The size of the EU population in the UK appears to have been significantly underestimated by the ONS, which put the resident EU population in 2019 at 3.7 million although 5.4 million people have so far successfully applied under the EUSS, and the final total will be higher. Whatever the precise figure, the resident EU population in the UK is far larger than the estimated UK resident population in the EU as a whole (around 1.1 million), let alone that in any one Member State.
Of course if we have indeed seen the peak for new cases already the chances of new restrictions will be much reduced. Still a little early to call but my prediction of the 19th being the peak seems quite close at the moment. What the country needs is to see that there is a way out of this and that things are going to get better reasonably quickly. My guess, FWIW, is that if that indeed happens Boris may get something of a boost.
But will Boris have made the right call… or may be he’s just been lucky… again
If the 19th does prove to be within a day or so of the peak I would suggest that the extension of freedom day by 4 weeks was driven by some rather more sophisticated modelling than is normally shared with us. The date in August for switching off the pings is hopefully similarly based. Not quite luck.
The decision to postpone freedom day was informed by published models including one from Warwick University that suggested hospital admissions would peak at around 2000 per day if you delayed against around 4000 per day if you didn't. Which is a kind of no-brainer.
PB epidemiologists opposed to the delay were outraged, saying the models were ludicrous and insisted the scientists be called to account, maybe jailed, for their irresponsibility and their agenda-driven modelling.
In fact the Warwick Model was out, more on timeframe than scale. The value with such models is in the A/B outcomes rather than coming up with actual predictions - if you do A what do you get?; if do B what do you get? What's the difference?
How do we know the Warwick model was only out on timeframe? And “being out in timeframe” is rather important if criticising decisions based on, er, timescales.
Models deal with uncertain worlds, which is why you need a variety, they need to be published, you need to understand the assumptions and you need to test them and then correct them.
To @DavidL point, these models are sophisticated as you get but they are still inherently inaccurate. It's just that a degree of inaccuracy is better than being completely uninformed.
As it turned out the timescale error didn't matter much*. We're heading towards the peak now rather than three or four weeks ago. But the model (backed up by several others) was probably correct that the peak will be lower than it would otherwise have been,
* Certainly compared with no model when you wouldn't have any timescale at all. It maybe affects preparation in the Hospital Boards but it doesn't change the decisions whether to keep restrictions for a bit longer.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
So not remotely the target audience then, and contributes nothing to “bringing new people into cricket”
I have no idea what the target audience is. They are young, uni bods who already are sports mad and like cricket. So absolutely. If the target is old blokes who don't like the cricket (ie me, for example), then it has failed. As would any other initiative involving cricket.
If the target is old blokes who already like cricket then again it fails as you lot don't like it.
If the target is young blokes who don't like cricket then we shall have to wait and see.
But in which case there is no point old blokes who like cricket (you lot) or old blokes who don't like cricket (me) opining on it.
I have added to the sample by relating my experiences of young blokes (and blokesses) who like the cricket and they are fans.
Can anyone help out with experience of young blokes who don't like cricket?
That's interesting in Leicester. One of the concerns with Kier's Batley poster with BoJo /Modi was that it would p1ss off Indian non-Muslim voters. Possible sign of this?
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
So not remotely the target audience then, and contributes nothing to “bringing new people into cricket”
I have no idea what the target audience is. They are young, uni bods who already are sports mad and like cricket. So absolutely. If the target is old blokes who don't like the cricket (ie me, for example), then it has failed. As would any other initiative involving cricket.
If the target is old blokes who already like cricket then again it fails as you lot don't like it.
If the target is young blokes who don't like cricket then we shall have to wait and see.
But in which case there is no point old blokes who like cricket (you lot) or old blokes who don't like cricket (me) opining on it.
I have added to the sample by relating my experiences of young blokes (and blokesses) who like the cricket and they are fans.
Can anyone help out with experience of young blokes who don't like cricket?
The target audience was explicitly people who “didn’t like cricket”. It’s one of the reasons why it was so ridiculed.
That's interesting in Leicester. One of the concerns with Kier's Batley poster with BoJo /Modi was that it would p1ss off Indian non-Muslim voters. Possible sign of this?
It’s almost as if the voters can now see the sort of highly-targeted materials political parties put out in elections, which they really wouldn’t want to have bought to the attention of a wider audience.
The mistake was printing leaflets, rather than buying social media ads.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
So not remotely the target audience then, and contributes nothing to “bringing new people into cricket”
I have no idea what the target audience is. They are young, uni bods who already are sports mad and like cricket. So absolutely. If the target is old blokes who don't like the cricket (ie me, for example), then it has failed. As would any other initiative involving cricket.
If the target is old blokes who already like cricket then again it fails as you lot don't like it.
If the target is young blokes who don't like cricket then we shall have to wait and see.
But in which case there is no point old blokes who like cricket (you lot) or old blokes who don't like cricket (me) opining on it.
I have added to the sample by relating my experiences of young blokes (and blokesses) who like the cricket and they are fans.
Can anyone help out with experience of young blokes who don't like cricket?
I don't think I am young enough any more to comment. But the flaw appears to be taking a game where nothing much happens for an awful long time and thinking it might be better if nothing much happens for still quite a long time?
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
So not remotely the target audience then, and contributes nothing to “bringing new people into cricket”
I have no idea what the target audience is. They are young, uni bods who already are sports mad and like cricket. So absolutely. If the target is old blokes who don't like the cricket (ie me, for example), then it has failed. As would any other initiative involving cricket.
If the target is old blokes who already like cricket then again it fails as you lot don't like it.
If the target is young blokes who don't like cricket then we shall have to wait and see.
But in which case there is no point old blokes who like cricket (you lot) or old blokes who don't like cricket (me) opining on it.
I have added to the sample by relating my experiences of young blokes (and blokesses) who like the cricket and they are fans.
Can anyone help out with experience of young blokes who don't like cricket?
The target audience was explicitly people who “didn’t like cricket”. It’s one of the reasons why it was so ridiculed.
Ah well with a sample size of one it has not worked.
I would have thought it would make sense to increase the consumption of the product by those who already like it while bringing in some longevity (you know they say it's always easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one) in which case it is working (ie back to my example, the young 'uns were all planning to go - whether that was at the expense of going to a T20 or some other cricket event who knows).
But back to my point about old people who do like cricket - ie many/most PB-ers. Absolutely no value at all in opining on it as it's not for them and there have only been a handful of games to date, haven't there?
An excellent commentary as always from Mike Smithson. These thoughts are from one who supported Brexit but wanted 'Norway for Now' in the belief that a long term process was essential.
1) If Brexit and GFA are actually incompatible then Remain incomprehensibly failed to say so, and failed to say what the limits on Brexit would be. That is because they are not incompatible.
2) The UK and the RoI are sovereign states (the sort with seats at the UN and armies).
3) The EU is an extensive trade association, and not a state.
4) If it is realistic to say that the UK can bend its sovereignty red lines to the extent of separating the GB and the NI internal market as the protocol requires, it is realistic to say that the EU can bend its trade association rules to contain an anomaly which protects the interests of one of their members, the RoI, and those of a friendly neighbour with equivalently high standards, the UK.
5) Which obvious truth is why Remain did not campaign on the basis that a (non EFTA) Brexit was impossible.
Precisely, the dispute is between the UK and Ireland, not the UK and EU. Ireland could disengage from the Single Market, join a customs union with the UK - no land border, no sea border - job done.
The Irish saw the trap on day 1 and have marshalled their considerable lobbying power in both the EU and the US to avoid having to choose between the Single Market and a soft land border. The EU doesn't care as long as its rules are followed, but Ireland won't compromise on this point, ever.
So what will happen if this Brexiteer government decides to tear up both the Protocol and the TCA? This is a significantly greater than zero risk. They will lose Nissan, which is something they seem to care about, but once it's gone it's gone, and they have pretty much wrecked everything else anyway, so why not?
I am guessing Ireland will go with the Single Market and cut the North loose. But it will be a grim time for everyone, especially those in Northern Ireland.
The UK government could have left without a deal. That would have left the EU with the problem of how to deal with the land border in the island of Ireland since in principle they would have had to close it to protect the SM, and we wouldn't because we would have had insufficient interest in protecting the border.
We didn't. Meaning that Boris accepted the Ireland fudge which all parties knew could not work in the long term. Not least because it is obvious to all that unionist extremists in NI would not accept for ever the NI/GB divergence without resorting to civil unrest.
So the problem landed mostly on us rather than them.
Boris's tactic was to accept the only way of leaving with a deal, and wait; hoping that in due course it may become a joint problem and not just ours. Hence the willingness to break with an international treaty. He has no alternative in these unique circumstances.
The EU wants the UK to break the red lines of our internal market. We want the EU to break their SM red lines. Both sides refuse to be the first to suggest an internal barrier. That is about the only hold Boris has.
The thing is we've got our cake and are eating it. Britain has a deal, and failing to implement the NI Protocol in the way the EU wanted it to exposes their bluff - they're not going to put up a border in the NI/Eire border, we're not going to put up an Irish Sea one, and they're not going to tear up the agreement because doing so means they will have to put up an NI/Eire border.
They have no chips to hold except "you agreed to this", which is not very meaningful in the circumstances. Especially since they agreed to Article 16 which is part of the agreement and can be invoked if need be - and if it is then what can they do without making their problems worse?
We hold all the cards.
Until the day when the Dublin government, caught between Britain and the EU, says there are only two workable options: a hard border or a united Ireland.
Surely a hard border is not an option because Peace Process, and a united Ireland is unlikely because a majority would have to be found for it in the North *AND* the South would have to be prepared to take on the cost of funding the North.
Great Britain is about thirteen times bigger than the Republic of Ireland. The financial burden of reunification upon the latter would be very heavy.
It's not the poor, agrarian economy of old, whose main export was navvies. Ireland now has a higher per-capita GDP than Northern Ireland, and could write its own aid cheques from America.
The Dublin government could also expect support from the ECB. There may be a limit to which the current settlement can survive and the men of ex-violence with the Book of Revelations in their pockets can continue getting their way now that the income from the construction sector has dried up both for them and for their opposite numbers among the men of ex-violence with the rosary beads. This sounds extremely cynical I know, but despite cultural liberalisation the BoR looms more vividly in many minds now than it did in 2019, especially for the older generation.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
So not remotely the target audience then, and contributes nothing to “bringing new people into cricket”
I have no idea what the target audience is. They are young, uni bods who already are sports mad and like cricket. So absolutely. If the target is old blokes who don't like the cricket (ie me, for example), then it has failed. As would any other initiative involving cricket.
If the target is old blokes who already like cricket then again it fails as you lot don't like it.
If the target is young blokes who don't like cricket then we shall have to wait and see.
But in which case there is no point old blokes who like cricket (you lot) or old blokes who don't like cricket (me) opining on it.
I have added to the sample by relating my experiences of young blokes (and blokesses) who like the cricket and they are fans.
Can anyone help out with experience of young blokes who don't like cricket?
The target audience was explicitly people who “don’t like cricket”. It’s one of the reasons why it was so ridiculed.
Ah well with a sample size of one it has not worked.
I would have thought it would make sense to increase the consumption of the product by those who already like it while bringing in some longevity (you know they say it's always easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one) in which case it is working (ie back to my example, the young 'uns were all planning to go - whether that was at the expense of going to a T20 or some other cricket event who knows).
But back to my point about old people who do like cricket - ie many/most PB-ers. Absolutely no value at all in opining on it as it's not for them and there have only been a handful of games to date, haven't there?
I like cricket, I just don't often WATCH cricket. For test matches, or even ODIs, I would at most follow the text commentary. I don't follow county cricket, and have dabbled in T20 Blast.
I think I'm part of the intended audience in addition to people who don't like cricket.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
So not remotely the target audience then, and contributes nothing to “bringing new people into cricket”
I have no idea what the target audience is. They are young, uni bods who already are sports mad and like cricket. So absolutely. If the target is old blokes who don't like the cricket (ie me, for example), then it has failed. As would any other initiative involving cricket.
If the target is old blokes who already like cricket then again it fails as you lot don't like it.
If the target is young blokes who don't like cricket then we shall have to wait and see.
But in which case there is no point old blokes who like cricket (you lot) or old blokes who don't like cricket (me) opining on it.
I have added to the sample by relating my experiences of young blokes (and blokesses) who like the cricket and they are fans.
Can anyone help out with experience of young blokes who don't like cricket?
Yes. The young blokes I know who don't like cricket have barely heard of The Hundred. They're just counting down the days till the PL football starts (21 to go) and beginning to work on their PL fantasy teams.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
Not the target audience then tbf, 9f the ECB had hosted a new jazzed up T20 tournament in the mold of IPL style franchises it would have been the same effect. T20 is just 20 more balls per innings, that's like another 10-15 mins, not something that should warrant ripping up the rule book over.
I think the point is that the new format made the foundation of the IPL style franchises possible.
personally it would have been better to have stuck with T20 and avoided the pointless gizmos.
Why not just found IPL style franchises using IPL style rules? Ie T20?
My biggest issue with The Hundred is that we're not going to end up with international Hundred competitions and a Hundred World Cup etc since we already having IT20s and an IT20 World Cup already and they're effectively the same thing. So we should surely have our player playing the real thing and not a dumbed down 83.33% version of the real thing.
I agree. And this 5 ball overs, possibly 10 balls, bits of paper being waved about etc is just change for the sake of it and adds nothing to the game. There is an astonishing depth of talent in the short ball version of the game in this country (as we saw against Pakistan) and enough international stars have been attracted to make this genuinely exciting. It wouldn't quite match the IPL but it would have had a lot of international coverage and attention. I just wish they hadn't bothered with the gimmicks.
That's interesting in Leicester. One of the concerns with Kier's Batley poster with BoJo /Modi was that it would p1ss off Indian non-Muslim voters. Possible sign of this?
Mass live challenge trials of the vaccines (& young people's inate immune systems) this weekend. Been told I'm the designated driver for my sins this evening
That's interesting in Leicester. One of the concerns with Kier's Batley poster with BoJo /Modi was that it would p1ss off Indian non-Muslim voters. Possible sign of this?
Kier not popular in Liecester?
It's Keir.
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that if Con put up a decent Indian candidate in Webbe’s seat she could be a gonner. I get the impression she is intensely disliked by many and somehow managed to collapse the majority built up by Keith Vaz.
This of course depends on the outcome of her court case. Long term Kier/Keir probably wouldn’t mind being shot of her.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
Not the target audience then tbf, 9f the ECB had hosted a new jazzed up T20 tournament in the mold of IPL style franchises it would have been the same effect. T20 is just 20 more balls per innings, that's like another 10-15 mins, not something that should warrant ripping up the rule book over.
I think the point is that the new format made the foundation of the IPL style franchises possible.
personally it would have been better to have stuck with T20 and avoided the pointless gizmos.
Why not just found IPL style franchises using IPL style rules? Ie T20?
My biggest issue with The Hundred is that we're not going to end up with international Hundred competitions and a Hundred World Cup etc since we already having IT20s and an IT20 World Cup already and they're effectively the same thing. So we should surely have our player playing the real thing and not a dumbed down 83.33% version of the real thing.
I agree. And this 5 ball overs, possibly 10 balls, bits of paper being waved about etc is just change for the sake of it and adds nothing to the game. There is an astonishing depth of talent in the short ball version of the game in this country (as we saw against Pakistan) and enough international stars have been attracted to make this genuinely exciting. It wouldn't quite match the IPL but it would have had a lot of international coverage and attention. I just wish they hadn't bothered with the gimmicks.
Of course if we have indeed seen the peak for new cases already the chances of new restrictions will be much reduced. Still a little early to call but my prediction of the 19th being the peak seems quite close at the moment. What the country needs is to see that there is a way out of this and that things are going to get better reasonably quickly. My guess, FWIW, is that if that indeed happens Boris may get something of a boost.
But will Boris have made the right call… or may be he’s just been lucky… again
If the 19th does prove to be within a day or so of the peak I would suggest that the extension of freedom day by 4 weeks was driven by some rather more sophisticated modelling than is normally shared with us. The date in August for switching off the pings is hopefully similarly based. Not quite luck.
The decision to postpone freedom day was informed by published models including one from Warwick University that suggested hospital admissions would peak at around 2000 per day if you delayed against around 4000 per day if you didn't. Which is a kind of no-brainer.
PB epidemiologists opposed to the delay were outraged, saying the models were ludicrous and insisted the scientists be called to account, maybe jailed, for their irresponsibility and their agenda-driven modelling.
In fact the Warwick Model was out, more on timeframe than scale. The value with such models is in the A/B outcomes rather than coming up with actual predictions - if you do A what do you get?; if do B what do you get? What's the difference?
How do we know the Warwick model was only out on timeframe? And “being out in timeframe” is rather important if criticising decisions based on, er, timescales.
Models deal with uncertain worlds, which is why you need a variety, they need to be published, you need to understand the assumptions and you need to test them and then correct them.
To @DavidL point, these models are sophisticated as you get but they are still inherently inaccurate. It's just that a degree of inaccuracy is better than being completely uninformed.
As it turned out the timescale error didn't matter much*. We're heading towards the peak now rather than three or four weeks ago. But the model (backed up by several others) was probably correct that the peak will be lower than it would otherwise have been,
* Certainly compared with no model when you wouldn't have any timescale at all. It maybe affects preparation in the Hospital Boards but it doesn't change the decisions whether to keep restrictions for a bit longer.
Sure, but as Philip pointed out there were some seriously big clues for the modelling in this case, specifically the schools breaking up and a lot of people going on holiday where they would spend an unusual amount of time outside. The point I am making, and which @Charles was making too, is that it is a part of Boris's act that he is blundering around in a generally clueless kind of way which remarkably comes up trumps a lot of the time. People taken in by this act think he is just "lucky" but he isn't, at least not entirely. It's a bit like when I drive my wife places and she think's it luck that we find it (a running family joke). There is more method than he likes to let on.
Of course if we have indeed seen the peak for new cases already the chances of new restrictions will be much reduced. Still a little early to call but my prediction of the 19th being the peak seems quite close at the moment. What the country needs is to see that there is a way out of this and that things are going to get better reasonably quickly. My guess, FWIW, is that if that indeed happens Boris may get something of a boost.
But will Boris have made the right call… or may be he’s just been lucky… again
If the 19th does prove to be within a day or so of the peak I would suggest that the extension of freedom day by 4 weeks was driven by some rather more sophisticated modelling than is normally shared with us. The date in August for switching off the pings is hopefully similarly based. Not quite luck.
The decision to postpone freedom day was informed by published models including one from Warwick University that suggested hospital admissions would peak at around 2000 per day if you delayed against around 4000 per day if you didn't. Which is a kind of no-brainer.
PB epidemiologists opposed to the delay were outraged, saying the models were ludicrous and insisted the scientists be called to account, maybe jailed, for their irresponsibility and their agenda-driven modelling.
In fact the Warwick Model was out, more on timeframe than scale. The value with such models is in the A/B outcomes rather than coming up with actual predictions - if you do A what do you get?; if do B what do you get? What's the difference?
How do we know the Warwick model was only out on timeframe? And “being out in timeframe” is rather important if criticising decisions based on, er, timescales.
Models deal with uncertain worlds, which is why you need a variety, they need to be published, you need to understand the assumptions and you need to test them and then correct them.
To @DavidL point, these models are sophisticated as you get but they are still inherently inaccurate. It's just that a degree of inaccuracy is better than being completely uninformed.
As it turned out the timescale error didn't matter much*. We're heading towards the peak now rather than three or four weeks ago. But the model (backed up by several others) was probably correct that the peak will be lower than it would otherwise have been,
* Certainly compared with no model when you wouldn't have any timescale at all. It maybe affects preparation in the Hospital Boards but it doesn't change the decisions whether to keep restrictions for a bit longer.
Sure, but as Philip pointed out there were some seriously big clues for the modelling in this case, specifically the schools breaking up and a lot of people going on holiday where they would spend an unusual amount of time outside. The point I am making, and which @Charles was making too, is that it is a part of Boris's act that he is blundering around in a generally clueless kind of way which remarkably comes up trumps a lot of the time. People taken in by this act think he is just "lucky" but he isn't, at least not entirely. It's a bit like when I drive my wife places and she think's it luck that we find it (a running family joke). There is more method than he likes to let on.
There is however an issue in that we now regard Boris as being lucky rather than demonstrating he is using experts so could be trusted.
And that is a very curious change in tone from when he was London Mayor where even though he often played things for the laugh you knew he had experts he had delegated things to and was merely presenting the results.
Of course if we have indeed seen the peak for new cases already the chances of new restrictions will be much reduced. Still a little early to call but my prediction of the 19th being the peak seems quite close at the moment. What the country needs is to see that there is a way out of this and that things are going to get better reasonably quickly. My guess, FWIW, is that if that indeed happens Boris may get something of a boost.
But will Boris have made the right call… or may be he’s just been lucky… again
If the 19th does prove to be within a day or so of the peak I would suggest that the extension of freedom day by 4 weeks was driven by some rather more sophisticated modelling than is normally shared with us. The date in August for switching off the pings is hopefully similarly based. Not quite luck.
The decision to postpone freedom day was informed by published models including one from Warwick University that suggested hospital admissions would peak at around 2000 per day if you delayed against around 4000 per day if you didn't. Which is a kind of no-brainer.
PB epidemiologists opposed to the delay were outraged, saying the models were ludicrous and insisted the scientists be called to account, maybe jailed, for their irresponsibility and their agenda-driven modelling.
In fact the Warwick Model was out, more on timeframe than scale. The value with such models is in the A/B outcomes rather than coming up with actual predictions - if you do A what do you get?; if do B what do you get? What's the difference?
How do we know the Warwick model was only out on timeframe? And “being out in timeframe” is rather important if criticising decisions based on, er, timescales.
Models deal with uncertain worlds, which is why you need a variety, they need to be published, you need to understand the assumptions and you need to test them and then correct them.
To @DavidL point, these models are sophisticated as you get but they are still inherently inaccurate. It's just that a degree of inaccuracy is better than being completely uninformed.
As it turned out the timescale error didn't matter much*. We're heading towards the peak now rather than three or four weeks ago. But the model (backed up by several others) was probably correct that the peak will be lower than it would otherwise have been,
* Certainly compared with no model when you wouldn't have any timescale at all. It maybe affects preparation in the Hospital Boards but it doesn't change the decisions whether to keep restrictions for a bit longer.
My favourite axiom about models is that they are inevitably simplified, as otherwise you would be running the world. It's a question of selecting what you leave out, as well as what you put in.
The size of the EU population in the UK appears to have been significantly underestimated by the ONS, which put the resident EU population in 2019 at 3.7 million although 5.4 million people have so far successfully applied under the EUSS, and the final total will be higher. Whatever the precise figure, the resident EU population in the UK is far larger than the estimated UK resident population in the EU as a whole (around 1.1 million), let alone that in any one Member State.
Feed that into FBPE twitter and it proves that Brits are all virulent racists because more of them chose to stay at home with their kind, and not go and live in 'Europe'.
No donkey. Harry Kane was top Premier League goalscorer last season, the third time he has won the Golden Boot. He also won Playmaker of the Season for most assists – previously twice won by Kevin de Bruyne of, erm, Manchester City. Kane was also one off top scorer at Euro 2020 and won the Golden Boot at the last World Cup. 27 years old so a few seasons left. Ah, hold on, I think I see your objection: he is captain of England.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
Of course if we have indeed seen the peak for new cases already the chances of new restrictions will be much reduced. Still a little early to call but my prediction of the 19th being the peak seems quite close at the moment. What the country needs is to see that there is a way out of this and that things are going to get better reasonably quickly. My guess, FWIW, is that if that indeed happens Boris may get something of a boost.
But will Boris have made the right call… or may be he’s just been lucky… again
If the 19th does prove to be within a day or so of the peak I would suggest that the extension of freedom day by 4 weeks was driven by some rather more sophisticated modelling than is normally shared with us. The date in August for switching off the pings is hopefully similarly based. Not quite luck.
The decision to postpone freedom day was informed by published models including one from Warwick University that suggested hospital admissions would peak at around 2000 per day if you delayed against around 4000 per day if you didn't. Which is a kind of no-brainer.
PB epidemiologists opposed to the delay were outraged, saying the models were ludicrous and insisted the scientists be called to account, maybe jailed, for their irresponsibility and their agenda-driven modelling.
In fact the Warwick Model was out, more on timeframe than scale. The value with such models is in the A/B outcomes rather than coming up with actual predictions - if you do A what do you get?; if do B what do you get? What's the difference?
How do we know the Warwick model was only out on timeframe? And “being out in timeframe” is rather important if criticising decisions based on, er, timescales.
Models deal with uncertain worlds, which is why you need a variety, they need to be published, you need to understand the assumptions and you need to test them and then correct them.
To @DavidL point, these models are sophisticated as you get but they are still inherently inaccurate. It's just that a degree of inaccuracy is better than being completely uninformed.
As it turned out the timescale error didn't matter much*. We're heading towards the peak now rather than three or four weeks ago. But the model (backed up by several others) was probably correct that the peak will be lower than it would otherwise have been,
* Certainly compared with no model when you wouldn't have any timescale at all. It maybe affects preparation in the Hospital Boards but it doesn't change the decisions whether to keep restrictions for a bit longer.
My favourite axiom about models is that they are inevitably simplified, as otherwise you would be running the world. It's a question of selecting what you leave out, as well as what you put in.
"..selecting what you leave out, as well as what you put in."
This.
As various people pointed out, ignoring major effects and simply using wrong input numbers for thing such as vaccine efficiency* rendered a number of earlier models useless.
*If you wanted to look at the effects of vaccine efficiency, it would be sensible to vary the number to test the sensitivity. But presenting a result where the numbers are quite simply not related to the measured, real world number.....
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Losing it (and evidently still smarting over having his claims trashed yesterday)
one of highest COVID rates in 🌍 - vaccinations slowing to crawl & not starting 💉 teenagers due to supply problems - truck driver shortage leading to empty supermarkets - Govt wants to tear up NI Protocol, 🇪🇺 rejects - MP expelled from Commons for telling truth about PM
Point ii a. Demand & 8 week time (generally) limited, which looks to be the best point - can't really improve this. Point ii b. To do with the JCVI rather than supply, the report looks plain weird on this. iii. Fair iv. Brexit v. Parliamentary language, speaker following protocol.
Firstly I now want to go and visit Truth or Consequences vin New Mexico and secondly I forgot that this entire plan is based on a decision Boris made within a 90 minute meeting which explains why he never thought through the consequences and risks of that decision.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
Remember, deaths within 28 days is going to be an increasingly flawed metric if we have, as we do, high cases but reasonably low hospitalisations in comparison to previous waves. More people will die with COVID rather than from COVID, than in previous waves.
You've got an ideal bet on this Mike between @rkrkrk and myself. Whoever loses gives £25 to the site. Glad to see you are on my side of the fence though.
I think the T20 concept makes sense* (obviously, given the commercial success it has had). But from our point of view, it was created to give the counties some revenue from games that could be completed in the early evening.
Just looking at the current format, I think the group stage is a bit long. I think two groups of nine with each side playing each other giving four home games and four away games would be enough. Play it over 18 days or so from the middle to the end of June. Then have quarter finals and finals day as and when it fits with everything else.
Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but I used to go to the Guildford cricket festival every year to watch a one day game on the Sunday. I understand the attraction of the shorter format, but I think there is a place for a full day's cricket where possible. As it is, the schedule is a complete mess, though I'm heartened to see that Surrey appear to have sold out for a game at Guildford on Tuesday:
* The only thing I'd have done differently is to only have six wickets. That is, only seven of the 11 can bat. It would make wickets worth that little bit more and potentially create quite exciting finishes where the fielding team actually tries to get wickets rather than preventing runs. It would also have meant four players would be selected purely for their bowling/fielding ability.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Absolutely you are not. As I said here last night it's not for you. A random group of youngsters polled by me over the weekend said it was fantastic.
Before the first match was played?!
They had been really looking forward to the one that was cancelled.
Edit: and were going to whichever one was next.
You probably answered this before and I missed it, but which particular “Hundred” features (as opposed to T20) were they attracted to?
I should not that if they were looking for a light hearted p*ss up in the sun, then they aren’t the target audience either.
They are all mad keen cricketers played for school and uni teams.
Not the target audience then tbf, 9f the ECB had hosted a new jazzed up T20 tournament in the mold of IPL style franchises it would have been the same effect. T20 is just 20 more balls per innings, that's like another 10-15 mins, not something that should warrant ripping up the rule book over.
I think the point is that the new format made the foundation of the IPL style franchises possible.
personally it would have been better to have stuck with T20 and avoided the pointless gizmos.
Why not just found IPL style franchises using IPL style rules? Ie T20?
My biggest issue with The Hundred is that we're not going to end up with international Hundred competitions and a Hundred World Cup etc since we already having IT20s and an IT20 World Cup already and they're effectively the same thing. So we should surely have our player playing the real thing and not a dumbed down 83.33% version of the real thing.
I agree. And this 5 ball overs, possibly 10 balls, bits of paper being waved about etc is just change for the sake of it and adds nothing to the game. There is an astonishing depth of talent in the short ball version of the game in this country (as we saw against Pakistan) and enough international stars have been attracted to make this genuinely exciting. It wouldn't quite match the IPL but it would have had a lot of international coverage and attention. I just wish they hadn't bothered with the gimmicks.
Precisely. Its like if the Premier League had chosen to split off away from the Football League, but in the process of doing so cut the game down to 37.5 minutes per half. A rather pointless change for change's sake.
I can't help suspecting that going from Aguero to Kane at the cost of £160m must be some sort of handicapping system imposed on Man City designed to make the EPL more competitive. I just hope it works.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
I don't think that's right - because the work can only be done at weekends and because there simply isn't enough people to do more than a few miles every weekend you end up with over-engineered solutions to all the old and new to run in parallel and provide any chance of switching from the old to the new without a long "getting ready" shutdown.
Simply put its easier to build new rather than upgrade railway lines - the issue we have is NIMBYs and insane desires to make projects financially risk free result in completely insane prices. The southern part of HS2 is so expensive because the risk was transferred to the constructors (who simply picked a price that ensured they could make a profit come what may) with extended designs costs and timeframes to ensure risk was minimised.
IT projects used to do that 20 years ago, we don't do it now because we know it just adds costs.
Covid restrictions betting. Is this relevant, from Nadhim Zahawi?
And as I updated the House on Monday, at the end of September we plan to make full vaccination a condition of entry to those high risk settings where large crowds gather and interact. By this point everyone aged 18 and over will have had the chance to be fully vaccinated and so everyone will have that opportunity to gain the maximum possible protection. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/minister-zahawi-update-to-the-house-on-step-4-and-nhs-covid-pass
I think the T20 concept makes sense* (obviously, given the commercial success it has had). But from our point of view, it was created to give the counties some revenue from games that could be completed in the early evening.
Just looking at the current format, I think the group stage is a bit long. I think two groups of nine with each side playing each other giving four home games and four away games would be enough. Play it over 18 days or so from the middle to the end of June. Then have quarter finals and finals day as and when it fits with everything else.
Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but I used to go to the Guildford cricket festival every year to watch a one day game on the Sunday. I understand the attraction of the shorter format, but I think there is a place for a full day's cricket where possible. As it is, the schedule is a complete mess, though I'm heartened to see that Surrey appear to have sold out for a game at Guildford on Tuesday:
* The only thing I'd have done differently is to only have six wickets. That is, only seven of the 11 can bat. It would make wickets worth that little bit more and potentially create quite exciting finishes where the fielding team actually tries to get wickets rather than preventing runs. It would also have meant four players would be selected purely for their bowling/fielding ability.
There was a similar suggestion yesterday that each wicket was knocked x runs off your score. That would incentivise careful shot selection and batsmen as much as bowlers.
The size of the EU population in the UK appears to have been significantly underestimated by the ONS, which put the resident EU population in 2019 at 3.7 million although 5.4 million people have so far successfully applied under the EUSS, and the final total will be higher. Whatever the precise figure, the resident EU population in the UK is far larger than the estimated UK resident population in the EU as a whole (around 1.1 million), let alone that in any one Member State.
Feed that into FBPE twitter and it proves that Brits are all virulent racists because more of them chose to stay at home with their kind, and not go and live in 'Europe'.
What won't be appearing in FBPE Twitter:
The number of concluded applications to the EU Settlement Scheme is a considerable achievement by the Home Office. There are many more EU citizens in the UK than there are UK citizens across the EU, and the UK Government faced a huge challenge in encouraging and processing over 5.4 million applications ahead of the deadline. We also welcome the Home Office’s approach of looking for reasons to grant status, rather than reasons to refuse.
Some EU Member States have constitutive systems and others have declaratory systems. We note that the UK’s EU Settlement Scheme has been open for nearly a year longer than the earliest constitutive scheme opened in the EU.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
Remember, deaths within 28 days is going to be an increasingly flawed metric if we have, as we do, high cases but reasonably low hospitalisations in comparison to previous waves. More people will die with COVID rather than from COVID, than in previous waves.
Yes but as the number of cases falls sharply so will that effect.
My posts in the last couple of days have been very grumpy for which I apologise. I do prefer to be polite here. My excuses are as follows:
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why? c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it? d) Someone nicked our dog crate. e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
King Cole, is this a surprise? I haven't kept up with it, but assuming it's a hundred each way, that's just 100 vs 120 for T20.
Sounds daft to me, though I'm not a cricketist.
The thing that struck me was that it was 5 ball sets rather than over. When Manchester were chasing it wasnt as easy because they wanted Brathwaite on strike but had one less ball per change of ends Oval looked very balanced as both Currans can bat and bowl at very high standard.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
This was always going to be the most difficult point, politically speaking, in the pandemic.
Government have done all they can with vaccines, the link between cases and hospitalisations is on a very different trajectory, and it’s now a case of balancing the economic costs against protecting the vulnerable.
I think they’ve chosen roughly the right path, of slowly lifting restrictions as the more vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, and the way forward is now to tell the vulnerable to take care while letting others live their lives.
The bit the government probably hadn’t banked on, is the large number of influential people who stand to lose from the ending of the pandemic, and the number of authoritarians trying to get their pet projects past ministers on the basis of public health.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
Remember, deaths within 28 days is going to be an increasingly flawed metric if we have, as we do, high cases but reasonably low hospitalisations in comparison to previous waves. More people will die with COVID rather than from COVID, than in previous waves.
Yes but as the number of cases falls sharply so will that effect.
Firstly I now want to go and visit Truth or Consequences vin New Mexico and secondly I forgot that this entire plan is based on a decision Boris made within a 90 minute meeting which explains why he never thought through the consequences and risks of that decision.
Was it that 90 minutes that brought about about the fabled 'Stormont Optout'? Why does no one mention that any more? I was assured on here at the time that it was one of the cleverest pieces of statecraft in history - a real testament to the genius of Boris - and solved everything.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
This was always going to be the most difficult point, politically speaking, in the pandemic.
Government have done all they can with vaccines, the link between cases and hospitalisations is on a very different trajectory, and it’s now a case of balancing the economic costs against protecting the vulnerable.
I think they’ve chosen roughly the right path, of slowly lifting restrictions as the more vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, and the way forward is now to tell the vulnerable to take care while letting others live their lives.
The bit the government probably hadn’t banked on, is the large number of influential people who stand to lose from the ending of the pandemic, and the number of authoritarians trying to get their pet projects past ministers on the basis of public health.
Yes the next 4-5 weeks are going to be bumpy and if OGH's bet on a Labour lead is going to come off that looks the window of opportunity to me. By September things will very probably be looking much better for the government.
My posts in the last couple of days have been very grumpy for which I apologise. I do prefer to be polite here. My excuses are as follows:
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why? c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it? d) Someone nicked our dog crate. e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
I’ve had the same issues with logging in, have messaged @MikeSmithson . Will let me like and flag but not post. Obviously you expect issues with Vanilla but it’s been particularly bad in the past couple of days.
My posts in the last couple of days have been very grumpy for which I apologise. I do prefer to be polite here. My excuses are as follows:
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why? c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it? d) Someone nicked our dog crate. e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
Contrarian’s going to contrarian. Agree about the Marcus Rashford posts though - he brings out a really nasty side in a lot of PBers.
Sorry to hear about your dog crate. I have a couple of spares but getting them to Southwold may be an issue.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
Remember, deaths within 28 days is going to be an increasingly flawed metric if we have, as we do, high cases but reasonably low hospitalisations in comparison to previous waves. More people will die with COVID rather than from COVID, than in previous waves.
Yes but as the number of cases falls sharply so will that effect.
Well, after a lag of 28 days it will.
I think sooner in this case for exactly the reason you have identified. A lot of people are going to be infected over the next few weeks. Some of those will die with Covid. For those that die of Covid the 4 week lag will continue to apply but that will be a smaller and smaller proportion of the total deaths because of vaccines.
My posts in the last couple of days have been very grumpy for which I apologise. I do prefer to be polite here. My excuses are as follows:
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why? c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it? d) Someone nicked our dog crate. e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
Contrarian’s going to contrarian. Agree about the Marcus Rashford posts though - he brings out a really nasty side in a lot of PBers.
Sorry to hear about your dog crate. I have a couple of spares but getting them to Southwold may be an issue.
That is very kind of you. Back home now in Surrey so had to buy one very quickly which was the most annoying part of it.
We put a notice in the window of our Southwold house and the dog sat next to it, plucking anyone's heart strings. It was if he was saying 'please bring back my home'.
Firstly I now want to go and visit Truth or Consequences vin New Mexico and secondly I forgot that this entire plan is based on a decision Boris made within a 90 minute meeting which explains why he never thought through the consequences and risks of that decision.
Was it that 90 minutes that brought about about the fabled 'Stormont Optout'? Why does no one mention that any more? I was assured on here at the time that it was one of the cleverest pieces of statecraft in history - a real testament to the genius of Boris - and solved everything.
1) does that opt out really exist? 2) If it does, why would Sinn Fein support the use of it?
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
I don't think that's right - because the work can only be done at weekends and because there simply isn't enough people to do more than a few miles every weekend you end up with over-engineered solutions to all the old and new to run in parallel and provide any chance of switching from the old to the new without a long "getting ready" shutdown.
Simply put its easier to build new rather than upgrade railway lines - the issue we have is NIMBYs and insane desires to make projects financially risk free result in completely insane prices. The southern part of HS2 is so expensive because the risk was transferred to the constructors (who simply picked a price that ensured they could make a profit come what may) with extended designs costs and timeframes to ensure risk was minimised.
IT projects used to do that 20 years ago, we don't do it now because we know it just adds costs.
The same pattern has been seen in defence projects for decades - we need the shiniest shiny thing ever. At a fixed cost.
So everyone pads the numbers, and by using a vast pyramid of outsourced contractors, no *one* company seems to be taking the piss...
Then a mad Safr gets a bunch of reneck welders and LA rocket scientists together in a Texas swamp....
My posts in the last couple of days have been very grumpy for which I apologise. I do prefer to be polite here. My excuses are as follows:
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why? c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it? d) Someone nicked our dog crate. e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
Contrarian’s going to contrarian. Agree about the Marcus Rashford posts though - he brings out a really nasty side in a lot of PBers.
Sorry to hear about your dog crate. I have a couple of spares but getting them to Southwold may be an issue.
That is very kind of you. Back home now in Surrey so had to buy one very quickly which was the most annoying part of it.
We put a notice in the window of our Southwold house and the dog sat next to it, plucking anyone's heart strings. It was if he was saying 'please bring back my home'.
You didn't buy a second-hand one did you.........? Advertised in a shop window, or similar?
Now on my second train of the day. Busier than the first but only around 20% masked. The young woman sat opposite me is wearing a top less substantial than some people's face coverings...
Running late, so my connection in Manchester looks dodgy.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
Remember, deaths within 28 days is going to be an increasingly flawed metric if we have, as we do, high cases but reasonably low hospitalisations in comparison to previous waves. More people will die with COVID rather than from COVID, than in previous waves.
2019 530,841 deaths registered in England and Wales (1454 in any day, 40,722 in a random 28 days). E&W population, 58.6 million. So if all 58.6 million of us caught covid on 1st January 2019 and it had 0 mortality effect we'd expect 40,722 deaths within 28 days. So if 1439 people caught covid on 1st Jan 2019 you'd expect 1 death with 0 mortality within 28 days. I think crudely every 1439 covid cases should generate 1 death within 28 days (At 0 mortality) ?
Cases in last 28 days : 911,965 (Sample date) (Reported is lower). You'd expect to generate 633 deaths in 28 days at 0 mortality, looking at 1 day (Today) this means that all else being equal* twenty two of today's deaths figure should be 'with covid'.
*Cases skew young this wave so the 'older people more likely to die' argument has little merit I think if anything deaths ought to be slightly lower than 22.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
I don't think that's right - because the work can only be done at weekends and because there simply isn't enough people to do more than a few miles every weekend you end up with over-engineered solutions to all the old and new to run in parallel and provide any chance of switching from the old to the new without a long "getting ready" shutdown.
Simply put its easier to build new rather than upgrade railway lines - the issue we have is NIMBYs and insane desires to make projects financially risk free result in completely insane prices. The southern part of HS2 is so expensive because the risk was transferred to the constructors (who simply picked a price that ensured they could make a profit come what may) with extended designs costs and timeframes to ensure risk was minimised.
IT projects used to do that 20 years ago, we don't do it now because we know it just adds costs.
The same pattern has been seen in defence projects for decades - we need the shiniest shiny thing ever. At a fixed cost.
So everyone pads the numbers, and by using a vast pyramid of outsourced contractors, no *one* company seems to be taking the piss...
Then a mad Safr gets a bunch of reneck welders and LA rocket scientists together in a Texas swamp....
It's worth pointing out here that that mad Safr couldn't have used his approach in the 1960s or even the 1990s.
The build, blow up and rebuild approach works because a lot of sensors can send data in real time out of the rocket so there is data is available to see where things went wrong.
I remember when the initial Shuttle disaster occurred most people failed to notice the flames coming from the side of the booster until well after the initial event.
My posts in the last couple of days have been very grumpy for which I apologise. I do prefer to be polite here. My excuses are as follows:
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why? c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it? d) Someone nicked our dog crate. e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
I’ve had the same issues with logging in, have messaged @MikeSmithson . Will let me like and flag but not post. Obviously you expect issues with Vanilla but it’s been particularly bad in the past couple of days.
Well next time you won't win the penalty shoot out, will you?
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
Remember, deaths within 28 days is going to be an increasingly flawed metric if we have, as we do, high cases but reasonably low hospitalisations in comparison to previous waves. More people will die with COVID rather than from COVID, than in previous waves.
2019 530,841 deaths registered in England and Wales (1454 in any day, 40,722 in a random 28 days). E&W population, 58.6 million. So if all 58.6 million of us caught covid on 1st January 2019 and it had 0 mortality effect we'd expect 40,722 deaths within 28 days. So if 1439 people caught covid on 1st Jan 2019 you'd expect 1 death with 0 mortality within 28 days. I think crudely every 1439 covid cases should generate 1 death within 28 days (At 0 mortality) ?
Cases in last 28 days : 911,965 (Sample date) (Reported is lower). You'd expect to generate 633 deaths in 28 days at 0 mortality, looking at 1 day (Today) this means that all else being equal* twenty two of today's deaths figure should be 'with covid'.
*Cases skew young this wave so the 'older people more likely to die' argument has little merit I think if anything deaths ought to be slightly lower than 22.
Looking at the moving average of UK deaths and thinking about the known vaccine efficacy/take-up odds ratios and so forth it may well be that vaccines basically eliminate death but for 'natural' mortality.
No donkey. Harry Kane was top Premier League goalscorer last season, the third time he has won the Golden Boot. He also won Playmaker of the Season for most assists – previously twice won by Kevin de Bruyne of, erm, Manchester City. Kane was also one off top scorer at Euro 2020 and won the Golden Boot at the last World Cup. 27 years old so a few seasons left. Ah, hold on, I think I see your objection: he is captain of England.
Have to say the few times I have seen him he looks useless, slower than a supertanker and always falling over with or without a touch. Assuming he must have something given goals etc but not from what I have seen personally.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Losing it (and evidently still smarting over having his claims trashed yesterday)
one of highest COVID rates in 🌍 - vaccinations slowing to crawl & not starting 💉 teenagers due to supply problems - truck driver shortage leading to empty supermarkets - Govt wants to tear up NI Protocol, 🇪🇺 rejects - MP expelled from Commons for telling truth about PM
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
This was always going to be the most difficult point, politically speaking, in the pandemic.
Government have done all they can with vaccines, the link between cases and hospitalisations is on a very different trajectory, and it’s now a case of balancing the economic costs against protecting the vulnerable.
I think they’ve chosen roughly the right path, of slowly lifting restrictions as the more vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, and the way forward is now to tell the vulnerable to take care while letting others live their lives.
The bit the government probably hadn’t banked on, is the large number of influential people who stand to lose from the ending of the pandemic, and the number of authoritarians trying to get their pet projects past ministers on the basis of public health.
Yes the next 4-5 weeks are going to be bumpy and if OGH's bet on a Labour lead is going to come off that looks the window of opportunity to me. By September things will very probably be looking much better for the government.
I think there is also a significant body of the medical scientific establishment who are eyeing up the opportunity to use Covid to normalise the concept of restrictions and/or lockdowns as a method of managing regular NHS winter pressures. So if there are problems in the NHS this winter that are really linked to flu, increasing Covid case numbers will be cited as an excuse to implement what are really anti-flu measures.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
Let the EU say there’s an Irish Sea border. Let the UK think there isn’t. A trusted trader scheme that makes 99% of the problem go away Deal with actual issues of smuggling as they arise, with checks on specific goods.
My posts in the last couple of days have been very grumpy for which I apologise. I do prefer to be polite here. My excuses are as follows:
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why? c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it? d) Someone nicked our dog crate. e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
Contrarian’s going to contrarian. Agree about the Marcus Rashford posts though - he brings out a really nasty side in a lot of PBers.
Sorry to hear about your dog crate. I have a couple of spares but getting them to Southwold may be an issue.
That is very kind of you. Back home now in Surrey so had to buy one very quickly which was the most annoying part of it.
We put a notice in the window of our Southwold house and the dog sat next to it, plucking anyone's heart strings. It was if he was saying 'please bring back my home'.
You didn't buy a second-hand one did you.........? Advertised in a shop window, or similar?
Ha ha. We have a very spoilt dog who gets everything new of course. He is also a mad dog. He is only 7 months old and a sproodle. He is frightened of nothing, which is going to be a painful lesson to learn at some stage. In the last week he has destroyed several doors, bitten through the tow bar electric cables, proudly picked up a golf ball from the fairway and refused to give it back to the golfers (just sits there taunting them - so embarrassing), pounced on a couple lying in the long grass and taken on motor lawn mowers and cement mixers who he deems are his mortal enemies.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
I don't think that's right - because the work can only be done at weekends and because there simply isn't enough people to do more than a few miles every weekend you end up with over-engineered solutions to all the old and new to run in parallel and provide any chance of switching from the old to the new without a long "getting ready" shutdown.
Simply put its easier to build new rather than upgrade railway lines - the issue we have is NIMBYs and insane desires to make projects financially risk free result in completely insane prices. The southern part of HS2 is so expensive because the risk was transferred to the constructors (who simply picked a price that ensured they could make a profit come what may) with extended designs costs and timeframes to ensure risk was minimised.
IT projects used to do that 20 years ago, we don't do it now because we know it just adds costs.
The same pattern has been seen in defence projects for decades - we need the shiniest shiny thing ever. At a fixed cost.
So everyone pads the numbers, and by using a vast pyramid of outsourced contractors, no *one* company seems to be taking the piss...
Then a mad Safr gets a bunch of reneck welders and LA rocket scientists together in a Texas swamp....
It's worth pointing out here that that mad Safr couldn't have used his approach in the 1960s or even the 1990s.
The build, blow up and rebuild approach works because a lot of sensors can send data in real time out of the rocket so there is data is available to see where things went wrong.
I remember when the initial Shuttle disaster occurred most people failed to notice the flames coming from the side of the booster until well after the initial event.
The seal failures were known and documented within NASA. Telephone book thickness reports had been written. A new joint design was in the works. But it wasn't a big issue. Because of those nice, comforting telephone book reports.
Then, on a extra cold day, with a set of booster segments that were slight out of round more than previous sets.....
Now on my second train of the day. Busier than the first but only around 20% masked. The young woman sat opposite me is wearing a top less substantial than some people's face coverings...
Running late, so my connection in Manchester looks dodgy.
There's always a silver lining somewhere. Perhaps she's aiming for the same connection as yourself!
I think the T20 concept makes sense* (obviously, given the commercial success it has had). But from our point of view, it was created to give the counties some revenue from games that could be completed in the early evening.
Just looking at the current format, I think the group stage is a bit long. I think two groups of nine with each side playing each other giving four home games and four away games would be enough. Play it over 18 days or so from the middle to the end of June. Then have quarter finals and finals day as and when it fits with everything else.
Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but I used to go to the Guildford cricket festival every year to watch a one day game on the Sunday. I understand the attraction of the shorter format, but I think there is a place for a full day's cricket where possible. As it is, the schedule is a complete mess, though I'm heartened to see that Surrey appear to have sold out for a game at Guildford on Tuesday:
* The only thing I'd have done differently is to only have six wickets. That is, only seven of the 11 can bat. It would make wickets worth that little bit more and potentially create quite exciting finishes where the fielding team actually tries to get wickets rather than preventing runs. It would also have meant four players would be selected purely for their bowling/fielding ability.
There was a similar suggestion yesterday that each wicket was knocked x runs off your score. That would incentivise careful shot selection and batsmen as much as bowlers.
The problem with that is that you would have to carry one playing until the side batting first had either reached a score at which they couldn't lose or (more likely) batted out the overs once past the target. That could feel a bit anti-climatic, though it could create interesting conundrum. Do you bat out the remaining balls or try to get a few more runs to have a wicket in hand.
Personally I think that becomes a little bit complicated and I'd rather have fewer wickets per innings as a way to generate a bit more jeopardy.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
When you compare the rail sector manufacturing R&D prowess in this country in the late 1970s/early 80s to what we are reduced to now, bolting together imported Japanese kit, it's an absolute tragedy.
Another beautiful day in God's country, warm with a little breeze, just perfect and I am off today. Lazy day in the garden with a good book and a few refreshments beckons.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
You seem to be missing the point of Brexit. The 'nimble' UK can now sever its red tape / compromise on standards * on a whim to undercut the lumbering, bureaucracy-ridden EU. Why should the EU allow us that competitive advantage while retaining full SM access?
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
This was always going to be the most difficult point, politically speaking, in the pandemic.
Government have done all they can with vaccines, the link between cases and hospitalisations is on a very different trajectory, and it’s now a case of balancing the economic costs against protecting the vulnerable.
I think they’ve chosen roughly the right path, of slowly lifting restrictions as the more vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, and the way forward is now to tell the vulnerable to take care while letting others live their lives.
The bit the government probably hadn’t banked on, is the large number of influential people who stand to lose from the ending of the pandemic, and the number of authoritarians trying to get their pet projects past ministers on the basis of public health.
Yes the next 4-5 weeks are going to be bumpy and if OGH's bet on a Labour lead is going to come off that looks the window of opportunity to me. By September things will very probably be looking much better for the government.
I think there is also a significant body of the medical scientific establishment who are eyeing up the opportunity to use Covid to normalise the concept of restrictions and/or lockdowns as a method of managing regular NHS winter pressures. So if there are problems in the NHS this winter that are really linked to flu, increasing Covid case numbers will be cited as an excuse to implement what are really anti-flu measures.
Possibly. There is also the undeniable success that our masks, hygiene, hand washing etc had in reducing flu infections massively last year. I mean, its a sample of one and it might just have been a relatively benign year but the NHS would seriously welcome a repeat this winter and will be pressing for the circumstances that facilitated it to be repeated. Just maybe they are right. The backlog is frightening.
My posts in the last couple of days have been very grumpy for which I apologise. I do prefer to be polite here. My excuses are as follows:
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why? c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it? d) Someone nicked our dog crate. e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
Contrarian’s going to contrarian. Agree about the Marcus Rashford posts though - he brings out a really nasty side in a lot of PBers.
Sorry to hear about your dog crate. I have a couple of spares but getting them to Southwold may be an issue.
That is very kind of you. Back home now in Surrey so had to buy one very quickly which was the most annoying part of it.
We put a notice in the window of our Southwold house and the dog sat next to it, plucking anyone's heart strings. It was if he was saying 'please bring back my home'.
You didn't buy a second-hand one did you.........? Advertised in a shop window, or similar?
Ha ha. We have a very spoilt dog who gets everything new of course. He is also a mad dog. He is only 7 months old and a sproodle. He is frightened of nothing, which is going to be a painful lesson to learn at some stage. In the last week he has destroyed several doors, bitten through the tow bar electric cables, proudly picked up a golf ball from the fairway and refused to give it back to the golfers (just sits there taunting them - so embarrassing), pounced on a couple lying in the long grass and taken on motor lawn mowers and cement mixers who he deems are his mortal enemies.
Sounds as though there's a bit of Jack Russell in there somewhere! Of course if the couple were just lying in the long grass.......
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Losing it (and evidently still smarting over having his claims trashed yesterday)
one of highest COVID rates in 🌍 - vaccinations slowing to crawl & not starting 💉 teenagers due to supply problems - truck driver shortage leading to empty supermarkets - Govt wants to tear up NI Protocol, 🇪🇺 rejects - MP expelled from Commons for telling truth about PM
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
Let the EU say there’s an Irish Sea border. Let the UK think there isn’t. A trusted trader scheme that makes 99% of the problem go away Deal with actual issues of smuggling as they arise, with checks on specific goods.
Schrödinger’s border, in other words.
Which is what Enda Kenny was on to until Teacher's Pet Varadkar thought he'd show off to the big boys...
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
When you compare the rail sector manufacturing R&D prowess in this country in the late 1970s/early 80s to what we are reduced to now, bolting together imported Japanese kit, it's an absolute tragedy.
My recollection of 1970/80s rail travel is slam-door carriages on rolling stock from the 1950s.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
I don't think that's right - because the work can only be done at weekends and because there simply isn't enough people to do more than a few miles every weekend you end up with over-engineered solutions to all the old and new to run in parallel and provide any chance of switching from the old to the new without a long "getting ready" shutdown.
Simply put its easier to build new rather than upgrade railway lines - the issue we have is NIMBYs and insane desires to make projects financially risk free result in completely insane prices. The southern part of HS2 is so expensive because the risk was transferred to the constructors (who simply picked a price that ensured they could make a profit come what may) with extended designs costs and timeframes to ensure risk was minimised.
IT projects used to do that 20 years ago, we don't do it now because we know it just adds costs.
The same pattern has been seen in defence projects for decades - we need the shiniest shiny thing ever. At a fixed cost.
So everyone pads the numbers, and by using a vast pyramid of outsourced contractors, no *one* company seems to be taking the piss...
Then a mad Safr gets a bunch of reneck welders and LA rocket scientists together in a Texas swamp....
It's worth pointing out here that that mad Safr couldn't have used his approach in the 1960s or even the 1990s.
The build, blow up and rebuild approach works because a lot of sensors can send data in real time out of the rocket so there is data is available to see where things went wrong.
I remember when the initial Shuttle disaster occurred most people failed to notice the flames coming from the side of the booster until well after the initial event.
The seal failures were known and documented within NASA. Telephone book thickness reports had been written. A new joint design was in the works. But it wasn't a big issue. Because of those nice, comforting telephone book reports.
Then, on a extra cold day, with a set of booster segments that were slight out of round more than previous sets.....
Ditto with the external tile failures that brought down Columbia, and the tank foam that caused it. Known about, and long predicted as a failure mode, several previous lucky escapes convinced everyone with lots of meetings and papers, that they’d stay safe.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
When you compare the rail sector manufacturing R&D prowess in this country in the late 1970s/early 80s to what we are reduced to now, bolting together imported Japanese kit, it's an absolute tragedy.
Then again, with the weird British fascination with picking a cool technical solution and persisting with it long after a simpler solution was found.....
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Losing it (and evidently still smarting over having his claims trashed yesterday)
one of highest COVID rates in 🌍 - vaccinations slowing to crawl & not starting 💉 teenagers due to supply problems - truck driver shortage leading to empty supermarkets - Govt wants to tear up NI Protocol, 🇪🇺 rejects - MP expelled from Commons for telling truth about PM
Point 2 comprehensively debunked yesterday, but he repeats it…
Blame it on Boris.....its the only game in town. Keir Starmer is a poor LOTO.. that's why all the shit is being pourer over Boris..
It's a serious problem for those, like myself, who dislike the PM. There is an element of truth in what the right here call "Boris Derangement Syndrome". The entire opposition to him at the moment, and I mean all of it, is focussed on the perceived personal failings of him and his cabinet. That just keeps him as the centre of attention. Have the combined posts of Scott and RP on here shifted a single vote? No. Have FBPE managed to get any traction outside their own Twitter bubble? No. It's makes us look like ranters and plays into Johnson's hands, he is successfully winding us up. Classic Dom said the other day that the 2016 Bus Pledge was there to wind up us Remainers. I can believe it frankly,
If we want to get anywhere in removing this shower then we simply have to start ignoring him a bit more and get on with presenting our alternative to the country. Those persuadable that they're pants have been persuaded, now it's time to get on with persuading those who think that they are 'meh' that there is a better option.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
When you compare the rail sector manufacturing R&D prowess in this country in the late 1970s/early 80s to what we are reduced to now, bolting together imported Japanese kit, it's an absolute tragedy.
When 'competition' between Trusts was introduced into the NHS there were some non-exec Directors who opposed staff attending conferences 'because our competitors might steal our brilliant ideas'. An idea which senior, certainly pharmaceutical, staff found totally baffling.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
Do you mean 'cannot' in the legal, moral, or practical sense?
Everyone agrees that Ireland is a special case - so special that the EU expects the UK the bend the normal rules of internal markets to accommodate it. Boris is trying out whether a non-state like the EU might do the same to avoid damage to the island of Ireland.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Losing it (and evidently still smarting over having his claims trashed yesterday)
one of highest COVID rates in 🌍 - vaccinations slowing to crawl & not starting 💉 teenagers due to supply problems - truck driver shortage leading to empty supermarkets - Govt wants to tear up NI Protocol, 🇪🇺 rejects - MP expelled from Commons for telling truth about PM
Point 2 comprehensively debunked yesterday, but he repeats it…
Blame it on Boris.....its the only game in town. Keir Starmer is a poor LOTO.. that's why all the shit is being pourer over Boris..
It's a serious problem for those, like myself, who dislike the PM. There is an element of truth in what the right here call "Boris Derangement Syndrome". The entire opposition to him at the moment, and I mean all of it, is focussed on the perceived personal failings of him and his cabinet. That just keeps him as the centre of attention. Have the combined posts of Scott and RP on here shifted a single vote? No. Have FBPE managed to get any traction outside their own Twitter bubble? No. It's makes us look like ranters and plays into Johnson's hands, he is successfully winding us up. Classic Dom said the other day that the 2016 Bus Pledge was there to wind up us Remainers. I can believe it frankly,
If we want to get anywhere in removing this shower then we simply have to start ignoring him a bit more and get on with presenting our alternative to the country. Those persuadable that they're pants have been persuaded, now it's time to get on with persuading those who think that they are 'meh' that there is a better option.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
I don't think that's right - because the work can only be done at weekends and because there simply isn't enough people to do more than a few miles every weekend you end up with over-engineered solutions to all the old and new to run in parallel and provide any chance of switching from the old to the new without a long "getting ready" shutdown.
Simply put its easier to build new rather than upgrade railway lines - the issue we have is NIMBYs and insane desires to make projects financially risk free result in completely insane prices. The southern part of HS2 is so expensive because the risk was transferred to the constructors (who simply picked a price that ensured they could make a profit come what may) with extended designs costs and timeframes to ensure risk was minimised.
IT projects used to do that 20 years ago, we don't do it now because we know it just adds costs.
The same pattern has been seen in defence projects for decades - we need the shiniest shiny thing ever. At a fixed cost.
So everyone pads the numbers, and by using a vast pyramid of outsourced contractors, no *one* company seems to be taking the piss...
Then a mad Safr gets a bunch of reneck welders and LA rocket scientists together in a Texas swamp....
It's worth pointing out here that that mad Safr couldn't have used his approach in the 1960s or even the 1990s.
The build, blow up and rebuild approach works because a lot of sensors can send data in real time out of the rocket so there is data is available to see where things went wrong.
I remember when the initial Shuttle disaster occurred most people failed to notice the flames coming from the side of the booster until well after the initial event.
The seal failures were known and documented within NASA. Telephone book thickness reports had been written. A new joint design was in the works. But it wasn't a big issue. Because of those nice, comforting telephone book reports.
Then, on a extra cold day, with a set of booster segments that were slight out of round more than previous sets.....
Ditto with the external tile failures that brought down Columbia, and the tank foam that caused it. Known about, and long predicted as a failure mode, several previous lucky escapes convinced everyone with lots of meetings and papers, that they’d stay safe.
Fourteen lives lost on those two shuttles.
Find a problem. Fix it.
Wayne Hale described the post Columbia project to remove all the waivers on the shuttle, on his blog....
Comments
that in any one Member State.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5802/ldselect/ldeuaff/46/46.pdf
To @DavidL point, these models are sophisticated as you get but they are still inherently inaccurate. It's just that a degree of inaccuracy is better than being completely uninformed.
As it turned out the timescale error didn't matter much*. We're heading towards the peak now rather than three or four weeks ago. But the model (backed up by several others) was probably correct that the peak will be lower than it would otherwise have been,
* Certainly compared with no model when you wouldn't have any timescale at all. It maybe affects preparation in the Hospital Boards but it doesn't change the decisions whether to keep restrictions for a bit longer.
These things are by nature very difficult, when the place is thousands of miles from anywhere, LBA don’t have that excuse!
If the target is old blokes who already like cricket then again it fails as you lot don't like it.
If the target is young blokes who don't like cricket then we shall have to wait and see.
But in which case there is no point old blokes who like cricket (you lot) or old blokes who don't like cricket (me) opining on it.
I have added to the sample by relating my experiences of young blokes (and blokesses) who like the cricket and they are fans.
Can anyone help out with experience of young blokes who don't like cricket?
Thread here:
https://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/15355/local-council-elections-22nd-july
Despite everything punters are prepared to actually put their cross in the blue column. Boris is still defying gravity.
T20> S16.4 or SPF16.4 or H100
Yes I'm being particularly pedantic here
Mark Ramprakash to be tournament director?
The mistake was printing leaflets, rather than buying social media ads.
16.4 is a Bugatti Veyron to me.
I would have thought it would make sense to increase the consumption of the product by those who already like it while bringing in some longevity (you know they say it's always easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one) in which case it is working (ie back to my example, the young 'uns were all planning to go - whether that was at the expense of going to a T20 or some other cricket event who knows).
But back to my point about old people who do like cricket - ie many/most PB-ers. Absolutely no value at all in opining on it as it's not for them and there have only been a handful of games to date, haven't there?
I think I'm part of the intended audience in addition to people who don't like cricket.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
It's Keir.
This of course depends on the outcome of her court case. Long term Kier/Keir probably wouldn’t mind being shot of her.
https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1418481402593648643?s=20
TLDR: Test.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/23/northern-ireland-protocol-boris-johnson-oven-ready-deal-sausage
And that is a very curious change in tone from when he was London Mayor where even though he often played things for the laugh you knew he had experts he had delegated things to and was merely presenting the results.
This.
As various people pointed out, ignoring major effects and simply using wrong input numbers for thing such as vaccine efficiency* rendered a number of earlier models useless.
*If you wanted to look at the effects of vaccine efficiency, it would be sensible to vary the number to test the sensitivity. But presenting a result where the numbers are quite simply not related to the measured, real world number.....
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9814095/Covid-positivity-rates-travellers-22-TIMES-higher-amber-list-nations-France.html
Sierra Leone, Algeria, Russia all likely higher.
Point ii a. Demand & 8 week time (generally) limited, which looks to be the best point - can't really improve this.
Point ii b. To do with the JCVI rather than supply, the report looks plain weird on this.
iii. Fair
iv. Brexit
v. Parliamentary language, speaker following protocol.
Firstly I now want to go and visit Truth or Consequences vin New Mexico and secondly I forgot that this entire plan is based on a decision Boris made within a 90 minute meeting which explains why he never thought through the consequences and risks of that decision.
https://www.pitch-study.org/PITCH_Dosing_Interval_23072021.pdf
Just looking at the current format, I think the group stage is a bit long. I think two groups of nine with each side playing each other giving four home games and four away games would be enough. Play it over 18 days or so from the middle to the end of June. Then have quarter finals and finals day as and when it fits with everything else.
Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but I used to go to the Guildford cricket festival every year to watch a one day game on the Sunday. I understand the attraction of the shorter format, but I think there is a place for a full day's cricket where possible. As it is, the schedule is a complete mess, though I'm heartened to see that Surrey appear to have sold out for a game at Guildford on Tuesday:
https://guildfordcc.com/guildford-cricket-festival/
* The only thing I'd have done differently is to only have six wickets. That is, only seven of the 11 can bat. It would make wickets worth that little bit more and potentially create quite exciting finishes where the fielding team actually tries to get wickets rather than preventing runs. It would also have meant four players would be selected purely for their bowling/fielding ability.
Simply put its easier to build new rather than upgrade railway lines - the issue we have is NIMBYs and insane desires to make projects financially risk free result in completely insane prices. The southern part of HS2 is so expensive because the risk was transferred to the constructors (who simply picked a price that ensured they could make a profit come what may) with extended designs costs and timeframes to ensure risk was minimised.
IT projects used to do that 20 years ago, we don't do it now because we know it just adds costs.
And as I updated the House on Monday, at the end of September we plan to make full vaccination a condition of entry to those high risk settings where large crowds gather and interact. By this point everyone aged 18 and over will have had the chance to be fully vaccinated and so everyone will have that opportunity to gain the maximum possible protection.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/minister-zahawi-update-to-the-house-on-step-4-and-nhs-covid-pass
The number of concluded applications to the EU Settlement Scheme is a considerable achievement by the Home Office. There are many more EU citizens in the UK than there are UK citizens across the EU, and the UK Government faced a huge challenge in encouraging and processing over 5.4 million applications ahead of the deadline. We also welcome the Home Office’s approach of looking for reasons to grant status, rather than reasons to refuse.
Some EU Member States have constitutive systems and others have declaratory systems. We note that the UK’s EU Settlement Scheme has been open for nearly a year longer than the earliest constitutive scheme opened in the EU.
a) Contrarian's anti vax posts
b) The hateful posts about Marcus Rashford. Interesting they are focused at him and not any other celebrity working for good causes. I wonder why?
c) The very annoying casino web site that hijacks PB sometimes when logging into PB. They have been very annoying in the last few days. I have seen others complain about this here. It only happens when logging into PB and only when using a mobile phone. Anyone know why and can @rcs1000 stop it?
d) Someone nicked our dog crate.
e) Traffic getting out of Southwold due to Latitudes.
Government have done all they can with vaccines, the link between cases and hospitalisations is on a very different trajectory, and it’s now a case of balancing the economic costs against protecting the vulnerable.
I think they’ve chosen roughly the right path, of slowly lifting restrictions as the more vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, and the way forward is now to tell the vulnerable to take care while letting others live their lives.
The bit the government probably hadn’t banked on, is the large number of influential people who stand to lose from the ending of the pandemic, and the number of authoritarians trying to get their pet projects past ministers on the basis of public health.
Sorry to hear about your dog crate. I have a couple of spares but getting them to Southwold may be an issue.
We put a notice in the window of our Southwold house and the dog sat next to it, plucking anyone's heart strings. It was if he was saying 'please bring back my home'.
2) If it does, why would Sinn Fein support the use of it?
So everyone pads the numbers, and by using a vast pyramid of outsourced contractors, no *one* company seems to be taking the piss...
Then a mad Safr gets a bunch of reneck welders and LA rocket scientists together in a Texas swamp....
Advertised in a shop window, or similar?
Running late, so my connection in Manchester looks dodgy.
So if all 58.6 million of us caught covid on 1st January 2019 and it had 0 mortality effect we'd expect 40,722 deaths within 28 days.
So if 1439 people caught covid on 1st Jan 2019 you'd expect 1 death with 0 mortality within 28 days.
I think crudely every 1439 covid cases should generate 1 death within 28 days (At 0 mortality) ?
Cases in last 28 days : 911,965 (Sample date) (Reported is lower). You'd expect to generate 633 deaths in 28 days at 0 mortality, looking at 1 day (Today) this means that all else being equal* twenty two of today's deaths figure should be 'with covid'.
*Cases skew young this wave so the 'older people more likely to die' argument has little merit I think if anything deaths ought to be slightly lower than 22.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The build, blow up and rebuild approach works because a lot of sensors can send data in real time out of the rocket so there is data is available to see where things went wrong.
I remember when the initial Shuttle disaster occurred most people failed to notice the flames coming from the side of the booster until well after the initial event.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
Let the EU say there’s an Irish Sea border.
Let the UK think there isn’t.
A trusted trader scheme that makes 99% of the problem go away
Deal with actual issues of smuggling as they arise, with checks on specific goods.
Schrödinger’s border, in other words.
Then, on a extra cold day, with a set of booster segments that were slight out of round more than previous sets.....
Personally I think that becomes a little bit complicated and I'd rather have fewer wickets per innings as a way to generate a bit more jeopardy.
on a whim to undercut the lumbering, bureaucracy-ridden EU. Why should the EU allow us that competitive advantage while retaining full SM access?
* Delete as appropriate
Prof Jean-François Delfaissy told BFM TV today France could reach around 50,000 new Covid cases per day by the beginning of next month.
It comes after he said yesterday that the fourth wave of infections in the country is expected to hit hospitals in the second half of August.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jul/23/coronavirus-live-news-taiwan-to-ease-restrictions-vaccinations-rising-in-us-states-with-high-cases?page=with:block-60fa736b8f0814e7a316fd4f#block-60fa736b8f0814e7a316fd4f
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/care-art-pornhubs-fight-uffizi-matters/
Of course if the couple were just lying in the long grass.......
Fourteen lives lost on those two shuttles.
If we want to get anywhere in removing this shower then we simply have to start ignoring him a bit more and get on with presenting our alternative to the country. Those persuadable that they're pants have been persuaded, now it's time to get on with persuading those who think that they are 'meh' that there is a better option.
An idea which senior, certainly pharmaceutical, staff found totally baffling.
Everyone agrees that Ireland is a special case - so special that the EU expects the UK the bend the normal rules of internal markets to accommodate it. Boris is trying out whether a non-state like the EU might do the same to avoid damage to the island of Ireland.
Wayne Hale described the post Columbia project to remove all the waivers on the shuttle, on his blog....