"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I just dont understand this. the government have rightly (in my view) opened up everything and said we should not obsess about covid now . Yet it backs a out of control test and trace system that makes everyone worry about covid becasue of the effects of getting pinged both as an individual (having to unecessarily isolate) and as a country (stopping essential work ) . Everyone I know has switched off the damn thing . What the hell are you doing government?
This was predicted. Government is sending mixed messages, ignoring data and creating perverse incentives.
At an individual level the relief of being double vaccinated remains as strong as ever, and I am sure that most people feel the same.
But the picture we were painted in the spring - of a one-way path to a summer free of restrictions, ahead of the rest of the world, has in just a couple of months turned to dust.
By a mix of bad luck and bad judgement we have dropped into a summer where all restrictions have been lifted, except that in practice they haven’t, when we are allowed to travel, except that in practice we aren’t, and where society is slowly being shut down by the government’s hyperactive App. With the news filling with stories of rising case numbers, the UK being now worse than many other nations, and with threat of new restrictions to come.
All made worse by a PM trapped by his own over-hyping in now being unable to map out any sort of clear path, to move forwards or backwards, for fear of contradicting his previous utterings,
Similarly, we're starting to have frequent problems in collecting refuse in my borough - the combination of (a) pinging (b) actual Covid (c) no driving tests for new drivers for 18 months and (d) shortage of foreign drivers. The company is doing its best and it's so far only a few rounds each time. but it's a genuine problem that's difficult to solve.
I’ve always found this fascinating
My local council - Westminster - has no issue with 2 refuse collections plus 1 recycling collection a week.
And yet other councils can’t manage that despite far higher council tax rates
This week has been the worst yet for my family's mental health. Eldest home after Uni, and youngest finished school has really shifted a comfortable dynamic off its axis. Too many adults at home all day in too small a house.
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I just dont understand this. the government have rightly (in my view) opened up everything and said we should not obsess about covid now . Yet it backs a out of control test and trace system that makes everyone worry about covid becasue of the effects of getting pinged both as an individual (having to unecessarily isolate) and as a country (stopping essential work ) . Everyone I know has switched off the damn thing . What the hell are you doing government?
This was predicted. Government is sending mixed messages, ignoring data and creating perverse incentives.
At an individual level the relief of being double vaccinated remains as strong as ever, and I am sure that most people feel the same.
But the picture we were painted in the spring - of a one-way path to a summer free of restrictions, ahead of the rest of the world, has in just a couple of months turned to dust.
By a mix of bad luck and bad judgement we have dropped into a summer where all restrictions have been lifted, except that in practice they haven’t, when we are allowed to travel, except that in practice we aren’t, and where society is slowly being shut down by the government’s hyperactive App. With the news filling with stories of rising case numbers, the UK being now worse than many other nations, and with threat of new restrictions to come.
All made worse by a PM trapped by his own over-hyping in now being unable to map out any sort of clear path, to move forwards or backwards, for fear of contradicting his previous utterings,
Interesting discussion yesterday at a u3a meeting ..... i.e we're talking about an organisation where pretty well everyone is over 60. We were all happy to get going again, all fully vaccinated, ......then someone said....... what about anti-vaxxers? Do we let them come back to our meetings? Apparently somewhere in ours there's a 'principled' anti-vaxxer.
Similarly, we're starting to have frequent problems in collecting refuse in my borough - the combination of (a) pinging (b) actual Covid (c) no driving tests for new drivers for 18 months and (d) shortage of foreign drivers. The company is doing its best and it's so far only a few rounds each time. but it's a genuine problem that's difficult to solve.
I’ve always found this fascinating
My local council - Westminster - has no issue with 2 refuse collections plus 1 recycling collection a week.
And yet other councils can’t manage that despite far higher council tax rates
One important factor might be size. Westminster is fairly compact so there is not much time wasted driving from one house or block of flats to the next. That said, any council that has fortnightly collections wants looking at (or more money).
Similarly, we're starting to have frequent problems in collecting refuse in my borough - the combination of (a) pinging (b) actual Covid (c) no driving tests for new drivers for 18 months and (d) shortage of foreign drivers. The company is doing its best and it's so far only a few rounds each time. but it's a genuine problem that's difficult to solve.
I’ve always found this fascinating
My local council - Westminster - has no issue with 2 refuse collections plus 1 recycling collection a week.
And yet other councils can’t manage that despite far higher council tax rates
Collecting refuse in a dense urban area is considerably quicker and cheaper, per person, than in an area of low population density.
And Westminster does very nicely out of its position at the centre of town - a healthy business rate base and lots of income from parking, etc.
The whole discussion’s farcical. The Govt’s going on about “isolation exemptions” for something which isn’t even a legal requirement (isolation after being pinged by an app). And which they are abandoning for double jabbed people in 3 weeks anyway.
It's currently 22 degrees in Bristol. Must be close to a record for a night time temperature.
Lucky you. We get that every year in Sweden. It’s called “tropical nights” - when the nighttime temperature does not fall below 20. We’ve just had a fortnight of it. Daytime temp hit 30 several times. You get used to it, but I laugh when my Highland mum describes anything over 16 as “a heatwave “.
Here in Buchan we have had a long warm spell and some seriously warm and sunny days, but no heatwave. As someone who dislikes extremes of weather I have no problem with missing out on the "extreme heat warning" just as I had no problem staying dry whilst southern England was drowned during the Euros.
The whole discussion’s farcical. The Govt’s going on about “isolation exemptions” for something which isn’t even a legal requirement (isolation after being pinged by an app). And which they are abandoning for double jabbed people in 3 weeks anyway.
That's where we are now. No restrictions in principle but lots in practice. Exceptions from an App that was only advisory and many people have now uninstalled, anyway. Travel restrictions so complicated that even the government is telling its staff not to bother enforcing them.
It's currently 22 degrees in Bristol. Must be close to a record for a night time temperature.
Lucky you. We get that every year in Sweden. It’s called “tropical nights” - when the nighttime temperature does not fall below 20. We’ve just had a fortnight of it. Daytime temp hit 30 several times. You get used to it, but I laugh when my Highland mum describes anything over 16 as “a heatwave “.
Here in Buchan we have had a long warm spell and some seriously warm and sunny days, but no heatwave. As someone who dislikes extremes of weather I have no problem with missing out on the "extreme heat warning" just as I had no problem staying dry whilst southern England was drowned during the Euros.
Surely you've only lived in Buchan for about ten minutes?
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
Yes, i’m sure there’s massive exploitation of the “self-cert” aspect of the app. But nobody is talking about it publicly.
The whole discussion’s farcical. The Govt’s going on about “isolation exemptions” for something which isn’t even a legal requirement (isolation after being pinged by an app). And which they are abandoning for double jabbed people in 3 weeks anyway.
I assume they assume in 3 weeks the pandemic numbers will be lower....
Perhaps relatedly, after my drinks I walked home from Highgate to Camden, as the night is so beautiful and warm (and it is all downhill)
Wow, north London feels edgy, sketchy and often deserted. It feels like it did in the early 1980s. Scruffy, sooty, silent, noisy, very un-chic, it is like 40 years of gentrification have been reversed in one and a half years of plague
The one upside is the sense of youthfulness. You only see young people, apart from a few old school drinkers in the pubs
Was dirt quiet up here too. I reckon the joy of some decent weather has been overtaken by a general lack of sleep.
Though most aren't awakened by a fucking drum machine!!!!
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
You mean St Bees Cumbria.. I was there last week and went into the church that used to be a place where training of prospective ordinands took place in the 1850s. I think it closed as a college in 1905 but is still a church.⁸
This week has been the worst yet for my family's mental health. Eldest home after Uni, and youngest finished school has really shifted a comfortable dynamic off its axis. Too many adults at home all day in too small a house.
I had drinks with some lefty friends today, normally very peaceable
At one point my Remainer mate was ranting about Brexit, to the extent of yelling the words "the Tory Nazis". It was a bit embarrassing TBH. His partner intervened and calmed him down
I've no doubt he is angry about Brexit - he always has been - but this was a new level of unhinged fury. Notably, he had been talking about the Delta Variant quite a lot, just before
I reckon the pandemic is now pushing a lot of people to the brink - and the idea that it might go on for many months more is basically intolerable
My partner says the suicide stats are quite eye opening. Not at all what the non-professional might assume. Though the decision of 2 of the 4 adults to purchase a drum machine without any consultation or usual channels hasn't helped. At fucking all.
I estimate we are two more variants away - ie 12-18 added months of variously cycling lockdown, death, infection and fear - from critical societal collapse across the West
If it was just death, that would perhaps be easier to live with. The problem is rooted in trying to control the virus by changing human behaviour. It has all sorts of unintended consequences.
Big cities cannot function in prolonged plagues with endless lockdown and quarantine. As this thread shows: a few pings and we have shortages. And if people are too terrified to congregate together, then cities will be slowly but relentlessly abandoned - what is the point of them? Cities ARE crowds.
As "civilisation" depends entirely on functional cities - by definition - that is extremely bad news for everyone. Even those now feeling smug in their garden suburbs, market towns and leafy villages, depend on big cities to keep the money turning and society thinking
Former CBI head Howard Davies has just said the City of London will never be the same again with large number of office workers commuting into work each day. I can't see how it can survive without that huge volume of people.
So what the fuck happens to it? And all the businesses that depend on it?
It's all very well to airily make these predictions, but the ramifications are tremendous, and ominous - as these epochal and accelerated changes will be repeated in big cities across the world, esp in America and Europe
My sense of London is that it is at the beginning of a chain reaction of terrible decline, as one business failure feeds into another, as one departed rich person leads to another round of debt, and the tax take falls, and the services are withdrawn, so more people leave, like New York in the 70s but on steroids
Christ, I hope I am wrong, I fear I am right. And, as I say, I believe this is the fate of all the great cities
We need the virus to fuck off very very quickly to avoid these things
Someone here will know the exact stats, but I think Liverpool went from something like 800,000 to 400,000 people in the post war period. It happens.
For a liverpool / detroit process to occur there needs to be massive depopulation. I can't see that happening in the case of London - purely because the demand for housing is so great, due to the constrained supply that currently exists. People have to live somewhere.
I think the issue you are describing could get bad in the suburbs, rather than the centre. Central London is massively desirable, the suburbs much less so.
Yes, but wasn't the depopulation of London, Liverpool, Glasgow, all deliberate policy? New Towns were created to take people out of overcrowded slums, creating places like Milton Keynes, Skelmersdale, Harlow, Wellingborough, Cumbernauld and Corby etc
That was in the days that we did urban planning and housing policy on a grander scale of course, and at least in theory included shopping centres, schools, industrial estates etc.
The whole discussion’s farcical. The Govt’s going on about “isolation exemptions” for something which isn’t even a legal requirement (isolation after being pinged by an app). And which they are abandoning for double jabbed people in 3 weeks anyway.
I assume they assume in 3 weeks the pandemic numbers will be lower....
Who knows what they think? Numbers can go up as well as down. And can change direction.
The rules that we have been sent are rather odd, and are trying to get clarification exclude people working with the vulnerable. Presumably including sick patients 🤔
A few thoughts on the header: 1. This is the perfect storm. Brexit makes for delays and issues getting chilled / fresh products across the border. Brexit + IR35 + Covid makes for a huge shortage in both vehicles and drivers to deliver products, causing uncontrolled shortages. And Covid means a whole load of people aren't at work. 2. There are no easy solutions. "Delete the App" is fine but it isn't just people getting pinged, most of us know numerous people who have caught Covid in this Delta wave. If you are sick you can't work whether you delete the App or not 3. Even as we come out the other side of Delta we still won't have fixed the driver and vehicle shortage. Some of the proposals - extend driver hours and now a provisional HGV license sound practically dangerous 4. The NI Protocol bluster (see this morning's insane Daily Express front page) could easily blow up into a total breakdown in co-operation and the hardest of border between us and the EU which really would create food shortages on top of the delivery and labour shortages.
I think the impacts on the government may not be as you might expect in normal times. But the impact on the general public? Not good - despite the pray the pox away efforts we still find ourselves in the midst of a big dangerous spike in a global pandemic with the next even worse variants already out there.
How do people react when its show your Covid passport to enter a supermarket that has got big gaps all over the shop? With the government sadly warning that such hardships will be in place through the long winter to come? OK so this is both variables (Covid and Logistics problems) at their worst, but its more than just possible.
And no, I am not wishing that this happens to attack the government. I am north of the wall so your government isn't in charge of a lot up here. I want Covid gone and quickly. But what I want and what is likely are not the same thing. Not with the Insane Clown Posse in government.
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
My Secretary is just back from a week on the Sussex coast. Had a lovely time, but a real struggle to find anywhere to eat in the evening. Very few staff, but not just covid, as permanent jobs going begging. East Europeans all gone home it seems.
This week has been the worst yet for my family's mental health. Eldest home after Uni, and youngest finished school has really shifted a comfortable dynamic off its axis. Too many adults at home all day in too small a house.
I had drinks with some lefty friends today, normally very peaceable
At one point my Remainer mate was ranting about Brexit, to the extent of yelling the words "the Tory Nazis". It was a bit embarrassing TBH. His partner intervened and calmed him down
I've no doubt he is angry about Brexit - he always has been - but this was a new level of unhinged fury. Notably, he had been talking about the Delta Variant quite a lot, just before
I reckon the pandemic is now pushing a lot of people to the brink - and the idea that it might go on for many months more is basically intolerable
My partner says the suicide stats are quite eye opening. Not at all what the non-professional might assume. Though the decision of 2 of the 4 adults to purchase a drum machine without any consultation or usual channels hasn't helped. At fucking all.
I estimate we are two more variants away - ie 12-18 added months of variously cycling lockdown, death, infection and fear - from critical societal collapse across the West
If it was just death, that would perhaps be easier to live with. The problem is rooted in trying to control the virus by changing human behaviour. It has all sorts of unintended consequences.
Big cities cannot function in prolonged plagues with endless lockdown and quarantine. As this thread shows: a few pings and we have shortages. And if people are too terrified to congregate together, then cities will be slowly but relentlessly abandoned - what is the point of them? Cities ARE crowds.
As "civilisation" depends entirely on functional cities - by definition - that is extremely bad news for everyone. Even those now feeling smug in their garden suburbs, market towns and leafy villages, depend on big cities to keep the money turning and society thinking
Former CBI head Howard Davies has just said the City of London will never be the same again with large number of office workers commuting into work each day. I can't see how it can survive without that huge volume of people.
Well, it will change.
Fewer offices. But more entertainment.
All that infrastructure - whether the tube, the apartments, the shopping centers, the hospitals, etc - will be used. The only question is what for, and who will pay for it.
We have seen what happens, in London, say, from 1945-1980, or New York from 1965-1985. No one pays for it. Stuff gets shut. Everything declines. The basic infrastructure is kinda maintained but ewwww
These are arguably more optimistic scenarios now. Just another secular decline, and then recovery, it happens, fair enough
The extreme worst case scenarios point to Detroit. Or Rome in 400AD
That's an excellent point. And entirely possible.
But it is worth remembering that it wasn't cities in general that were declining in those periods, but specific cities.
Is this a generalised death of the city? Or will it merely be a shake out?
I'm glad I don't own really expensive real estate in London and Los Angeles. Oh wait...
The whole discussion’s farcical. The Govt’s going on about “isolation exemptions” for something which isn’t even a legal requirement (isolation after being pinged by an app). And which they are abandoning for double jabbed people in 3 weeks anyway.
That's where we are now. No restrictions in principle but lots in practice. Exceptions from an App that was only advisory and many people have now uninstalled, anyway. Travel restrictions so complicated that even the government is telling its staff not to bother enforcing them.
Were they ever enforcing the travel restrictions? When Mrs RP went to see her dad in Spain last summer nobody asked for the locator form and similar was widely reported. Patel didn't bother to recruit Border Agency staff so the border can't operate securely anyway.
As for the App, the news that it is advisory only will have taken a lot of people by surprise - has always been "You MUST" not "you should". Not that deleting it makes a difference if you actually catch Covid as 50k a day are doing.
Well I don't know about London but Edinburgh is buzzing at the moment. The grassmarket area of the City expanded outdoor capacity enormously during Covid as did the Royal Mile and, in the current weather, this has been an enormous hit with a huge al fresco eating and drinking activity going on throughout the day and into the night with people reluctant to go back inside even although they can. Its made the place feel very continental.
A friend of mine was trying yesterday to get accommodation near Fort William for him and his son. It was very difficult with no camping or B&B within 40 miles of Fort William. He has got a nice hotel room but its pricy as these establishments clearly take advantage of the staycation tendency.
The picture, it seems to me, is very mixed with good and bad cheek by jowl. The major disappointment has been the ease with which the double vaxxed are getting delta covid. The expectation was that this would be a rare event but it clearly isn't, even if most are not that ill. This means we are not getting the herd immunity protection that large scale vaccination was supposed to achieve. What we need is accurate information on whether those double vaxxed get a sufficient dose of the virus to be infectious to the unprotected. If they don't then pings for them can be ignored. If they do we still have a problem. Its looking like the latter because it is hard to see how current infection rates don't involve transmission by the large percentage of the population that are vaccinated but we need to be sure.
The whole discussion’s farcical. The Govt’s going on about “isolation exemptions” for something which isn’t even a legal requirement (isolation after being pinged by an app). And which they are abandoning for double jabbed people in 3 weeks anyway.
I assume they assume in 3 weeks the pandemic numbers will be lower....
Who knows what they think? Numbers can go up as well as down. And can change direction.
Can imagine Boris yelling at Vallance and Whitty "We've vaccinated everyone, why can't this blasted covid just go away"
There’s a particular breed of big company executive that got to where they are through extreme extrovertism. They generally find it difficult to empathise with anyone to the left of them on the introvert-extrovert scale (i.e. almost everyone) and assume that everyone needs to feed off everyone else’s energy as much as they do.
Since they are prone to workaholism, home working has been akin to upgrading from the blackberry doobie in the pocket, to living in an opium den with a full workstation in their home. And they know it’s bad for them.
They often have flimsy relationships with spouses and offspring. So have seen the extra time with family in the pandemic as a burden rather than an opportunity.
For them, work is more centred on shaping their self identity, meeting smart people in smart restaurants, offices and hotels, and wearing smart suits. Unlike the rest of us who work to pay the bills. Many of them don’t care about “productivity through collaboration”, training gaps and sunk office rents as much as they might have you believe. It’s just about how their own life is effected that matters.
This breed of exec right now are the ones trying to force the end of home working and get everyone back. The more days in the office a week the better and starting now.
But they are not the only breed of exec. Rounded management teams at big corporations are playing out in real time a battle for what “hybrid working” will really mean. And are more open to considering a dynamic model based upon role and stage in life. Hard to know who wins that battle right now. But it will have quite profound consequences for the global cities, as @Leon has so vividly described.
The whole discussion’s farcical. The Govt’s going on about “isolation exemptions” for something which isn’t even a legal requirement (isolation after being pinged by an app). And which they are abandoning for double jabbed people in 3 weeks anyway.
I assume they assume in 3 weeks the pandemic numbers will be lower....
Who knows what they think? Numbers can go up as well as down. And can change direction.
Can imagine Boris yelling at Vallance and Whitty "We've vaccinated everyone, why can't this blasted covid just go away"
Those Cummings messages reveal that Johnson doesn't understand numbers. But then lots of senior people in different walks of life don't understand numbers.
Regarding cities and the impact of (semi)permanent flexible working. Isn't the reason why white collar workers have been so happy to adapt because the commute was something they tolerated rather than did gladly?
There are a long list of reasons why business needs to keep having teams meeting in person - because the city needs their money is not one of them. The money that employees aren't wasting on a season ticket and twatty coffee and overpriced hipster lunch will be spent on something else, it isn't money lost to the economy.
The future is that instead of that London having companies with huge office spaces for their whole workforce, they reduce the size significantly and have people in part time. Teams can meet remotely when not in the office, and getting everyone together becomes an away day - something that most big companies already did.
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
My Secretary is just back from a week on the Sussex coast. Had a lovely time, but a real struggle to find anywhere to eat in the evening. Very few staff, but not just covid, as permanent jobs going begging. East Europeans all gone home it seems.
It was explained to me that zillions are still furloughed till Sept.. that's why there are no staff.
Why ARE they holding the Games?! Is it really just the greed of the IOC? The Japanese people are, understandably, dead against. The Japanese government knows this
As a frightening new strain of the plague sweeps the world, WTAF?
Because the next Winter Olympics is in Beijing and there is a whole Japan/China thing going on
It wouldn’t surprise me to find that the UK government has been lobbying behind the scenes.
I'd be astonished if the government gave a toss either way. More likely the IOC is worried about political statements. It's not quite stripping medals over Black power salutes, yet.
No medals were stripped over Black Power salutes. That is a common misconception. The athletes concerned were expelled from the Games but kept their medals.
A few thoughts on the header: 1. This is the perfect storm. Brexit makes for delays and issues getting chilled / fresh products across the border. Brexit + IR35 + Covid makes for a huge shortage in both vehicles and drivers to deliver products, causing uncontrolled shortages. And Covid means a whole load of people aren't at work. 2. There are no easy solutions. "Delete the App" is fine but it isn't just people getting pinged, most of us know numerous people who have caught Covid in this Delta wave. If you are sick you can't work whether you delete the App or not 3. Even as we come out the other side of Delta we still won't have fixed the driver and vehicle shortage. Some of the proposals - extend driver hours and now a provisional HGV license sound practically dangerous 4. The NI Protocol bluster (see this morning's insane Daily Express front page) could easily blow up into a total breakdown in co-operation and the hardest of border between us and the EU which really would create food shortages on top of the delivery and labour shortages.
I think the impacts on the government may not be as you might expect in normal times. But the impact on the general public? Not good - despite the pray the pox away efforts we still find ourselves in the midst of a big dangerous spike in a global pandemic with the next even worse variants already out there.
How do people react when its show your Covid passport to enter a supermarket that has got big gaps all over the shop? With the government sadly warning that such hardships will be in place through the long winter to come? OK so this is both variables (Covid and Logistics problems) at their worst, but its more than just possible.
And no, I am not wishing that this happens to attack the government. I am north of the wall so your government isn't in charge of a lot up here. I want Covid gone and quickly. But what I want and what is likely are not the same thing. Not with the Insane Clown Posse in government.
I don't actually remember things being this bad when Covid stock piling was at it's worst.
Yes there was flour and pasta in morrisons (not that we need any as I've tons in the stock pile) but whole shelves (most own brand cereal) and freezers (90% of the frozen veg) were completely empty.
Similarly, we're starting to have frequent problems in collecting refuse in my borough - the combination of (a) pinging (b) actual Covid (c) no driving tests for new drivers for 18 months and (d) shortage of foreign drivers. The company is doing its best and it's so far only a few rounds each time. but it's a genuine problem that's difficult to solve.
I’ve always found this fascinating
My local council - Westminster - has no issue with 2 refuse collections plus 1 recycling collection a week.
And yet other councils can’t manage that despite far higher council tax rates
Ah kerbside collections. The only visible return for our council tax payments. Does anything else count?
This week has been the worst yet for my family's mental health. Eldest home after Uni, and youngest finished school has really shifted a comfortable dynamic off its axis. Too many adults at home all day in too small a house.
I had drinks with some lefty friends today, normally very peaceable
At one point my Remainer mate was ranting about Brexit, to the extent of yelling the words "the Tory Nazis". It was a bit embarrassing TBH. His partner intervened and calmed him down
I've no doubt he is angry about Brexit - he always has been - but this was a new level of unhinged fury. Notably, he had been talking about the Delta Variant quite a lot, just before
I reckon the pandemic is now pushing a lot of people to the brink - and the idea that it might go on for many months more is basically intolerable
My partner says the suicide stats are quite eye opening. Not at all what the non-professional might assume. Though the decision of 2 of the 4 adults to purchase a drum machine without any consultation or usual channels hasn't helped. At fucking all.
I estimate we are two more variants away - ie 12-18 added months of variously cycling lockdown, death, infection and fear - from critical societal collapse across the West
If it was just death, that would perhaps be easier to live with. The problem is rooted in trying to control the virus by changing human behaviour. It has all sorts of unintended consequences.
Big cities cannot function in prolonged plagues with endless lockdown and quarantine. As this thread shows: a few pings and we have shortages. And if people are too terrified to congregate together, then cities will be slowly but relentlessly abandoned - what is the point of them? Cities ARE crowds.
As "civilisation" depends entirely on functional cities - by definition - that is extremely bad news for everyone. Even those now feeling smug in their garden suburbs, market towns and leafy villages, depend on big cities to keep the money turning and society thinking
Former CBI head Howard Davies has just said the City of London will never be the same again with large number of office workers commuting into work each day. I can't see how it can survive without that huge volume of people.
Well, it will change.
Fewer offices. But more entertainment.
All that infrastructure - whether the tube, the apartments, the shopping centers, the hospitals, etc - will be used. The only question is what for, and who will pay for it.
We have seen what happens, in London, say, from 1945-1980, or New York from 1965-1985. No one pays for it. Stuff gets shut. Everything declines. The basic infrastructure is kinda maintained but ewwww
These are arguably more optimistic scenarios now. Just another secular decline, and then recovery, it happens, fair enough
The extreme worst case scenarios point to Detroit. Or Rome in 400AD
That's an excellent point. And entirely possible.
But it is worth remembering that it wasn't cities in general that were declining in those periods, but specific cities.
Is this a generalised death of the city? Or will it merely be a shake out?
I'm glad I don't own really expensive real estate in London and Los Angeles. Oh wait...
Think about it as a buying opportunity
Buy property in London now Charles? I'd be nervous to do so. Maybe better to wait 12 months and see how things pan out? But Buffett did say, "Buy when others are fearful".
Tom Winsor wants Line of Duty to become a documentary and tech bosses jailed for online abuse on their platforms and/or infrastructure (which would probably mean the end of PB).
The question surely is what vetting encompasses. What behaviours are relevant? What points to future (or current) corrupt or criminal behaviour? There is nothing in the reports I've seen (not the Times story, owing to paywall) suggesting Winsor has given it any great thought and is merely stating what should have been bleeding obvious from the start. As it is, the police are not properly acting on their existing criteria. https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/force-content/met/careers/careers/detective-constable/cautions-convictions.v4.pdf
The whole discussion’s farcical. The Govt’s going on about “isolation exemptions” for something which isn’t even a legal requirement (isolation after being pinged by an app). And which they are abandoning for double jabbed people in 3 weeks anyway.
That's where we are now. No restrictions in principle but lots in practice. Exceptions from an App that was only advisory and many people have now uninstalled, anyway. Travel restrictions so complicated that even the government is telling its staff not to bother enforcing them.
Were they ever enforcing the travel restrictions? When Mrs RP went to see her dad in Spain last summer nobody asked for the locator form and similar was widely reported. Patel didn't bother to recruit Border Agency staff so the border can't operate securely anyway.
As for the App, the news that it is advisory only will have taken a lot of people by surprise - has always been "You MUST" not "you should". Not that deleting it makes a difference if you actually catch Covid as 50k a day are doing.
Most people don’t know how the app works. Or what it is that causes you to get pinged. I didn’t realise until recently that the “checkin” function (as opposed to the Bluetooth function) was anonymous. Of course once you think about it you realise it must be - but I was making the mistake of assuming that the Govt rules for pubs made sense - that they originally required pubs to take names and contact details, but then switched to saying they required checkin on the app. Of course you could make up the former but that’s not the point. Maybe in fact the rules for pubs didn’t actually change (one pub I go to is still asking for you to use the app AND asking for contact details) just nobody followed them.
Basically it’s all a continuation of how the government has consistently blurred the line between guidance and law to encourage compliance. Maybe that was quite clever, I don’t know.
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
You mean St Bees Cumbria.. I was there last week and went into the church that used to be a place where training of prospective ordinands took place in the 1850s. I think it closed as a college in 1905 but is still a church.⁸
That’s the one. Had a mobile home right next to the beach. Wonderful morning sunshine. Interesting that mill hill school was evacuated there during ww2 and lots of benches sponsored by the former pupils. The start of the coast to coast walk was about 20 yards from where we stayed and lots of nice pubs in the village centre.
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
Yes, i’m sure there’s massive exploitation of the “self-cert” aspect of the app. But nobody is talking about it publicly.
Uh oh. First warning that ‘Pingdemic’ may continue beyond August 16, when rules are due to be dropped for the double jabbed. Business Sec says he’s hopeful the move will go ahead but it’s ‘fingers crossed’ https://twitter.com/kayburley/status/1418099660149989379
Tom Winsor wants Line of Duty to become a documentary and tech bosses jailed for online abuse on their platforms and/or infrastructure (which would probably mean the end of PB).
The question surely is what vetting encompasses. What behaviours are relevant? What points to future (or current) corrupt or criminal behaviour? There is nothing in the reports I've seen (not the Times story, owing to paywall) suggesting Winsor has given it any great thought and is merely stating what should have been bleeding obvious from the start. As it is, the police are not properly acting on their existing criteria. https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/force-content/met/careers/careers/detective-constable/cautions-convictions.v4.pdf
Tom Winsor, when I knew him, was a Linklaters lawyer who worked on rail privatisation. He knows the square root of fuck all about policing and the criminal law - beyond what every solicitor is taught. An odd choice for the role and has not, IMO, distinguished himself in it.
Like far too many organisations the police don't do proper due diligence on those they hire and do not understand why this is important. I could fill headers with examples from finance and the consequences. It is basic basic stuff - important stuff - but is treated as a minor bureaucratic inconvenience.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9h Genuine question. What does Boris think is going to happen? An army of magic elves is going to appear and suddenly start stacking the nation’s shelves? Everyone can see this crisis unfolding. So what’s the Government’s solution.
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
You mean St Bees Cumbria.. I was there last week and went into the church that used to be a place where training of prospective ordinands took place in the 1850s. I think it closed as a college in 1905 but is still a church.⁸
That’s the one. Had a mobile home right next to the beach. Wonderful morning sunshine. Interesting that mill hill school was evacuated there during ww2 and lots of benches sponsored by the former pupils. The start of the coast to coast walk was about 20 yards from where we stayed and lots of nice pubs in the village centre.
A lovely part of the world. Not far from where I am.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9h Genuine question. What does Boris think is going to happen? An army of magic elves is going to appear and suddenly start stacking the nation’s shelves? Everyone can see this crisis unfolding. So what’s the Government’s solution.
Regarding cities and the impact of (semi)permanent flexible working. Isn't the reason why white collar workers have been so happy to adapt because the commute was something they tolerated rather than did gladly?
There are a long list of reasons why business needs to keep having teams meeting in person - because the city needs their money is not one of them. The money that employees aren't wasting on a season ticket and twatty coffee and overpriced hipster lunch will be spent on something else, it isn't money lost to the economy.
The future is that instead of that London having companies with huge office spaces for their whole workforce, they reduce the size significantly and have people in part time. Teams can meet remotely when not in the office, and getting everyone together becomes an away day - something that most big companies already did.
Money saved on commuting might well be lost to the economy if it is spent on imported goods, on foreign holidays (chance would be a fine thing) or added to savings or debt reduction.
However, as you suggest, those measures were starting to be taken even before Covid (and then reversed in some companies). And there are questions around security in particular that still need to be addressed by many firms, but also health and safety, equipment supply and maintenance and so on.
Re: home working. Not sure about management style, but I think it is a mistake to think that most people who like home working are introverts and the opposite extroverts. If anything it is often likely to be the opposite. For at least a couple of reasons. For one, introverts often crave social situations where they are forced to be with other people. Office environments are perfect for that. They don’t actually create any pressure to spend a lot of time engaging, but they make it a lot easier to engage when needed. Compare with home working environments. These can be very difficult for introverts. Even ignoring the social side - needing to contact somebody via eg. Teams when you have no idea if they are free to talk can be stressful. A lot easier when said individual is visible in an office. And a lot less scary because familiarity granted by an office environment makes people a lot less intimidating (mostly). etc etc
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
Yes, i’m sure there’s massive exploitation of the “self-cert” aspect of the app. But nobody is talking about it publicly.
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
My Secretary is just back from a week on the Sussex coast. Had a lovely time, but a real struggle to find anywhere to eat in the evening. Very few staff, but not just covid, as permanent jobs going begging. East Europeans all gone home it seems.
It was explained to me that zillions are still furloughed till Sept.. that's why there are no staff.
This week has been the worst yet for my family's mental health. Eldest home after Uni, and youngest finished school has really shifted a comfortable dynamic off its axis. Too many adults at home all day in too small a house.
I had drinks with some lefty friends today, normally very peaceable
At one point my Remainer mate was ranting about Brexit, to the extent of yelling the words "the Tory Nazis". It was a bit embarrassing TBH. His partner intervened and calmed him down
I've no doubt he is angry about Brexit - he always has been - but this was a new level of unhinged fury. Notably, he had been talking about the Delta Variant quite a lot, just before
I reckon the pandemic is now pushing a lot of people to the brink - and the idea that it might go on for many months more is basically intolerable
My partner says the suicide stats are quite eye opening. Not at all what the non-professional might assume. Though the decision of 2 of the 4 adults to purchase a drum machine without any consultation or usual channels hasn't helped. At fucking all.
I estimate we are two more variants away - ie 12-18 added months of variously cycling lockdown, death, infection and fear - from critical societal collapse across the West
If it was just death, that would perhaps be easier to live with. The problem is rooted in trying to control the virus by changing human behaviour. It has all sorts of unintended consequences.
Big cities cannot function in prolonged plagues with endless lockdown and quarantine. As this thread shows: a few pings and we have shortages. And if people are too terrified to congregate together, then cities will be slowly but relentlessly abandoned - what is the point of them? Cities ARE crowds.
As "civilisation" depends entirely on functional cities - by definition - that is extremely bad news for everyone. Even those now feeling smug in their garden suburbs, market towns and leafy villages, depend on big cities to keep the money turning and society thinking
Former CBI head Howard Davies has just said the City of London will never be the same again with large number of office workers commuting into work each day. I can't see how it can survive without that huge volume of people.
Well, it will change.
Fewer offices. But more entertainment.
All that infrastructure - whether the tube, the apartments, the shopping centers, the hospitals, etc - will be used. The only question is what for, and who will pay for it.
We have seen what happens, in London, say, from 1945-1980, or New York from 1965-1985. No one pays for it. Stuff gets shut. Everything declines. The basic infrastructure is kinda maintained but ewwww
These are arguably more optimistic scenarios now. Just another secular decline, and then recovery, it happens, fair enough
The extreme worst case scenarios point to Detroit. Or Rome in 400AD
That's an excellent point. And entirely possible.
But it is worth remembering that it wasn't cities in general that were declining in those periods, but specific cities.
Is this a generalised death of the city? Or will it merely be a shake out?
I'm glad I don't own really expensive real estate in London and Los Angeles. Oh wait...
Think about it as a buying opportunity
Buy property in London now Charles? I'd be nervous to do so. Maybe better to wait 12 months and see how things pan out? But Buffett did say, "Buy when others are fearful".
Not had the London crash yet. Flats a bit lower than peak, houses pretty steady. Surely too early to buy, especially if inflation has a chance of kicking in. The marginal buyers are not yet fearful and still believe property is a one way bet.
On plans to exempt 'critical workers' from isolation, @KwasiKwarteng tells @BBCr4today: "I don't think it's a question of applying...we will be publishing today the sectors that will be affected."
Similarly, we're starting to have frequent problems in collecting refuse in my borough - the combination of (a) pinging (b) actual Covid (c) no driving tests for new drivers for 18 months and (d) shortage of foreign drivers. The company is doing its best and it's so far only a few rounds each time. but it's a genuine problem that's difficult to solve.
I’ve always found this fascinating
My local council - Westminster - has no issue with 2 refuse collections plus 1 recycling collection a week.
And yet other councils can’t manage that despite far higher council tax rates
Ah kerbside collections. The only visible return for our council tax payments. Does anything else count?
Of course it does.
But this is easy and has a meaningful impact on quality of life
This week has been the worst yet for my family's mental health. Eldest home after Uni, and youngest finished school has really shifted a comfortable dynamic off its axis. Too many adults at home all day in too small a house.
I had drinks with some lefty friends today, normally very peaceable
At one point my Remainer mate was ranting about Brexit, to the extent of yelling the words "the Tory Nazis". It was a bit embarrassing TBH. His partner intervened and calmed him down
I've no doubt he is angry about Brexit - he always has been - but this was a new level of unhinged fury. Notably, he had been talking about the Delta Variant quite a lot, just before
I reckon the pandemic is now pushing a lot of people to the brink - and the idea that it might go on for many months more is basically intolerable
My partner says the suicide stats are quite eye opening. Not at all what the non-professional might assume. Though the decision of 2 of the 4 adults to purchase a drum machine without any consultation or usual channels hasn't helped. At fucking all.
I estimate we are two more variants away - ie 12-18 added months of variously cycling lockdown, death, infection and fear - from critical societal collapse across the West
If it was just death, that would perhaps be easier to live with. The problem is rooted in trying to control the virus by changing human behaviour. It has all sorts of unintended consequences.
Big cities cannot function in prolonged plagues with endless lockdown and quarantine. As this thread shows: a few pings and we have shortages. And if people are too terrified to congregate together, then cities will be slowly but relentlessly abandoned - what is the point of them? Cities ARE crowds.
As "civilisation" depends entirely on functional cities - by definition - that is extremely bad news for everyone. Even those now feeling smug in their garden suburbs, market towns and leafy villages, depend on big cities to keep the money turning and society thinking
Former CBI head Howard Davies has just said the City of London will never be the same again with large number of office workers commuting into work each day. I can't see how it can survive without that huge volume of people.
Well, it will change.
Fewer offices. But more entertainment.
All that infrastructure - whether the tube, the apartments, the shopping centers, the hospitals, etc - will be used. The only question is what for, and who will pay for it.
We have seen what happens, in London, say, from 1945-1980, or New York from 1965-1985. No one pays for it. Stuff gets shut. Everything declines. The basic infrastructure is kinda maintained but ewwww
These are arguably more optimistic scenarios now. Just another secular decline, and then recovery, it happens, fair enough
The extreme worst case scenarios point to Detroit. Or Rome in 400AD
That's an excellent point. And entirely possible.
But it is worth remembering that it wasn't cities in general that were declining in those periods, but specific cities.
Is this a generalised death of the city? Or will it merely be a shake out?
I'm glad I don't own really expensive real estate in London and Los Angeles. Oh wait...
Think about it as a buying opportunity
Buy property in London now Charles? I'd be nervous to do so. Maybe better to wait 12 months and see how things pan out? But Buffett did say, "Buy when others are fearful".
Nah. Overheated right now. It’s more if it becomes a howling desolation
But that can't be right? I mean some chap said something on social media, so it must be a huge world wide conspspiracy to aid the great reset etc etc etc
Similarly, we're starting to have frequent problems in collecting refuse in my borough - the combination of (a) pinging (b) actual Covid (c) no driving tests for new drivers for 18 months and (d) shortage of foreign drivers. The company is doing its best and it's so far only a few rounds each time. but it's a genuine problem that's difficult to solve.
I’ve always found this fascinating
My local council - Westminster - has no issue with 2 refuse collections plus 1 recycling collection a week.
And yet other councils can’t manage that despite far higher council tax rates
The delta variant is much more capable of infecting the fully vaccinated than had been hoped. The result is that that herd immunity is not being achieved and large scale infection will persist. This makes the probability of the unvaccinated being both infected and becoming seriously ill much higher than might have been hoped with current vaccination levels. Whilst it is clear that the vaccines make death in particular much, much less likely the numbers getting ill enough to require hospital treatment is disappointing. The combined effect of these 2 latter points is that hospitals face a difficult few months with high and increasing numbers of patients further deferring work on the backlog.
The choices that the government faces are unpalatable.
If we continue down the current freedom route then we face significant ongoing disruption as isolation becomes the major tool of breaking transmission. This is going to affect public facing jobs in particular and is going to make large scale events problematic in the extreme, even for the vaccinated.
If we don't then we are accepting that vaccinations have not proven to be the way out of this mess that we hoped. Plan B? Really not sure what it is but I do know for sure that we won't like it. I think we are going to have to muddle through and effectively let the virus let rip. There is some sense in doing this now in the summer. Its going to be a bumpy ride.
Florida is seeing a significant surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to federal data
Florida has stopped publicising hospitalisation data.
I think DeSantis's removal of the rights of cities and towns to set their own rules will go down as a major unforced error.
What reason did they have for doing that?
Edit: stopping the publication of data, that is.
Covid is over, so we don't to keep publishing unnecessary data.
To be fair, once everyone who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated, there's an element of truth in that.
We don't publish daily data on stuff like flu infections etc and once people are vaccinated then Covid is similar to that (and if people aren't vaccinated its their own damned fault).
This week has been the worst yet for my family's mental health. Eldest home after Uni, and youngest finished school has really shifted a comfortable dynamic off its axis. Too many adults at home all day in too small a house.
I had drinks with some lefty friends today, normally very peaceable
At one point my Remainer mate was ranting about Brexit, to the extent of yelling the words "the Tory Nazis". It was a bit embarrassing TBH. His partner intervened and calmed him down
I've no doubt he is angry about Brexit - he always has been - but this was a new level of unhinged fury. Notably, he had been talking about the Delta Variant quite a lot, just before
I reckon the pandemic is now pushing a lot of people to the brink - and the idea that it might go on for many months more is basically intolerable
My partner says the suicide stats are quite eye opening. Not at all what the non-professional might assume. Though the decision of 2 of the 4 adults to purchase a drum machine without any consultation or usual channels hasn't helped. At fucking all.
I estimate we are two more variants away - ie 12-18 added months of variously cycling lockdown, death, infection and fear - from critical societal collapse across the West
If it was just death, that would perhaps be easier to live with. The problem is rooted in trying to control the virus by changing human behaviour. It has all sorts of unintended consequences.
Big cities cannot function in prolonged plagues with endless lockdown and quarantine. As this thread shows: a few pings and we have shortages. And if people are too terrified to congregate together, then cities will be slowly but relentlessly abandoned - what is the point of them? Cities ARE crowds.
As "civilisation" depends entirely on functional cities - by definition - that is extremely bad news for everyone. Even those now feeling smug in their garden suburbs, market towns and leafy villages, depend on big cities to keep the money turning and society thinking
Former CBI head Howard Davies has just said the City of London will never be the same again with large number of office workers commuting into work each day. I can't see how it can survive without that huge volume of people.
Well, it will change.
Fewer offices. But more entertainment.
All that infrastructure - whether the tube, the apartments, the shopping centers, the hospitals, etc - will be used. The only question is what for, and who will pay for it.
We have seen what happens, in London, say, from 1945-1980, or New York from 1965-1985. No one pays for it. Stuff gets shut. Everything declines. The basic infrastructure is kinda maintained but ewwww
These are arguably more optimistic scenarios now. Just another secular decline, and then recovery, it happens, fair enough
The extreme worst case scenarios point to Detroit. Or Rome in 400AD
That's an excellent point. And entirely possible.
But it is worth remembering that it wasn't cities in general that were declining in those periods, but specific cities.
Is this a generalised death of the city? Or will it merely be a shake out?
I'm glad I don't own really expensive real estate in London and Los Angeles. Oh wait...
Think about it as a buying opportunity
I don't think even the two if you together can afford to bail out London.
.@KwasiKwarteng v robust about govt using its big majority to legalise compulsory Covid passports. Tells @JustinOnWeb "I'm very confident that we can pass the legislation that we require."
With 40+ Tory MPs publicly opposed, that's quite a bold claim
The thing is the whole “don’t need to isolate if you are vaxxed” is the perfect solution. We know that vaccination isn’t 100% against onward transmission (the point of isolation) but it’s reasonable (and evidence is that what is passed on is probably less dangerous). The government delayed until August because “fairness”, and as an incentive to get vaxxed.
And now they’re back to economically destructive confusion which has lost sight of why the policy shift was planned. And which goes back to undermining the message that vaccines protect and people who have received them should stop being fearful. It’s also the case that without the policy shift they can never get people back into offices in any numbers, because one positive case and everyone has to go home again .
Well I don't know about London but Edinburgh is buzzing at the moment. The grassmarket area of the City expanded outdoor capacity enormously during Covid as did the Royal Mile and, in the current weather, this has been an enormous hit with a huge al fresco eating and drinking activity going on throughout the day and into the night with people reluctant to go back inside even although they can. Its made the place feel very continental.
A friend of mine was trying yesterday to get accommodation near Fort William for him and his son. It was very difficult with no camping or B&B within 40 miles of Fort William. He has got a nice hotel room but its pricy as these establishments clearly take advantage of the staycation tendency.
The picture, it seems to me, is very mixed with good and bad cheek by jowl. The major disappointment has been the ease with which the double vaxxed are getting delta covid. The expectation was that this would be a rare event but it clearly isn't, even if most are not that ill. This means we are not getting the herd immunity protection that large scale vaccination was supposed to achieve. What we need is accurate information on whether those double vaxxed get a sufficient dose of the virus to be infectious to the unprotected. If they don't then pings for them can be ignored. If they do we still have a problem. Its looking like the latter because it is hard to see how current infection rates don't involve transmission by the large percentage of the population that are vaccinated but we need to be sure.
As a matter of interest, have you any idea what the hotels / B&B's are like in Edinburgh at the moment? I am ummming and ahhing about taking the little 'un on a road trip after the festival and before school restarts, and Edinburgh was to be our destination.
.@KwasiKwarteng v robust about govt using its big majority to legalise compulsory Covid passports. Tells @JustinOnWeb "I'm very confident that we can pass the legislation that we require."
With 40+ Tory MPs publicly opposed, that's quite a bold claim
The delta variant is much more capable of infecting the fully vaccinated than had been hoped. The result is that that herd immunity is not being achieved and large scale infection will persist. This makes the probability of the unvaccinated being both infected and becoming seriously ill much higher than might have been hoped with current vaccination levels. Whilst it is clear that the vaccines make death in particular much, much less likely the numbers getting ill enough to require hospital treatment is disappointing. The combined effect of these 2 latter points is that hospitals face a difficult few months with high and increasing numbers of patients further deferring work on the backlog.
The choices that the government faces are unpalatable.
If we continue down the current freedom route then we face significant ongoing disruption as isolation becomes the major tool of breaking transmission. This is going to affect public facing jobs in particular and is going to make large scale events problematic in the extreme, even for the vaccinated.
If we don't then we are accepting that vaccinations have not proven to be the way out of this mess that we hoped. Plan B? Really not sure what it is but I do know for sure that we won't like it. I think we are going to have to muddle through and effectively let the virus let rip. There is some sense in doing this now in the summer. Its going to be a bumpy ride.
I would look at what has happened to Delta in India for more positive thoughts.
@kateferguson4: Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng on supermarket shortages: “Shoppers shouldn’t be panicking….I’m not panicking.” #today
"’m not panicking.”
That'll be the headline for a while.
"Crisis? What crisis?" memories.
Odd thing about the phrase "Crisis, what crisis?". My older colleague would not believe me I said that Callaghan never actually said that. He claims to remember him saying it on TV. Wrong of course, and a classic false memory.
Haven’t we had this before - the biggest loser from NI rises is the NHS - as the biggest employer in the country. The end result is that a lot of money just gets ended up being recycled...
Tom Winsor wants Line of Duty to become a documentary and tech bosses jailed for online abuse on their platforms and/or infrastructure (which would probably mean the end of PB).
The question surely is what vetting encompasses. What behaviours are relevant? What points to future (or current) corrupt or criminal behaviour? There is nothing in the reports I've seen (not the Times story, owing to paywall) suggesting Winsor has given it any great thought and is merely stating what should have been bleeding obvious from the start. As it is, the police are not properly acting on their existing criteria. https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/force-content/met/careers/careers/detective-constable/cautions-convictions.v4.pdf
Tom Winsor, when I knew him, was a Linklaters lawyer who worked on rail privatisation. He knows the square root of fuck all about policing and the criminal law - beyond what every solicitor is taught. An odd choice for the role and has not, IMO, distinguished himself in it.
Like far too many organisations the police don't do proper due diligence on those they hire and do not understand why this is important. I could fill headers with examples from finance and the consequences. It is basic basic stuff - important stuff - but is treated as a minor bureaucratic inconvenience.
Agreed, but in many cases it is lesser indicators that count, so an officer might have attracted complaints from the public (and here we need to be careful because "the public" in this case might be villains). Taking the Ian Tomlinson case as an example (which involved Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer in walk-on parts), the police officer involved had faced ten complaints of which nine had been dismissed. Should that have been a significant warning? I don't know. But it is these micro-indicators rather than criminal convictions that concern me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ian_Tomlinson
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 9h Genuine question. What does Boris think is going to happen? An army of magic elves is going to appear and suddenly start stacking the nation’s shelves? Everyone can see this crisis unfolding. So what’s the Government’s solution.
There's also American feminist writer Naomi Wolf, who used to be one of the most fashionable social commentators around. She was recently banned from Twitter for posting misinformation about Covid-19 and is now routinely accused of being a conspiracy theorist.
I think she even commented at the 2019 GE with some nonsense about the exit poll. It's not Twitter's fault, not exactly, but it has provided a way for people to reveal their silliness to.the world.
"Supermarkets struggle to stock shelves as ‘pingdemic’ havoc spreads Ministers urged to include retail staff and lorry drivers in exemption as self-isolating workers causes shortages"
Off down Tesco after work today to buy a family-sized pack of bog paper and to restock the freezer. Not getting caught out this time.
Johnson won't act on all these critical staff shortages until it is way, way too late. This Government seems incapable of getting anything right by design. I'm coming to regard the relative success of the vaccination drive as an exemplar of the stopped clock principle.
I went to take my father in law out from his care home for lunch on Sunday. By 12:30 the (big chain) pub-restaurant was still closed. I called the manager, I know him somewhat, he told me it was a nightmare. All his staff had called in saying they had been pinged. A sunny summer Sunday and you just have to make one call to get the day off with pay. We took him to another one down the road and the duty manager there was cursing because half the staff had done the same. I am surprised more aren’t doing it.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
You mean St Bees Cumbria.. I was there last week and went into the church that used to be a place where training of prospective ordinands took place in the 1850s. I think it closed as a college in 1905 but is still a church.⁸
That’s the one. Had a mobile home right next to the beach. Wonderful morning sunshine. Interesting that mill hill school was evacuated there during ww2 and lots of benches sponsored by the former pupils. The start of the coast to coast walk was about 20 yards from where we stayed and lots of nice pubs in the village centre.
A lovely part of the world. Not far from where I am.
That whole coastline is gorgeous.
My St Bees story: I passed there, heading north, on my coastal walk. On the way up the cliffs I passed a couple heading down, who told me with glee that they're just finishing their walk from Robin Hood's Bay. "I've just come from there," I said. "It's such a hard walk, isn't it," she said. "We did it in under two weeks! Some people take much longer." "Oh, I took it easy," I replied. "It took me seven months. But I did go via Land's End."
The delta variant is much more capable of infecting the fully vaccinated than had been hoped. The result is that that herd immunity is not being achieved and large scale infection will persist. This makes the probability of the unvaccinated being both infected and becoming seriously ill much higher than might have been hoped with current vaccination levels. Whilst it is clear that the vaccines make death in particular much, much less likely the numbers getting ill enough to require hospital treatment is disappointing. The combined effect of these 2 latter points is that hospitals face a difficult few months with high and increasing numbers of patients further deferring work on the backlog.
The choices that the government faces are unpalatable.
If we continue down the current freedom route then we face significant ongoing disruption as isolation becomes the major tool of breaking transmission. This is going to affect public facing jobs in particular and is going to make large scale events problematic in the extreme, even for the vaccinated.
If we don't then we are accepting that vaccinations have not proven to be the way out of this mess that we hoped. Plan B? Really not sure what it is but I do know for sure that we won't like it. I think we are going to have to muddle through and effectively let the virus let rip. There is some sense in doing this now in the summer. Its going to be a bumpy ride.
You are too pessimistic. Molecular modelling has repeatedly shown sarscov2 heading into an evolutionary dead end. Even if antibody protection fades, or struggles in the face of mild variations, our T Cells will stop serious illness. Sure, these wane as you age. But we can combat that with boosters and reverting to acceptance that much older people generally fare worse from infectious disease as a matter of course.
The point will come when our immune systems have been so bombarded with top up immunity to this virus (exposure from high R variants and/or vaccine boosters) that sarscov2 will struggle to make much headway and will quietly fade away. And you will look back and think “well weren’t those odd times”.
✍🏻 OLYMPICS LATEST: Kentaro Kobayashi, creative director of the Opening Ceremony was fired for joking about the Holocaust as part of a skit in 1998 when he worked as a comedian.
I don't know why people bother to apologise for historic things if they are to get sacked regardless, or forced to stand down (I think some musician leaving a band recently made a similar point), since it doesnt seem to mollify anyone evening you mean it, so you might as well just not comment.
talkRADIO @talkRADIO · 54m The pingdemic has led to food supply chains failing. Federation of Wholesale Distributors chief executive @jaesbielbym says "It's chaos" and the number of people affected is "going up exponentially." He calls for "a blanket exemption for food supply chain workers."
A few thoughts on the header: 1. This is the perfect storm. Brexit makes for delays and issues getting chilled / fresh products across the border. Brexit + IR35 + Covid makes for a huge shortage in both vehicles and drivers to deliver products, causing uncontrolled shortages. And Covid means a whole load of people aren't at work. 2. There are no easy solutions. "Delete the App" is fine but it isn't just people getting pinged, most of us know numerous people who have caught Covid in this Delta wave. If you are sick you can't work whether you delete the App or not 3. Even as we come out the other side of Delta we still won't have fixed the driver and vehicle shortage. Some of the proposals - extend driver hours and now a provisional HGV license sound practically dangerous 4. The NI Protocol bluster (see this morning's insane Daily Express front page) could easily blow up into a total breakdown in co-operation and the hardest of border between us and the EU which really would create food shortages on top of the delivery and labour shortages.
I think the impacts on the government may not be as you might expect in normal times. But the impact on the general public? Not good - despite the pray the pox away efforts we still find ourselves in the midst of a big dangerous spike in a global pandemic with the next even worse variants already out there.
How do people react when its show your Covid passport to enter a supermarket that has got big gaps all over the shop? With the government sadly warning that such hardships will be in place through the long winter to come? OK so this is both variables (Covid and Logistics problems) at their worst, but its more than just possible.
And no, I am not wishing that this happens to attack the government. I am north of the wall so your government isn't in charge of a lot up here. I want Covid gone and quickly. But what I want and what is likely are not the same thing. Not with the Insane Clown Posse in government.
I don't actually remember things being this bad when Covid stock piling was at it's worst.
Yes there was flour and pasta in morrisons (not that we need any as I've tons in the stock pile) but whole shelves (most own brand cereal) and freezers (90% of the frozen veg) were completely empty.
I took photos in those early days of whole sections of stores empty. The only time I could remember anything like it was the dying moths of Kwiksave when they tried to survive as an independent and quickly ran out of cash.
The difference between then and now? Last year the gaps were as a result of panic buying - demand led. This year there has been no panic buying and the gaps are down to the inability to ship - supply led.
Add panic buying on top and it could head south rapidly.
Mr./Miss (sorry, not sure) Moonshine, I read something interesting on home working and offices recently. It's a little bit of a long read but I found it worth the time.
Comments
But the picture we were painted in the spring - of a one-way path to a summer free of restrictions, ahead of the rest of the world, has in just a couple of months turned to dust.
By a mix of bad luck and bad judgement we have dropped into a summer where all restrictions have been lifted, except that in practice they haven’t, when we are allowed to travel, except that in practice we aren’t, and where society is slowly being shut down by the government’s hyperactive App. With the news filling with stories of rising case numbers, the UK being now worse than many other nations, and with threat of new restrictions to come.
All made worse by a PM trapped by his own over-hyping in now being unable to map out any sort of clear path, to move forwards or backwards, for fear of contradicting his previous utterings,
My local council - Westminster - has no issue with 2 refuse collections plus 1 recycling collection a week.
And yet other councils can’t manage that despite far higher council tax rates
20C at 0700 this morning, hot, but shy of the record earlier this week.
And just some fruit missing from today's expected delivery from Waitrose.
O/T I went for a nice weeks break in St. Bees. Never been there before. Will defo return. Beautiful place!
Oh look - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-risk-new-case-like-wayne-couzens-s-murder-of-sarah-everard-watchdog-warns-n0dw9sxh9 - the police watchdog finally saying what I have been saying for months, no years.
When will Dick finally be kicked out?
Do we let them come back to our meetings? Apparently somewhere in ours there's a 'principled' anti-vaxxer.
And Westminster does very nicely out of its position at the centre of town - a healthy business rate base and lots of income from parking, etc.
No more Hoare’s to Paris
That was in the days that we did urban planning and housing policy on a grander scale of course, and at least in theory included shopping centres, schools, industrial estates etc.
1. This is the perfect storm. Brexit makes for delays and issues getting chilled / fresh products across the border. Brexit + IR35 + Covid makes for a huge shortage in both vehicles and drivers to deliver products, causing uncontrolled shortages. And Covid means a whole load of people aren't at work.
2. There are no easy solutions. "Delete the App" is fine but it isn't just people getting pinged, most of us know numerous people who have caught Covid in this Delta wave. If you are sick you can't work whether you delete the App or not
3. Even as we come out the other side of Delta we still won't have fixed the driver and vehicle shortage. Some of the proposals - extend driver hours and now a provisional HGV license sound practically dangerous
4. The NI Protocol bluster (see this morning's insane Daily Express front page) could easily blow up into a total breakdown in co-operation and the hardest of border between us and the EU which really would create food shortages on top of the delivery and labour shortages.
I think the impacts on the government may not be as you might expect in normal times. But the impact on the general public? Not good - despite the pray the pox away efforts we still find ourselves in the midst of a big dangerous spike in a global pandemic with the next even worse variants already out there.
How do people react when its show your Covid passport to enter a supermarket that has got big gaps all over the shop? With the government sadly warning that such hardships will be in place through the long winter to come? OK so this is both variables (Covid and Logistics problems) at their worst, but its more than just possible.
And no, I am not wishing that this happens to attack the government. I am north of the wall so your government isn't in charge of a lot up here. I want Covid gone and quickly. But what I want and what is likely are not the same thing. Not with the Insane Clown Posse in government.
As for the App, the news that it is advisory only will have taken a lot of people by surprise - has always been "You MUST" not "you should". Not that deleting it makes a difference if you actually catch Covid as 50k a day are doing.
A friend of mine was trying yesterday to get accommodation near Fort William for him and his son. It was very difficult with no camping or B&B within 40 miles of Fort William. He has got a nice hotel room but its pricy as these establishments clearly take advantage of the staycation tendency.
The picture, it seems to me, is very mixed with good and bad cheek by jowl. The major disappointment has been the ease with which the double vaxxed are getting delta covid. The expectation was that this would be a rare event but it clearly isn't, even if most are not that ill. This means we are not getting the herd immunity protection that large scale vaccination was supposed to achieve. What we need is accurate information on whether those double vaxxed get a sufficient dose of the virus to be infectious to the unprotected. If they don't then pings for them can be ignored. If they do we still have a problem. Its looking like the latter because it is hard to see how current infection rates don't involve transmission by the large percentage of the population that are vaccinated but we need to be sure.
There’s a particular breed of big company executive that got to where they are through extreme extrovertism. They generally find it difficult to empathise with anyone to the left of them on the introvert-extrovert scale (i.e. almost everyone) and assume that everyone needs to feed off everyone else’s energy as much as they do.
Since they are prone to workaholism, home working has been akin to upgrading from the blackberry doobie in the pocket, to living in an opium den with a full workstation in their home. And they know it’s bad for them.
They often have flimsy relationships with spouses and offspring. So have seen the extra time with family in the pandemic as a burden rather than an opportunity.
For them, work is more centred on shaping their self identity, meeting smart people in smart restaurants, offices and hotels, and wearing smart suits. Unlike the rest of us who work to pay the bills. Many of them don’t care about “productivity through collaboration”, training gaps and sunk office rents as much as they might have you believe. It’s just about how their own life is effected that matters.
This breed of exec right now are the ones trying to force the end of home working and get everyone back. The more days in the office a week the better and starting now.
But they are not the only breed of exec. Rounded management teams at big corporations are playing out in real time a battle for what “hybrid working” will really mean. And are more open to considering a dynamic model based upon role and stage in life. Hard to know who wins that battle right now. But it will have quite profound consequences for the global cities, as @Leon has so vividly described.
There are a long list of reasons why business needs to keep having teams meeting in person - because the city needs their money is not one of them. The money that employees aren't wasting on a season ticket and twatty coffee and overpriced hipster lunch will be spent on something else, it isn't money lost to the economy.
The future is that instead of that London having companies with huge office spaces for their whole workforce, they reduce the size significantly and have people in part time. Teams can meet remotely when not in the office, and getting everyone together becomes an away day - something that most big companies already did.
Yes there was flour and pasta in morrisons (not that we need any as I've tons in the stock pile) but whole shelves (most own brand cereal) and freezers (90% of the frozen veg) were completely empty.
Still, vetting stopped one:-
Met police officer sacked for 122mph speeding on his final day at training college.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/metropolitan-police-sacked-speeding-maurice-maison-b946890.html
The question surely is what vetting encompasses. What behaviours are relevant? What points to future (or current) corrupt or criminal behaviour? There is nothing in the reports I've seen (not the Times story, owing to paywall) suggesting Winsor has given it any great thought and is merely stating what should have been bleeding obvious from the start. As it is, the police are not properly acting on their existing criteria.
https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/force-content/met/careers/careers/detective-constable/cautions-convictions.v4.pdf
Basically it’s all a continuation of how the government has consistently blurred the line between guidance and law to encourage compliance. Maybe that was quite clever, I don’t know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id9W8jqjTaE
What a ping f*cking mess. Business minister been sent out to bat on R4, trying to hold the line gallantly.
That surely means a No.10 u-turn by lunchtime.
Like far too many organisations the police don't do proper due diligence on those they hire and do not understand why this is important. I could fill headers with examples from finance and the consequences. It is basic basic stuff - important stuff - but is treated as a minor bureaucratic inconvenience.
@DPJHodges
·
15m
And what does recent experience tells us happens when partial food shortages begin appearing.
@DPJHodges
·
9h
Genuine question. What does Boris think is going to happen? An army of magic elves is going to appear and suddenly start stacking the nation’s shelves? Everyone can see this crisis unfolding. So what’s the Government’s solution.
That whole coastline is gorgeous.
However, as you suggest, those measures were starting to be taken even before Covid (and then reversed in some companies). And there are questions around security in particular that still need to be addressed by many firms, but also health and safety, equipment supply and maintenance and so on.
@kateferguson4: Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng on supermarket shortages: “Shoppers shouldn’t be panicking….I’m not panicking.” #today
https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1418092980519555075
2 days ago, No.10 said firms *would* have to apply + there'd be no list of sectors
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1418108459732590592
“Rules” which aren’t rules, only guidance.
But this is easy and has a meaningful impact on quality of life
That'll be the headline for a while.
"Crisis? What crisis?" memories.
We have to go.
A 3 per cent pay rise for NHS staff is likely to be funded from an increase in national insurance that was intended to pay for overhauling social care
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nhs-staffs-3-pay-rise-likely-to-come-out-of-social-care-tax-0w226n8fw
The delta variant is much more capable of infecting the fully vaccinated than had been hoped.
The result is that that herd immunity is not being achieved and large scale infection will persist.
This makes the probability of the unvaccinated being both infected and becoming seriously ill much higher than might have been hoped with current vaccination levels.
Whilst it is clear that the vaccines make death in particular much, much less likely the numbers getting ill enough to require hospital treatment is disappointing.
The combined effect of these 2 latter points is that hospitals face a difficult few months with high and increasing numbers of patients further deferring work on the backlog.
The choices that the government faces are unpalatable.
If we continue down the current freedom route then we face significant ongoing disruption as isolation becomes the major tool of breaking transmission. This is going to affect public facing jobs in particular and is going to make large scale events problematic in the extreme, even for the vaccinated.
If we don't then we are accepting that vaccinations have not proven to be the way out of this mess that we hoped. Plan B? Really not sure what it is but I do know for sure that we won't like it. I think we are going to have to muddle through and effectively let the virus let rip. There is some sense in doing this now in the summer. Its going to be a bumpy ride.
We don't publish daily data on stuff like flu infections etc and once people are vaccinated then Covid is similar to that (and if people aren't vaccinated its their own damned fault).
With 40+ Tory MPs publicly opposed, that's quite a bold claim
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour-will-oppose-boris-johnson-plan-for-compulsory-covid-passports-for-nightclubs_uk_60f853bee4b0158a5edc9980
And now they’re back to economically destructive confusion which has lost sight of why the policy shift was planned. And which goes back to undermining the message that vaccines protect and people who have received them should stop being fearful. It’s also the case that without the policy shift they can never get people back into offices in any numbers, because one positive case and everyone has to go home again .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ian_Tomlinson
I passed there, heading north, on my coastal walk. On the way up the cliffs I passed a couple heading down, who told me with glee that they're just finishing their walk from Robin Hood's Bay.
"I've just come from there," I said.
"It's such a hard walk, isn't it," she said. "We did it in under two weeks! Some people take much longer."
"Oh, I took it easy," I replied. "It took me seven months. But I did go via Land's End."
The point will come when our immune systems have been so bombarded with top up immunity to this virus (exposure from high R variants and/or vaccine boosters) that sarscov2 will struggle to make much headway and will quietly fade away. And you will look back and think “well weren’t those odd times”.
@talkRADIO
·
54m
The pingdemic has led to food supply chains failing. Federation of Wholesale Distributors chief executive @jaesbielbym says "It's chaos" and the number of people affected is "going up exponentially." He calls for "a blanket exemption for food supply chain workers."
The difference between then and now? Last year the gaps were as a result of panic buying - demand led. This year there has been no panic buying and the gaps are down to the inability to ship - supply led.
Add panic buying on top and it could head south rapidly.
Mr./Miss (sorry, not sure) Moonshine, I read something interesting on home working and offices recently. It's a little bit of a long read but I found it worth the time.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/how-to-achieve-sustainable-remote-work