What the biggest band / act you saw live before they became massive?
Mrs U years ago tried to get to me go and see this ginger bloke called Ed playing some small crappy venue....she played a couple of tracks and I said nah, not for me, so she went with a friend.
When I was a student at Reading (79-82), I went to see Hazel O'Connor at the Top Rank. The support band was called Duran Duran - anyone know what became of them?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
I, too, find that whenever people come to a different conclusion than me, they must be "completely suspending their normal critical faculties".
For example those faculties that distinguish between permitted vaccination, vaccination encouraged by professionals and nudged in that direction by society, and mandatory vaccination.
Great. People on here are not advocating mandatory vaccination. At least not legally. So a choice is allowed but the language used certainly gives the impression that it should be.
Most of us were vaccinated shortly after birth, as were our own children, then vaxxed again at school. Being vaccinated in general is neither novel nor shocking.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
Such voices should be free to speak. And others should be free to point out when we think they're wrong, dissembling, inconsistent, or even outright lying. That's doubly the case if their words potentially place others in danger.
What the biggest band / act you saw live before they became massive?
Mrs U years ago tried to get to me go and see this ginger bloke called Ed playing some small crappy venue....she played a couple of tracks and I said nah, not for me, so she went with a friend.
When I was a student at Reading (79-82), I went to see Hazel O'Connor at the Top Rank. The support band was called Duran Duran - anyone know what became of them?
On First Impression, I Believe All I Need to Know is that, as a Matter of Fact, One of Those Days, I might be Starting to Remember whether they were Worth Waiting For.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Why, if you are driving on the wrong side of the road whilst pi**ed out of your head and smoking a spliff, should you be stigmatised?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he is talking nonsense, combined with a few of I'm-not-anti-vax-but-here's-another-anti-vax-meme
He has consistently questioned the prevailing orthodoxy while everyone else fell into line instantly.
He should be given a PB medal.
That's absolutely not true.
Plenty here have questioned the orthodoxy too. But they've done so honestly.
He questions it with untruths, bullshit and lies. No medal for that.
And he attacks and abuses others for criticising him for it.
The data says that black and ethnic minority citizens are less likely to have been vaccinated than whites in America.
Will Mike and TSE be calling black and ethnic minority citizens who are resistant to taking vaccines ''ignorant cretins? ''
Or is that insult merely for people they would despise in any case, simply because they are Trump supporters...??
You’re putting word in Mike’s mouth. This is the context for his ‘cretins’ epithet: Daniel Darling, senior vice president of communications for the National Religious Broadcasters, was fired Friday (Aug. 27) after refusing to admit his pro-vaccine statements were mistaken…
That’s the idiocy you’re defending.
I am not defending anti-vaxxers. I never have. Vaccines are very effective, although its becoming clearer that they are not as effective as getting and surviving covid.
I am simply asking why one subset of the vaccine hesitant (Trump supporting whites), is called 'ignorant cretins' and not all of those subsets.
You do realise 1 in 3 American evangelicals are not white? Not particularly different to the US population as a whole. So when someone is criticising evangelicals the only link to white/not white criticism from that comment exists in your head, not from the person who said it.
Very few blacks are Trump voters though and yet he mysteriously appears in the header. Its pretty clear who is being singled out here, and its pretty clear why. Fair enough.
There’s nothing mysterious about it. There is a very obvious distinction between hesitancy and denialism, which a i’ve pointed out to you a couple of times in this thread. The latter has become part of a political identity, and is utterly irrational.
Oh I see so all vaccine hesitant people are vaccine hesitant, but some are more justifiably vaccine hesitant than others. The more 'justifiably' vaccine hesitant being black and ethnic minority people, and less 'justifiably' vaccine hesitant white Trump supporters. In other words prejudice, plain and simple. Lets call it what it is.
And as I point out below the only anti-vaxxers I have seen online are medical professionals. IE doctors. Are these people Trump supporters? who the heck knows.
That's remarkable if you've been able to see only the tiny proportion of online antivax nuttery that comes from medical professionals.
Quite so, I wasn't aware that Laurence Fox and his admirers were medical professionals. Far from it. This is a typical Lozza contribution from the other day: In the end, it will be the unvaccinated that preserve the remnants of what used to be a liberal democracy.
I wonder if our contrarian friend supports Lozza's sentiment?
Lozza's output gets ever more crazy. I really don't know where it's all going to end up for him. I somehow can't quite go the whole "denounce this rancid far right commentator!" with him because it's a certain type of dense plonkery that comes through most strongly, plus those Lewises are still playing on repeat and there he still is as Hathaway.
Hathaway was one of my favourite characters on TV. Though I suppose any one of a number of competent actors could easily have played him.
I clearly have a different view on woke to you, and was pleased that someone on telly - an actor, FFS! - said what he did on Question Time. Which wasn't actually terribly controversial with the 90% of the country with its head not up its own arse. He should have stuck there. Or at least, stuck at that level - rational voice calling out the most egregious excesses of woke. Instead, he seems to have become intoxicated by notoriety and sought out edgier and edgier causes. He is, after all, an actor. A breed which lies for a living and often confuses its own intellect and abilities with those of the characters it portrays.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Why, if you are driving on the wrong side of the road whilst pi**ed out of your head and smoking a spliff, should you be stigmatised?
Because it endangers those around you?
What is wrong with pointing firearms, you believe to be unloaded, in random directions, and going "click"?
Statistically it is a one in a million that something goes wrong.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
I wonder whether and how teaching will be affected? I’ve already been asked to do online tutoring for children in China and Vietnam.
Water rising in New Orleans already on the anniversary of Katrina.
I changed my trend location to southern Louisiana so I could see what the people staying behind are talking about and it’s Wheat Thins and Triscuits. Fuck those are some thick skinned people. https://twitter.com/EmbryEthan/status/1431987118264315909
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
I wonder whether and how teaching will be affected? I’ve already been asked to do online tutoring for children in China and Vietnam.
In the short run, you'll do great as the middle classes of Asia demand your services. (Not just any teacher, but really good Western ones.)
In the medium term, those kids you teach will have grown up on YouTube and will speak perfect English and will have access to the same University courses as people who went to Cambridge or UCL or Lampeter. And they'll offer one-on-one teaching at a fraction of your price, and they'll eat your lunch.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I like lots of stuff that has limited appeal to many (NFL for example) but I really don’t “get” the appeal of F1
Do you mean Motor Racing in general, or specifically F1?
Specifically F1. I’m not a huge fan of motorsports in general but F1 seems to be more of a procession than the others.
It certainly seems to have that problem. I've been watching it for 25 years and there always seems to be a discussion going on about how they can make it easier to overtake. The new rules for next year are supposed to help, but then they say that pretty much every year.
I guess as a fan, the bits that I find exciting don't happen very often, but when they do, they're *really* exciting. Bit like Test Cricket!
I think that's true of all sports, especially if you're not into them. The only football match I've ever attended was a Derby - Milwall playoff at the New Den in ?94? We left after the third pitch invasion. It was an exciting match, but not an experience I'd like to repeat, not just because I was in the Milwall end and am from Derby! Aside from the invasion, it was a boring experience.
This morning I watched the Paralympics final of the wheelchair rugby. Someone scored every minute, and after a while even that became slightly stale. "Oh, someone's scored. Again."
I've followed a lot of motorsport over the years, and it all - rallying, BTCC, F2 and its precursors, Ginetta Juniors etc - can be boring. I've come to believe that you need the boring bits, to make the exciting bits more, well, exciting.
That was widely reported on the news on Friday. Five new songs, and some form of tour but done with holograms. Precise details yet to be fleshed out, but it's happening.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
I wonder whether and how teaching will be affected? I’ve already been asked to do online tutoring for children in China and Vietnam.
In the short run, you'll do great as the middle classes of Asia demand your services. (Not just any teacher, but really good Western ones.)
In the medium term, those kids you teach will have grown up on YouTube and will speak perfect English and will have access to the same University courses as people who went to Cambridge or UCL or Lampeter. And they'll offer one-on-one teaching at a fraction of your price, and they'll eat your lunch.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
Tried to make a Pen Farthing zinger out of this load of auld shite. Failed. I offer it to PB to see what you can do.
'The Swastika or Hammer and Sickle of this totalitarian society is a canopied penny-farthing bicycle, which we find emblazoned everywhere, from public buildings to the labels on tinned food.'
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
In which case we're all doomed anyway*, so what difference the immigration regime will make I don't know. It would still be cheaper for your remote worker in Portugal to keep on working remotely from Portugal even if we were still in the EU and therefore had a completely open border with Portugal.
*Well, most of us are doomed. Amongst the saved are those in niche high-end manufacturing that's too difficult to uproot/not worth the upheaval of moving somewhere with lower labour costs. (Buffs nails.)
That was widely reported on the news on Friday. Five new songs, and some form of tour but done with holograms. Precise details yet to be fleshed out, but it's happening.
Custom built concert venue in London Olympic Park from 2022 to 2025 before moving elsewhere. Only 24,000 seats a week though so may be hard to get tickets
Part of the problem with measuring the risks and rewards of vaccines for kids, is that it rather depends on what the background level of Covid is.
If there are a few hundred cases a day in the UK, the chances of a kid getting a real big viral load of Covid are pretty small.
If there are 100,000 cases a day, then the chances are 1,000x higher.
In the former case, most parents would choose not to give their kids the vaccine. In the latter, most would go with the vaccine.
But as with measles, we need to encourage as many people as possible to get the vaccine so that those who are willing, but for whom vaccines are ineffective (i.e. the immunocompromised) get the best protection possible.
Now: what is the best way to encourage?
In California, you simply can't go to a public school without a whole host of vaccinations (some of which were unknown to me as a Brit). Do we want to go down this route?
What about airplanes? Is it OK to restrict their usage to the vaccinated? What about buses, trains, and other public transport?
Is it OK for restaraunts to require vaccination? Is it OK for governments or councils to mandate it?
Is it OK for an employer to pay less to vaccine refuseniks on the basis they are more likely to spend time off sick?
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
I wonder whether and how teaching will be affected? I’ve already been asked to do online tutoring for children in China and Vietnam.
This is an interesting question. I think it may be different at the top end of the market from the rest. One thing my University has learned from the pandemic is the degree to which students appreciate (and demand) live tuition. It has damped any momentum towards "MOOCs" at my institution (thankfully) and caused us to re-commit to personalized, face-to-face, teaching. On the other hand, mass delivery of cut-price tuition -- typically cut-price because the assessment and accreditation are weak -- to the East will probably become a serious income stream for lower-ranked Universities, who have a shortfall because of fewer overseas students coming here at the moment, and perhaps some Sixth-Form Colleges will branch out as well.
I've also been approached many times by mostly Chinese institutions, offering considerable sums for relatively little contact time. The hourly rates would probably exceed even PBs top lawyers! Most of these, however, have some fine print about the students receiving a "recommendation letter" at the end of the module, and that's what they are really paying for. I'm not willing to write a recommendation that I don't believe in, so I haven't responded to any approach. If that clause were omitted, I'd probably consider it as I am motivated by inspiring young people to study my subject, no matter where in the world they live and even if they are privileged themselves (which they must be, to be paying so much).
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
This is both completely plausible and mainly bollocks. The big white working class vote for Leave could well have been driven by a calculation that fewer migrants = a tighter low paid labour market = higher wages. Just like the big white working class vote for Donald Trump could well have been driven by a calculation that he would import back all the lost manufacturing jobs from Mexico and China etc. But it wasn't and it wasn't. Thought out economics was in the mix, sure, but IDENTITY was the driver. This is more powerful than economics. That's why Leave won. It didn't come from a detached 'pros and cons' evaluation of the financial impact. It was identity. To maintain otherwise is 'alt PC' gone mad.
Part of the problem with measuring the risks and rewards of vaccines for kids, is that it rather depends on what the background level of Covid is.
If there are a few hundred cases a day in the UK, the chances of a kid getting a real big viral load of Covid are pretty small.
If there are 100,000 cases a day, then the chances are 1,000x higher.
In the former case, most parents would choose not to give their kids the vaccine. In the latter, most would go with the vaccine.
But as with measles, we need to encourage as many people as possible to get the vaccine so that those who are willing, but for whom vaccines are ineffective (i.e. the immunocompromised) get the best protection possible.
Now: what is the best way to encourage?
In California, you simply can't go to a public school without a whole host of vaccinations (some of which were unknown to me as a Brit). Do we want to go down this route?
What about airplanes? Is it OK to restrict their usage to the vaccinated? What about buses, trains, and other public transport?
Is it OK for restaraunts to require vaccination? Is it OK for governments or councils to mandate it?
Is it OK for an employer to pay less to vaccine refuseniks on the basis they are more likely to spend time off sick?
Excellent questions.
I will await the debate with opprobrium heaped upon only one side.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
A recent one was a claim that vaccines were ineffective at reducing the risk to young/healthy people.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
I wonder whether and how teaching will be affected? I’ve already been asked to do online tutoring for children in China and Vietnam.
This is an interesting question. I think it may be different at the top end of the market from the rest. One thing my University has learned from the pandemic is the degree to which students appreciate (and demand) live tuition. It has damped any momentum towards "MOOCs" at my institution (thankfully) and caused us to re-commit to personalized, face-to-face, teaching. On the other hand, mass delivery of cut-price tuition -- typically cut-price because the assessment and accreditation are weak -- to the East will probably become a serious income stream for lower-ranked Universities, who have a shortfall because of fewer overseas students coming here at the moment, and perhaps some Sixth-Form Colleges will branch out as well.
I've also been approached many times by mostly Chinese institutions, offering considerable sums for relatively little contact time. The hourly rates would probably exceed even PBs top lawyers! Most of these, however, have some fine print about the students receiving a "recommendation letter" at the end of the module, and that's what they are really paying for. I'm not willing to write a recommendation that I don't believe in, so I haven't responded to any approach. If that clause were omitted, I'd probably consider it as I am motivated by inspiring young people to study my subject, no matter where in the world they live and even if they are privileged themselves (which they must be, to be paying so much).
--AS
That’s already been a problem for some time of course. Look at the scandal over the University of Wales. And the only reason that became a scandal is because Leighton Andrews needed a pretext to close it after it told the sanctimonious little loser to do one. Many, even most, unis are running similarly dodgy courses.
But in the age of online teaching it will get much easier.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
A recent one was a claim that vaccines were ineffective at reducing the risk to young/healthy people.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
In which case we're all doomed anyway*, so what difference the immigration regime will make I don't know. It would still be cheaper for your remote worker in Portugal to keep on working remotely from Portugal even if we were still in the EU and therefore had a completely open border with Portugal.
*Well, most of us are doomed. Amongst the saved are those in niche high-end manufacturing that's too difficult to uproot/not worth the upheaval of moving somewhere with lower labour costs. (Buffs nails.)
We're not doomed.
It's just that those of us born in the UK or the US or Australia or wherever, well we got the Charlie Bucket golden ticket. We got to be better educated than people in the rest of the world, and we got to be paid more for our level of education and intelligence than we would get paid elsewhere in the world.
Of course we attracted immigrants! If you can earn more washing cars in Acton than as an accountant in Albania, then it's pretty logical to try and get to London.
But the world is changing. Technology means that education is going to be available to more people than ever before; and it means that someone can probably do your job for less, and without having to move country.
This doesn't mean we're doomed. It merely means that we'll receive the same reward for a piece of work as someone in Karachi, not a massive multiple based on the lottery of place of birth.
That'll be a hard pill for those in the West to swallow. But it'll be an incredibly opportunity for those in poorer parts of the world.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
A recent one was a claim that vaccines were ineffective at reducing the risk to young/healthy people.
"Its probably 'overwhelming' if you are an old or vulnerable person, sure, but if you are a young person having a vaccine is of no consequence whatever"
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he is talking nonsense, combined with a few of I'm-not-anti-vax-but-here's-another-anti-vax-meme
He has consistently questioned the prevailing orthodoxy while everyone else fell into line instantly.
He should be given a PB medal.
It is right to question whether the earth is round or flat, and whether heavier-than-air flight is even theoretically possible, but it is also right to arrive at the correct answer. His case against lockdown was too crude to be interesting (we're a load of greedy old struldbrugs jealously eking out our last miserable months of existence at the expense of the young), and if it's him vs every country in the world except Sweden which changed its mind anyway, I know who I am going with. And Covid passes, meh. You're going to need one if you ever want to leave the country again, and that's not up to our gumment, so why worry?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
In which case we're all doomed anyway*, so what difference the immigration regime will make I don't know. It would still be cheaper for your remote worker in Portugal to keep on working remotely from Portugal even if we were still in the EU and therefore had a completely open border with Portugal.
*Well, most of us are doomed. Amongst the saved are those in niche high-end manufacturing that's too difficult to uproot/not worth the upheaval of moving somewhere with lower labour costs. (Buffs nails.)
We're not doomed.
It's just that those of us born in the UK or the US or Australia or wherever, well we got the Charlie Bucket golden ticket. We got to be better educated than people in the rest of the world, and we got to be paid more for our level of education and intelligence than we would get paid elsewhere in the world.
Of course we attracted immigrants! If you can earn more washing cars in Acton than as an accountant in Albania, then it's pretty logical to try and get to London.
But the world is changing. Technology means that education is going to be available to more people than ever before; and it means that someone can probably do your job for less, and without having to move country.
This doesn't mean we're doomed. It merely means that we'll receive the same reward for a piece of work as someone in Karachi, not a massive multiple based on the lottery of place of birth.
That'll be a hard pill for those in the West to swallow. But it'll be an incredibly opportunity for those in poorer parts of the world.
Reverse emigration? When we earn a Polish wage, we’ll want to live at Polish prices.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
This is both completely plausible and mainly bollocks. The big white working class vote for Leave could well have been driven by a calculation that fewer migrants = a tighter low paid labour market = higher wages. Just like the big white working class vote for Donald Trump could well have been driven by a calculation that he would import back all the lost manufacturing jobs from Mexico and China etc. But it wasn't and it wasn't. Thought out economics was in the mix, sure, but IDENTITY was the driver. This is more powerful than economics. That's why Leave won. It didn't come from a detached 'pros and cons' evaluation of the financial impact. It was identity. To maintain otherwise is 'alt PC' gone mad.
Nah, it was a combination of both. The result, as we all know of course, was really quite close and economics would've been quite enough to tip the scales *if* there had been a sufficient number of middling voters who thought that they'd be worse off if we left.
If the UK were a net recipient of EU funds rather than a net contributor to them, for example, then I'm virtually certain that Remain would've won.
If identity were the sole or principal driver then Leave would've won by a much more substantial margin. The EU was never loved as an institution by the vast bulk of the electorate.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he is talking nonsense, combined with a few of I'm-not-anti-vax-but-here's-another-anti-vax-meme
He has consistently questioned the prevailing orthodoxy while everyone else fell into line instantly.
He should be given a PB medal.
It is right to question whether the earth is round or flat, and whether heavier-than-air flight is even theoretically possible, but it is also right to arrive at the correct answer. His case against lockdown was too crude to be interesting (we're a load of greedy old struldbrugs jealously eking out our last miserable months of existence at the expense of the young), and if it's him vs every country in the world except Sweden which changed its mind anyway, I know who I am going with. And Covid passes, meh. You're going to need one if you ever want to leave the country again, and that's not up to our gumment, so why worry?
I fear for the spirit of scientific enquiry with the attitude displayed by most on PB.
Don't cigarettes aid the bronchial tubes?
Everything is transparently obvious until it is not.
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
A recent one was a claim that vaccines were ineffective at reducing the risk to young/healthy people.
"Its probably 'overwhelming' if you are an old or vulnerable person, sure, but if you are a young person having a vaccine is of no consequence whatever"
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
A recent one was a claim that vaccines were ineffective at reducing the risk to young/healthy people.
"Its probably 'overwhelming' if you are an old or vulnerable person, sure, but if you are a young person having a vaccine is of no consequence whatever"
Which is close to the JCVI position is it not.
It really isn't. He was claiming that the vaccine was of "no consequence whatsoever" to young/healthy people. That claim is totally false. There is a legitimate question whether the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risk, but there is no doubt that the vaccines do have at least some benefit for all that take it.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
In which case we're all doomed anyway*, so what difference the immigration regime will make I don't know. It would still be cheaper for your remote worker in Portugal to keep on working remotely from Portugal even if we were still in the EU and therefore had a completely open border with Portugal.
*Well, most of us are doomed. Amongst the saved are those in niche high-end manufacturing that's too difficult to uproot/not worth the upheaval of moving somewhere with lower labour costs. (Buffs nails.)
We're not doomed.
It's just that those of us born in the UK or the US or Australia or wherever, well we got the Charlie Bucket golden ticket. We got to be better educated than people in the rest of the world, and we got to be paid more for our level of education and intelligence than we would get paid elsewhere in the world.
Of course we attracted immigrants! If you can earn more washing cars in Acton than as an accountant in Albania, then it's pretty logical to try and get to London.
But the world is changing. Technology means that education is going to be available to more people than ever before; and it means that someone can probably do your job for less, and without having to move country.
This doesn't mean we're doomed. It merely means that we'll receive the same reward for a piece of work as someone in Karachi, not a massive multiple based on the lottery of place of birth.
That'll be a hard pill for those in the West to swallow. But it'll be an incredibly opportunity for those in poorer parts of the world.
Reverse emigration? When we earn a Polish wage, we’ll want to live at Polish prices.
We're seeing that - in a small way - in the UK right now. Prices for housing in small towns is on the up, while prices in cities are being hit. People are choosing to live in cheaper places, as they're going to be increasingly working remote.
But what can be delivered to London from Devon or Powys, can also be delivered from Djibouti or Panama.
I would predict that cities become more like Las Vegas: they become entertainment spaces, where you go because you want to see a play or a gallery or to eat at a nice restaurant and to see some great architecture.
They won't be so much places of work.
Where this has the potential to be really painful is in countries where there are existing imbalances. If your country already imports more than it exports, and it finances this via people borrowing against their exceptionally expensive houses... then you could be in for a very rocky ride.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
I was wondering if giving everybody (who'd been vaccinated) a very mild dose of Original Covid (TM) might be a very effective strategy. And you'd want to give it in aerosol form.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
In which case we're all doomed anyway*, so what difference the immigration regime will make I don't know. It would still be cheaper for your remote worker in Portugal to keep on working remotely from Portugal even if we were still in the EU and therefore had a completely open border with Portugal.
*Well, most of us are doomed. Amongst the saved are those in niche high-end manufacturing that's too difficult to uproot/not worth the upheaval of moving somewhere with lower labour costs. (Buffs nails.)
We're not doomed.
It's just that those of us born in the UK or the US or Australia or wherever, well we got the Charlie Bucket golden ticket. We got to be better educated than people in the rest of the world, and we got to be paid more for our level of education and intelligence than we would get paid elsewhere in the world.
Of course we attracted immigrants! If you can earn more washing cars in Acton than as an accountant in Albania, then it's pretty logical to try and get to London.
But the world is changing. Technology means that education is going to be available to more people than ever before; and it means that someone can probably do your job for less, and without having to move country.
This doesn't mean we're doomed. It merely means that we'll receive the same reward for a piece of work as someone in Karachi, not a massive multiple based on the lottery of place of birth.
That'll be a hard pill for those in the West to swallow. But it'll be an incredibly opportunity for those in poorer parts of the world.
Reverse emigration? When we earn a Polish wage, we’ll want to live at Polish prices.
We're seeing that - in a small way - in the UK right now. Prices for housing in small towns is on the up, while prices in cities are being hit. People are choosing to live in cheaper places, as they're going to be increasingly working remote.
But what can be delivered to London from Devon or Powys, can also be delivered from Djibouti or Panama.
I would predict that cities become more like Las Vegas: they become entertainment spaces, where you go because you want to see a play or a gallery or to eat at a nice restaurant and to see some great architecture.
They won't be so much places of work.
Where this has the potential to be really painful is in countries where there are existing imbalances. If your country already imports more than it exports, and it finances this via people borrowing against their exceptionally expensive houses... then you could be in for a very rocky ride.
Isn’t it a good job the UK and US run a balance of payments surplus and a tight fiscal policy?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
A very good example of what I have been talking about.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
I thought people who had to be rescued from mountains were charged?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
Or, indeed, army vets who were injured because crap officers gave stupid orders in the hope of getting a tin medal.
We could be on a winner here...
Edit - I didn’t actually make my suggestion seriously, although I appreciate as a person of limited intelligence you may have missed that. But if you refuse to take a reasonable action to reduce the risk of harm and subsequently cause major damage, people do get blamed for it. It’s the same principle as causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
I thought people who had to be rescued from mountains were charged?
Not here. Elsewhere, yes. I once fell out of the Cresta run and thought I was too winded ever to move or speak again. Then I heard the pisteur radioing up a helicopter for me. That got me to my feet very rapidly.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
I thought people who had to be rescued from mountains were charged?
Not in the UK, but that does mean all mountain rescuers are volunteers.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
We need contrarians, but @contrarian is a disappointing example of the genre.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
Or, indeed, army vets who were injured because crap officers gave stupid orders in the hope of getting a tin medal.
We could be on a winner here...
Edit - I didn’t actually make my suggestion seriously, although I appreciate as a person of limited intelligence you may have missed that. But if you refuse to take a reasonable action to reduce the risk of harm and subsequently cause major damage, people do get blamed for it. It’s the same principle as causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
What about the flu? Have you ever had the flu (deaths by flu averaging 20-40,000/year) and not gone out in case you were contagious. Have you had the flu jab every year?
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
So, much as you may dislike this @rcs1000 I am with you on a lot of this. You are already seeing it. Facebook, Google et al delaying a return to the office and offering “work from wherever but take a pay cut” alternatives to staff, The advantage for firms is they can offer both slightly lower wages - which is a big saving on absolute terms - and reduce their property costs. For many tech firms - US and U.K. - it also means they don’t have to go through expensive Visa processes.
One slight caveat with the Indian analyst example. Our bank tried it nearly 20 years ago and it just didn’t work - the analysts would come in the morning and find some VOD from India had completely fucked up the models and / or decided to do their own thing. It may have changed now.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
Or, indeed, army vets who were injured because crap officers gave stupid orders in the hope of getting a tin medal.
We could be on a winner here...
Edit - I didn’t actually make my suggestion seriously, although I appreciate as a person of limited intelligence you may have missed that. But if you refuse to take a reasonable action to reduce the risk of harm and subsequently cause major damage, people do get blamed for it. It’s the same principle as causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
What about the flu? Have you ever had the flu (deaths by flu averaging 20-40,000/year) and not gone out in case you were contagious. Have you had the flu jab every year?
Yes, and paid for it.
The exception was last year when they ran out of jabs and I thought better to vaccinate the vulnerable than somebody like me who despite a few issues is basically healthy.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
This is both completely plausible and mainly bollocks. The big white working class vote for Leave could well have been driven by a calculation that fewer migrants = a tighter low paid labour market = higher wages. Just like the big white working class vote for Donald Trump could well have been driven by a calculation that he would import back all the lost manufacturing jobs from Mexico and China etc. But it wasn't and it wasn't. Thought out economics was in the mix, sure, but IDENTITY was the driver. This is more powerful than economics. That's why Leave won. It didn't come from a detached 'pros and cons' evaluation of the financial impact. It was identity. To maintain otherwise is 'alt PC' gone mad.
Nah, it was a combination of both. The result, as we all know of course, was really quite close and economics would've been quite enough to tip the scales *if* there had been a sufficient number of middling voters who thought that they'd be worse off if we left.
If the UK were a net recipient of EU funds rather than a net contributor to them, for example, then I'm virtually certain that Remain would've won.
If identity were the sole or principal driver then Leave would've won by a much more substantial margin. The EU was never loved as an institution by the vast bulk of the electorate.
You're straining to impose a desiccated broadsheet rationality onto what was an emotional tabloid happening. It's simply wrong. Sounds ok, but it's a complete misread of what actually went on.
In truth it wasn't close at all. On a FPTP basis it was a landslide. Take out London - a kingdom unto itself - plus some poncy uni enclaves and virtually the whole of England wanted out. Plus loads of people who emotionally quite fancied leaving wimped out through risk aversion (with the whole establishment telling them not to risk it). In terms of the real mood of the country it was 65/35 not 52/48.
And this was NOT about money. Money doesn't do that, not when the economics are so complex and arguable either way. It was about identity. We will not be bossed around by Brussels. There's way too many people coming over here. It's too easy. We're a soft touch. Any case we should be setting our own laws. It was meant to be a Common Market not a European Superstate. We don't need Europe. We just don't need them. We are British FFS. England. We stood alone in 41 we can do it again. Sick of being dictated to. We wanna be free once more. Like we used to be. Time to call a halt to this. It's time to TAKE BACK CONTROL.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
We need contrarians, but @contrarian is a disappointing example of the genre.
You can't pick and choose sadly. He has asked the questions. He has fulfilled a hugely important purpose. Is he right about everything he says? Of course not but for me the reaction to him has been instructive.
@rcs1000 posed some interesting questions earlier. According to PB consensus there is only one set of "correct" answers.
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
They will establish the Solent facts via a Test and get it Wight.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
Or, indeed, army vets who were injured because crap officers gave stupid orders in the hope of getting a tin medal.
We could be on a winner here...
Edit - I didn’t actually make my suggestion seriously, although I appreciate as a person of limited intelligence you may have missed that. But if you refuse to take a reasonable action to reduce the risk of harm and subsequently cause major damage, people do get blamed for it. It’s the same principle as causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
What about the flu? Have you ever had the flu (deaths by flu averaging 20-40,000/year) and not gone out in case you were contagious. Have you had the flu jab every year?
Yes, and paid for it.
The exception was last year when they ran out of jabs and I thought better to vaccinate the vulnerable than somebody like me who despite a few issues is basically healthy.
You are the exception. Most people hadn't given it a second thought.
Plus you are young, just about to embark upon a new career (your students as one rise up to rejoice). What are you doing having the flu jab? It's for those over 50.
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
They will establish the Solent facts via a Test and get it Wight.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
We need contrarians but not contrarian. He's not a moron though. He's a troll who's having a good time on here. Like you.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
They will establish the Solent facts via a Test and get it Wight.
Sounds so me like they Havant a clue.
Are they going straight to human trials, or experimenting with Cowes?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
Or, indeed, army vets who were injured because crap officers gave stupid orders in the hope of getting a tin medal.
We could be on a winner here...
Edit - I didn’t actually make my suggestion seriously, although I appreciate as a person of limited intelligence you may have missed that. But if you refuse to take a reasonable action to reduce the risk of harm and subsequently cause major damage, people do get blamed for it. It’s the same principle as causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
What about the flu? Have you ever had the flu (deaths by flu averaging 20-40,000/year) and not gone out in case you were contagious. Have you had the flu jab every year?
Yes, and paid for it.
The exception was last year when they ran out of jabs and I thought better to vaccinate the vulnerable than somebody like me who despite a few issues is basically healthy.
You are the exception. Most people hadn't given it a second thought.
Plus you are young, just about to embark upon a new career (your students as one rise up to rejoice). What are you doing having the flu jab? It's for those over 50.
Actually they’re not rejoicing. Don’t confuse them with the soldiers who were relieved to see a fat posh git you moved to GSO where you could do no more harm.
I have it to protect others and to minimise my time off work. It’s called selflessness. You should try it sometime. But it may be a bit late given your age and utter lack of self awareness.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
We need contrarians but not contrarian. He's not a moron though. He's a troll who's having a good time on here. Like you.
I know the discussion is relatively complex but that was embarrassing by any measure.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
When discussing science Contrarian is filling the part of creationists. He adds nothing but noise and lies and has done from the beginning. Way back he kept promoting that woman who claimed that covid only had a 0.01 fatality rate and it would be pointed out that almost twice the official population of the uk must be living here and must all have got it to make that "Fact" true. He would be debunked then the following day would come on repeating it again
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
They will establish the Solent facts via a Test and get it Wight.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who is cheering that? Who has proposed it? How would it even work? There has never been compulsory vaccination of adults in this country, and I don't see it happening.
That's great and leaving aside the Covid Pass which allows people to participate in normal life, so why are you giving @contrarian such a hard time.
Because he's unvaccinated and sharing antivaxx memes, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
He deserves a hard time for that does he not?
He has chosen not to let the government tell him what to put inside his body.
And questioned lockdown.
We absolutely need such voices.
You can question things without lying and bullshitting.
We don't need such voices.
I haven't checked out his lies. What was the most egregious of them?
He does so regularly, sharing antivaxx memes and lies.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
Is it not the case that the risks to the young from Covid are sufficiently small such that there is a live debate about the relative merits of that vs getting the vaccine.
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
Contrarian says things that are palpably untrue and repeats them again and again after being called out. The JCVI don't.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
It is the scientific process. You need Michie and you need @contrarian.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But he's just an idiot. We have seen footage from Italy and NYC and South America and India showing what out of control covid does. He's like someone at the tail end of the blitz insisting there's still no real evidence that getting people off the streets and into air raid shelters helps stop them being blown up. I was arguing vigorously this time last year that we were probably years away from even one workable vaccine, might not even get that, etc. The scientific method is about being shown to be wrong and admitting it.
You are a funny old sausage.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
@contrarian gets a lot of stick on here. I don’t agree necessarily with 100pc of the stuff - and I take a different view on the anti-vaxx front - but you need to challenge the orthodoxy sometimes and, by and large, I think he (is he a he?) puts across his points in a considered and argued manner.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
There are zillions of examples of the orthodoxy being overturned. As I said it's obvious until it isn't obvious. But if no one asks the questions then nothing moves forward.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
A very good example of what I have been talking about.
Lock 'em up.
No explanation of why it is that a collective punishment beating of the whole population to save the NHS (which is all that previous lockdowns were, after all) is actually preferable to a selective punishment beating of the fraction of the population responsible for the imminent collapse of the healthcare system.
Leaving refusers just to take the risk of getting sick and taking their chances is, arguably, a better option than either, but what if it's not available?
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Might make you feel better, but it makes no difference to capacity constraints under the circumstances being discussed. The refusers will take up the same number of hospital beds regardless of whether you're whacking them with exemplary charges or not - unless you get around the problem with option 4.
But jesus fucking christ. We are facing a grave threat which has the potential to kill many of us.
And PB almost to a man (person) embraced then and is embracing now illiberal measures unprecedented in our own times. Yes it is an unprecedented pandemic but the way people on here are completely suspending their normal critical faculties is a sight to behold.
No one knows what long term effects the vaccine has but more important, you are all cheering mandatory vaccination. The government forcing people to inject something into their bodies.
Quite extraordinary.
Who's supporting mandatory vaccinations?
Mandatory vaccinations as a condition of employment is as old as vaccinations themselves. That's entirely reasonable just as the mandatory wearing of a uniform as a condition of employment.
Being antivaxx or unvaccinated should be as socially stigmatised and viewed as irresponsible as drinking and driving. But unlike that it shouldn't be illegal.
Why if you are unvaccinated should you be stigmatised?
Setting aside whether you should, whether you will is heavily dependent on circumstances.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
I know freedom is a bastard.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
In the scenario that I described - anti-vaxxers threatening to clog the arteries of the healthcare system - there would appear to be only four available courses of action:
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse 2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected 3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual 4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Option 5 - charge them for the treatment they get?
Good idea. And charge three day eventers when they fall off or mountaineers when they have an accident or people who have been scarred by bad teaching when they were at school and need counselling.
Or, indeed, army vets who were injured because crap officers gave stupid orders in the hope of getting a tin medal.
We could be on a winner here...
Edit - I didn’t actually make my suggestion seriously, although I appreciate as a person of limited intelligence you may have missed that. But if you refuse to take a reasonable action to reduce the risk of harm and subsequently cause major damage, people do get blamed for it. It’s the same principle as causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
What about the flu? Have you ever had the flu (deaths by flu averaging 20-40,000/year) and not gone out in case you were contagious. Have you had the flu jab every year?
Yes, and paid for it.
The exception was last year when they ran out of jabs and I thought better to vaccinate the vulnerable than somebody like me who despite a few issues is basically healthy.
You are the exception. Most people hadn't given it a second thought.
Plus you are young, just about to embark upon a new career (your students as one rise up to rejoice). What are you doing having the flu jab? It's for those over 50.
Actually they’re not rejoicing. Don’t confuse them with the soldiers who were relieved to see a fat posh git you moved to GSO where you could do no more harm.
I have it to protect others and to minimise my time off work. It’s called selflessness. You should try it sometime. But it may be a bit late given your age and utter lack of self awareness.
Back to ignoring you, you stupid old failure.
What have you thought about for an alternative career? Apparently they are in desperate need of baristas which, after a few months retraining, you might have a chance at doing?
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
They will establish the Solent facts via a Test and get it Wight.
Itchen to discover the outcome.
I hope they come out against boosters. It's the Needles I object to.
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
They will establish the Solent facts via a Test and get it Wight.
Your comment is giving me the Needle. The test might need you to take a Ryde to Cowes.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
So, much as you may dislike this @rcs1000 I am with you on a lot of this. You are already seeing it. Facebook, Google et al delaying a return to the office and offering “work from wherever but take a pay cut” alternatives to staff, The advantage for firms is they can offer both slightly lower wages - which is a big saving on absolute terms - and reduce their property costs. For many tech firms - US and U.K. - it also means they don’t have to go through expensive Visa processes.
One slight caveat with the Indian analyst example. Our bank tried it nearly 20 years ago and it just didn’t work - the analysts would come in the morning and find some VOD from India had completely fucked up the models and / or decided to do their own thing. It may have changed now.
I think initial experiments of outsourcing parts of the analyst role failed because they thought "building models" was a role distinct from the team.
So you'd have a bunch of people in X, who would know Excel and accounting, but wouldn't know anything about the industry they were supposed to be modeling.
In the future, there won't be a Mumbai Model Team, there'll be a couple of members of the Morgan Stanley Capital Goods research team who are remote.
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Telegraph saying the decision as to when and who gets booster is awaiting results of a major trial led by Southampton
They will establish the Solent facts via a Test and get it Wight.
An alternative take on Brexit-induced worker shortages:
Employers have only a limited range of options if they find themselves short of staff and it is not possible to call up reinforcements from overseas. They can invest more in labour-saving equipment; they can invest more in training to raise skill levels; or they can pay more in order to attract staff. It is not immediately obvious why any of these should be either impossible or undesirable.
Naturally, companies cannot solve immediate labour shortage issues by ramping up training or buying new kit. Both take time to organise and to have any real impact. That only really leaves the option of paying higher wages, which explains why Tesco is offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus for new lorry drivers.
...
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brexit divided the nation in the way it did. If you were in a relatively well-paid job and not at risk of being replaced or undercut by a worker from overseas, you were likely to vote remain. The Polish plumber was cheaper, the Lithuanian nanny was better educated, so what was not to like?
If, on the other hand, you were part of Britain’s casualised workforce, needing two or more part-time jobs to get by, you were much more likely to vote leave, on the grounds that tougher controls on migration would lead to a tighter labour market, which in turn would push up wages.
For those who have nothing to fear from open borders, labour shortages are evidence Brexit is flawed. For those not so fortunate, it is doing what it was supposed to do.
In a globalised world, is it easier to take the jobs overseas, or to train up the people here?
Offshoring is unnecessary on labour shortage grounds in better paid sectors, where companies will be able to bring workers in from abroad if they need to: the main point of regaining control of the borders is to cut off the limitless flow of coffee shop baristas and chancers looking for casual labour on building sites or in hand car washes, not to exclude computer programmers. OTOH it's mostly an empty threat to low-paid work. You can't offshore supermarket shelf stacking or wiping the arses of the demented.
So,
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing. Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
So, much as you may dislike this @rcs1000 I am with you on a lot of this. You are already seeing it. Facebook, Google et al delaying a return to the office and offering “work from wherever but take a pay cut” alternatives to staff, The advantage for firms is they can offer both slightly lower wages - which is a big saving on absolute terms - and reduce their property costs. For many tech firms - US and U.K. - it also means they don’t have to go through expensive Visa processes.
One slight caveat with the Indian analyst example. Our bank tried it nearly 20 years ago and it just didn’t work - the analysts would come in the morning and find some VOD from India had completely fucked up the models and / or decided to do their own thing. It may have changed now.
I think initial experiments of outsourcing parts of the analyst role failed because they thought "building models" was a role distinct from the team.
So you'd have a bunch of people in X, who would know Excel and accounting, but wouldn't know anything about the industry they were supposed to be modeling.
In the future, there won't be a Mumbai Model Team, there'll be a couple of members of the Morgan Stanley Capital Goods research team who are remote.
Kind of like the theory that you can design stuff in the UK and get Johnny Far easterner to do the manufacturing. If you want to design new widgets, you can't beat having a widget factoryt on site for prototyping.
The argument around the economic impact of a reduced labour market is complex and has many nuances.
To this observer, the most obvious impact is rising labour costs should be leading companies to invest in improving business processes through technology whether though improved business systems or even the use of robots. It's not a question of whether a robot can serve you coffee (probably could) but whether the current way the process of ordering, preparation and delivery can be made more efficient and improved.
The skilled worker will be at an advantage if the skills are transferrable - they can almost command a wage, either you pay me more or I'm off to a company that will.
The alternative approach is to look to outsource - in a sense, home or remote working is a form of outsourcing especially if organisations take the opportunity to reduce or re-configure their space away from the traditional banks of desks to something more useful. Obviously, the thorny old issue of sending it all to a business park in Bangalore will raise its head but are the savings that obvious?
We've already heard @rcs1000 claiming there'll be a new push for outsourcing - I doubt it. Companies and organisations who mange their property portfolios adroitly will realise some significant benefits.
As for unskilled workers, they too will be better off at least initially subject to them performing a function which can't be easily automated. The suspicion is future immigration policy will be focussed on bridging perceived or actual skills gaps or temporary requirements for unskilled workers.
The other aspect of home or remote working is the re-invigoration of commuter towns and dormitories during the day as places for home workers to go for lunch or entertainment. That may be to the detriment of the City centre but the small town or village and especially those with a few artisan or "unique" shops is going to prosper.
The Tory backbenchers who queued up to lambast the prime minister in the Commons see further evidence that Boris Johnson is no good in a crisis. Reputational damage has also been inflicted on the prime minister’s titular deputy, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab. If a contest to be the next leader of the Conservative party were to be held tomorrow, the chancellor would be the man to beat.
One reason for Mr Johnson to resent Mr Sunak is that he is not the chancellor that the prime minister thought he was getting when he promoted the much younger man to Number 11. His expectation then was that he would be an unshowy and pliant next-door neighbour willing to rubber-stamp all the cheques that the prime minister wanted to cash to make himself popular. [Yet] is keen on self-promotion with a talent for charming Tory MPs.
Jealousy may be another factor at work. Mr Johnson’s personal money troubles are a persistent topic of conversation among his friends and a source of stories that generate a stink.
It is against this background of paranoia and recrimination in Downing Street that the government is heading into an autumn during which spending and debt will be dominant and highly divisive issues.
A relationship made toxic by personal resentments, ideological differences and rival ambitions is a highly combustible cocktail.
Comments
Anyway, I must be off.
The support band was called Duran Duran - anyone know what became of them?
For example those faculties that distinguish between permitted vaccination, vaccination encouraged by professionals and nudged in that direction by society, and mandatory vaccination.
--AS
We don't need such voices.
Because it endangers those around you?
note the launchers for enhanced piscenes on the back of the vehicle....
Then whines when they criticise him further.
No, contrarian isn’t really an asset.
I clearly have a different view on woke to you, and was pleased that someone on telly - an actor, FFS! - said what he did on Question Time. Which wasn't actually terribly controversial with the 90% of the country with its head not up its own arse.
He should have stuck there. Or at least, stuck at that level - rational voice calling out the most egregious excesses of woke. Instead, he seems to have become intoxicated by notoriety and sought out edgier and edgier causes.
He is, after all, an actor. A breed which lies for a living and often confuses its own intellect and abilities with those of the characters it portrays.
I'm going to disagree incredibly vehemently with you.
Off-shoring: first they came for the textiles staff, and I said nothing.
Then they came for the call center staff, and I said nothing.
Then they came for the transcription staff, and I said nothing.
You know what's coming next - accelerated by Covid and working from home - a whole ton of professional industries.
Take my business (Just). Pre-covid, we had a dozen staff in the UK, of which 4 or 5 were immigrants. We now have maybe 16 people working for the UK entity. But there's no London office any more.
Our designer has relocated back to Portugal, because she can earn near London wages, but live in her own apartment rather than a house share. One developer returned to Oz. Two new developers are working from Poland. And our head of software engineering can't decide whether to stay in an apartment in London with his wife and small child, or head back to Latvia.
That's a massive shift. If we don't need people to work from London any more, then we can have all the advantages of a pan European labour pool but without the expensive London real estate. Great for us, great for people who need to pay rent in London, but not actually great for the pay rates of developers in London. They are now competing with people who have much lower costs of living.
The same is happening with things like accounting. Why have a bookkeeper based in London? Invoices are all electronic these days, and I can probably get somebody for 70 or 80% less in India or Malaysia.
What next? What about conveyancing and other bread-and-butter legal services. If a man with an English law degree can do it in Bangalore, why not? Law firms increasingly become brass plates, with all the work done by those overseas.
At Morgan Stanley, they're hiring MBAs from the best business schools in India, and putting them together as analyst support. So, instead of a senior US analyst having two American MBAs at $500,000 apiece working for them, they have three Indians at $100,000.
It starts in support roles, and then those offshore people will move to the main roles. One of those Indian MBAs will write such good research, that it won't make sense replacing the American with another expensive Stanford MBA - not when the man from Bangalore only wants a quarter of his salary.
Covid is accelerating a trend that high end work - thought work, professional work - can be delivered by people with funny names in places with much lower costs.
Off shoring is coming for all of us.
Statistically it is a one in a million that something goes wrong.
Yet such behaviour is frowned upon.
ABBA are reforming.
I think.
https://twitter.com/ABBA/status/1432021476107030532
Fuck those are some thick skinned people.
https://twitter.com/EmbryEthan/status/1431987118264315909
In the medium term, those kids you teach will have grown up on YouTube and will speak perfect English and will have access to the same University courses as people who went to Cambridge or UCL or Lampeter. And they'll offer one-on-one teaching at a fraction of your price, and they'll eat your lunch.
A society like ours can arguably afford the luxury of leaving anti-vaxxers alone because there aren't that many of them. However, if it turns out that there are a sufficient number of them getting sick to clog the hospitals and force the Government to start bringing back restrictions, then an awful lot of people are going to want something done to remedy the situation. That can only mean compulsory jabs, backed up with punitive impositions on those who continue to refuse (such as mandatory confinement to their own homes, to get them out of circulation.)
And could you seriously criticise the compliant 90%+ of the population for demanding this? Lockdowns to try to free up healthcare capacity for the sake of stubborn vaccine refusers is a pretty hard sell for any Government.
This morning I watched the Paralympics final of the wheelchair rugby. Someone scored every minute, and after a while even that became slightly stale. "Oh, someone's scored. Again."
I've followed a lot of motorsport over the years, and it all - rallying, BTCC, F2 and its precursors, Ginetta Juniors etc - can be boring. I've come to believe that you need the boring bits, to make the exciting bits more, well, exciting.
If people have been vaccinated then they greatly lessen the impact of Covid.
And there would be many activities that should be banned if your aim is to free up NHS resources.
I offer it to PB to see what you can do.
'The Swastika or Hammer and Sickle of this totalitarian society is a canopied penny-farthing bicycle, which we find emblazoned everywhere, from public buildings to the labels on tinned food.'
https://twitter.com/ConHome/status/1432029025782820865?s=20
*Well, most of us are doomed. Amongst the saved are those in niche high-end manufacturing that's too difficult to uproot/not worth the upheaval of moving somewhere with lower labour costs. (Buffs nails.)
Only 24,000 seats a week though so may be hard to get tickets
If there are a few hundred cases a day in the UK, the chances of a kid getting a real big viral load of Covid are pretty small.
If there are 100,000 cases a day, then the chances are 1,000x higher.
In the former case, most parents would choose not to give their kids the vaccine. In the latter, most would go with the vaccine.
But as with measles, we need to encourage as many people as possible to get the vaccine so that those who are willing, but for whom vaccines are ineffective (i.e. the immunocompromised) get the best protection possible.
Now: what is the best way to encourage?
In California, you simply can't go to a public school without a whole host of vaccinations (some of which were unknown to me as a Brit). Do we want to go down this route?
What about airplanes? Is it OK to restrict their usage to the vaccinated? What about buses, trains, and other public transport?
Is it OK for restaraunts to require vaccination? Is it OK for governments or councils to mandate it?
Is it OK for an employer to pay less to vaccine refuseniks on the basis they are more likely to spend time off sick?
I've also been approached many times by mostly Chinese institutions, offering considerable sums for relatively little contact time. The hourly rates would probably exceed even PBs top lawyers! Most of these, however, have some fine print about the students receiving a "recommendation letter" at the end of the module, and that's what they are really paying for. I'm not willing to write a recommendation that I don't believe in, so I haven't responded to any approach. If that clause were omitted, I'd probably consider it as I am motivated by inspiring young people to study my subject, no matter where in the world they live and even if they are privileged themselves (which they must be, to be paying so much).
--AS
Well worth a read.
I will await the debate with opprobrium heaped upon only one side.
In the past 24 hours he's claimed that the young are better off catching Covid than being vaccinated (not true) and that the risk to the young from Covid is less than being struck by lightning (completely wrong).
He's no better than Susan Michie.
But in the age of online teaching it will get much easier.
It's just that those of us born in the UK or the US or Australia or wherever, well we got the Charlie Bucket golden ticket. We got to be better educated than people in the rest of the world, and we got to be paid more for our level of education and intelligence than we would get paid elsewhere in the world.
Of course we attracted immigrants! If you can earn more washing cars in Acton than as an accountant in Albania, then it's pretty logical to try and get to London.
But the world is changing. Technology means that education is going to be available to more people than ever before; and it means that someone can probably do your job for less, and without having to move country.
This doesn't mean we're doomed. It merely means that we'll receive the same reward for a piece of work as someone in Karachi, not a massive multiple based on the lottery of place of birth.
That'll be a hard pill for those in the West to swallow. But it'll be an incredibly opportunity for those in poorer parts of the world.
"Its probably 'overwhelming' if you are an old or vulnerable person, sure, but if you are a young person having a vaccine is of no consequence whatever"
How is what @contrarian says so different from the JCVI position.
If the UK were a net recipient of EU funds rather than a net contributor to them, for example, then I'm virtually certain that Remain would've won.
If identity were the sole or principal driver then Leave would've won by a much more substantial margin. The EU was never loved as an institution by the vast bulk of the electorate.
Contrarian is just an antivaxx extreme equivalent of Michie. I do not see much praise on this website for her, every argument you use in favour of contrarian could be repeated for Michie. Both are questioning, uncompromising zealots who don't engage with reality.
When did you last praise Michie? Or anyone else from that extreme?
Don't cigarettes aid the bronchial tubes?
Everything is transparently obvious until it is not.
I'm a little confused - I'm reading contradictory reports about a booster vaccination this autumn. I had originally thought it would be targeted at a large group (certainly the 50+ and those clinically vulnerable) but I now see it may only be offered to the very elderly (80+and the clinically vulnerable).
The argument seems to be twofold - one, those who are already doubly vaccinated have a significant degree of protection against the virus and two, a mild dose of the virus provides more comprehensive and longer lasting immunity than a vaccination.
In other words, if we all get a mild dose of the virus, so much the better.
I'm not wholly convinced I follow that reasoning if that is the reasoning.
Vigorous debate.
As I said, his position on vaxxing children is the same as that of the JCVI.
But what can be delivered to London from Devon or Powys, can also be delivered from Djibouti or Panama.
I would predict that cities become more like Las Vegas: they become entertainment spaces, where you go because you want to see a play or a gallery or to eat at a nice restaurant and to see some great architecture.
They won't be so much places of work.
Where this has the potential to be really painful is in countries where there are existing imbalances. If your country already imports more than it exports, and it finances this via people borrowing against their exceptionally expensive houses... then you could be in for a very rocky ride.
1. Allow healthcare system to become swamped and to collapse
2. Lock everybody up to try to stop refusers from getting infected
3. Lock refusers up to try to stop then from getting infected, so everyone else can carry on as usual
4. Let refusers get infected but then transport them to a massive tent hospital somewhere in the Midlands if and when they get sick, with one army medic between every fifty patients, and abandon them to their fate. That way they have the freedom to get ill and bear the consequences, whilst NHS capacity is still preserved for everyone else
Option 3 is probably preferable to option 4 and certainly preferable to options 1 and 2. I don't view this as being particularly controversial.
Ah....
Lock 'em up.
We could be on a winner here...
Edit - I didn’t actually make my suggestion seriously, although I appreciate as a person of limited intelligence you may have missed that. But if you refuse to take a reasonable action to reduce the risk of harm and subsequently cause major damage, people do get blamed for it. It’s the same principle as causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
You have a guy who has questioned the government at every turn. I know you are a huge fan of Boris et al but the reaction to him ( @contrarian ) has been unmitigated opprobrium.
Society needs contrarians. Everyone agrees, right? But of course the defining characteristic of a contrarian is that no one believes what they say and, further, ridicules them with a near-religious certainty.
You believe that @contrarian is foolish, absurd and heretical. Fair enough.
One slight caveat with the Indian analyst example. Our bank tried it nearly 20 years ago and it just didn’t work - the analysts would come in the morning and find some VOD from India had completely fucked up the models and / or decided to do their own thing. It may have changed now.
The exception was last year when they ran out of jabs and I thought better to vaccinate the vulnerable than somebody like me who despite a few issues is basically healthy.
In truth it wasn't close at all. On a FPTP basis it was a landslide. Take out London - a kingdom unto itself - plus some poncy uni enclaves and virtually the whole of England wanted out. Plus loads of people who emotionally quite fancied leaving wimped out through risk aversion (with the whole establishment telling them not to risk it). In terms of the real mood of the country it was 65/35 not 52/48.
And this was NOT about money. Money doesn't do that, not when the economics are so complex and arguable either way. It was about identity. We will not be bossed around by Brussels. There's way too many people coming over here. It's too easy. We're a soft touch. Any case we should be setting our own laws. It was meant to be a Common Market not a European Superstate. We don't need Europe. We just don't need them. We are British FFS. England. We stood alone in 41 we can do it again. Sick of being dictated to. We wanna be free once more. Like we used to be. Time to call a halt to this. It's time to TAKE BACK CONTROL.
@rcs1000 posed some interesting questions earlier. According to PB consensus there is only one set of "correct" answers.
That can't be right.
Plus you are young, just about to embark upon a new career (your students as one rise up to rejoice). What are you doing having the flu jab? It's for those over 50.
The simple fact is no one can say for sure some of his points won’t be proved right down the line. I hope not but they could be. We are always told to not jump to short term conclusions. The potential unintended consequences of the vaccine rollout remain to be seen.
At the risk of going down the Godwin’s Law route, a certain Mr Winston S Churchill was considered a conspiracy crank for much of the 30s due to his comments on a certain Herr A Hitler.
a fat posh gityou moved to GSO where you could do no more harm.I have it to protect others and to minimise my time off work. It’s called selflessness. You should try it sometime. But it may be a bit late given your age and utter lack of self awareness.
Back to ignoring you, you stupid old failure.
Who is looking after the cats and dogs?
Leaving refusers just to take the risk of getting sick and taking their chances is, arguably, a better option than either, but what if it's not available? Might make you feel better, but it makes no difference to capacity constraints under the circumstances being discussed. The refusers will take up the same number of hospital beds regardless of whether you're whacking them with exemplary charges or not - unless you get around the problem with option 4.
Keep us posted.
So you'd have a bunch of people in X, who would know Excel and accounting, but wouldn't know anything about the industry they were supposed to be modeling.
In the future, there won't be a Mumbai Model Team, there'll be a couple of members of the Morgan Stanley Capital Goods research team who are remote.
To this observer, the most obvious impact is rising labour costs should be leading companies to invest in improving business processes through technology whether though improved business systems or even the use of robots. It's not a question of whether a robot can serve you coffee (probably could) but whether the current way the process of ordering, preparation and delivery can be made more efficient and improved.
The skilled worker will be at an advantage if the skills are transferrable - they can almost command a wage, either you pay me more or I'm off to a company that will.
The alternative approach is to look to outsource - in a sense, home or remote working is a form of outsourcing especially if organisations take the opportunity to reduce or re-configure their space away from the traditional banks of desks to something more useful. Obviously, the thorny old issue of sending it all to a business park in Bangalore will raise its head but are the savings that obvious?
We've already heard @rcs1000 claiming there'll be a new push for outsourcing - I doubt it. Companies and organisations who mange their property portfolios adroitly will realise some significant benefits.
As for unskilled workers, they too will be better off at least initially subject to them performing a function which can't be easily automated. The suspicion is future immigration policy will be focussed on bridging perceived or actual skills gaps or temporary requirements for unskilled workers.
The other aspect of home or remote working is the re-invigoration of commuter towns and dormitories during the day as places for home workers to go for lunch or entertainment. That may be to the detriment of the City centre but the small town or village and especially those with a few artisan or "unique" shops is going to prosper.
(Yeah, that’s a feeble one, but it’s the best I could manage, Southampton not being a Cinque port.)
The Tory backbenchers who queued up to lambast the prime minister in the Commons see further evidence that Boris Johnson is no good in a crisis. Reputational damage has also been inflicted on the prime minister’s titular deputy, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab. If a contest to be the next leader of the Conservative party were to be held tomorrow, the chancellor would be the man to beat.
One reason for Mr Johnson to resent Mr Sunak is that he is not the chancellor that the prime minister thought he was getting when he promoted the much younger man to Number 11. His expectation then was that he would be an unshowy and pliant next-door neighbour willing to rubber-stamp all the cheques that the prime minister wanted to cash to make himself popular. [Yet] is keen on self-promotion with a talent for charming Tory MPs.
Jealousy may be another factor at work. Mr Johnson’s personal money troubles are a persistent topic of conversation among his friends and a source of stories that generate a stink.
It is against this background of paranoia and recrimination in Downing Street that the government is heading into an autumn during which spending and debt will be dominant and highly divisive issues.
A relationship made toxic by personal resentments, ideological differences and rival ambitions is a highly combustible cocktail.