1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
I agree with pretty much all of this, except that I think what you call "Millwall diplomacy" is the only thing the EU will listen to. Which makes it regrettably optional.
If they won't move without Frosty pissing on their leg, then Frosty pissing on their leg may not be elegant or pretty, but it works.
Have the EU moved, as otherwise all Frosty has done is pee them off.
Don't forget that Frosty battered the EU into agreeing to Johnson's "oven-ready" deal, so Phil must be right.
We don't know why the EU needed to be battered into agreeing the deal.
Its possible the EU kept on saying, you know this doesn't work, whack (from Frosty), you know this doesn't work, whack (from Frosty), you know this doesn't work, whack (from Frosty), until final the EU just went - OK we've tried to warn you but if you insist.....
I've had IT projects that go exactly like that - the only thing you can do in such circumstances is make sure the issues you've highlighted are documented and in the project plan for when reality hits just before or after go live...
But this doesn’t really help anyone. Except make Remainers feel good about themselves, of course.
Labour needs to attach Boris on both lying (about the deal) and incompetence (the deal sucks), but agree the deal must be negotiated and it will do a better job as more competent and trustworthy negotiating partner.
Labour should also point out that it is entirely in Ireland’s interests especially that a more durable arrangement can be found.
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
I agree with pretty much all of this, except that I think what you call "Millwall diplomacy" is the only thing the EU will listen to. Which makes it regrettably optional.
If they won't move without Frosty pissing on their leg, then Frosty pissing on their leg may not be elegant or pretty, but it works.
Oh, I had forgotten, because Brexit seems so long ago. We hold all the cards, don't we?
Yes! So long as we're prepared to wield them we absolutely do.
Makes that Israel data look even more of an outlier. Also puts the anecdotal stories on here of all the double jabbed people they know who have caught covid in perspective.
Everyone does negotiate international treaties in that way. Look at the Swiss, they've been renegotiating and in dispute as to how treaties operate for decades.
Johnson is acting to represent the UK's best interest not the EU's. That's how every country operates around the globe.
Putting a border down the Irish Sea is acting to represent "the UK's best interest" how exactly?
It is doing precisely the opposite. It is undermining the UK.
Perhaps it may not be the best for NI but I would say that it was the best for England and since England is 84% of the UK, while NI is 3% of the UK, that made the best deal for England the best deal for the UK.
Now that England has what it wants (trade deal, out of the EU, paralysis over) now its time to sort out the EU.
Its a bit like the Pareto Principle in action. NI is 3% of the UK but was causing 80% of the dispute, while England is over 80% of the UK but was causing minimal dispute. So get what you want for England first, then tackle NI afterwards.
Might be the best for England? Were the English asked whether they wanted the entity that they have been a part of for some time so recklessly torn apart? Best for England in your mind but not objectively "best for England".
There's no such thing as objective. Subjectively best for England - and as an objective measurement I do believe that in the first Meaningful Vote most English MPs rejected May's deal while most English MPs accepted Boris's, so looks objectively like they collectively decided it was better too.
Good article from Finlan O'Toole, linked earlier, and good precis from @Gardenwalker on NI.
I must say my faith in the good intentions of the EU towards the island of Ireland have been severely shaken with vaccine border-gate but yes, at its core, the UK chose to separate out NI from GB rather than align with the EU. And yes, Boris is a useless, solipsistic, lying, ignorant twat*.
What does the asterisk signify, pray? A new and improved Mark of twat, or what?
Ha yes sorry I was going to add that I am using this in the sense of not being part of a woman's body because that is not the common usage of twat imo whereas some think that it is a direct reference.
Thank you; I am illuminated. Actually, I wonder if the PB keyboard has a male zoological symbol on it (= astrological Mars symbol)? That would be quite helpful.
Of course I hesitate to google the word "twat".
There is always Twatt in Orkney. Which, as Wikipedia helpfully explains at once, is "Not to be confused with Twatt, Shetland." I think we discussed that particular variety on PB a few years back - including the fact that it was a Fleet Air Arm base, under that name: RNAS Twatt.
The etymological derivation of twat is "clearing in a forest" (the same as the placename Thwaite) which I always find amusing.
Robert Browning also used it, thinking it was another word for a nun’s wimple:
‘Then owls and bats Cowls and twats Monks and nuns in a cloister's moods Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.’
Does that mean he married one of the Barratts of T**t Street?
I know, I know. I used to work in a building on the corner of Queen Annes St. and Wimpole St.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
Freddie Sayers @freddiesayers Collision symbolTrump insider @JasonMillerinDC , who spoke to the former president yesterday, tells me that the chances of him running in 2024 have gone up in recent weeks, from 50/50 to more like 2 to 1.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
We have to hope that Delta has now burned itself out, because if it hasn’t cases will start rising again in a week or so’s time.
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
I agree with pretty much all of this, except that I think what you call "Millwall diplomacy" is the only thing the EU will listen to. Which makes it regrettably optional.
If they won't move without Frosty pissing on their leg, then Frosty pissing on their leg may not be elegant or pretty, but it works.
Oh, I had forgotten, because Brexit seems so long ago. We hold all the cards, don't we?
Yes! So long as we're prepared to wield them we absolutely do.
We clearly don’t.
The more we piss off the EU with bad faith approaches, the more likely a tit for tat on other areas that are useful to us.
However we do hold one major card which is we are on the ground in Northern Ireland, and we control the “facts on the ground” to some extent. We have to be able to reach a durable solution, as does Ireland.
The EU merely needs to make sure the risks around smuggling etc are adequately and proportionately managed.
But this doesn’t really help anyone. Except make Remainers feel good about themselves, of course.
Labour needs to attach Boris on both lying (about the deal) and incompetence (the deal sucks), but agree the deal must be negotiated and it will do a better job as more competent and trustworthy negotiating partner.
Labour should also point out that it is entirely in Ireland’s interests especially that a more durable arrangement can be found.
There is a more durable solution, but you're not gonna like it...
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
I agree with pretty much all of this, except that I think what you call "Millwall diplomacy" is the only thing the EU will listen to. Which makes it regrettably optional.
If they won't move without Frosty pissing on their leg, then Frosty pissing on their leg may not be elegant or pretty, but it works.
Oh, I had forgotten, because Brexit seems so long ago. We hold all the cards, don't we?
Yes! So long as we're prepared to wield them we absolutely do.
We clearly don’t.
The more we piss off the EU with bad faith approaches, the more likely a tit for tat on other areas that are useful to us.
However we do hold one major card which is we are on the ground in Northern Ireland and we have to reach a durable solution, as does Ireland.
The EU merely needs to make sure the risks around smuggling etc are adequately and proportionately managed.
The fact that we are on the ground and they're not is precisely why we hold all the cards.
We just need to be prepared to wield that as essentially a veto and there's little they can do but to accept that reality.
If they respond to us essentially vetoing any alternative solution like the NI Protocol then what are they going to do? If they erect border posts in Ireland they've done that and made matters worse from the Irish perspective. If they don't, they've given us what we wanted and shown the NI Protocol is unnecessary.
They have no winning move, so long as we're prepared to stand our ground it is checkmate.
If you have graduated from a top global university then you will be free to move to the UK without a job offer under the new 'High Potential Individual Visa'.
It is a good idea in general, but probably needs refining. There are better ways to test high potential than just where someone went to University, which in most parts of the world is largely a function of how well off your parents are.
That's largely true. But does it matter in practical terms for the UK?
Three main groups: 1. Rich and smart - seems fine to let them in 2. Poor and smart - likewise, they'll likely get a decent job and contribute. These in fact probably the most impressive/most potential individuals as they overcame obstacles to do well 3. Rich and stupid - well, they'll blend in well enough and might as well spend their money stupidly here as anywhere (Group 4, poor and stupid are pretty much excluded by the went to top university thing)
I don’t think we can take your last point as a given. Richard Burgon keeps parading his humble origins and was at Cambridge.
He went to St Johns, so he was not exactly advantaged.
If you have graduated from a top global university then you will be free to move to the UK without a job offer under the new 'High Potential Individual Visa'.
It is a good idea in general, but probably needs refining. There are better ways to test high potential than just where someone went to University, which in most parts of the world is largely a function of how well off your parents are.
That's largely true. But does it matter in practical terms for the UK?
Three main groups: 1. Rich and smart - seems fine to let them in 2. Poor and smart - likewise, they'll likely get a decent job and contribute. These in fact probably the most impressive/most potential individuals as they overcame obstacles to do well 3. Rich and stupid - well, they'll blend in well enough and might as well spend their money stupidly here as anywhere (Group 4, poor and stupid are pretty much excluded by the went to top university thing)
I don’t think we can take your last point as a given. Richard Burgon keeps parading his humble origins and was at Cambridge.
He went to St Johns, so he was not exactly advantaged.
Did he have the Eccles Cake and Lancashire Cheese?
Is it just me concerned that today's figure is suspiciously round?
EDIT: Oops, misread, that's the first vaccine dose figure - but still, that's suspiciously round.
You mean the number of first vaccines? 43,000 unusable, but not impossible.
Reminds me of a story, that may or may not be accurate, that the first people to servery mount Everest, calculated it very prissily but it came out to a very round number, with 3 zeros at the end. The servaysers realised that everybody would assume that they had only estimated it to the closes 1000 (feet or meters) so they added a 2.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Today is a week-on-week fall.
Today the last 7 days are 31,747 more than the previous 7 days which is an increase of 11% but that percentage is falling fast and will be negative early next week. That's what I meant.
If you have graduated from a top global university then you will be free to move to the UK without a job offer under the new 'High Potential Individual Visa'.
It is a good idea in general, but probably needs refining. There are better ways to test high potential than just where someone went to University, which in most parts of the world is largely a function of how well off your parents are.
That's largely true. But does it matter in practical terms for the UK?
Three main groups: 1. Rich and smart - seems fine to let them in 2. Poor and smart - likewise, they'll likely get a decent job and contribute. These in fact probably the most impressive/most potential individuals as they overcame obstacles to do well 3. Rich and stupid - well, they'll blend in well enough and might as well spend their money stupidly here as anywhere (Group 4, poor and stupid are pretty much excluded by the went to top university thing)
I don’t think we can take your last point as a given. Richard Burgon keeps parading his humble origins and was at Cambridge.
He went to St Johns, so he was not exactly advantaged.
The hood bit of the gown you wear to taunt the untermenschen with your academic attainments is technically called a Burgon. An appropriate homage, I think.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
We have to hope that Delta has now burned itself out, because if it hasn’t cases will start rising again in a week or so’s time.
So the issue is that we may see a levelling off in the drop because stage 4 activity offsets the falls in activity from schools and football.
What's interesting is the analysis above that's saying 99% of cases are in people with no antibodies from prior infection dropping to 86% with double vaxxed status. That means 86% of infections (and there were 750K last week) are creating completely new antibodies. Our funnel still has another ~2m infections in this wave in addition to the ~3m there have already been. At 86% that's about 4.3m people will have got antibodies in this wave that were unvaxxed or previously uninfected at the time. We can, in a simplistic sense, add those numbers onto our vaccine programme number of double jabbed. It brings us very, very close to herd immunity.
If you have graduated from a top global university then you will be free to move to the UK without a job offer under the new 'High Potential Individual Visa'.
It is a good idea in general, but probably needs refining. There are better ways to test high potential than just where someone went to University, which in most parts of the world is largely a function of how well off your parents are.
That's largely true. But does it matter in practical terms for the UK?
Three main groups: 1. Rich and smart - seems fine to let them in 2. Poor and smart - likewise, they'll likely get a decent job and contribute. These in fact probably the most impressive/most potential individuals as they overcame obstacles to do well 3. Rich and stupid - well, they'll blend in well enough and might as well spend their money stupidly here as anywhere (Group 4, poor and stupid are pretty much excluded by the went to top university thing)
I don’t think we can take your last point as a given. Richard Burgon keeps parading his humble origins and was at Cambridge.
He went to St Johns, so he was not exactly advantaged.
The hood bit of the gown you wear to taunt the untermenschen with your academic attainments is technically called a Burgon. An appropriate homage, I think.
Perhaps, indeed, “Burgon” was the word Browning was reaching for in that poem where he inserted the word “twat” instead.
The UK has recorded 36,389 new coronavirus cases and 64 further deaths, according to the latest update to the government’s coronavirus dashboard.
The total number of new cases over the past seven days is still up on the total for the previous week, by 11.4%. But yesterday the equivalent figure was +24.2%, and the previous day it was +35.8%, so the rate of increase does appear to be slowing. Some of this might be related to a slight drop in the number of tests being carried out.
Oliver Johnson @BristOliver · 16m Definite flattening of cases by specimen date, but honestly think we need to give it a week to see what effect 19th July has before we start putting up banners on aircraft carriers.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Well assuming that stage 4 activity doesn't offset the other falls. It may do and we could level off at R=1 for a while.
I may have to put my hands up and admit a mistake. I was quite angry that the 21 June unlocking was delayed and I still think it was unnecessary and the models for it were ridiculous.
But its quite possible that 19 July was objectively better timed matching up with the holidays and if it does level off at R=1 it will do so from a lower level than if we'd had Stage 4 four weeks earlier.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Today is a week-on-week fall.
Today the last 7 days are 31,747 more than the previous 7 days which is an increase of 11% but that percentage is falling fast and will be negative early next week. That's what I meant.
Ah - I mean that today's number was lower than seven days ago, but reading the previous quote, you are clearly correct.
This wave has - I think - been very helpful to the UK. It's added a lot of new people with some degree of protection. When schools go back in September, we'll be in a position to start vaccinating 12-17 year olds, and for (most adult groups) herd immunity will be largely reached.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Well assuming that stage 4 activity doesn't offset the other falls. It may do and we could level off at R=1 for a while.
The impression I am getting is that Delta is becoming a bit of a victim of its own success and is likely to fall off sharply as we have seen in other countries. My guess is that that factor will outweigh any potential spreading from the relaxation.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Well assuming that stage 4 activity doesn't offset the other falls. It may do and we could level off at R=1 for a while.
I may have to put my hands up and admit a mistake. I was quite angry that the 21 June unlocking was delayed and I still think it was unnecessary and the models for it were ridiculous.
But its quite possible that 19 July was objectively better timed matching up with the holidays and if it does level off at R=1 it will do so from a lower level than if we'd had Stage 4 four weeks earlier.
I think that's right - combining opening up with school holidays was almost certainly the right thing to do.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Well assuming that stage 4 activity doesn't offset the other falls. It may do and we could level off at R=1 for a while.
The impression I am getting is that Delta is becoming a bit of a victim of its own success and is likely to fall off sharply as we have seen in other countries. My guess is that that factor will outweigh any potential spreading from the relaxation.
Yes, I think it's related to my previous post. Delta infects so many people in such a short space of time it drives populations to herd immunity very quickly and sadly destructively in places with low vaccination rates.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Well assuming that stage 4 activity doesn't offset the other falls. It may do and we could level off at R=1 for a while.
The impression I am getting is that Delta is becoming a bit of a victim of its own success and is likely to fall off sharply as we have seen in other countries. My guess is that that factor will outweigh any potential spreading from the relaxation.
91.9% of adults have antibodies. Effective R is therefore 11x lower. It's really a testament to Delta that it has got this far.
ONS says more than 800,000 people in UK thought to have had Covid last week
Once again, one is moved to wonder how much longer it's going to take for this virus finally to run out of victims. We've had two or three (depending on how you regard them) huge outbreaks, with another well underway, it's run riot in schools, two-thirds of the adult population is fully vaccinated and we keep being reassured how low re-infection rates are - and yet, nearly a million more are estimated to have caught it in a week.
Logically the pandemic phase has to end at some point, but it really does feel like it never will.
But this doesn’t really help anyone. Except make Remainers feel good about themselves, of course.
Labour needs to attach Boris on both lying (about the deal) and incompetence (the deal sucks), but agree the deal must be negotiated and it will do a better job as more competent and trustworthy negotiating partner.
Labour should also point out that it is entirely in Ireland’s interests especially that a more durable arrangement can be found.
The way things are going I will have to apologise to the ludicrous Robert Smithson for calling the peak almost exactly, when I thought it would rise until next week at least
I will never be happier to be proven humiliatingly wrong
If you have graduated from a top global university then you will be free to move to the UK without a job offer under the new 'High Potential Individual Visa'.
It is a good idea in general, but probably needs refining. There are better ways to test high potential than just where someone went to University, which in most parts of the world is largely a function of how well off your parents are.
I'm not sure it needs refining. The easy and universal nature of it is part of the appeal. It's a big Welcome To Global Britain sign, hovering right above Heathrow
Britain likes smart people. Britain wants hard working talent. You can walk right in if you've got the brains
Shouldn't be too hard to define the top universities. The top 100 from the most cited lists - THES, QS, etc?
Perhaps include people who have worked for the world's top corporations might actually be better?
(as I wrote that I realised it is complete bias because I went to a second rate uni but blagged my way into one of the world's most elite corporations a few years later lol!)
The world's most elite corporations are full of people who write bias for biased. De rigueur at Goldman Sachs.
Would anyone in the real world write "the world's most elite corporations" anyway? It sounds like the blurb off an airport novel about a secret agent with a big schlong.
Personal experience says the so called elite corporations are full of really dumb people who only seem bright because the senior management is even dumber and listens to them.
I cite an example from when I worked for ICI we had McKinseys in, they divided things into core competencies and non core and we all filled in paper work to show how much time we spent on each of the two.
They then took total hours worked ( from memory averaged about 45 a week) and downscaled both to 37.5 which was contractual.
So for the 21 in my team they worked out we worked 945 hours a month of which 45 hours was not core competence. They then down scaled it by 37.5/45. Worked out therefore we could lose a member of staff who got made redundant.
So despite our section churning out 900 core competence a month they decided that was only really 750 hours a month and we could lose a person. Management seemed surprised when everyone in section suddenly went you know what. 5.30 pm is when I am contracted to work till so that experiment that takes 10 hours and only has an hour to go will just have to stop and will try again tomorrow. Took them about 3 months to realise however none of the longer experimental work was getting done because people werent prepared to put in extra time to bring the actual hours back up to the 950 really needed because despite it being called non core that work still had do be done
Cases continuing to look good. (Multicoloured graph extended backwards to May 3rd, which was the lowest point and the very start of the wave):
Nice chunky fall week-on-week.
Very encouraging, and it's even been falling day-on-day within this week. Which means we're down 30% versus last Friday.
I'll hold my hands up and admit I was wrong in expecting growth to continue, even if at a slower pace.
It'll be interesting to see if it is able to withstand the impact of the first full weekend of nightclubs.
Maybe Whitty, Vallance and VanTam do know what they're talking about.
(This isn't meant sarcastically, though it sounds it. I'm in the same boat as you. I do have a modicum of sympathy for sage: they get it in the neck from both sides and are never popular. And its obviously much harder to make a decision you have to live with the consequences of than it is to opine on the internet.)
Support for Scottish independence has actually been in steady decline since mid-2020, @AngusRobertson. As Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution it surely behoves you not to mislead the public on this question. One might even cite the Ministerial Code.
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
I agree with pretty much all of this, except that I think what you call "Millwall diplomacy" is the only thing the EU will listen to. Which makes it regrettably optional.
If they won't move without Frosty pissing on their leg, then Frosty pissing on their leg may not be elegant or pretty, but it works.
Oh, I had forgotten, because Brexit seems so long ago. We hold all the cards, don't we?
Yes! So long as we're prepared to wield them we absolutely do.
We clearly don’t.
The more we piss off the EU with bad faith approaches, the more likely a tit for tat on other areas that are useful to us.
However we do hold one major card which is we are on the ground in Northern Ireland and we have to reach a durable solution, as does Ireland.
The EU merely needs to make sure the risks around smuggling etc are adequately and proportionately managed.
The fact that we are on the ground and they're not is precisely why we hold all the cards.
We just need to be prepared to wield that as essentially a veto and there's little they can do but to accept that reality.
If they respond to us essentially vetoing any alternative solution like the NI Protocol then what are they going to do? If they erect border posts in Ireland they've done that and made matters worse from the Irish perspective. If they don't, they've given us what we wanted and shown the NI Protocol is unnecessary.
They have no winning move, so long as we're prepared to stand our ground it is checkmate.
If we renege on our commitments with regard to the Northern Ireland Protocol, would that not put the entire Brexit Withdrawal Agreement in jeopardy, leaving us staring No Deal in the face again?
Cases continuing to look good. (Multicoloured graph extended backwards to May 3rd, which was the lowest point and the very start of the wave):
Nice chunky fall week-on-week.
Very encouraging, and it's even been falling day-on-day within this week. Which means we're down 30% versus last Friday.
I'll hold my hands up and admit I was wrong in expecting growth to continue, even if at a slower pace.
It'll be interesting to see if it is able to withstand the impact of the first full weekend of nightclubs.
How many people actually go to nightclubs? And how does it compare to the number who are now not going to school?
I'd guess it's a meaningful proportion of <25 adults that have the lowest vaccination rates. And my memory of nightclubs is that you couldn't design a better environment for Covid (especially delta) to spread.
On the other hand, it's clearly far fewer people than were in schools.
I'm on the fence. Let's see where we are in 10 days' time.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Today is a week-on-week fall.
Today the last 7 days are 31,747 more than the previous 7 days which is an increase of 11% but that percentage is falling fast and will be negative early next week. That's what I meant.
Ah - I mean that today's number was lower than seven days ago, but reading the previous quote, you are clearly correct.
This wave has - I think - been very helpful to the UK. It's added a lot of new people with some degree of protection. When schools go back in September, we'll be in a position to start vaccinating 12-17 year olds, and for (most adult groups) herd immunity will be largely reached.
Its also been very helpful that this wave has come in the middle of summer when the pressure on the hospitals is at its lowest. The number of admissions we have been seeing of late would be a much bigger problem in January or February. I think that was a part of the government's thinking. If we are to have a further wave to reach herd immunity let's do it now.
If you have graduated from a top global university then you will be free to move to the UK without a job offer under the new 'High Potential Individual Visa'.
It is a good idea in general, but probably needs refining. There are better ways to test high potential than just where someone went to University, which in most parts of the world is largely a function of how well off your parents are.
That's largely true. But does it matter in practical terms for the UK?
Three main groups: 1. Rich and smart - seems fine to let them in 2. Poor and smart - likewise, they'll likely get a decent job and contribute. These in fact probably the most impressive/most potential individuals as they overcame obstacles to do well 3. Rich and stupid - well, they'll blend in well enough and might as well spend their money stupidly here as anywhere (Group 4, poor and stupid are pretty much excluded by the went to top university thing)
I don’t think we can take your last point as a given. Richard Burgon keeps parading his humble origins and was at Cambridge.
He went to St Johns, so he was not exactly advantaged.
Oy! That's my alma mater m8 - one rotten apple's not too bad a percentage!
I think the UK will eventually agree a semi-free movement deal for under 35s from most EU countries on a bilateral basis. Similar to what we've just agreed with Australia. It suits all parties.
Does not suit me and I suspect doesn't suit those youngsters who are finally getting off rock bottom minimum wages due to not having an essentially infinite labour pool to draw on to keep wages at the bottom. Hospitality workers for example
Makes that Israel data look even more of an outlier. Also puts the anecdotal stories on here of all the double jabbed people they know who have caught covid in perspective.
It’s the old problem. 10,000 double jabbed people not getting Covid is not a news story. 1 double jabbed person gets Covid and tells all their social media circle and it’s the end of days...
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
I did too, I think. But I am surprised by how abruptly growth seems to have stopped. I thought we'd plateau for a bit at 50-55,000 cases a day. Instead of which we seem to have dropped straight back to the high 30s.
My oldest daughters' last day at primary school today. Year 6 have been having a water fight all day and have decamped en masse to the park to continue. Such joy on their faces. Startling to think this would have been illegal not long ago. I will never take freedom like this for granted again. The school, I should add, have been absolutely brilluant in trying to give them as memorable a last few weeks as possible, given the circumstances and the repeated bubble popping. Public sector josworths these people are not.
ONS says more than 800,000 people in UK thought to have had Covid last week
Once again, one is moved to wonder how much longer it's going to take for this virus finally to run out of victims. We've had two or three (depending on how you regard them) huge outbreaks, with another well underway, it's run riot in schools, two-thirds of the adult population is fully vaccinated and we keep being reassured how low re-infection rates are - and yet, nearly a million more are estimated to have caught it in a week.
Logically the pandemic phase has to end at some point, but it really does feel like it never will.
If 90% of people have antibodies and 1% of the populating gets it a week (rates we are currently seeing in places like Redcar and hartlepool, indeed the whole North East Region is close to that level) then that's still two and a half months to get through the population.
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
Not often agreeing with Gardenwalker, I am delighted to agree that most of the above is pretty much on the ball, if you assume a point of view and accept the style is somewhat adversarial to Boris.
So just two qualifications, neither very important now; Parliament trashed May's deal. Not Boris. That doesn't matter now but it is true.
Secondly, further delay was, at the time, politically impossible. Boris privately (IMHO) made the big and fairly noble call to reject No Deal, at huge personal cost. Since the only deal on the table was one with a bad Ireland deal.
Boris is a Machiavelli politician anyway. Circumstances since getting a bad but only available Brexit through a parliament that never wanted one mean he has to act in ways which are Machiavelli squared.
I wonder how anyone else would be faring by now? Politically? Polling? Personally? It is worth thinking about. The current marmite Boris - everyone either loves him or loathes him is not quite true to the complex situation. Less uncritical support and opposition and more nuance would be a worthwhile project.
While Parliament did trash the deal, Boris had the option of turning round and making slight changes to May's scheme and going "take it or No Deal" or creating a new deal and going "new deal or no deal". The fact he took the latter option was his choice / mistake.
I remember the evening when the deal was first announced and Theresa May did her speech in the dark on the steps of Downing Street, and Boris was immediately denouncing it on all the news channels before the text had even been made public.
I am often blamed on here (as a former Remainer) for my failure to back Mrs May's deal in favour of the ultimate wet-dream of a second referendum, and as such I am responsible for Johnson's oven-ready pig-in-a-poke.
With the benefit of hindsight, I was wrong, not least because what came next was substantially worse, although it was sold by Johnson and many on here as a fault-free, compromise- free alternative to Mrs May's far from perfect shambles.
Johnson didn't accept Mrs May's compromise, because doing so didn't give him the keys to number 10. So surely along with me, Johnson and Frost should shoulder some of the blame.
In my defence I genuinely believed in the event of Mrs May's deal falling, and a second referendum win for Remain, that would have been of benefit to our nation. Johnson believed in the event of Mrs May's deal falling, it would have been of benefit to him. Yet public perception is; I am the traitor and Johnson is the patriot.
Parliament rejected Mrs May's deal. Hundreds of Labour MPs voted against it. Boris only had the power of being a single vote among MPs. Yes, he was opportunist. Yes, the pope is a Catholic. Boris is a politician.
"Boris" as you affectionately call him, is a particular type of politician. And, no, they are not all the same, thank God. There are honest politicians on both sides of the house. There are perhaps none who are so malignantly narcissistic and dishonest as Boris Johnson, certainly this side of the Atlantic. In that unique area, he is most definitely world class.
Please, what hyperbole.
Well, hyperbole can sometimes be a useful tool for illustration, but in this case I must disagree that I have used it . Please tell me mainstream politicians with worse rep's for telling porkies?
...still no response? The silence is deafening. I rest my case.
Was the late Reichsfuehrer Goebbels 'mainstream'? Just asking for a friend.
On-topic (unusually for me!). On Mike's previous header on the market when it was 50% chance I said I thought that was marginal value, but not enough to tempt me. Well, it is now, so I've had a nibble (at 4, so even better).
Restrictions could come back, obviously, but given Johnson's previous reluctance (see Christmas/January particularly) I think things will have to get pretty dire to make him move. The vaccine success is the big success of this government. If that's seen to fail, by restrictions coming back, then there's trouble for the Conservatives, I think (particularly given Starmer was at least appearing to argue for more caution). I just don't see things getting dire enough.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Today is a week-on-week fall.
Today the last 7 days are 31,747 more than the previous 7 days which is an increase of 11% but that percentage is falling fast and will be negative early next week. That's what I meant.
Ah - I mean that today's number was lower than seven days ago, but reading the previous quote, you are clearly correct.
This wave has - I think - been very helpful to the UK. It's added a lot of new people with some degree of protection. When schools go back in September, we'll be in a position to start vaccinating 12-17 year olds, and for (most adult groups) herd immunity will be largely reached.
Support for Scottish independence has actually been in steady decline since mid-2020, @AngusRobertson. As Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution it surely behoves you not to mislead the public on this question. One might even cite the Ministerial Code.
I think the UK will eventually agree a semi-free movement deal for under 35s from most EU countries on a bilateral basis. Similar to what we've just agreed with Australia. It suits all parties.
Does not suit me and I suspect doesn't suit those youngsters who are finally getting off rock bottom minimum wages due to not having an essentially infinite labour pool to draw on to keep wages at the bottom. Hospitality workers for example
That argument only works if you have significant unemployment, which was certainly not the case before covid.
If you have virtually full employment, and then you send away most of those doing menial jobs, the net effect is that more indigenous people end up doing menial jobs instead of more fulfilling work, albeit for somewhat higher wages than those who they replace. And everything gets more expensive.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Today is a week-on-week fall.
Today the last 7 days are 31,747 more than the previous 7 days which is an increase of 11% but that percentage is falling fast and will be negative early next week. That's what I meant.
Ah - I mean that today's number was lower than seven days ago, but reading the previous quote, you are clearly correct.
This wave has - I think - been very helpful to the UK. It's added a lot of new people with some degree of protection. When schools go back in September, we'll be in a position to start vaccinating 12-17 year olds, and for (most adult groups) herd immunity will be largely reached.
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
I agree with pretty much all of this, except that I think what you call "Millwall diplomacy" is the only thing the EU will listen to. Which makes it regrettably optional.
If they won't move without Frosty pissing on their leg, then Frosty pissing on their leg may not be elegant or pretty, but it works.
Oh, I had forgotten, because Brexit seems so long ago. We hold all the cards, don't we?
Yes! So long as we're prepared to wield them we absolutely do.
We clearly don’t.
The more we piss off the EU with bad faith approaches, the more likely a tit for tat on other areas that are useful to us.
However we do hold one major card which is we are on the ground in Northern Ireland and we have to reach a durable solution, as does Ireland.
The EU merely needs to make sure the risks around smuggling etc are adequately and proportionately managed.
The fact that we are on the ground and they're not is precisely why we hold all the cards.
We just need to be prepared to wield that as essentially a veto and there's little they can do but to accept that reality.
If they respond to us essentially vetoing any alternative solution like the NI Protocol then what are they going to do? If they erect border posts in Ireland they've done that and made matters worse from the Irish perspective. If they don't, they've given us what we wanted and shown the NI Protocol is unnecessary.
They have no winning move, so long as we're prepared to stand our ground it is checkmate.
If we renege on our commitments with regard to the Northern Ireland Protocol, would that not put the entire Brexit Withdrawal Agreement in jeopardy, leaving us staring No Deal in the face again?
QTWAIN.
If we invoke Article 16 of the NI Protocol then that's part and parcel of the Withdrawal Agreement, we have every right to exercise a provision of the Protocol and that's not grounds to cancel the agreement.
Besides if the EU did then want to invoke the exit procedure to end the Withdrawal Agreement they'd need to give 12 months notice for that, during which time they still don't have a solution to the Protocol - and even after the 12 months they'd still have no solution to the Protocol so would be no better off.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
I did too, I think. But I am surprised by how abruptly growth seems to have stopped. I thought we'd plateau for a bit at 50-55,000 cases a day. Instead of which we seem to have dropped straight back to the high 30s.
My oldest daughters' last day at primary school today. Year 6 have been having a water fight all day and have decamped en masse to the park to continue. Such joy on their faces. Startling to think this would have been illegal not long ago. I will never take freedom like this for granted again. The school, I should add, have been absolutely brilluant in trying to give them as memorable a last few weeks as possible, given the circumstances and the repeated bubble popping. Public sector josworths these people are not.
Delighted to hear it. Earlier on we were discussing the age groups of those children sent home to self-isolate. I thought there were plenty of 2-11yr olds, using your daughter as an example. Do we have any idea how widespread it was at that age range?
I think the UK will eventually agree a semi-free movement deal for under 35s from most EU countries on a bilateral basis. Similar to what we've just agreed with Australia. It suits all parties.
Does not suit me and I suspect doesn't suit those youngsters who are finally getting off rock bottom minimum wages due to not having an essentially infinite labour pool to draw on to keep wages at the bottom. Hospitality workers for example
That argument only works if you have significant unemployment, which was certainly not the case before covid.
If you have virtually full employment, and then you send away most of those doing menial jobs, the net effect is that more indigenous people end up doing menial jobs instead of more fulfilling work, albeit for somewhat higher wages than those who they replace. And everything gets more expensive.
For a lot of indigenous people especially the young menial work like stacking shelves and waiting tables is all they can get for a few years. If you can afford to go out for a meal you can afford to pay a little more. Maybe then the staff waiting on you can also afford to go out for a meal occasionally.
If the pay rises high enough due to staff shortages people from abroad will be able to get visa's under the points system to come do it.
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
I agree with pretty much all of this, except that I think what you call "Millwall diplomacy" is the only thing the EU will listen to. Which makes it regrettably optional.
If they won't move without Frosty pissing on their leg, then Frosty pissing on their leg may not be elegant or pretty, but it works.
Oh, I had forgotten, because Brexit seems so long ago. We hold all the cards, don't we?
Yes! So long as we're prepared to wield them we absolutely do.
We clearly don’t.
The more we piss off the EU with bad faith approaches, the more likely a tit for tat on other areas that are useful to us.
However we do hold one major card which is we are on the ground in Northern Ireland and we have to reach a durable solution, as does Ireland.
The EU merely needs to make sure the risks around smuggling etc are adequately and proportionately managed.
The fact that we are on the ground and they're not is precisely why we hold all the cards.
We just need to be prepared to wield that as essentially a veto and there's little they can do but to accept that reality.
If they respond to us essentially vetoing any alternative solution like the NI Protocol then what are they going to do? If they erect border posts in Ireland they've done that and made matters worse from the Irish perspective. If they don't, they've given us what we wanted and shown the NI Protocol is unnecessary.
They have no winning move, so long as we're prepared to stand our ground it is checkmate.
If we renege on our commitments with regard to the Northern Ireland Protocol, would that not put the entire Brexit Withdrawal Agreement in jeopardy, leaving us staring No Deal in the face again?
Maybe at some point the EU will stop grandstanding in the media and trigger the provisions of the agreement that are there in the event that one party thinks the other is non compliant. Trouble for them is that it is not at all clear that we don’t have the right to seek to change the arrangements if they aren’t working as intended...
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Yes, me. And I was ridiculed on here.
I did too. Was also told it was "unlikely" by the smartest guy in the room. Football ending + schools closing was inevitably going to result in a drop off in cases.
I did too, I think. But I am surprised by how abruptly growth seems to have stopped. I thought we'd plateau for a bit at 50-55,000 cases a day. Instead of which we seem to have dropped straight back to the high 30s.
My oldest daughters' last day at primary school today. Year 6 have been having a water fight all day and have decamped en masse to the park to continue. Such joy on their faces. Startling to think this would have been illegal not long ago. I will never take freedom like this for granted again. The school, I should add, have been absolutely brilluant in trying to give them as memorable a last few weeks as possible, given the circumstances and the repeated bubble popping. Public sector josworths these people are not.
Delighted to hear it. Earlier on we were discussing the age groups of those children sent home to self-isolate. I thought there were plenty of 2-11yr olds, using your daughter as an example. Do we have any idea how widespread it was at that age range?
Yep, I'm aware of plenty of children between 5-11 who have been sent home to isolate including (even last week) whole classes
ONS says more than 800,000 people in UK thought to have had Covid last week
Once again, one is moved to wonder how much longer it's going to take for this virus finally to run out of victims. We've had two or three (depending on how you regard them) huge outbreaks, with another well underway, it's run riot in schools, two-thirds of the adult population is fully vaccinated and we keep being reassured how low re-infection rates are - and yet, nearly a million more are estimated to have caught it in a week.
Logically the pandemic phase has to end at some point, but it really does feel like it never will.
I stand by my presumption that we're at sufficient herd immunity to prevent the hospitals ever being overwhelmed again and now the virus is simply filling in the pools of unvaccinated people (youngsters especially) and will then fade away.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Today is a week-on-week fall.
Today the last 7 days are 31,747 more than the previous 7 days which is an increase of 11% but that percentage is falling fast and will be negative early next week. That's what I meant.
Ah - I mean that today's number was lower than seven days ago, but reading the previous quote, you are clearly correct.
This wave has - I think - been very helpful to the UK. It's added a lot of new people with some degree of protection. When schools go back in September, we'll be in a position to start vaccinating 12-17 year olds, and for (most adult groups) herd immunity will be largely reached.
I like to think that @chris frequents other forums where he behaves as he does here, gracefully doling out his enormous wisdom, and generally making the world a better place. I might be wrong, though, and maybe he doesn’t want to post when things aren’t getting worse...
If cases really did peak on 15 July at 60,703, then perhaps for the first time in his life Boris may have made the right decision at the right time.
If he is proved correct — huge pinch of salt, touch wood, cross my fingers — he deserves a lot of credit. I'd forgive him pretty much anything if he got ending lockdown right.
Daily 36,389 Last 7 days 309,742 up 31,747 (11.4%)
Not out of the woods yet....but not going deeper into them either.....so far....
By Monday we should be seeing week on week falls. Probably pretty slow and a tad erratic at first but the right direction.
Today is a week-on-week fall.
Today the last 7 days are 31,747 more than the previous 7 days which is an increase of 11% but that percentage is falling fast and will be negative early next week. That's what I meant.
Ah - I mean that today's number was lower than seven days ago, but reading the previous quote, you are clearly correct.
This wave has - I think - been very helpful to the UK. It's added a lot of new people with some degree of protection. When schools go back in September, we'll be in a position to start vaccinating 12-17 year olds, and for (most adult groups) herd immunity will be largely reached.
I like to think that @chris frequents other forums where he behaves as he does here, gracefully doling out his enormous wisdom, and generally making the world a better place. I might be wrong, though, and maybe he doesn’t want to post when things aren’t getting worse...
I believe he is heavily involved when not here in mole sanctuaries
Makes that Israel data look even more of an outlier. Also puts the anecdotal stories on here of all the double jabbed people they know who have caught covid in perspective.
It’s the old problem. 10,000 double jabbed people not getting Covid is not a news story. 1 double jabbed person gets Covid and tells all their social media circle and it’s the end of days...
The thing is that for a certain percentage of people even double vaccination won't give them protection. And that 3-6% will both go down with Covid and were they vocal on social media may discourage others from being vaccinated.
Good article from Finlan O'Toole, linked earlier, and good precis from @Gardenwalker on NI.
I must say my faith in the good intentions of the EU towards the island of Ireland have been severely shaken with vaccine border-gate but yes, at its core, the UK chose to separate out NI from GB rather than align with the EU. And yes, Boris is a useless, solipsistic, lying, ignorant twat*.
What does the asterisk signify, pray? A new and improved Mark of twat, or what?
Ha yes sorry I was going to add that I am using this in the sense of not being part of a woman's body because that is not the common usage of twat imo whereas some think that it is a direct reference.
Thank you; I am illuminated. Actually, I wonder if the PB keyboard has a male zoological symbol on it (= astrological Mars symbol)? That would be quite helpful.
Of course I hesitate to google the word "twat".
There is always Twatt in Orkney. Which, as Wikipedia helpfully explains at once, is "Not to be confused with Twatt, Shetland." I think we discussed that particular variety on PB a few years back - including the fact that it was a Fleet Air Arm base, under that name: RNAS Twatt.
The etymological derivation of twat is "clearing in a forest" (the same as the placename Thwaite) which I always find amusing.
Robert Browning also used it, thinking it was another word for a nun’s wimple:
‘Then owls and bats Cowls and twats Monks and nuns in a cloister's moods Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.’
Does that mean he married one of the Barratts of T**t Street?
I know, I know. I used to work in a building on the corner of Queen Annes St. and Wimpole St.
Plus I remember visiting the Castle area and being told about Tidmarsh Lane aka Titmouse Lane (en route to the very nice pub at the Morrell's brewery gates).
I think the UK will eventually agree a semi-free movement deal for under 35s from most EU countries on a bilateral basis. Similar to what we've just agreed with Australia. It suits all parties.
Does not suit me and I suspect doesn't suit those youngsters who are finally getting off rock bottom minimum wages due to not having an essentially infinite labour pool to draw on to keep wages at the bottom. Hospitality workers for example
That argument only works if you have significant unemployment, which was certainly not the case before covid.
If you have virtually full employment, and then you send away most of those doing menial jobs, the net effect is that more indigenous people end up doing menial jobs instead of more fulfilling work, albeit for somewhat higher wages than those who they replace. And everything gets more expensive.
For a lot of indigenous people especially the young menial work like stacking shelves and waiting tables is all they can get for a few years. If you can afford to go out for a meal you can afford to pay a little more. Maybe then the staff waiting on you can also afford to go out for a meal occasionally.
If the pay rises high enough due to staff shortages people from abroad will be able to get visa's under the points system to come do it.
For example my son, got a top class MsC from UCL in biochemistry....spent 3 years doing such menial jobs till he managed to find a non menial one, also know a friend of his that got a first in marine biology...still working in costa's after 8 years because he cant find a not hospitality job
Last Friday did anyone think the cases would have fallen this much?
Today's figure is about one-third down on last Friday's - this is about the same as the decreases we have seen in Scotland after their participation in the football tournament ended and their schools closed for the summer. So, aside from the impact of nightclubs, I'd say that these decreases were expected, though I did think that the peak was going to be a few days later.
It may well end up being that nightclubs are relatively a niche pursuit, and don't impact the headline numbers as much as schools or a nation-unifying football tournament.
It's also possible that there has been a degree of behaviour modification among the "Boris is trying to kill us all crowd" which is acting to reduce transmission while those who aren't so paranoid enjoy themselves in the nightclubs.
Support for Scottish independence has actually been in steady decline since mid-2020, @AngusRobertson. As Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution it surely behoves you not to mislead the public on this question. One might even cite the Ministerial Code.
Is it just me concerned that today's figure is suspiciously round?
EDIT: Oops, misread, that's the first vaccine dose figure - but still, that's suspiciously round.
It's a 1-in-1000 chance, but then you are looking at figures for: first doses, second doses, cases (at least) that could be similarly suspiciously round, so you'd expect it to happen about once a year for one of those three statistics.
I think the UK will eventually agree a semi-free movement deal for under 35s from most EU countries on a bilateral basis. Similar to what we've just agreed with Australia. It suits all parties.
Does not suit me and I suspect doesn't suit those youngsters who are finally getting off rock bottom minimum wages due to not having an essentially infinite labour pool to draw on to keep wages at the bottom. Hospitality workers for example
That argument only works if you have significant unemployment, which was certainly not the case before covid.
If you have virtually full employment, and then you send away most of those doing menial jobs, the net effect is that more indigenous people end up doing menial jobs instead of more fulfilling work, albeit for somewhat higher wages than those who they replace. And everything gets more expensive.
For a lot of indigenous people especially the young menial work like stacking shelves and waiting tables is all they can get for a few years. If you can afford to go out for a meal you can afford to pay a little more. Maybe then the staff waiting on you can also afford to go out for a meal occasionally.
If the pay rises high enough due to staff shortages people from abroad will be able to get visa's under the points system to come do it.
Granted, it'll be good for the Brits who are currently doing menial jobs and have no aspiration to do anything else, though they'll likely be the first ones on the dole if unemployment rises from its current very low level. It won't be so good for the Brits who end up having to do some of the menial jobs left empty by the returning migrants instead of a more fulfilling job (some will go to automation). And rising prices won't be good for the rest of us.
Comments
(Though I'm not entirely sure about @MrEd .)
More seriously, the test will be another week or so as we see the further relaxations like nightclub reopenings filtering through.
Taken together with the vaccination data, it is very clear that in the UK COVID-19 is still mainly affecting immune naive people
Delta cases (99% of cases in England ) are occurring in people with NO previous infection (99%) & who are NOT fully vaccinated (86%)
https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1418567528322945031?s=20
Its possible the EU kept on saying, you know this doesn't work, whack (from Frosty), you know this doesn't work, whack (from Frosty), you know this doesn't work, whack (from Frosty), until final the EU just went - OK we've tried to warn you but if you insist.....
I've had IT projects that go exactly like that - the only thing you can do in such circumstances is make sure the issues you've highlighted are documented and in the project plan for when reality hits just before or after go live...
Except make Remainers feel good about themselves, of course.
Labour needs to attach Boris on both lying (about the deal) and incompetence (the deal sucks), but agree the deal must be negotiated and it will do a better job as more competent and trustworthy negotiating partner.
Labour should also point out that it is entirely in Ireland’s interests especially that a more durable arrangement can be found.
Freddie Sayers
@freddiesayers
Collision symbolTrump insider
@JasonMillerinDC
, who spoke to the former president yesterday, tells me that the chances of him running in 2024 have gone up in recent weeks, from 50/50 to more like 2 to 1.
New interview up now at
@UnHerd
https://twitter.com/freddiesayers/status/1418587641734443011
and yes they've written the odds wrong - it's 1:2 (66% chance) that Trump will run up from evens,.
I’ve a feeling he’ll soon be finding employment opportunities as few and far between as they are for Johnny Depp.
(Multicoloured graph extended backwards to May 3rd, which was the lowest point and the very start of the wave):
Nice chunky fall week-on-week.
Does he still have his stake in Salford FC?
EDIT: Oops, misread, that's the first vaccine dose figure - but still, that's suspiciously round.
The more we piss off the EU with bad faith approaches, the more likely a tit for tat on other areas that are useful to us.
However we do hold one major card which is we are on the ground in Northern Ireland, and we control the “facts on the ground” to some extent. We have to be able to reach a durable solution, as does Ireland.
The EU merely needs to make sure the risks around smuggling etc are adequately and proportionately managed.
But still - 43,000 is an incredibly round number of first doses isn't it?
We just need to be prepared to wield that as essentially a veto and there's little they can do but to accept that reality.
If they respond to us essentially vetoing any alternative solution like the NI Protocol then what are they going to do? If they erect border posts in Ireland they've done that and made matters worse from the Irish perspective. If they don't, they've given us what we wanted and shown the NI Protocol is unnecessary.
They have no winning move, so long as we're prepared to stand our ground it is checkmate.
Reminds me of a story, that may or may not be accurate, that the first people to servery mount Everest, calculated it very prissily but it came out to a very round number, with 3 zeros at the end. The servaysers realised that everybody would assume that they had only estimated it to the closes 1000 (feet or meters) so they added a 2.
What's interesting is the analysis above that's saying 99% of cases are in people with no antibodies from prior infection dropping to 86% with double vaxxed status. That means 86% of infections (and there were 750K last week) are creating completely new antibodies. Our funnel still has another ~2m infections in this wave in addition to the ~3m there have already been. At 86% that's about 4.3m people will have got antibodies in this wave that were unvaxxed or previously uninfected at the time. We can, in a simplistic sense, add those numbers onto our vaccine programme number of double jabbed. It brings us very, very close to herd immunity.
(See upthread for details).
The UK has recorded 36,389 new coronavirus cases and 64 further deaths, according to the latest update to the government’s coronavirus dashboard.
The total number of new cases over the past seven days is still up on the total for the previous week, by 11.4%. But yesterday the equivalent figure was +24.2%, and the previous day it was +35.8%, so the rate of increase does appear to be slowing. Some of this might be related to a slight drop in the number of tests being carried out.
Tests carried out
22nd: 1,016,134
16th: 979,046
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/jul/23/uk-covid-live-news-latest-updates-coronavirus-pingdemic-boris-johnson?page=with:block-60fadab58f08bb57f5f7d987#block-60fadab58f08bb57f5f7d987
Services to the mask making industry.
@BristOliver
·
16m
Definite flattening of cases by specimen date, but honestly think we need to give it a week to see what effect 19th July has before we start putting up banners on aircraft carriers.
I'll hold my hands up and admit I was wrong in expecting growth to continue, even if at a slower pace.
It'll be interesting to see if it is able to withstand the impact of the first full weekend of nightclubs.
But its quite possible that 19 July was objectively better timed matching up with the holidays and if it does level off at R=1 it will do so from a lower level than if we'd had Stage 4 four weeks earlier.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/will-vaccine-efficacy-decline-over-time-
Some thoughts on the Israel data.
This wave has - I think - been very helpful to the UK. It's added a lot of new people with some degree of protection. When schools go back in September, we'll be in a position to start vaccinating 12-17 year olds, and for (most adult groups) herd immunity will be largely reached.
Where's @Chris, by the way?
But, we'll see. I'm remaining cautious on the numbers for another week or so.
Certainly the @Chris (tina Pagel) Index is promising – their absence from the forum tells its own story.
Logically the pandemic phase has to end at some point, but it really does feel like it never will.
I will never be happier to be proven humiliatingly wrong
I cite an example from when I worked for ICI we had McKinseys in, they divided things into core competencies and non core and we all filled in paper work to show how much time we spent on each of the two.
They then took total hours worked ( from memory averaged about 45 a week) and downscaled both to 37.5 which was contractual.
So for the 21 in my team they worked out we worked 945 hours a month of which 45 hours was not core competence. They then down scaled it by 37.5/45. Worked out therefore we could lose a member of staff who got made redundant.
So despite our section churning out 900 core competence a month they decided that was only really 750 hours a month and we could lose a person. Management seemed surprised when everyone in section suddenly went you know what. 5.30 pm is when I am contracted to work till so that experiment that takes 10 hours and only has an hour to go will just have to stop and will try again tomorrow. Took them about 3 months to realise however none of the longer experimental work was getting done because people werent prepared to put in extra time to bring the actual hours back up to the 950 really needed because despite it being called non core that work still had do be done
(This isn't meant sarcastically, though it sounds it. I'm in the same boat as you. I do have a modicum of sympathy for sage: they get it in the neck from both sides and are never popular. And its obviously much harder to make a decision you have to live with the consequences of than it is to opine on the internet.)
https://twitter.com/dhothersall/status/1418549918688497665?s=20
"Cite the Ministerial code" - its the way he tells them!
On the other hand, it's clearly far fewer people than were in schools.
I'm on the fence. Let's see where we are in 10 days' time.
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/sydney-lockdown-could-be-permanent-until-majority-are-vaccinated/news-story/48b69865fe3e9c61d8807a784a49b546
But I am surprised by how abruptly growth seems to have stopped. I thought we'd plateau for a bit at 50-55,000 cases a day. Instead of which we seem to have dropped straight back to the high 30s.
My oldest daughters' last day at primary school today. Year 6 have been having a water fight all day and have decamped en masse to the park to continue. Such joy on their faces. Startling to think this would have been illegal not long ago. I will never take freedom like this for granted again.
The school, I should add, have been absolutely brilluant in trying to give them as memorable a last few weeks as possible, given the circumstances and the repeated bubble popping. Public sector josworths these people are not.
Restrictions could come back, obviously, but given Johnson's previous reluctance (see Christmas/January particularly) I think things will have to get pretty dire to make him move. The vaccine success is the big success of this government. If that's seen to fail, by restrictions coming back, then there's trouble for the Conservatives, I think (particularly given Starmer was at least appearing to argue for more caution). I just don't see things getting dire enough.
If you have virtually full employment, and then you send away most of those doing menial jobs, the net effect is that more indigenous people end up doing menial jobs instead of more fulfilling work, albeit for somewhat higher wages than those who they replace. And everything gets more expensive.
If we invoke Article 16 of the NI Protocol then that's part and parcel of the Withdrawal Agreement, we have every right to exercise a provision of the Protocol and that's not grounds to cancel the agreement.
Besides if the EU did then want to invoke the exit procedure to end the Withdrawal Agreement they'd need to give 12 months notice for that, during which time they still don't have a solution to the Protocol - and even after the 12 months they'd still have no solution to the Protocol so would be no better off.
If the pay rises high enough due to staff shortages people from abroad will be able to get visa's under the points system to come do it.
Let's hope that the fall in case numbers is sustained and that the past week hasn't just been a blip.
I have traversed the Hope Valley to Sheffield and am now on a fairly busy train heading towards Leeds. Approximately 50% mask wearing.
Remarkably, the only place where I have witnessed any sunshine today was Manchester!
It may well end up being that nightclubs are relatively a niche pursuit, and don't impact the headline numbers as much as schools or a nation-unifying football tournament.
It's also possible that there has been a degree of behaviour modification among the "Boris is trying to kill us all crowd" which is acting to reduce transmission while those who aren't so paranoid enjoy themselves in the nightclubs.
It just happened to be that statistic, today.