I’m not aware of research, but I’d take the view that haters will hate.
If the fat girl / asthmatic boy isn’t beaten up for same sex parents they will be beaten up for something else. Kids can be vile.
How international is this? I never experienced bullying in any form except for a brief period when I was at a school for English expats in Vienna, where it was common (and the teachers still smacked kids, to little effect). I mentioned casually to my parents that someone had tried to push a kid out of the moving school bus and they said WHAT! and whipped me out of there and into the American counterpart overnight. I was quite upset not to say goodbye to friends, but I never encountered a single bit of bullying in the next 7 years at American-led international schools.
I've heard of it in Denmark and Germany ("mobbing"). Are US schools generally better at handling it? Or was it just a biased sample, as the international schools are full of kids of diplomamts and businesspeople? But in that case, why was the English one so much worse?
How international is bullying at school. Oh Nick, bless. And not in the US/American schools?
There was no bullying at my Washington DC school that I can remember. At my English boarding school bullying was practically the school sport; even the teachers joined in. I was a second tier bully more given to mockery, impersonation and derogatory nicknames rather than outright violence.
Didn't you hoist a kid you didn't like up a flagpole by his y-fronts?
No, but I stole somebody's trousers and stuck them up a chimney. He burst into the maths class clad from the waist down in a towel and said in a piping querulous voice, "Sir! Sir! Dura Ace has my trousers!"
I remember a documaentary on TV many years ago about his father. It showed a clip of the young JRM (11yrs I think) reading a copy of the FT (I think it was pink). He also opined ona few issues. He was a supercilious Git then as he is now.
Was it the French doc from this tweet I posted a few weeks ago?
Apart from the lessons of Northern Rock's "borrow short, lend long" collapse for domestic gas suppliers.
And all other lessons.
What I don’t get is why is the government talk about bailing out the small companies with crappy business models. They took a risk and their equity should be wiped out
Transfer the customers and agree a subsidy between the current rate and the average spot rate over the next 6-9 months. You can’t ask a company to buy into a loss making contract without support
The energy space is far too 'busy' imo. Tons of separate players all milling around and falling over each other being "creative" (ie misleading customers in trying to make themselves look different) and "entrepreneurial" (ie reckless in pursuit of a buck) when what they're supplying is essentially the same bread & butter necessity.
The core requirement, the only requirement, is a safe and reliable power supply at a stable uniform price affordable by all. But no, this wouldn't be exciting enough, so instead we have a smorgasbord of arcanary; caps and collars, fixed v floating rates, short deals and long deals, salary incentives, bonuses, share options, boardroom games, shareholder angst and pressure, the bosses troughing and posturing, golden hellos, golden goodbyes, customer discounts for switching contracts, people paying wildly different tariffs, savvy types tracking their options 24/7 online and making savings, others who need the money more stuck on bad deals, or not understanding the deal they're on, paying over the odds, etc, the whole thing is ridiculous.
Competition = good is a mantra which really does need to be challenged. Often, as here, and as per another example, banking, it leads to valueless, truth-obscuring complexity in how things are done and the public end up being ill-served. With such sectors I get a strong sense of something that's really a public utility, which would be better and logically run that way.
Except that competition works.
Yes it has issues. But the customer is better placed with a competitive environment than one where a monopoly public sector behemoth ends up running poorly with no challenge.
And if companies fail that shouldn't be considered a market failure but the market working as intended. Bad business models fail, good ones thrive.
Sometimes, sometimes not. It's wrong to assume either way. You need to look at it case by case.
Is the product essentially the same? Is the product a necessity of life?
If the answer is "Yes" to both of the above, it means Provision is more important than Choice, and public ownership should be considered.
Why?
And the product isn't essentially the same, unless you think coal fired power is the same as wind generated power, and "clean energy" is how some companies have been distinguishing themselves for years.
"The UK has slashed its strategic gas storage to barely 1.7pc of annual demand by closing the Rough facility off the Yorkshire coast, subcontracting the costly task of storage to Germany and the Netherlands."
Telegraph
Sounds like Business Sec could be in real shit here this winter.
Massive shit. As @Morris_Dancer pointed out this has been brewing for a long time. We've been making strategically stupid decisions in energy since the "dash for gas" days. You can only rely on North Sea Gas as your energy reserve if you haven't let the privatised utilities burn through it already.
For all of the bluster the UK has been increasingly and heavily reliant on exports for decades. Too much focus on prices and competition and profiteering, not enough on where the energy is coming from and what drives the prices.
So here we are. Reliant on imported gas with fuck all storage, reliant on imported electricity with no membership of the regulated European energy market (and nothing to replace it). A unique to Britain massive price spike in electricity threatening business ruin food shortages and blackouts.
We may avoid it. But why the fuck has Johnson let us slide out here to the edge? Global Britain who can't keep the lights on? Watch him spin our power crisis as some kind of environmental statement for COP26.
Headlines that have aged well, part 471
"Sturgeon told ‘find new customer’ for independent Scotland's energy as UK would cut ties"
I thought you were going to link to Nicola opposing the deveulopment of North Sea oil fields so as to reduce our imports.
‘Our’ imports? I assume after Indy your huffy old rump Unionists won’t be wanting Scottish oil anyway, best get used to it now.
If there was ever indy the rUK government would of course play hardball and ensure that as much North Sea Oil as possible stayed in the rUK, especially given BP has played a big role in extracting it and has its HQ in London
"Who gets what" would be governed by international law and while there might be arguing at the edges there's not a lot of room for "hard ball" by anyone.
Ultimately as Westminster is sovereign and can make its own laws regardless of what international law says even if it tends to abide by it and Scotland would be a new state with international laws previously covering the UK which is a sovereign state which Scotland is not yet where the boundary for North Sea oil went would be up for negotiation. Certainly Scotland would not be getting all of it, even if they got most of it England and Wales and NI would want its share too
You can have no idea, nor can any of us, over these matters as indyref2 is years away and sources of energy are changing
What I do know however is that if there is ever an indyref2 allowed by the UK government and Scotland votes Yes, Scotland would immediately be treated as a foreign nation from that point having voted to leave the Union. The government of England and Wales and NI would look after its own interests first in Scexit negotiations and trade deal discussions exactly as the EU treated the UK as a foreign power after the Brexit vote in the subsequent negotiations.
That would apply to North Sea Oil , or what is left of it, as much as anything else
I’m not aware of research, but I’d take the view that haters will hate.
If the fat girl / asthmatic boy isn’t beaten up for same sex parents they will be beaten up for something else. Kids can be vile.
How international is this? I never experienced bullying in any form except for a brief period when I was at a school for English expats in Vienna, where it was common (and the teachers still smacked kids, to little effect). I mentioned casually to my parents that someone had tried to push a kid out of the moving school bus and they said WHAT! and whipped me out of there and into the American counterpart overnight. I was quite upset not to say goodbye to friends, but I never encountered a single bit of bullying in the next 7 years at American-led international schools.
I've heard of it in Denmark and Germany ("mobbing"). Are US schools generally better at handling it? Or was it just a biased sample, as the international schools are full of kids of diplomamts and businesspeople? But in that case, why was the English one so much worse?
How international is bullying at school. Oh Nick, bless. And not in the US/American schools?
There was no bullying at my Washington DC school that I can remember. At my English boarding school bullying was practically the school sport; even the teachers joined in. I was a second tier bully more given to mockery, impersonation and derogatory nicknames rather than outright violence.
Didn't you hoist a kid you didn't like up a flagpole by his y-fronts?
No, but I stole somebody's trousers and stuck them up a chimney. He burst into the maths class clad from the waist down in a towel and said in a piping querulous voice, "Sir! Sir! Dura Ace has my trousers!"
I remember a documaentary on TV many years ago about his father. It showed a clip of the young JRM (11yrs I think) reading a copy of the FT (I think it was pink). He also opined ona few issues. He was a supercilious Git then as he is now.
It may have been The Times he was reading. After all, his father was its Editor. That probably explains quite a lot about JRM.
So does the fact that his dad is Somerset Lloyd-James in Simon Raven's Alms for Oblivion.
Welsh Labour’s party conference in November has been cancelled due to high cases of covid and pressure on the NHS. expected at that time of year does that mean other large scale events could be in jeopardy come the winter months?
No, just Drakeford is a wet blanket, hospitalisations still low due to the vaccinations
Follow the link below, and look at the blue line in Figure 5. And then read this: ... in our more recent data (since mid-April 2021), infections and hospitalisations began to re-converge, potentially reflecting the increased prevalence and severity of Delta compared with Alpha [25], a changing age mix of severe cases, and possible waning of protection [19,26]. https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/90800/2/react1_r13_final_preprint_final.pdf
In short, the increased severity of the Delta variant has essentially cancelled out the benefit from vaccination, as far as the rate of hospitalisation per infection is concerned.
That doesn't mean there is no longer any benefit from vaccination, because vaccination still has a big benefit in lowering the risk of being infected in the first place - and thereby the risk of being hospitalised.
But people really need to stop parroting the old mantra about vaccination reducing the percentage of those infected who go to hospital. It doesn't.
Yes, it does. As well as all the studies showing the protection against severe infection (which is invariably far higher than the protection against any level of breakthrough infection, making it arithmetically inescapable that vaccination reduces the percentage of those infected who go to hospital), the ratio between infections (measured by the ONS) in England and hospitalisations and deaths is considerably lower now than before.
(Use of the daily infection incidence numbers in the ONS survey for England, against the hospitalisations figure lagged by 20 days (as suggested in the REACT study) and multiplied by 20 to normalise close to an equal-sized peak at its worst (and implying an average of 5% IHR at worst), and deaths lagged by 27 days (also as suggested in the REACT study) and multiplied by 75 for similar normalisation of the relative peaks.
You're going to have to explain the consistently lower red and black lines in the recent wave - especially in the face of data suggesting that Delta is twice as likely to hospitalise people than Alpha (so the line should be twice as high as the blue peak).
One factor may be that we are finding a far higher percentage of infected people than before through widespread asymptomatic testing (schools and workplaces).
This is the result of the ONS infection survey, so it shouldn't be sensitive to that.
I tend to agree, but the data is confused. The positive cases data suggest that vastly fewer are going to hospital and dying, the REACT study positive test vs hospitalisation suggests otherwise.
I genuinely don't know the answer.
No, the ONS infection incidence data suggests the same as the positive cases data - that the proportion of those infected who go on to be hospitalised or die has reduced a long way.
But not in the study posted?
Then the study posted was wrong because it fails to match the objective quantifiable data we have before us. Or other studies.
But it suits Chris's agenda so he'll keep quoting it. No different to Indy Sage.
There's a reason why I often refer to him as @Chris (tina Pagel)
I note its a preprint - it may have failed peer review by now...
"The UK has slashed its strategic gas storage to barely 1.7pc of annual demand by closing the Rough facility off the Yorkshire coast, subcontracting the costly task of storage to Germany and the Netherlands."
Telegraph
Sounds like Business Sec could be in real shit here this winter.
Massive shit. As @Morris_Dancer pointed out this has been brewing for a long time. We've been making strategically stupid decisions in energy since the "dash for gas" days. You can only rely on North Sea Gas as your energy reserve if you haven't let the privatised utilities burn through it already.
For all of the bluster the UK has been increasingly and heavily reliant on exports for decades. Too much focus on prices and competition and profiteering, not enough on where the energy is coming from and what drives the prices.
So here we are. Reliant on imported gas with fuck all storage, reliant on imported electricity with no membership of the regulated European energy market (and nothing to replace it). A unique to Britain massive price spike in electricity threatening business ruin food shortages and blackouts.
We may avoid it. But why the fuck has Johnson let us slide out here to the edge? Global Britain who can't keep the lights on? Watch him spin our power crisis as some kind of environmental statement for COP26.
Headlines that have aged well, part 471
"Sturgeon told ‘find new customer’ for independent Scotland's energy as UK would cut ties"
I thought you were going to link to Nicola opposing the deveulopment of North Sea oil fields so as to reduce our imports.
‘Our’ imports? I assume after Indy your huffy old rump Unionists won’t be wanting Scottish oil anyway, best get used to it now.
Maybe Shetland, Orkney and Aberdeenshire could remain part of the UK, along with the borders? They don't seem to swallow the nationalism shit. I am sure you wouldn't want to deny them their democratic rights?
Not only that, the Scots do not want independence
It is an interesting thought though isn't it? The geographical area in Scotland that voted in favour of "independence" is tiny, and yet the loony English haters would have you believe everyone across Scotland is in favour. I was in the Highlands a few weeks ago, and it is pretty obvious that genuine Highlanders have more in common with the rural folk of the Yorkshire Dales, or Cornishmen on Bodmin than they do with the clean living folk of Glasgow.
You are very much on the money
Having lived for some years in the Borders and have a close association with NE Scotland, the rupture across Scotland if independence came about would make Brexit look like a walk in the park
Nice quote from Mrs T in 1988 on that thread. For those who might have missed it:
"Just think for a moment what a prospect that is. A single market without barriers - visible or invisible - giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people. Bigger than Japan. Bigger than the United States. On your doorstep. It's not a dream. It's not a vision. It's not some bureaucrat's plan. It's for real.
"You might say: weren't we supposed to have a common market already? Wasn't that the reason we joined Europe in the first place? Weren't we promised all this in 1973?
"Europe wasn't open for business. Underneath the rhetoric, the old barriers remained. Not just against the outside world, but between the European countries. Not the classic barriers of tariffs, but the insidious ones of differing national standards, various restrictions on the provision of services, exclusion of foreign firms from public contracts. Now that's going to change. Britain has given the lead."
Interesting aside in that quote that demonstrates just how much the EU has failed in the decades since. At the time the late, great MrsT said that the EEC was indeed I believe bigger than the USA like she said. Despite only being 12 nations at the time.
However by 2016 Europe had collapsed as a share of the world's economy. The Europe of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people that Thatcher spoke about no longer exists.
The world's wealthiest and most prosperous people now are throughout the globe and despite the EU now having 27 not 12 nations, it's collective GDP is now down to barely 70% of the USA's as opposed to greater even than the USA anymore.
That's why it's time to stop being parochial about our continent and to embrace the globe.
Nice try Philip, predictable as ever. People with your simplistic and populist views trashed her legacy. Boris Johnson (remember when you used to be his biggest fan?) continues to trash it further, with one objective only: his ego.
The energy crisis started in the late 80s when the sector was deregulated. We've mentioned the dash for gas - not only did it help burn off our North Sea reserves it also bust the market for coal.
What did that mean? We went from digging coal from profitable pits a short distance from the power station to shutting the pits and importing coal from Venezuela and Brazil. Once you start importing its easy to keep doing it - suddenly imported coal is expensive so both imports and CCS are off the table and coal generation goes.
But its alright as we have all these gas power stations. Except that the gas is increasingly imported. But its alright as we have nuclear. Yeah right, we can't build new ones. But its alright as we have these interconnectors and the energy market is regulated. Until an interconnector burns out and we quit the regulated market.
Whilst there have been errors piled on errors this lot have been in government for 11 years. How will they blame someone else or what they have done - and haven't done - in that time?
There are those who are demanding Cambo is stopped and the Cumbria coal mine planning refused then complain over energy supply crisis
I really fear that we are all, not just here in the UK, but across the globe going to experience the clash between climate change demands (COP26) and the reality that most everyone wants to deal with it but then cannot accept an abrupt and sudden spike in energy prices which underpins all economic activity
The eco warriors on the M25 have infuriated drivers and it would appear 59/25 oppose the demonstrations again indicating that you have to take the public with you and their wallets
The Cumbrian mine is irrelevant now - we needed to not shut the pits and then not shut the power stations.
Yes, viable green energy is a global issue. The explosive price increase in the UK and only the UK is not a global issue. We can't blame the EU or remoaners or stoppy French idiots for this. Quitting the EU regulated energy market left us wide open to this but as usual we thought it was crap as its the EU and didn't need replacing.
Whoops.
I have been listening to the various contributors on Sky this morning and it is fiendishly complex and is not a Brexit issue
Indeed it seems that Ed Miliband's energy price cap enacted by Therese May is a factor in the crisis
Its certainly complex, but are we really going to insist that our departure from the regulated market has nothing to do with the vast increase only in UK prices?
I've not got a detailed understanding about this, so correct me if I'm wrong, but... isn't the main driver of the difference in UK/non-UK prices rises due to an interconnector fire in Kent? That is, we're stuck having to generate more of our own electricity. That could have happened just as easily with us within the EU, right?
It was that which is used to smooth supply plus...a huge flood in demand for energy globally; Russia is being unhelpful and restricting demand as per the AEP article; maintenance on gas platforms in the North Sea; we have had some nuclear outage; and the wind hasn't been blowing in the past few weeks.
According to R4 this morning (08.13).
Yes. It’s a lot of bad luck, but the basic failure by all governments over the last 20-30 years is to fail to understand you need multiple levels of redundancy for strategic supplies like food and energy.
Do we have any water systems that could be turned into a significant pumped storage battery in the UK ? Could we create one, or do we need to go Lithium ion for storage here ?
There have been experiments with raising/lowering weights as a form of storage. Could be of use in areas with lots of disused deep mine shafts. My hazy scientific grasp is that a substance denser than water e.g. stone or metal would be more efficient than raising/lowering water.
It's a great idea until you start to consider the scale required to be useful. Dinorwic gives you 1.8GW for about 5 hours run flat out from full. To do so it takes around 390 tones of water falling 100m per second. That's 3,900 tons falling 10m a second, or 39,000 tons at 1m/second. If we dig a hole for our 40k ton weight to go down 1km deep, it will equal Dinorwic for 17 minutes. That's before you start looking at the engineering problem posed by dangling 40k tons down a 1km mineshaft on a rope.
Nice idea, but it just doesn't scale big enough sensibly.
And which is why pumped storage isn't any easy answer - you still need alot of Dinorwic's to deal with intermittency from renewables such as solar and wind.
One interesting idea I came across was using compressed air storage - beating the problem of energy loss on expansion to cooling, by using the cooling to manufacture liquid gases for free..... Making that add up would be an interesting one, though.
Dinorwic is enormous and well worth a visit
Not as worth it as it once was.. From wiki
"The power station was also promoted as a tourist attraction, with visitors able to take a minibus trip from "Electric Mountain" - the name of its nearby visitor centre - to see the workings inside the power station; 132,000 people visited the attraction in 2015. However, the centre is now closed with no prospect of reopening."
Also from wiki..
" The project – begun in 1974 and taking ten years to complete at a cost of £425 million – was the largest civil engineering contract ever awarded by the UK government at the time. .... The scheme paid for itself within two years.[citation needed]"
I went through it years ago and I must admit I did not know tours had ended
I wonder if that's because no one wants to go any more, or if it's because the counter-terrorism lot suggested that running tours of strategic targets was a little bit foolish.
As a kid, I went on a tour of a Magnox nuclear power station, including wandering round in the control room whilst it was online - can't imagine that being allowed now.
I think many would want to go on the tour but maybe it is an operational issue
Not posted for a while but thought I would mention that in Denmark, after we removed all final covid restrictions we continue to see declining case numbers /hospitalisations. On the metro in Copenhagen you do see a few people in masks and at the supermarket it is now just normal to keep distance in the queue but apart from that everything is normal.
A Danish view on AUKUS is that the UK's role as security partner is at risk - but that the UK has to a large extent been pushed away and the depth of its security role was ignored on the grounds that the UK would be irrelevant for the US after brexit and it wouldn't matter - starting to dawn on the government here that their tough brexit stance might have consequences they didn't expect.
Nice to get a continental view from not France/Germany and from one of the UK's more traditional allies.
Your last sentence is a headache I expect Eurocrats are waking up to this morning. Pushing the UK away over the last 4 years was bound to have consequences for the EU. The EU got high on its own supply believing its own propaganda about how the UK would be sidelined by Brexit. That was always unrealistic, the UK is still the world's 5th largest economy and has a very capable military along with being a permanent security council member. The UK will always have a seat at the table and be in the room.
I now have a picture of having a seat at the table but not being in the room… are we on the balcony perhaps?
The main difference between Kennedy and 99% of Classic FM listeners (and probably Radio 3 listeners)? Kennedy is actually a musician.
The funny thing about Classic FM is that none of the ultra-snobs admit it has the same function for classical music that cheap Merlot serves to the fine wine business. Gateway drug. Nearly no-one starts with the most inaccessible stuff or the most expensive....
Nice quote from Mrs T in 1988 on that thread. For those who might have missed it:
"Just think for a moment what a prospect that is. A single market without barriers - visible or invisible - giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people. Bigger than Japan. Bigger than the United States. On your doorstep. It's not a dream. It's not a vision. It's not some bureaucrat's plan. It's for real.
"You might say: weren't we supposed to have a common market already? Wasn't that the reason we joined Europe in the first place? Weren't we promised all this in 1973?
"Europe wasn't open for business. Underneath the rhetoric, the old barriers remained. Not just against the outside world, but between the European countries. Not the classic barriers of tariffs, but the insidious ones of differing national standards, various restrictions on the provision of services, exclusion of foreign firms from public contracts. Now that's going to change. Britain has given the lead."
Interesting aside in that quote that demonstrates just how much the EU has failed in the decades since. At the time the late, great MrsT said that the EEC was indeed I believe bigger than the USA like she said. Despite only being 12 nations at the time.
However by 2016 Europe had collapsed as a share of the world's economy. The Europe of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people that Thatcher spoke about no longer exists.
The world's wealthiest and most prosperous people now are throughout the globe and despite the EU now having 27 not 12 nations, it's collective GDP is now down to barely 70% of the USA's as opposed to greater even than the USA anymore.
That's why it's time to stop being parochial about our continent and to embrace the globe.
There is no reason to expect us to be better at exporting to these fast growing markets outside the EU than inside - and actually plenty of reasons to think the opposite. Here is the % increase in imports by emerging market and developing countries (in USD) from a selection of major economies over the 20 years to 2020:
Germany: 338% Italy: 213% France: 182% The Euro Area: 293%
United States: 118% Japan: 168%
United Kingdom: 122%.
Bottom line: the EU countries increased their exports more than the non-EU countries.
(Data from the IMF's Direction of Trade database. I'm using the most recent 20 year period, which more or less matches the period since China joined the WTO, but using 2019 to avoid Covid disruption doesn't change the relative picture).
"The UK has slashed its strategic gas storage to barely 1.7pc of annual demand by closing the Rough facility off the Yorkshire coast, subcontracting the costly task of storage to Germany and the Netherlands."
Telegraph
Sounds like Business Sec could be in real shit here this winter.
Massive shit. As @Morris_Dancer pointed out this has been brewing for a long time. We've been making strategically stupid decisions in energy since the "dash for gas" days. You can only rely on North Sea Gas as your energy reserve if you haven't let the privatised utilities burn through it already.
For all of the bluster the UK has been increasingly and heavily reliant on exports for decades. Too much focus on prices and competition and profiteering, not enough on where the energy is coming from and what drives the prices.
So here we are. Reliant on imported gas with fuck all storage, reliant on imported electricity with no membership of the regulated European energy market (and nothing to replace it). A unique to Britain massive price spike in electricity threatening business ruin food shortages and blackouts.
We may avoid it. But why the fuck has Johnson let us slide out here to the edge? Global Britain who can't keep the lights on? Watch him spin our power crisis as some kind of environmental statement for COP26.
Headlines that have aged well, part 471
"Sturgeon told ‘find new customer’ for independent Scotland's energy as UK would cut ties"
I thought you were going to link to Nicola opposing the deveulopment of North Sea oil fields so as to reduce our imports.
‘Our’ imports? I assume after Indy your huffy old rump Unionists won’t be wanting Scottish oil anyway, best get used to it now.
Maybe Shetland, Orkney and Aberdeenshire could remain part of the UK, along with the borders? They don't seem to swallow the nationalism shit. I am sure you wouldn't want to deny them their democratic rights?
Not only that, the Scots do not want independence
It is an interesting thought though isn't it? The geographical area in Scotland that voted in favour of "independence" is tiny, and yet the loony English haters would have you believe everyone across Scotland is in favour. I was in the Highlands a few weeks ago, and it is pretty obvious that genuine Highlanders have more in common with the rural folk of the Yorkshire Dales, or Cornishmen on Bodmin than they do with the clean living folk of Glasgow.
You are very much on the money
Having lived for some years in the Borders and have a close association with NE Scotland, the rupture across Scotland if independence came about would make Brexit look like a walk in the park
I am quite surprised that no-one seems to talk up the possibility of the partition of Scotland post Indy ref. One could argue that it is the Nats that wish to drive it. I mean, why should the folk of the Borders, Orkney, Shetland or Aberdeenshire be steamrollered into something they don't want? Surely they should be allowed a subsequent referendum if the Central Belt want to bully them? It could be a Remain or Remain question. Do you wish to Remain part of the UK or part of Independent Sturgeon-land?
Not posted for a while but thought I would mention that in Denmark, after we removed all final covid restrictions we continue to see declining case numbers /hospitalisations. On the metro in Copenhagen you do see a few people in masks and at the supermarket it is now just normal to keep distance in the queue but apart from that everything is normal.
A Danish view on AUKUS is that the UK's role as security partner is at risk - but that the UK has to a large extent been pushed away and the depth of its security role was ignored on the grounds that the UK would be irrelevant for the US after brexit and it wouldn't matter - starting to dawn on the government here that their tough brexit stance might have consequences they didn't expect.
Nice to get a continental view from not France/Germany and from one of the UK's more traditional allies.
Your last sentence is a headache I expect Eurocrats are waking up to this morning. Pushing the UK away over the last 4 years was bound to have consequences for the EU. The EU got high on its own supply believing its own propaganda about how the UK would be sidelined by Brexit. That was always unrealistic, the UK is still the world's 5th largest economy and has a very capable military along with being a permanent security council member. The UK will always have a seat at the table and be in the room.
I now have a picture of having a seat at the table but not being in the room… are we on the balcony perhaps?
Isn't the balcony reserved for the Hereford Boat Club?
Nice quote from Mrs T in 1988 on that thread. For those who might have missed it:
"Just think for a moment what a prospect that is. A single market without barriers - visible or invisible - giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people. Bigger than Japan. Bigger than the United States. On your doorstep. It's not a dream. It's not a vision. It's not some bureaucrat's plan. It's for real.
"You might say: weren't we supposed to have a common market already? Wasn't that the reason we joined Europe in the first place? Weren't we promised all this in 1973?
"Europe wasn't open for business. Underneath the rhetoric, the old barriers remained. Not just against the outside world, but between the European countries. Not the classic barriers of tariffs, but the insidious ones of differing national standards, various restrictions on the provision of services, exclusion of foreign firms from public contracts. Now that's going to change. Britain has given the lead."
Interesting aside in that quote that demonstrates just how much the EU has failed in the decades since. At the time the late, great MrsT said that the EEC was indeed I believe bigger than the USA like she said. Despite only being 12 nations at the time.
However by 2016 Europe had collapsed as a share of the world's economy. The Europe of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people that Thatcher spoke about no longer exists.
The world's wealthiest and most prosperous people now are throughout the globe and despite the EU now having 27 not 12 nations, it's collective GDP is now down to barely 70% of the USA's as opposed to greater even than the USA anymore.
That's why it's time to stop being parochial about our continent and to embrace the globe.
Nice try Philip, predictable as ever. People with your simplistic and populist views trashed her legacy. Boris Johnson (remember when you used to be his biggest fan?) continues to trash it further, with one objective only: his ego.
Nice try Nigel but her legacy was trashed by Delors and those who followed which is why Europe has collapsed as a share of global GDP. Even relative to other developed nations like she name checked in that speech.
Quite objectively the facts have changed since she spoke and when the facts change, it's time to change your mind.
Thatcher wasn't afraid to challenge the status quo. Thatcher wasn't afraid to change our trading arrangements to embrace what she called the wealthiest and most prosperous people.
By 2021 those people aren't in Europe. That's why the appropriate Thatcherite thing to do is to not be afraid of reform and to embrace change to be able to liberalise trade with the wealthiest and most prosperous people in the planet in 2021. Which is what Brexit allows.
The main difference between Kennedy and 99% of Classic FM listeners (and probably Radio 3 listeners)? Kennedy is actually a musician.
The funny thing about Classic FM is that none of the ultra-snobs admit it has the same function for classical music that cheap Merlot serves to the fine wine business. Gateway drug. Nearly no-one starts with the most inaccessible stuff or the most expensive....
Indeed. It is to musical understanding what Mark Francois is to political philosophy.
Nice quote from Mrs T in 1988 on that thread. For those who might have missed it:
"Just think for a moment what a prospect that is. A single market without barriers - visible or invisible - giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people. Bigger than Japan. Bigger than the United States. On your doorstep. It's not a dream. It's not a vision. It's not some bureaucrat's plan. It's for real.
"You might say: weren't we supposed to have a common market already? Wasn't that the reason we joined Europe in the first place? Weren't we promised all this in 1973?
"Europe wasn't open for business. Underneath the rhetoric, the old barriers remained. Not just against the outside world, but between the European countries. Not the classic barriers of tariffs, but the insidious ones of differing national standards, various restrictions on the provision of services, exclusion of foreign firms from public contracts. Now that's going to change. Britain has given the lead."
Interesting aside in that quote that demonstrates just how much the EU has failed in the decades since. At the time the late, great MrsT said that the EEC was indeed I believe bigger than the USA like she said. Despite only being 12 nations at the time.
However by 2016 Europe had collapsed as a share of the world's economy. The Europe of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people that Thatcher spoke about no longer exists.
The world's wealthiest and most prosperous people now are throughout the globe and despite the EU now having 27 not 12 nations, it's collective GDP is now down to barely 70% of the USA's as opposed to greater even than the USA anymore.
That's why it's time to stop being parochial about our continent and to embrace the globe.
Nice try Philip, predictable as ever. People with your simplistic and populist views trashed her legacy. Boris Johnson (remember when you used to be his biggest fan?) continues to trash it further, with one objective only: his ego.
Nice try Nigel but her legacy was trashed by Delors and those who followed which is why Europe has collapsed as a share of global GDP. Even relative to other developed nations like she name checked in that speech.
Quite objectively the facts have changed since she spoke and when the facts change, it's time to change your mind.
Thatcher wasn't afraid to challenge the status quo. Thatcher wasn't afraid to change our trading arrangements to embrace what she called the wealthiest and most prosperous people.
By 2021 those people aren't in Europe. That's why the appropriate Thatcherite thing to do is to not be afraid of reform and to embrace change to be able to liberalise trade with the wealthiest and most prosperous people in the planet in 2021. Which is what Brexit allows.
You are entitled to your view Philip, but I don't think you understand the first thing about Mrs Thatcher, her philosophy, or the times she/we lived through. If you did, you would never have been such a fanbois of Mr. Johnson.
The main difference between Kennedy and 99% of Classic FM listeners (and probably Radio 3 listeners)? Kennedy is actually a musician.
The funny thing about Classic FM is that none of the ultra-snobs admit it has the same function for classical music that cheap Merlot serves to the fine wine business. Gateway drug. Nearly no-one starts with the most inaccessible stuff or the most expensive....
Indeed. It is to musical understanding what Mark Francois is to political philosophy.
Do you practise curling your lip in distaste, in the mirror?
Nice quote from Mrs T in 1988 on that thread. For those who might have missed it:
"Just think for a moment what a prospect that is. A single market without barriers - visible or invisible - giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people. Bigger than Japan. Bigger than the United States. On your doorstep. It's not a dream. It's not a vision. It's not some bureaucrat's plan. It's for real.
"You might say: weren't we supposed to have a common market already? Wasn't that the reason we joined Europe in the first place? Weren't we promised all this in 1973?
"Europe wasn't open for business. Underneath the rhetoric, the old barriers remained. Not just against the outside world, but between the European countries. Not the classic barriers of tariffs, but the insidious ones of differing national standards, various restrictions on the provision of services, exclusion of foreign firms from public contracts. Now that's going to change. Britain has given the lead."
Interesting aside in that quote that demonstrates just how much the EU has failed in the decades since. At the time the late, great MrsT said that the EEC was indeed I believe bigger than the USA like she said. Despite only being 12 nations at the time.
However by 2016 Europe had collapsed as a share of the world's economy. The Europe of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people that Thatcher spoke about no longer exists.
The world's wealthiest and most prosperous people now are throughout the globe and despite the EU now having 27 not 12 nations, it's collective GDP is now down to barely 70% of the USA's as opposed to greater even than the USA anymore.
That's why it's time to stop being parochial about our continent and to embrace the globe.
Nice try Philip, predictable as ever. People with your simplistic and populist views trashed her legacy. Boris Johnson (remember when you used to be his biggest fan?) continues to trash it further, with one objective only: his ego.
Is it fair to say that you didn't expect to see something like this?
Welsh Labour’s party conference in November has been cancelled due to high cases of covid and pressure on the NHS. expected at that time of year does that mean other large scale events could be in jeopardy come the winter months?
No, just Drakeford is a wet blanket, hospitalisations still low due to the vaccinations
Follow the link below, and look at the blue line in Figure 5. And then read this: ... in our more recent data (since mid-April 2021), infections and hospitalisations began to re-converge, potentially reflecting the increased prevalence and severity of Delta compared with Alpha [25], a changing age mix of severe cases, and possible waning of protection [19,26]. https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/90800/2/react1_r13_final_preprint_final.pdf
In short, the increased severity of the Delta variant has essentially cancelled out the benefit from vaccination, as far as the rate of hospitalisation per infection is concerned.
That doesn't mean there is no longer any benefit from vaccination, because vaccination still has a big benefit in lowering the risk of being infected in the first place - and thereby the risk of being hospitalised.
But people really need to stop parroting the old mantra about vaccination reducing the percentage of those infected who go to hospital. It doesn't.
Yes, it does. As well as all the studies showing the protection against severe infection (which is invariably far higher than the protection against any level of breakthrough infection, making it arithmetically inescapable that vaccination reduces the percentage of those infected who go to hospital), the ratio between infections (measured by the ONS) in England and hospitalisations and deaths is considerably lower now than before.
(Use of the daily infection incidence numbers in the ONS survey for England, against the hospitalisations figure lagged by 20 days (as suggested in the REACT study) and multiplied by 20 to normalise close to an equal-sized peak at its worst (and implying an average of 5% IHR at worst), and deaths lagged by 27 days (also as suggested in the REACT study) and multiplied by 75 for similar normalisation of the relative peaks.
You're going to have to explain the consistently lower red and black lines in the recent wave - especially in the face of data suggesting that Delta is twice as likely to hospitalise people than Alpha (so the line should be twice as high as the blue peak).
One factor may be that we are finding a far higher percentage of infected people than before through widespread asymptomatic testing (schools and workplaces).
This is the result of the ONS infection survey, so it shouldn't be sensitive to that.
I tend to agree, but the data is confused. The positive cases data suggest that vastly fewer are going to hospital and dying, the REACT study positive test vs hospitalisation suggests otherwise.
I genuinely don't know the answer.
No, the ONS infection incidence data suggests the same as the positive cases data - that the proportion of those infected who go on to be hospitalised or die has reduced a long way.
But not in the study posted?
Then the study posted was wrong because it fails to match the objective quantifiable data we have before us. Or other studies.
But it suits Chris's agenda so he'll keep quoting it. No different to Indy Sage.
There's a reason why I often refer to him as @Chris (tina Pagel)
I note its a preprint - it may have failed peer review by now...
Given the ONS data for infection exists - why use anything else for an academic study, where a lag of a week or 2 in getting the data is not important?
Their biggest creditor by some distance is the Chinese state, via state owned banks, so there's some degree of uncertainty as to how this plays out. Subordinate lenders are definitely fncked, of course.
Their biggest creditor by some distance is the Chinese state, via state owned banks, so there's some degree of uncertainty as to how this plays out. Subordinate lenders are definitely fncked, of course.
"Their biggest creditor by some distance is the Chinese state"
Why am I reminded of the last x times that a Chinese financial comedy happened and it turned out it was based on giving loans to stupid companies because oligarchs in the Party said so?
The main difference between Kennedy and 99% of Classic FM listeners (and probably Radio 3 listeners)? Kennedy is actually a musician.
The funny thing about Classic FM is that none of the ultra-snobs admit it has the same function for classical music that cheap Merlot serves to the fine wine business. Gateway drug. Nearly no-one starts with the most inaccessible stuff or the most expensive....
Hendrix is inaccessible ? I'm with Kennedy on this - "Jurassic FM".
High genetic barrier to SARS-CoV-2 polyclonal neutralizing antibody escape https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04005-0 The number and variability of the neutralizing epitopes targeted by polyclonal antibodies in SARS-CoV-2 convalescent and vaccinated individuals are key determinants of neutralization breadth and the genetic barrier to viral escape1–4. Using HIV-1 pseudotypes and plasma-selection experiments with vesicular stomatitis virus/SARS-CoV-2 chimeras5, we show that multiple neutralizing epitopes, within and outside the receptor binding domain (RBD), are variably targeted by human polyclonal antibodies. Antibody targets coincide with spike sequences that are enriched for diversity in natural SARS-CoV-2 populations. By combining plasma-selected spike substitutions, we generated synthetic ‘polymutant’ spike protein pseudotypes that resisted polyclonal antibody neutralization to a similar degree as circulating variants of concern (VOC). By aggregating VOC-associated and antibody-selected spike substitutions into a single polymutant spike protein, we show that 20 naturally occurring mutations in SARS-CoV-2 spike are sufficient to generate pseudotypes with near-complete resistance to the polyclonal neutralizing antibodies generated by convalescents or mRNA vaccine recipients. Strikingly, however, plasma from individuals who had been infected and subsequently received mRNA vaccination, neutralized pseudotypes bearing this highly resistant SARS-CoV-2 polymutant spike, or diverse sarbecovirus spike proteins. Thus, optimally elicited human polyclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 should be resilient to substantial future SARS-CoV-2 variation and may confer protection against potential future sarbecovirus pandemics....
The main difference between Kennedy and 99% of Classic FM listeners (and probably Radio 3 listeners)? Kennedy is actually a musician.
The funny thing about Classic FM is that none of the ultra-snobs admit it has the same function for classical music that cheap Merlot serves to the fine wine business. Gateway drug. Nearly no-one starts with the most inaccessible stuff or the most expensive....
Hendrix is inaccessible ? I'm with Kennedy on this - "Jurassic FM".
I was responding to the crack about musicians above.
The joke is that, in the snobby part of classical music, Kennedy is regarded as the ultimate sell out to the "popular" stuff.
Cases up about 20% on last week (~6,000). Up in England and Wales. Big fall in Scotland and small one in NI.
I find this all very odd as I had expected the England case surge to come immediately with kids going back to school.
My daughter in Y8 has one case in her class last week. Over the weekend 11 had tested positive. None serious. They had all been exposed to it obviously last week and the ones who now have it obviously hadn't had it before. They will be out of school for a week but learning remotely and then will have some good immunity. If her one class is anything to go by then this could well be the reason for the jump.
Cases up about 20% on last week (~6,000). Up in England and Wales. Big fall in Scotland and small one in NI.
I find this all very odd as I had expected the England case surge to come immediately with kids going back to school.
My daughter in Y8 has one case in her class last week. Over the weekend 11 had tested positive. None serious. They had all been exposed to it obviously last week and the ones who now have it obviously hadn't had it before. They will be out of school for a week but learning remotely and then will have some good immunity. If her one class is anything to go by then this could well be the reason for the jump.
This chart is certainly suggesting it is the kids with the 10-14 age band getting darker and darker. Quite why there was the delay over the Summer in not jabbing them I have no idea. They will I'm sure be fine but they are now missing school and a greater risk they could pass it on.
Cases up about 20% on last week (~6,000). Up in England and Wales. Big fall in Scotland and small one in NI.
I find this all very odd as I had expected the England case surge to come immediately with kids going back to school.
My daughter in Y8 has one case in her class last week. Over the weekend 11 had tested positive. None serious. They had all been exposed to it obviously last week and the ones who now have it obviously hadn't had it before. They will be out of school for a week but learning remotely and then will have some good immunity. If her one class is anything to go by then this could well be the reason for the jump.
This chart is certainly suggesting it is the kids with the 10-14 age band getting darker and darker. Quite why there was the delay over the Summer in not jabbing them I have no idea. They will I'm sure be fine but they are now missing school and a greater risk they could pass it on.
It looks like the 15-19 are heading down to join the other vaccinated groups..... Which leaves....
As to the vaccination policy - ask JCVI. The government was pushing for it as were the CMOs. The JCVI dug their heals in and tried too find ways to say no. Looks like the change in health sec pushed it forward, finally. My guess is that JCVI were told to either rule as to their assigned responsibilities or resign...... or something like that.
Welsh Labour’s party conference in November has been cancelled due to high cases of covid and pressure on the NHS. expected at that time of year does that mean other large scale events could be in jeopardy come the winter months?
No, just Drakeford is a wet blanket, hospitalisations still low due to the vaccinations
Follow the link below, and look at the blue line in Figure 5. And then read this: ... in our more recent data (since mid-April 2021), infections and hospitalisations began to re-converge, potentially reflecting the increased prevalence and severity of Delta compared with Alpha [25], a changing age mix of severe cases, and possible waning of protection [19,26]. https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/90800/2/react1_r13_final_preprint_final.pdf
In short, the increased severity of the Delta variant has essentially cancelled out the benefit from vaccination, as far as the rate of hospitalisation per infection is concerned.
That doesn't mean there is no longer any benefit from vaccination, because vaccination still has a big benefit in lowering the risk of being infected in the first place - and thereby the risk of being hospitalised.
But people really need to stop parroting the old mantra about vaccination reducing the percentage of those infected who go to hospital. It doesn't.
Yes, it does. As well as all the studies showing the protection against severe infection (which is invariably far higher than the protection against any level of breakthrough infection, making it arithmetically inescapable that vaccination reduces the percentage of those infected who go to hospital), the ratio between infections (measured by the ONS) in England and hospitalisations and deaths is considerably lower now than before.
(Use of the daily infection incidence numbers in the ONS survey for England, against the hospitalisations figure lagged by 20 days (as suggested in the REACT study) and multiplied by 20 to normalise close to an equal-sized peak at its worst (and implying an average of 5% IHR at worst), and deaths lagged by 27 days (also as suggested in the REACT study) and multiplied by 75 for similar normalisation of the relative peaks.
You're going to have to explain the consistently lower red and black lines in the recent wave - especially in the face of data suggesting that Delta is twice as likely to hospitalise people than Alpha (so the line should be twice as high as the blue peak).
One factor may be that we are finding a far higher percentage of infected people than before through widespread asymptomatic testing (schools and workplaces).
This is the result of the ONS infection survey, so it shouldn't be sensitive to that.
I tend to agree, but the data is confused. The positive cases data suggest that vastly fewer are going to hospital and dying, the REACT study positive test vs hospitalisation suggests otherwise.
I genuinely don't know the answer.
No, the ONS infection incidence data suggests the same as the positive cases data - that the proportion of those infected who go on to be hospitalised or die has reduced a long way.
But not in the study posted?
Then the study posted was wrong because it fails to match the objective quantifiable data we have before us. Or other studies.
But it suits Chris's agenda so he'll keep quoting it. No different to Indy Sage.
If you really want to annoy Chris, point out that cherry-picking a single study or stat and treating it as established truth is similar to what Toby Young does on his propaganda site.
If you really want to annoy Chris, point out an error in what he's said.
Welsh Labour’s party conference in November has been cancelled due to high cases of covid and pressure on the NHS. expected at that time of year does that mean other large scale events could be in jeopardy come the winter months?
No, just Drakeford is a wet blanket, hospitalisations still low due to the vaccinations
Follow the link below, and look at the blue line in Figure 5. And then read this: ... in our more recent data (since mid-April 2021), infections and hospitalisations began to re-converge, potentially reflecting the increased prevalence and severity of Delta compared with Alpha [25], a changing age mix of severe cases, and possible waning of protection [19,26]. https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/90800/2/react1_r13_final_preprint_final.pdf
In short, the increased severity of the Delta variant has essentially cancelled out the benefit from vaccination, as far as the rate of hospitalisation per infection is concerned.
That doesn't mean there is no longer any benefit from vaccination, because vaccination still has a big benefit in lowering the risk of being infected in the first place - and thereby the risk of being hospitalised.
But people really need to stop parroting the old mantra about vaccination reducing the percentage of those infected who go to hospital. It doesn't.
Yes, it does. As well as all the studies showing the protection against severe infection (which is invariably far higher than the protection against any level of breakthrough infection, making it arithmetically inescapable that vaccination reduces the percentage of those infected who go to hospital), the ratio between infections (measured by the ONS) in England and hospitalisations and deaths is considerably lower now than before.
(Use of the daily infection incidence numbers in the ONS survey for England, against the hospitalisations figure lagged by 20 days (as suggested in the REACT study) and multiplied by 20 to normalise close to an equal-sized peak at its worst (and implying an average of 5% IHR at worst), and deaths lagged by 27 days (also as suggested in the REACT study) and multiplied by 75 for similar normalisation of the relative peaks.
You're going to have to explain the consistently lower red and black lines in the recent wave - especially in the face of data suggesting that Delta is twice as likely to hospitalise people than Alpha (so the line should be twice as high as the blue peak).
I'm not sure what incidence numbers you've used there. As far as I know, the ONS stopped reporting them for months while they reviewed their methodology, and when they started again the methodology was different. The ONS hedges the incidence estimate with a lot of caution by comparison with the "percentage testing positive" figure that is their main focus. The latter would be the equivalent of what's used in the REACT study, and would seem like a more appropriate comparison.
Comments
"For JRM "fans" - a video of 12 year old Jacob being interviewed by French TV in the back of his Dad's Rolls
https://twitter.com/Inafr_officiel/status/1430775768142028801 "
And the product isn't essentially the same, unless you think coal fired power is the same as wind generated power, and "clean energy" is how some companies have been distinguishing themselves for years.
That would apply to North Sea Oil , or what is left of it, as much as anything else
Having lived for some years in the Borders and have a close association with NE Scotland, the rupture across Scotland if independence came about would make Brexit look like a walk in the park
Here is the % increase in imports by emerging market and developing countries (in USD) from a selection of major economies over the 20 years to 2020:
Germany: 338%
Italy: 213%
France: 182%
The Euro Area: 293%
United States: 118%
Japan: 168%
United Kingdom: 122%.
Bottom line: the EU countries increased their exports more than the non-EU countries.
(Data from the IMF's Direction of Trade database. I'm using the most recent 20 year period, which more or less matches the period since China joined the WTO, but using 2019 to avoid Covid disruption doesn't change the relative picture).
Quite objectively the facts have changed since she spoke and when the facts change, it's time to change your mind.
Thatcher wasn't afraid to challenge the status quo.
Thatcher wasn't afraid to change our trading arrangements to embrace what she called the wealthiest and most prosperous people.
By 2021 those people aren't in Europe. That's why the appropriate Thatcherite thing to do is to not be afraid of reform and to embrace change to be able to liberalise trade with the wealthiest and most prosperous people in the planet in 2021. Which is what Brexit allows.
Subordinate lenders are definitely fncked, of course.
Why am I reminded of the last x times that a Chinese financial comedy happened and it turned out it was based on giving loans to stupid companies because oligarchs in the Party said so?
I'm with Kennedy on this - "Jurassic FM".
High genetic barrier to SARS-CoV-2 polyclonal neutralizing antibody escape
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04005-0
The number and variability of the neutralizing epitopes targeted by polyclonal antibodies in SARS-CoV-2 convalescent and vaccinated individuals are key determinants of neutralization breadth and the genetic barrier to viral escape1–4. Using HIV-1 pseudotypes and plasma-selection experiments with vesicular stomatitis virus/SARS-CoV-2 chimeras5, we show that multiple neutralizing epitopes, within and outside the receptor binding domain (RBD), are variably targeted by human polyclonal antibodies. Antibody targets coincide with spike sequences that are enriched for diversity in natural SARS-CoV-2 populations. By combining plasma-selected spike substitutions, we generated synthetic ‘polymutant’ spike protein pseudotypes that resisted polyclonal antibody neutralization to a similar degree as circulating variants of concern (VOC). By aggregating VOC-associated and antibody-selected spike substitutions into a single polymutant spike protein, we show that 20 naturally occurring mutations in SARS-CoV-2 spike are sufficient to generate pseudotypes with near-complete resistance to the polyclonal neutralizing antibodies generated by convalescents or mRNA vaccine recipients. Strikingly, however, plasma from individuals who had been infected and subsequently received mRNA vaccination, neutralized pseudotypes bearing this highly resistant SARS-CoV-2 polymutant spike, or diverse sarbecovirus spike proteins. Thus, optimally elicited human polyclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 should be resilient to substantial future SARS-CoV-2 variation and may confer protection against potential future sarbecovirus pandemics....
The joke is that, in the snobby part of classical music, Kennedy is regarded as the ultimate sell out to the "popular" stuff.
I find this all very odd as I had expected the England case surge to come immediately with kids going back to school.
My daughter in Y8 has one case in her class last week. Over the weekend 11 had tested positive. None serious. They had all been exposed to it obviously last week and the ones who now have it obviously hadn't had it before. They will be out of school for a week but learning remotely and then will have some good immunity. If her one class is anything to go by then this could well be the reason for the jump.
As to the vaccination policy - ask JCVI. The government was pushing for it as were the CMOs. The JCVI dug their heals in and tried too find ways to say no. Looks like the change in health sec pushed it forward, finally. My guess is that JCVI were told to either rule as to their assigned responsibilities or resign...... or something like that.
A ton of innuendo won't have much effect at all.