councils, the OMRL Party would have been blamed. But they didn't.
Yep, it was a policy of deliberate targeting and it worked. OK so those areas had a decade of shit, but now they have voted Labour out here comes the cash to make you feel better.
However, some of the Labour-since-the-Danelaw councils really didn't help themselves. Dripping sense of entitlement, "its all the Tories fault", cuts and misery with no vision for how to come out the other side.
And that problem remains. Boris is or was seen as being on their side. Labour isn't, either because Jeremy Corbyn was more interested in a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing, or because Keir Starmer does not seem to be in favour of, or against, anything at all so far as can be readily discerned.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
People blamed Labour councils because they had Labour councils. You think people voted UKIP out of gratitude to George Osborne? You have misunderstood and/or not properly engaged with the argument.
Except most people didn't have Labour Councils. 🤦♂️
By 2010 after 13 years of Labour in government, the Tories had won most Councillors across the country. So if people were turning against their local Councillors then the Tories should have been the biggest losers, not the big winners from that.
Is there some magical reason in your eyes that people have turned against Labour Councils in a way that they haven't turned against Tory ones?
Or maybe its just that people turned against Labour as they didn't like what Labour had to say? 🤔
The question was why particular towns went deep blue, via purple, from red. The ones on the map. Now, these towns, it turns out, if you look at the other map, are the ones hardest hit by Osborne's austerity, which was not, as you can see, equally spread round the country. The links are given earlier in this thread and at the end of the last. Because Osborne's cuts were to local authority budgets, it was the Labour councils that had to cut facilities and services on the ground, and that is why Labour councils were blamed. Doubtless if these particular places had Official Monster Raving Loony councils, the OMRL Party would have been blamed. But they didn't.
Yep, it was a policy of deliberate targeting and it worked. OK so those areas had a decade of shit, but now they have voted Labour out here comes the cash to make you feel better.
However, some of the Labour-since-the-Danelaw councils really didn't help themselves. Dripping sense of entitlement, "its all the Tories fault", cuts and misery with no vision for how to come out the other side.
In a lot of cases - it was cuts and misery with no vision for how to come out the other side as the cuts were to the point that if it wasn't a legally required service it had to go and any service would get the bare minimum and no more.
Remember Darlington's budget was so bad they decided to close their libraries until it was pointed out that they were legally required to provide one at which point they started pulling any other trick they could to reduce those costs.
Now a lot of that had to do with crap leadership but an equally large part of it was the impact of osbourne remove council tax balancing payments from areas where the average house was in a lower council tax band - that had a significant impact on the worst hit councils.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
I am currently sober...probably...
I took 'Whoishenow' to be a reference to the poster formerly known as SeanT, particularly given the 'rodomontade' (good word!) reference. Not sure where 'Doctor' comes in though.
OGH surely deserves a slot too?! Maybe a brief prayer session for Starmer and/or the LDs to kick off the day before HYUFD.
And Sunil's great train journeys as a gentler end to the day after the Dura Ace slot.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
Don’t forget Agent 008 Yokel with his yarns from the planet’s security services. You’d almost think it was non-fiction.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
Many Scots with chips on their shoulders love saying this, because it plays to the idea of "Infamy, infamy, the English have all got it in for me". But "Sutton United Win the FA Cup" would be front-page British news, whereas "Sutton United Get Knocked Out in the Preliminaries" would only make the local press.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
This disease is causing about 1% of current deaths even though it is widespread. It really isnt something to obsess about to the point of mask wearing , house imprisonment for the crime of being near somebody who may have it etc etc .99% of current deaths are caused by something other than covid- why is 99% (it seems) of government dictaks , media news about covid?
Because we have a runaway infection rate way higher than the rest of the world and have many hospitals unable to cope?
You and others are fed up - we all are. But you've decided that the best way to be clear of Covid is to wish it out of existence. The majority think you are crazy. When you find that you are in the minority tomorrow with most people still "virtue signalling" is going to wind you up?
"Who are these idiots?" you will think about each other.
I don't think people have decided to wish it out of existence. They just think - for their personal levels of acceptable risk - that they'd rather live with the risk and get on with their lives.
Even if you disagree with it, it's a reasonable view atm. An alternative is people fearing Covid so much that we never, ever, get out of the restrictions, even when the hospitalisations and deaths are near-zero.
I'm happy for people to make their own choices at this stage - although the presence of people who cannot be vaccinated (as opposed to refuseniks - is something to be factored in. I'll still be wearing masks for a while, as I don't see it as much of an infringement of my liberties to do so. Others do.
As an aside, a real tragedy of this crisis is that, whilst vaccinations have worked better than I hoped, therapeutics have not.
Personally, I am taking a pragmatic view. Though unlikely to die of it, I do not want it. Losing sense of smell and taste permanently (as Mrs Foxy has partially) would be a significant loss to me.
I won't be going out much to indoor venues from Monday 19th during a time of high prevalence, though will do so once the wave subsides to a few thousand rather than 50 000 cases per day.
I just don't want to be around unmasked people who are ignoring social distancing for a while yet.
A minor point: how do you know if your good wife has lost her sense of smell permanently?
When I had viral meningitis, the effects lingered for about nine months and I now think I have recovered fully (as far as I can tell where memory is concerned). ISTR a certain person on here denying that meningitis has long-term effects ...
Well it is 9 months now, and one of my work colleagues still has not regained his after 15 months. Obviously we haven't got much longer follow up than that, but there is good reason to expect it is permanent.
This paper on MRI imaging before and after covid does appear to show permanent damage to the limbic system, which is a primitive part of the brain dealing with smell, memory and emotion.
We will know more in the future, but I am quite happy with my limbic system as it is at present.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
Charles, the NHS are having to instruct medical staff to delete the NHS Track and Trace App because too many medical staff are being exposed to it.
Not having the app to ping means that they can continue to treat medically vulnerable and seriously ill patients and likely expose them to Covid.
So we're back to two schools of thought. On one hand everyone should already have been jabbed by now, which makes them invulnerable so stop testing and let nature take its course. On the other hand your comments about evil.
I'm glad I am not a medic. Unlike the "pray the pox away" brigade on here they know how bad this is. And your government have put them in the position of don't get pinghed, keep working and likely cause harm, or get pinged, don't work and the hospital is so short of medics that it will likely cause harm.
This is not true for the NHS across the board. It doesn’t exist as a single entity but as many separate trusts with different policies. My wife’s trust expects people when at work to switch off the app and if people are pinged they risk assess.
Yes, my Trust has always had a policy of switching it off at work. The argument is that we are protected by our PPE. I only use the App for entering venues. Most of the time I keep Bluetooth switched off because it drains my battery excessively.
The app contact tracing settings actually include "you are a heathcare worker woring in a healthcare building such as a hospital or GP surgery" in times when you should pause contact tracing (if you go to those settings in the app). Not sure, but I think that's a new thing.
Other noted reasons to turn off - storing phone in communal locker; working behind fixed screen, health/social care worker using medical grade PPE.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
If there was ever a post which demonstrated that Scottish nationalists are largely ignorant twats you have proved it here. Thick thick thick. And I thought that you were one of the more intelligent ones, though seeing as the other main Nationalist posters are Malcom and Union Divvie (Mr Angry and Mr slightly less angry), the bar is very low. I feel slightly sorry for Carnyx who seems quite a decent chap, because the company he has to keep is pretty shockingly divisive and stupid.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
This disease is causing about 1% of current deaths even though it is widespread. It really isnt something to obsess about to the point of mask wearing , house imprisonment for the crime of being near somebody who may have it etc etc .99% of current deaths are caused by something other than covid- why is 99% (it seems) of government dictaks , media news about covid?
Because we have a runaway infection rate way higher than the rest of the world and have many hospitals unable to cope?
You and others are fed up - we all are. But you've decided that the best way to be clear of Covid is to wish it out of existence. The majority think you are crazy. When you find that you are in the minority tomorrow with most people still "virtue signalling" is going to wind you up?
"Who are these idiots?" you will think about each other.
I don't think people have decided to wish it out of existence. They just think - for their personal levels of acceptable risk - that they'd rather live with the risk and get on with their lives.
Even if you disagree with it, it's a reasonable view atm. An alternative is people fearing Covid so much that we never, ever, get out of the restrictions, even when the hospitalisations and deaths are near-zero.
I'm happy for people to make their own choices at this stage - although the presence of people who cannot be vaccinated (as opposed to refuseniks - is something to be factored in. I'll still be wearing masks for a while, as I don't see it as much of an infringement of my liberties to do so. Others do.
As an aside, a real tragedy of this crisis is that, whilst vaccinations have worked better than I hoped, therapeutics have not.
Personally, I am taking a pragmatic view. Though unlikely to die of it, I do not want it. Losing sense of smell and taste permanently (as Mrs Foxy has partially) would be a significant loss to me.
I won't be going out much to indoor venues from Monday 19th during a time of high prevalence, though will do so once the wave subsides to a few thousand rather than 50 000 cases per day.
I just don't want to be around unmasked people who are ignoring social distancing for a while yet.
A minor point: how do you know if your good wife has lost her sense of smell permanently?
When I had viral meningitis, the effects lingered for about nine months and I now think I have recovered fully (as far as I can tell where memory is concerned). ISTR a certain person on here denying that meningitis has long-term effects ...
Well it is 9 months now, and one of my work colleagues still has not regained his after 15 months. Obviously we haven't got much longer follow up than that, but there is good reason to expect it is permanent.
This paper on MRI imaging before and after covid does appear to show permanent damage to the limbic system, which is a primitive part of the brain dealing with smell, memory and emotion.
Very interesting information. Thanks for this. Is this how "long Covid" causes "brain fog", one of the examples of which is memory impairment?
To be honest, we don't yet know, and the limbic system is a fascinatingly primitive part of the brain. Much larger in dogs for example, but the links between smell, emotion and memory have been known for some time, Proust's Madeline for example, or this scene in possibly the best film ever made:
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
You forgot Great Airline Seat Upgrades Wot I Have Experienced.
And of course Soft Fruit Watch.
I sense you're yearning for the summer of 2018.
Here's a few more:
Thai prostitutes review with SeanT. London restaurant update with Byronic. The secret lives of my lifelong friends with Leon.
Sounds good. Also things wot my cab driver told me, with LadyG?
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Why should we care?
That was before I was even an adult and I've voted in six general elections since then.
Whether a prior generation of politicians, very few of whom are still in Parliament and none of whom hold a senior role in the party anymore, opposed it or not is moot now. The Tories in Parliament today have introduced the Living Wage and uplifted the Minimum Wage faster than inflation.
See my post on 'elected dictatorship'. We have an appalling form of democracy. This is symptomatic of it.
Govt ignore parliament, oppositions oppose everything. There is no real debate.
What are you talking about? How is that symptomatic of anything?
In a previous century, a previous generation of politicians lost an argument. They had the argument for good reasons, implemented badly a minimum wage can lead to mass unemployment, but they lost the argument. Future generations of politicians have accepted the new reality and moved on.
But you seem to want to be trapped in a previous century with previous politicians. Why?
I think you are missing the point Philip. As happened then and as happens now Govts do what ever they want and opposition opposes regardless of the merits of the argument. There is no constructive debate.
Stamer came up with a logical issue 2 PMQs ago. I raised it at the time. Everyone including you now agrees with him. Boris just tried to ridicule him as would every PM in history regardless of party. It is what a PM is expected to do.
Same in reverse all that time ago on Mon wage and flip to living wage.
In fact same with every issue. Doesn't matter if you are a Tory or Labour. It is the system.
That is the point. The system is broken. There is no constructive debate.
Philip try the following test:
If Starmer were PM and Boris were LOTO and Boris had spotted the flaw in the testing regime that just about everyone including you has now spotted and Boris raised it at PMQs I'm pretty certain that Starmer would have reacted in exactly the same way Boris did. In other words our system makes them all hypocrites.
Same with Living Wage. If Labour had introduced it the Tory's would have ripped it to shreds with the same argument they did when the min wage was introduced.
It is the system and it is no way to govern the country. Both parties are as bad as one another and the system makes them so.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
70% is great for vaccines. Flu is often around 50%
Yes it is good and it’s efficacy against hospitalisation is far higher.
This is the problem when Ill informed Laymen offer opinions on stuff they know squat about.
Indeed. Antivaxxers and Scottish nationalists. Both groups seem to delight in being divisive idiots.
A lot of criticism of the government, and yet despite how obviously terrible everything they are doing is the Welsh and Scottish governments are doing essentially the same thing. Which is surprising as surely there is some clearly better alternative plan that they could follow in Wales and Scotland rather than aping Johnson's mad plan to kill us all in England. Or maybe what is being done in England, Wales, and Scotland is the least bad option, and the critics are full of it.
Delete app. Use phone's camera mode and wave the phone over the QR code at a venue.
Job done.
Tbh, I can’t remember when I was last asked for my contact details at a venue.
Must have been some time ago.
I have never had the app. Have been asked to check in all of once having been into licensed premises 4 times in total since Covid began.
I do have to laugh though at the mentality that we have to 'break the doom cycle' or whatever. Pox will Go Away if we think positive thoughts. meanwhile, as we have some hospitals being overrun, they're having to instruct their staff to delete the app because whether they have come into contact with Covid or not, if so many staff have to isolate then people are going to die.
Pox won't Go Away if we think positive thoughts. Pox has already Gone Away as a significant cause of death.
People are hyperventillating over cases but cases aren't resulting in deaths in any significant number.
The solution is simple. Stop worrying about cases. Stop testing for cases. Stop trying to prevent the pox spreading.
If people are unvaccinated they may get sick and die. So get vaccinated.
But... it currently represents about 20% of all preventable deaths, rising at about 45% per week. Next week, it will probably be at about 40% of all preventable deaths. That does seem quite significant to me.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
They billed themselves as pro free speech, not anti woke.
It's one of those Yes Minister irregular verbs.
I'm pro-free-speech You are a racist He is charged under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
@kinabalu could host “Morality Corner”, positioned like Ronnie Corbett in a chair too big for him, wearing his standard attire of cloth cap and cravat and stroking his chin with Topping as side-kick dishing out thrashings to the morally inferior.
A binocular-attired Francis would then present “Holiday-maker C**ts” to get the blood rising further.
Then, “Trim-watch” with Leon regaling us of “the birds wot I have shagged” while sipping red wine on a different Greek shore every week, feet-up on the previous night’s conquest.
“Marky’s Moth Bothering” would provide lighter relief.
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Why should we care?
That was before I was even an adult and I've voted in six general elections since then.
Whether a prior generation of politicians, very few of whom are still in Parliament and none of whom hold a senior role in the party anymore, opposed it or not is moot now. The Tories in Parliament today have introduced the Living Wage and uplifted the Minimum Wage faster than inflation.
See my post on 'elected dictatorship'. We have an appalling form of democracy. This is symptomatic of it.
Govt ignore parliament, oppositions oppose everything. There is no real debate.
What are you talking about? How is that symptomatic of anything?
In a previous century, a previous generation of politicians lost an argument. They had the argument for good reasons, implemented badly a minimum wage can lead to mass unemployment, but they lost the argument. Future generations of politicians have accepted the new reality and moved on.
But you seem to want to be trapped in a previous century with previous politicians. Why?
I think you are missing the point Philip. As happened then and as happens now Govts do what ever they want and opposition opposes regardless of the merits of the argument. There is no constructive debate.
Stamer came up with a logical issue 2 PMQs ago. I raised it at the time. Everyone including you now agrees with him. Boris just tried to ridicule him as would every PM in history regardless of party. It is what a PM is expected to do.
Same in reverse all that time ago on Mon wage and flip to living wage.
In fact same with every issue. Doesn't matter if you are a Tory or Labour. It is the system.
That is the point. The system is broken. There is no constructive debate.
That's not a broken system it's a system that is working as intended.
Having an opposition that challenges and stress tests the government probing for weaknesses to exploit is a strength of our system.
Having a government that is willing to learn and pick up and address good points the opposition makes, neutering them as a political issue and addressing the issue for the nation, is a strength of our system.
But as it happens the Tories of the day didn't oppose the Minimum Wage just for opposition's sake, but on principle this state level interference in the market can be really harmful and counterproductive. At the time this happened Youth Unemployment was a real issue across much of the West. Many nations had 30%+ Youth Unemployment.
Opposing a policy that you think could lead to 30%+ Youth Unemployment is a good thing not a bad one.
As it happens, the staggering of the age brackets avoided the feared Youth Unemployment issue. Though at the last election Corbyn wanted to abolish the age brackets - I would 100% oppose that for the same reason the minimum wage was originally opposed. Because that would fail. The system is working thanks to the brackets, so abolishing them would be massively counterproductive.
On thread: Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but there are examples of people getting pinged from being in the next house to someone who tests positive. Close proximity, yes, but surely a wall being in the way makes it difficult for the bug? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/15/neighbours-pinged-walls-nhs-covid-app/
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
All interesting - for instance, the last, as well as being particularly recommended for our Excel-lovers, has a thump in the tail like a Varanus komodoensis.
Have to go and work in a moment, so have a good day all.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
70% is great for vaccines. Flu is often around 50%
Yes it is good and it’s efficacy against hospitalisation is far higher.
This is the problem when Ill informed Laymen offer opinions on stuff they know squat about.
Indeed. Antivaxxers and Scottish nationalists. Both groups seem to delight in being divisive idiots.
A Thai medicines authority wants to restrict export of AstraZenica because the country needs it too much. But I was assured by @StuartDickson it was a dud no one can give away?
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
People blamed Labour councils because they had Labour councils. You think people voted UKIP out of gratitude to George Osborne? You have misunderstood and/or not properly engaged with the argument.
Except most people didn't have Labour Councils. 🤦♂️
By 2010 after 13 years of Labour in government, the Tories had won most Councillors across the country. So if people were turning against their local Councillors then the Tories should have been the biggest losers, not the big winners from that.
Is there some magical reason in your eyes that people have turned against Labour Councils in a way that they haven't turned against Tory ones?
Or maybe its just that people turned against Labour as they didn't like what Labour had to say? 🤔
The question was why particular towns went deep blue, via purple, from red. The ones on the map. Now, these towns, it turns out, if you look at the other map, are the ones hardest hit by Osborne's austerity, which was not, as you can see, equally spread round the country. The links are given earlier in this thread and at the end of the last. Because Osborne's cuts were to local authority budgets, it was the Labour councils that had to cut facilities and services on the ground, and that is why Labour councils were blamed. Doubtless if these particular places had Official Monster Raving Loony councils, the OMRL Party would have been blamed. But they didn't.
Yep, it was a policy of deliberate targeting and it worked. OK so those areas had a decade of shit, but now they have voted Labour out here comes the cash to make you feel better.
However, some of the Labour-since-the-Danelaw councils really didn't help themselves. Dripping sense of entitlement, "its all the Tories fault", cuts and misery with no vision for how to come out the other side.
And that problem remains. Boris is or was seen as being on their side. Labour isn't, either because Jeremy Corbyn was more interested in a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing, or because Keir Starmer does not seem to be in favour of, or against, anything at all so far as can be readily discerned.
They also have a basic problem of who wants to be a councillor? A lot of councillors are ageing, their replacements tend to be enthusiasts. In Labour's case that has prompted a load of councillors (and MPs) who follow the anti-semite, which isn't really the solution they are looking for.
The Tories younger cadre are enthusiastic clown apologists (and from what we can see think as mince). Populism means lots of "Hi De Hi!" chanting which is good at projecting a party that is Up and Positive even if it isn't actually delivering, vs Labour where everything is Down and Depressing.
On thread: Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but there are examples of people getting pinged from being in the next house to someone who tests positive. Close proximity, yes, but surely a wall being in the way makes it difficult for the bug? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/15/neighbours-pinged-walls-nhs-covid-app/
My gut feeling over the past week is that there is something weird happening with the app. This is partly because lots of not especially raver type mates (generally bookish introverts) have been getting pinged without knowing anyone else who had.
In blocks of flats and offices in particular, 2m proximity for over 15m is definitely imaginable....
On thread: Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but there are examples of people getting pinged from being in the next house to someone who tests positive. Close proximity, yes, but surely a wall being in the way makes it difficult for the bug? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/15/neighbours-pinged-walls-nhs-covid-app/
Air currents are the issue, no? Also access corridors. So not impossible (though I don't think that is what T&T had in mind?) IIRC shared lightwells were a problem recognised early.
I should think there's a non-trivial risk if sitting downwind in the garden for a significant period of time. We have had anecdata of that happening when visiting someone in their garden, and a garden fence may not be enough ...
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
Many Scots with chips on their shoulders love saying this, because it plays to the idea of "Infamy, infamy, the English have all got it in for me". But "Sutton United Win the FA Cup" would be front-page British news, whereas "Sutton United Get Knocked Out in the Preliminaries" would only make the local press.
Trust me. You're not being picked on.
Don't tell him that. He bizarrely likes to wallow in a phoney sense of Scottish inferiority to appeal to an equally phoney sense of injustice. The inconvenient truth for the Nats is that Scots have been a driving force behind the British establishment. Their universities and schools have provided a disproportionate amount of leading politicians who are either Scottish or of Scottish decent. The Blair government was a leading example. The Scots were enthusiastic promoters of Empire, and their troops used to repress the genuinely oppressed around the world. Nats promote a false history, just like all nationalists and their close cousins, fascists.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
You forgot Great Airline Seat Upgrades Wot I Have Experienced.
And of course Soft Fruit Watch.
I sense you're yearning for the summer of 2018.
Here's a few more:
Thai prostitutes review with SeanT. London restaurant update with Byronic. The secret lives of my lifelong friends with Leon.
Sounds good. Also things wot my cab driver told me, with LadyG?
Travels with minicab drivers with Eadric The joy of newt painting with LadyG
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
Well if they bill themselves as an anti-woke channel (and why not?) then its best not to go more woke than your mainstream channels. Otherwise you do get precisely (or imprecisely) nil viewers
Yes, they really don't like free speech or contrary opinions do they the GB News viewers!
What really is killing it, apart from the poor production values, is that there is very little news, just repetitive pub bores rolling out the same tired ill-informed whinges. They just cannot fill 24 hours that way. They probably could manage a couple of hours in the evening.
You know what would be fucking mint? PBTV.
Sample Schedule:
A Look at the Polls with HYUFD
Cooking with Thommo. How to feed a family of four for a week on £1.20.
Doctor Whoishenow. A soap opera featuring a drunk identity shifting rodomontade specialist.
Casino Presents Wokewatch. Today's episode: First they came for the statues.
Questions of Nationalism presented by Malc. (OFCOM permitting)
This Week in Millionaires Complaining About Tyres with Morris Dancer
Dura Ace Fucking Roasts Viewers' Cars
@kinabalu could host “Morality Corner”, positioned like Ronnie Corbett in a chair too big for him, wearing his standard attire of cloth cap and cravat and stroking his chin with Topping as side-kick dishing out thrashings to the morally inferior.
A binocular-attired Francis would then present “Holiday-maker C**ts” to get the blood rising further.
Then, “Trim-watch” with Leon regaling us of “the birds wot I have shagged” while sipping red wine on a different Greek shore every week, feet-up on the previous night’s conquest.
“Marky’s Moth Bothering” would provide lighter relief.
You've put Leon in twice ... oh, er, I see now ...
Looks like GB News viewers are in favour of the cancel culture, both viewers in fact.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
The channel has now said the decision of Guto Harri to make the on-air gesture on Tuesday in solidarity against the racist abuse suffered by English players was “an unacceptable breach of our standards”.
A GB News spokesperson declined to say whether Harri, a former spokesperson for Boris Johnson, was still with the channel.
Business editor Liam Halligan and former Labour MP Gloria De Piero attracted no measurable audience to their show between 1pm and 1.30pm on Wednesday afternoon. During the same timeslot the BBC News channel attracted 62,000 viewers, while Sky News had 50,000 people watching.
GB News’ audience again briefly dipped to zero at 5pm, during a late-afternoon programme co-hosted by ex-BBC presenter Simon McCoy and former Ukip spokesperson Alex Phillips.
The figures were recorded the day after Harri’s move, which led to widespread fury on social media from GB News viewers who pledged to stop watching the recently launched rightwing current affairs channel, making accusations that it had sold out and gone “woke”, secretly harboured Marxist values, or was in favour of Black Lives Matter.
For those who don’t understand Barb panels (like the Guardian) it is very common for digital channels to reach ‘zero’ figures. It happens to Sky News , BT Sport often as you can imagine because the panel only has approx 20,000 viewers and if for example 3 quarters don’t have their TV on it is quite believable that none of the other 5k are watching a channel high up the EPG, or equally during a big England match a whole host of channels will rate zero.
This isn’t me saying GB News is doing well or badly or somewhere inbetween more the Guardian reporter has no context or understanding of TV ratings.
I deleted the App 24 hours after installing it last year. I could see what was coming.
Now that we have vaccines, testing is a waste of time. We don't test people for flu.
We need to snap out of this fear-laden doom-mongered mindset. And live.
I know this bit is controversial, but if I've caught covid I shan't inform anyone. I'll wear a mask out and about including at the shops and that's it.
And, once again, knowingly put people at risk of catching a highly transmissible and potentially fatal deal is evil.
If you know you have the bug then the only right thing to do is self isolate.
Everything else is fine.
Charles, the NHS are having to instruct medical staff to delete the NHS Track and Trace App because too many medical staff are being exposed to it.
Not having the app to ping means that they can continue to treat medically vulnerable and seriously ill patients and likely expose them to Covid.
So we're back to two schools of thought. On one hand everyone should already have been jabbed by now, which makes them invulnerable so stop testing and let nature take its course. On the other hand your comments about evil.
I'm glad I am not a medic. Unlike the "pray the pox away" brigade on here they know how bad this is. And your government have put them in the position of don't get pinghed, keep working and likely cause harm, or get pinged, don't work and the hospital is so short of medics that it will likely cause harm.
I’m not talking about the app / self isolation (it seems ridiculous but I’ve only read the headlines).
I’m talking about someone who - in the full knowledge that they have a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease - chooses to expose others to that
You occasionally get stories of people with HIV who knowingly have unprotected sexual with multiple partners without informing them of the facts. Those people get sent to prison, and rightly so. It’s not hugely different in principle
Indeed. My point is that the border between "I know I have Covid, fuck off" from Cocky and "I may have Covid, I am going to act like I haven't" or better still "YOU may have Covid, I am going to instruct you as my employee to act like you haven't" is a fine one.
Some posters want to pray the pox away. It appears the majority do not - so are being described as "afraid". Yes, they are afraid. A runaway pandemic where once again the UK is at the leading edge of the infection wave does that to you.
"Its just like the flu" in terms of impact and the way we should act is what they keep posting. Most of us have had flu. It isn't a big deal and has a fixed short-term impact. Covid is not flu. It does not have a fixed impact, and the long-term effects for many sound fare more debilitating than the short. Suggest that its long covid that has people afeared.
Covid is not the flu you're right. Flu season kills tens of thousands of people and post vaccination Covid is killing far less than that.
Covid post vaccines is less than the flu not more than it.
If you're not vaccinated get vaccinated but if you are vaccinated then Covid has every chance of being asymptomatic and considerably milder than real flu (as opposed to man flu).
This is something that was obvious from the first minute to myself and a few others on here.
Why it took media and the police so long to recognise and spread mistruths I don’t know. Hopefully they can focus on the online world of racism which is where serious reform is required and the new online safety bill might make some difference.
Looks like GB News viewers are in favour of the cancel culture, both viewers in fact.
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
The channel has now said the decision of Guto Harri to make the on-air gesture on Tuesday in solidarity against the racist abuse suffered by English players was “an unacceptable breach of our standards”.
A GB News spokesperson declined to say whether Harri, a former spokesperson for Boris Johnson, was still with the channel.
Business editor Liam Halligan and former Labour MP Gloria De Piero attracted no measurable audience to their show between 1pm and 1.30pm on Wednesday afternoon. During the same timeslot the BBC News channel attracted 62,000 viewers, while Sky News had 50,000 people watching.
GB News’ audience again briefly dipped to zero at 5pm, during a late-afternoon programme co-hosted by ex-BBC presenter Simon McCoy and former Ukip spokesperson Alex Phillips.
The figures were recorded the day after Harri’s move, which led to widespread fury on social media from GB News viewers who pledged to stop watching the recently launched rightwing current affairs channel, making accusations that it had sold out and gone “woke”, secretly harboured Marxist values, or was in favour of Black Lives Matter.
For those who don’t understand Barb panels (like the Guardian) it is very common for digital channels to reach ‘zero’ figures. It happens to Sky News , BT Sport often as you can imagine because the panel only has approx 20,000 viewers and if for example 3 quarters don’t have their TV on it is quite believable that none of the other 5k are watching a channel high up the EPG, or equally during a big England match a whole host of channels will rate zero.
This isn’t me saying GB News is doing well or badly or somewhere inbetween more the Guardian reporter has no context or understanding of TV ratings.
A Guardian journalist not knowing what they are talking about? Whatever next?
I've always been a big supporter of devolution within England so was interested in the Prime Minister's comments today.
I'm not wholly sure what a "County Deal" is and it doesn't seem the Prime Minister is either. Surrey and Hampshire are not London and expecting Tim Oliver to take over "transport" beyond local buses and cycling seems curious. Are we suggesting for example the County Councils take over South Western Railway? To be fair, they could only do a better job.
There's no mention of proper devolution such as ending capping and allowing Councils to set whatever Council Tax they consider justified for service provision. There's no mention (no surprise) of handing planning control back to elected local councillors (might be good if you wanted to stop the drift of disillusioned Conservatives to the LDs) and, more important, no mention of moving powers to local authorities and providing adequate resources (public health being one example).
The problem with County Councils is so much of their funding is taken up by the provision of care to adults and children - until and unless we see a resolution to the provision and funding of adult social care in particular (those the cost of provision of care to vulnerable children is another big drain on resources), the financial question is going to bedevil progress in other areas.
It also seems the Government has backed away from any talk of ending two-tier local Government and this will be another issue - again, back to Surrey where the Conservative-run County Council faces eleven Districts and Boroughs, many of whom are now run by anti-Conservative groupings. Seeking a common approach to devolution is almost impossible in such a dislocated political environment.
Yes, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Reigate & Banstead and Woking (minority) are Conservative led out of the 11 Ds&Bs in Surrey. I completely agree that the possibility of even a basic accommodation with the County is near zero.
The Tories now only need to lose 5 seats to lose control of Surrey CC too, Surrey is now full of Tory-LD marginals like Esher and Walton and Guildford and Surrey SW, it is no longer the ultra safe Tory county of the Major years that stayed true blue as other areas fell to Blair and Ashdown.
By contrast here in Essex, which used to be classic marginal territory with lots of seats won by New Labour, every seat is Tory held and most with big majorities and at county council level the Tories have a large majority of 31 now
Not quite, Cons 47 others 34 so seven seats! But point taken...though don't forget that Guildford had a LibDem MP until 2010 and Jeremy Hunt only held Surrey SW by three figures in 2005. E&W had an over 20,000 majority just 4 years ago in 2017 and the LibDems did not do well in the May elections albeit they captured Cobham in a by-election last week.
Guildford it is true had a LD MP for 1 term but that is the only seat the Tories have lost in the county before. At the next election it is conceivable Surrey SW, Esher and Walton, Woking as well as Guildford could all go yellow as they are all in the top 50 LD target seats.
By contrast here in Essex seats like Harlow and Clacton and Harwich and Thurrock which Blair won are not even in the top 100 Labour target seats or Colchester which was LD is not in the top 50 LD targets either.
One of the curiosities is that there's such a strong East-West gradient on the political map. The places where UKIP/BXP/New Model Tories have done really well tend to be along the East Coast. The further west you go, in general, with exceptions, the less the appeal.
Are there any good theories about what's going on?
Yes. George Osborne. Austerity. Government cut funding to councils; councils made cuts; people blamed the Labour councils, and the EU and everyone except the government; voted UKIP then Leave then Tory.
And this is where I used to say Cameron and Osborne caused Brexit and ended their own careers with their gerrymandering (whose side-effect was disenfranchising pro-Remain voters) and austerity. However, now PB Tories might say, ah, but there is a God and the end result was Conservative hegemony under the great Boris!
This is what Dominic Cummings saw, hence the levelling up agenda which as we know from Boris's speech yesterday, is, well, who can tell?
That's a polite fiction lefties are telling themselves to convince themselves they have "won the argument".
If blaming Councils were the issue then why haven't Tory Councils been blamed? Tories already had most Councillors nationwide.
More significantly is surely that the country has full employment. With the Living Wage that Osborne introduced, full employment, and affordable houses people are able to afford their own homes and not rely upon Councils.
George Osborne didn't introduce the living wage, he renamed the minimum wage which Conservatives opposed.
He did introduce the Living Wage.
The Minimum Wage tiers already existed. The Living Wage is a brand new even higher tier introduced by Osborne.
Dancing on a pinhead.
Why did the Tories object to the minimum wage?
Why should we care?
That was before I was even an adult and I've voted in six general elections since then.
Whether a prior generation of politicians, very few of whom are still in Parliament and none of whom hold a senior role in the party anymore, opposed it or not is moot now. The Tories in Parliament today have introduced the Living Wage and uplifted the Minimum Wage faster than inflation.
See my post on 'elected dictatorship'. We have an appalling form of democracy. This is symptomatic of it.
Govt ignore parliament, oppositions oppose everything. There is no real debate.
What are you talking about? How is that symptomatic of anything?
In a previous century, a previous generation of politicians lost an argument. They had the argument for good reasons, implemented badly a minimum wage can lead to mass unemployment, but they lost the argument. Future generations of politicians have accepted the new reality and moved on.
But you seem to want to be trapped in a previous century with previous politicians. Why?
I think you are missing the point Philip. As happened then and as happens now Govts do what ever they want and opposition opposes regardless of the merits of the argument. There is no constructive debate.
Stamer came up with a logical issue 2 PMQs ago. I raised it at the time. Everyone including you now agrees with him. Boris just tried to ridicule him as would every PM in history regardless of party. It is what a PM is expected to do.
Same in reverse all that time ago on Mon wage and flip to living wage.
In fact same with every issue. Doesn't matter if you are a Tory or Labour. It is the system.
That is the point. The system is broken. There is no constructive debate.
That's not a broken system it's a system that is working as intended.
Having an opposition that challenges and stress tests the government probing for weaknesses to exploit is a strength of our system.
Having a government that is willing to learn and pick up and address good points the opposition makes, neutering them as a political issue and addressing the issue for the nation, is a strength of our system.
But as it happens the Tories of the day didn't oppose the Minimum Wage just for opposition's sake, but on principle this state level interference in the market can be really harmful and counterproductive. At the time this happened Youth Unemployment was a real issue across much of the West. Many nations had 30%+ Youth Unemployment.
Opposing a policy that you think could lead to 30%+ Youth Unemployment is a good thing not a bad one.
As it happens, the staggering of the age brackets avoided the feared Youth Unemployment issue. Though at the last election Corbyn wanted to abolish the age brackets - I would 100% oppose that for the same reason the minimum wage was originally opposed. Because that would fail. The system is working thanks to the brackets, so abolishing them would be massively counterproductive.
Philip see my other post. I do think you are deluded if you think the opposition stress tests and the govt is willing to learn.
The opposition (no matter who it is) opposes everything and governments (no matter who they are) ignore them. Only when their own side or external pressure comes to force does this change. Just look at the recent issue of excessive isolation due to pings. Starmer was ridiculed by the PM when he brought it up. Only now a week and a bit later is it being considered and because of the reaction in the media and by the population. Starmer had zero impact.
In a well run system, a PM would have taken the issue onboard, had it looked at and agreed or dismissed it. Not dismiss it without a 2nd thought.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
70% is great for vaccines. Flu is often around 50%
Flu tends to be one jab rather than two doesn't it?
I wonder whether if we had two jabs for flu, like two for Covid, whether we might significantly improve protection against the flu?
I wonder if in the future mRNA etc might help produce better flu vaccines too?
The weird thing about the outrage towards GB News is that it has surely caused a sort of Streisand effect. TV news is a declining medium anyway. If it had just been ignored by the left then many on the right would probably have stayed away rather than watch in solidarity.
For those who don’t understand Barb panels (like the Guardian) it is very common for digital channels to reach ‘zero’ figures. It happens to Sky News , BT Sport often as you can imagine because the panel only has approx 20,000 viewers and if for example 3 quarters don’t have their TV on it is quite believable that none of the other 5k are watching a channel high up the EPG, or equally during a big England match a whole host of channels will rate zero.
This isn’t me saying GB News is doing well or badly or somewhere inbetween more the Guardian reporter has no context or understanding of TV ratings.
I'm sure that the Guardian's Media Editor understands TV ratings — if he doesn't he should not be in the job — so the story is simpy getting a dig in. Sounds a bit "fake news" to me.
[Ministers] are worried about the South African variant because they think it escapes the vaccine, although they don’t have evidence of that yet,” a government source said."
Not even tarot card evidence? Why do they think it then?
“It appears to be why a lot of countries in Africa and the Middle East are on the red list despite low prevalence rates.”
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
Many Scots with chips on their shoulders love saying this, because it plays to the idea of "Infamy, infamy, the English have all got it in for me". But "Sutton United Win the FA Cup" would be front-page British news, whereas "Sutton United Get Knocked Out in the Preliminaries" would only make the local press.
Trust me. You're not being picked on.
Don't tell him that. He bizarrely likes to wallow in a phoney sense of Scottish inferiority to appeal to an equally phoney sense of injustice. The inconvenient truth for the Nats is that Scots have been a driving force behind the British establishment. Their universities and schools have provided a disproportionate amount of leading politicians who are either Scottish or of Scottish decent. The Blair government was a leading example. The Scots were enthusiastic promoters of Empire, and their troops used to repress the genuinely oppressed around the world. Nats promote a false history, just like all nationalists and their close cousins, fascists.
Oh come now, thjere are for sure some idiots more henerally (incoluding deliberate bots, remember) but you are confoinding natikonalists and independistas. The SNP make no attempt to keep win ding up the old clock, certainly nothing on the scale of the Tories in England. I haven't seen them trying to reissue some Caledonian version of 'Our Island Story' for instance. They're modern independistas.
I've said it before, but the relative reactions to the vandalisms of the Churchill and Bruce at Bannockburn statues were totally different - and revealingly so.
On thread: Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but there are examples of people getting pinged from being in the next house to someone who tests positive. Close proximity, yes, but surely a wall being in the way makes it difficult for the bug? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/15/neighbours-pinged-walls-nhs-covid-app/
My gut feeling over the past week is that there is something weird happening with the app. This is partly because lots of not especially raver type mates (generally bookish introverts) have been getting pinged without knowing anyone else who had.
In blocks of flats and offices in particular, 2m proximity for over 15m is definitely imaginable....
Um, this is probably a really stupid suggestion but could there be a 2D effect here? By which I mean, is the app locating people in only two dimensions so that it decides you are in the same place as someone 10 floors above you?
I assume the phones use a combination of GPS and mobile cell triangulation... not sure how well GPS will work inside, say, a block of flats, which only leaves the triangulation.
If someone actually knows how this works it would be interesting to hear.
[Ministers] are worried about the South African variant because they think it escapes the vaccine, although they don’t have evidence of that yet,” a government source said."
Not even tarot card evidence? Why do they think it then?
WHO says that there is a loss in efficacy for beta. It's not speculation.
The weird thing about the outrage towards GB News is that it has surely caused a sort of Streisand effect. TV news is a declining medium anyway. If it had just been ignored by the left then many on the right would probably have stayed away rather than watch in solidarity.
On the other hand the right-leaning viewers may have been disappointed that it was not as right-wing as the left had portrayed it.
A lot of criticism of the government, and yet despite how obviously terrible everything they are doing is the Welsh and Scottish governments are doing essentially the same thing. Which is surprising as surely there is some clearly better alternative plan that they could follow in Wales and Scotland rather than aping Johnson's mad plan to kill us all in England. Or maybe what is being done in England, Wales, and Scotland is the least bad option, and the critics are full of it.
TBF, the S and W gmts are not rushing to dump masks on public transport, for one thing.
Indeed. My point is that the border between "I know I have Covid, fuck off" from Cocky and "I may have Covid, I am going to act like I haven't" or better still "YOU may have Covid, I am going to instruct you as my employee to act like you haven't" is a fine one.
Some posters want to pray the pox away. It appears the majority do not - so are being described as "afraid". Yes, they are afraid. A runaway pandemic where once again the UK is at the leading edge of the infection wave does that to you.
"Its just like the flu" in terms of impact and the way we should act is what they keep posting. Most of us have had flu. It isn't a big deal and has a fixed short-term impact. Covid is not flu. It does not have a fixed impact, and the long-term effects for many sound fare more debilitating than the short. Suggest that its long covid that has people afeared.
Covid is not the flu you're right. Flu season kills tens of thousands of people and post vaccination Covid is killing far less than that.
Covid post vaccines is less than the flu not more than it.
If you're not vaccinated get vaccinated but if you are vaccinated then Covid has every chance of being asymptomatic and considerably milder than real flu (as opposed to man flu).
FWIW I think RP is right and you're wrong, and dangerously so. If we all followed your advice we would collectively be in very deep trouble.
Comments
Govt ignore parliament, oppositions oppose everything. There is no real debate.
Hopefully that will help 'break the chains of transmission' of pings.
Funding was allocated using Eric Pickles' 'Revenue Spending Power' formula.
By happy accident, no doubt, that formula saw the biggest spending cuts handed to Labour-run councils and the lowest cuts - and in a few cases modest increases - handed to Conservative-run councils.
I live in the Wakefield Council area and they were, IIRC, in the top ten for cuts nationally at the time, despite having some areas of very high deprivation.
The anger at those cuts no doubt fed, mistakenly I obviously think, into the Brexit vote here. And anger at Labour for having to make deep cuts. So for the Conservative point of view, job done. Cooper's seat, where I live, looks vulnerable now.
The allocation then reminds me of this recent deprived town funding from Jenrick that somehow, again another happy accident no doubt, ended up going to Tory towns - or marginals - that were less deprived than many other places that didn't receive any funding.
In a previous century, a previous generation of politicians lost an argument. They had the argument for good reasons, implemented badly a minimum wage can lead to mass unemployment, but they lost the argument. Future generations of politicians have accepted the new reality and moved on.
But you seem to want to be trapped in a previous century with previous politicians. Why?
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
The Nasty Party breaks promise by being Nasty. Product A behaving like Product A and thereby reinforcing their well-earned Nasty Party brand.
Prior to 97 most countries typically had flat minimum wages and that does indeed price out the young from the market. Staggered tiers of age groups helps encourage firms to hire the young.
i) If you've got corona (You'd do the same for flu)
ii) Someone else living in your house has the bug.
Sitting near someone in a restaurant ? The app should suggest 2 lfts at days 3 or 5, same as the double jabbed holiday people do I think.
I’m talking about someone who - in the full knowledge that they have a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease - chooses to expose others to that
You occasionally get stories of people with HIV who knowingly have unprotected sexual with multiple partners without informing them of the facts. Those people get sent to prison, and rightly so. It’s not hugely different in principle
Sample Schedule:
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
It still has an extremely high efficacy against hospitalisation for the delta variant, and as a consequence deaths.
The vaccine can, along with others, be tweaked to take account of new variants.
https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/astrazeneca-vaccine-delta-variant/
When I had viral meningitis, the effects lingered for about nine months and I now think I have recovered fully (as far as I can tell where memory is concerned). ISTR a certain person on here denying that meningitis has long-term effects ...
There was a problem in that pensions were inadequate. The triple lock was put in place to address that. It has been successful but now is over prioritising pensions at the expense of others. So you shift to a new model.
I personally favour setting pensions as a fixed percent of average earnings. Other models are available.
My response was to the comment “if I’ve caught COVID I shan’t tell anyone…”
He’s posted it before as well
1) The people who don't want to miss work etc who are uninstalling the app.
2) The people who fancy a week off work who are installing the app.
You know supply and demand, market forces all the things you cherish.
Suck it up.
Some posters want to pray the pox away. It appears the majority do not - so are being described as "afraid". Yes, they are afraid. A runaway pandemic where once again the UK is at the leading edge of the infection wave does that to you.
"Its just like the flu" in terms of impact and the way we should act is what they keep posting. Most of us have had flu. It isn't a big deal and has a fixed short-term impact. Covid is not flu. It does not have a fixed impact, and the long-term effects for many sound fare more debilitating than the short. Suggest that its long covid that has people afeared.
And of course Soft Fruit Watch.
I can't figure out your game on this point - the vaccine most definitely and demonstrably is not a dud and you're not an anti vaxxer so why spread an anti vaxxer argument that it is ineffective when so much evidence shows it isn't?
In a brief dose of humanity, a Con government briefly decided to stop behaving like Turdmasters General and triple lock the pensions so that they were slightly less shite. Then came the Farage/Johnson revolution and suddenly they thought being slightly less unpleasant to OAPs causes a worrying lack of funds to chuck at the dodgy government contracts being handed out to their pals.
If you require further clarification I can oblige
However, some of the Labour-since-the-Danelaw councils really didn't help themselves. Dripping sense of entitlement, "its all the Tories fault", cuts and misery with no vision for how to come out the other side.
This paper on MRI imaging before and after covid does appear to show permanent damage to the limbic system, which is a primitive part of the brain dealing with smell, memory and emotion.
We will know more in the future, but I am quite happy with my limbic system as it is at present.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v1.full
One practical thing is that Mrs Foxy has lost her enjoyment of wine, though the effect is curiously patchy. She can smell some things.
The one thing which would continue to stop the country dead in its tracks is if they didn't abolish the 10-day isolation.
No one could plan to do anything, nor have any certainty of being able to work, if they thought they might be pinged at any time and told to stay at home for 10 days. If it stays the country will be at the mercy of having to put their lives on hold at any time. It is untenable.
It was so obvious that this would be an issue.
Stamer came up with a logical issue 2 PMQs ago. I raised it at the time. Everyone including you now agrees with him. Boris just tried to ridicule him as would every PM in history regardless of party. It is what a PM is expected to do.
Same in reverse all that time ago on Mon wage and flip to living wage.
In fact same with every issue. Doesn't matter if you are a Tory or Labour. It is the system.
That is the point. The system is broken. There is no constructive debate.
It's the old "8 out of 10 owners say their cats prefer it" manoeuvre.
They're saying it's stopping people going down the pub and going on holiday, and that it's interfering with the operation of the holy NHS. You can't get much of a clearer message than that, not without the royal family standing on the balcony at Buckingham Palace and saying "Turn your epps ORFFF".
Just your Andy Murray assertion has been proved to be bollocks (see link below) this trope is just lazily trotted out by the Anglophobic end of Scottish nationalism of which you are a sadly prime exemplar.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-34909845
I never thought being hugely introverted and a loather of mobile phones would prove such useful character traits.
Here's a few more:
Thai prostitutes review with SeanT.
London restaurant update with Byronic.
The secret lives of my lifelong friends with Leon.
This is the problem when Ill informed Laymen offer opinions on stuff they know squat about.
Remember Darlington's budget was so bad they decided to close their libraries until it was pointed out that they were legally required to provide one at which point they started pulling any other trick they could to reduce those costs.
Now a lot of that had to do with crap leadership but an equally large part of it was the impact of osbourne remove council tax balancing payments from areas where the average house was in a lower council tax band - that had a significant impact on the worst hit councils.
OGH surely deserves a slot too?! Maybe a brief prayer session for Starmer and/or the LDs to kick off the day before HYUFD.
And Sunil's great train journeys as a gentler end to the day after the Dura Ace slot.
Trust me. You're not being picked on.
Other noted reasons to turn off - storing phone in communal locker; working behind fixed screen, health/social care worker using medical grade PPE.
Can't you organise a rota so that at least one of you is watching GB News at any point in time?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/15/gb-news-shows-attracted-zero-viewers-after-boycott-over-taking-the-knee
https://youtu.be/kuyUKdJccgM
If Starmer were PM and Boris were LOTO and Boris had spotted the flaw in the testing regime that just about everyone including you has now spotted and Boris raised it at PMQs I'm pretty certain that Starmer would have reacted in exactly the same way Boris did. In other words our system makes them all hypocrites.
Same with Living Wage. If Labour had introduced it the Tory's would have ripped it to shreds with the same argument they did when the min wage was introduced.
It is the system and it is no way to govern the country. Both parties are as bad as one another and the system makes them so.
I'm pro-free-speech
You are a racist
He is charged under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006
A binocular-attired Francis would then present “Holiday-maker C**ts” to get the blood rising further.
Then, “Trim-watch” with Leon regaling us of “the birds wot I have shagged” while sipping red wine on a different Greek shore every week, feet-up on the previous night’s conquest.
“Marky’s Moth Bothering” would provide lighter relief.
Having an opposition that challenges and stress tests the government probing for weaknesses to exploit is a strength of our system.
Having a government that is willing to learn and pick up and address good points the opposition makes, neutering them as a political issue and addressing the issue for the nation, is a strength of our system.
But as it happens the Tories of the day didn't oppose the Minimum Wage just for opposition's sake, but on principle this state level interference in the market can be really harmful and counterproductive. At the time this happened Youth Unemployment was a real issue across much of the West. Many nations had 30%+ Youth Unemployment.
Opposing a policy that you think could lead to 30%+ Youth Unemployment is a good thing not a bad one.
As it happens, the staggering of the age brackets avoided the feared Youth Unemployment issue. Though at the last election Corbyn wanted to abolish the age brackets - I would 100% oppose that for the same reason the minimum wage was originally opposed. Because that would fail. The system is working thanks to the brackets, so abolishing them would be massively counterproductive.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/15/neighbours-pinged-walls-nhs-covid-app/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-supporting-ivermectin-as-covid-treatment-withdrawn-over-ethical-concerns
I can recommend it - and also the links in it (may have been updated):
https://steamtraen.blogspot.com/2021/07/Some-problems-with-the-data-from-a-Covid-study.html
Student in question:
https://grftr.news/why-was-a-major-study-on-ivermectin-for-covid-19-just-retracted/
And two others examining the issues
https://gidmk.medium.com/is-ivermectin-for-covid-19-based-on-fraudulent-research-5cc079278602
https://steamtraen.blogspot.com/2021/07/Some-problems-with-the-data-from-a-Covid-study.html
All interesting - for instance, the last, as well as being particularly recommended for our Excel-lovers, has a thump in the tail like a Varanus komodoensis.
Have to go and work in a moment, so have a good day all.
https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/aseanplus-news/2021/07/07/thai-pharmacy-council-urges-cap-on-az-vaccine-exports-as-virus-deaths-rise
I wish the Scots well on their inevitable path to independence but I hope nutcases like the ones on this board don’t end up in charge.
The Tories younger cadre are enthusiastic clown apologists (and from what we can see think as mince). Populism means lots of "Hi De Hi!" chanting which is good at projecting a party that is Up and Positive even if it isn't actually delivering, vs Labour where everything is Down and Depressing.
In blocks of flats and offices in particular, 2m proximity for over 15m is definitely imaginable....
I should think there's a non-trivial risk if sitting downwind in the garden for a significant period of time. We have had anecdata of that happening when visiting someone in their garden, and a garden fence may not be enough ...
The joy of newt painting with LadyG
Have enough for a Mon-Fri schedule.
This isn’t me saying GB News is doing well or badly or somewhere inbetween more the Guardian reporter has no context or understanding of TV ratings.
Covid post vaccines is less than the flu not more than it.
If you're not vaccinated get vaccinated but if you are vaccinated then Covid has every chance of being asymptomatic and considerably milder than real flu (as opposed to man flu).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-57849730
This is something that was obvious from the first minute to myself and a few others on here.
Why it took media and the police so long to recognise and spread mistruths I don’t know. Hopefully they can focus on the online world of racism which is where serious reform is required and the new online safety bill might make some difference.
https://twitter.com/HughRSOsborne/status/1415773636506574853
The opposition (no matter who it is) opposes everything and governments (no matter who they are) ignore them. Only when their own side or external pressure comes to force does this change. Just look at the recent issue of excessive isolation due to pings. Starmer was ridiculed by the PM when he brought it up. Only now a week and a bit later is it being considered and because of the reaction in the media and by the population. Starmer had zero impact.
In a well run system, a PM would have taken the issue onboard, had it looked at and agreed or dismissed it. Not dismiss it without a 2nd thought.
I wonder whether if we had two jabs for flu, like two for Covid, whether we might significantly improve protection against the flu?
I wonder if in the future mRNA etc might help produce better flu vaccines too?
"France ‘could be added to red travel list’
[Ministers] are worried about the South African variant because they think it escapes the vaccine, although they don’t have evidence of that yet,” a government source said."
Not even tarot card evidence? Why do they think it then?
“It appears to be why a lot of countries in Africa and the Middle East are on the red list despite low prevalence rates.”
Funny they didn't say that before.
I've said it before, but the relative reactions to the vandalisms of the Churchill and Bruce at Bannockburn statues were totally different - and revealingly so.
Off to work now, so play nicely all.
I assume the phones use a combination of GPS and mobile cell triangulation... not sure how well GPS will work inside, say, a block of flats, which only leaves the triangulation.
If someone actually knows how this works it would be interesting to hear.