This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
The bulk of care home funding comes from local authorities who don’t have the ability to pay higher fees at the moment
Increasing staff wages - which would be a good thing - requires a significant increase in government spending.
There is currently a structural shortage of beds in the space so we can’t afford operators to go out of business
There is the cash to offer Nurses a 3% pay rise but not enough cash to pay care staff a penny more than the minimum wage? For a night shift job providing close personal care to societies most vulnerable people? 🤔
The interesting thing is that many universities now are offering degrees in social care. So we have people going to university, getting a degree in social care, then working in the social care sector ... For minimum wage. 🤦♂️
Of course government can find the money.
I’m just pointing out that spending choices are choices. The care home sector competes with retail and hospitality for staff - and the latter two have better conditions (the nature of the job / shifts etc not the employment conditions per se)
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
I have been in hospital during this for an unrelated condition. The treatment was first rate although follow up has been slower than promised. I am seeing my GP on Friday morning face to face. It may be patchy but my experience is not as bad as yours.
This is utterly bad news, this means the Indian commentary we received at the start of the year during England's tour on India won't be the worst and biased commentary we hear this year.
England fans planning to watch the Ashes on television will have to make do with Australian commentary when the series begins next month.
As Sportsmail revealed in August, BT Sport have bought the live TV rights for the five Tests, but are not planning to send a commentary team to Australia, and will instead rely on a feed provided by host broadcasters Fox and Channel Seven.
Michael Vaughan will be the lone Englishman we hear.
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Good post. The repeated pointing the finger elsewhere when problems occurred , which we see again today, should be on the list. The government will take praise all too quickly if something goes ok, but can’t stomach an ounce of accountability if things fail. All a bit playground really.
True.
But there is a UK inquiry, which will look at England-only matters as well. There is a Scotland only inquiry. There is a N. Ireland only inquiry.
Which country is missing ? And who runs it ?
Qed
Hardly.
I am asking why there is no inquiry into actions taken by the Welsh Government in Wales, when the other devolved administrations are holding one.
You are going to absolutely love my piece this weekend.
Being entirely selfish it will not effect my wife and I
As it happens this policy will, I predict, be dropped by a shameless Johnson days after COP21 ends and the whole circus has moved out of Glasgow.
I thought it was COP26 but I just think it is unworkable
My house is fully insulated but @Gallowgate said that only houses built in the last 20 years would qualify for the degree of insulation required and he is an expert on the subject
I think the distinction is between fully insulated (in the sense of as much insulation as you can sensibly put on an older house), which is less than the amount of insulation you need to allow a heat pump to make your house reliably comfortable.
Design the building right ("Passivhaus") and you can cut the heating requirements by 75% or so, which is handily the sort of carbon dioxide reduction we're looking for.
I don't see why it should be thought of as unworkable.
A ban on new installs of gas boilers from 2035 gives us until about 2045-2050 to replace all of them - which is well over 20 years - since they all have a lifecycle.
The Scottish Government policy announced today (I posted a link earlier) is 5 years earlier:
Their net zero target date is 2045 (vs 2050).
Ban on installing fossil fuel boilers from 2025 for off-gas properties Ban on installing fossil fuel boilers from 2030 for all properties
The suggestion for England is 5 years behind the Scottish proposals. If it all fails @malcolmg and @Theuniondivvie will be donning their knitted popsocks 5 years before @TSE and @Leon .
It's important to ignore the Greens, just as we ignore Extinction Rebellion, as they have marketed their position as essentially broadcasting the fictional claim that "nothing has been done".
A huge amount has been done.
I just can't see how it will work.
Are we really going to force someone to demolish a house just because their boiler has packed in? Because that's effectively what you are doing if you require everyone to use a heat pump in all circumstances.
My 1920s bungalow doesn't have a full cavity, so it would have to go. There's no space to clad it externally.
Or are we going to end up forcing people to go back to direct electrical heating of the kind you still find in places off the gas network?
The government will end up having to make exceptions. Many of them.
That's not right.
It's perfectly possible properly to insulate / improve solid walled houses. I have done a whole series of them myself. It doesn't need a full cavity - which as you say weren't a regular thing until perhaps 1925-1930.
You can internally insulate it (which will take around 3-4" off each external wall done well), or externally insulate it. In either case you can easily take it up to a decent standard (say a C or even a B on the EPC scale). Those approaches are even routinely used under the ECO programme for people who qualify for support, and have been for many years. Perhaps there are slightly more wrinkles and PM needed, but it is a normal thing to do.
Today building without a cavity is also a normal thing to do in many technologies / types of build.
Personally I have done an 1850s cottage, several pre WW1, and a couple more from the 1920s - all solid walled.
Yes there will be exceptions, but a very small proportion.
If you're house is very well insulated (not difficult, just lots) direct electrical heating can be fine and is coming back for new houses. One option is to have essentially Willis Heaters (like immersion heaters) installed directly in the slab, and run them on Economy-7. A quality house will take days to leak the heat out, so that approach can work fine running overnight.
These days many do not bother with heating upstairs, except perhaps an electric towel rail and a fan heater in the cupboard for once a year when a boost is needed or something breaks.
(Though that highlights that for well-insulated, airtight houses, controlled cooling is as important as controlled heating.)
The idea that over the next 25 years we're going to upgrade* our housing stock to this extent is for the fairies.
Who on earth is going to pay for this? By the time you've got the insulation good enough for heat pumps, and installed the things, you'll be the wrong side of £20k a house. Average that out between now and 2050 and its £700 a year - that's twice my current gas bill before you've paid for any energy to run the heat pumps.
*it's not much of an upgrade either is it! Loseing 4" internal space off every external wall really won't improve smaller houses. When it's done you've replaced instant cheap heating and instant unlimited boiling hot water with heating which takes literally takes all day to come up to temperature (so you have to run it all the time - my gas heating only kicks in for 30mins in the morning and 3 hours in the evening) and hot water in a tank (so you can run it out if you're in the shower too long). Oh, and it's going to be more expensive to run (I could easily generate my own electricity from my mains gas for less than I'm currently being charged for it).
It's about time we told the politicians absolutely no way are they doing this to us.
My question about such a report: hoe much hindsightism is involved? It seems reasonable to say that locking down a week earlier in March would have saved thousands of lives. With hindsight.
But what advice were the government getting at the time?
Additionally, we had never done a lockdown before in this manner. The entire apparatus of state had to be turned around to face this issue - and the leviathan of state is never good at responding quickly at scale to novel situations.
I have a great deal of sympathy with the politicians who had to deal with this back in March 2020 - especially as the plans we had prepared targeted the wrong sort of disease. What's more problematic for me are the events of November / December 2020.
But we must also bring China into this: if China had been truthful about the scale of the problem they faced back in early 2020, then the world might have been a little more prepared. Their lies and denials could well have led to the loss of countless lives.
All they needed to say to the world was: "This is really, really bad, people." Instead they said: "Move along; nothing to see here."
I recall very clearly the scientists arguing that it would be wrong to lockdown too early because they were worried about "lockdown fatigue" resulting in lockdown breaking down as the pandemic peaked - resulting in more deaths. As it turned out the British public were more willing to accept limitations on their liberty than had been modelled. Ultimate responsibility rests with the politicians and I think they could have been more rigorous in probing why other countries were doing things differently, but going against scientific advice would have been "brave".
The R4 commentary on the report just now saying that anyone looking for "the guilty men" will be disappointed - it looks at systemic failures rather than bad actors.
I look forward to similarly robust reports from Edinburgh, Cardiff & Belfast....
Forgive my cynicism (esp. as I like their housing heating policy from yesterday), but presumably Sturgeon will submit hundreds of pages of evidence one hour before the hearing after sitting on it for months, then claim that she has been exonerated.
It is rather unfortunate that the header uses the only technically accurate "highest death toll in Europe" trope, which is very misleading.
latest French opinion poll has Bertrand level with Le Pen for the second run off spot. Both on 16%, Zemmour on 14%. This is the danger for Macron. Le Pen and Zemmour probably need to break very close to 50/50 to let Bertrand through, and he has a genuine chance of beating Macron in round 2 if he gets there. Tough needle to thread but numbers like this show it might be possible.
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
Sympathies.
It's also a really good point. NHS provision was always very patchy; anecdotally from friends and family, it appears to have got much patchier.
This is utterly bad news, this means the Indian commentary we received at the start of the year during England's tour on India won't be the worst and biased commentary we hear this year.
England fans planning to watch the Ashes on television will have to make do with Australian commentary when the series begins next month.
As Sportsmail revealed in August, BT Sport have bought the live TV rights for the five Tests, but are not planning to send a commentary team to Australia, and will instead rely on a feed provided by host broadcasters Fox and Channel Seven.
Michael Vaughan will be the lone Englishman we hear.
This is utterly bad news, this means the Indian commentary we received at the start of the year during England's tour on India won't be the worst and biased commentary we hear this year.
England fans planning to watch the Ashes on television will have to make do with Australian commentary when the series begins next month.
As Sportsmail revealed in August, BT Sport have bought the live TV rights for the five Tests, but are not planning to send a commentary team to Australia, and will instead rely on a feed provided by host broadcasters Fox and Channel Seven.
Michael Vaughan will be the lone Englishman we hear.
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
I cannot disagree. The carnage of the aftermath of covid on the NHS cannot be exaggerated. Staffing vacancies are huge, beds and ICU are full, postgraduate training in many specialities is a year behind schedule. The consensus amongst colleagues is that it will take 5 years to get back to where we were. There is an interesting rumour that waiting lists will be cut by simply deeming a lot on there as not needed.
Yet the government wants to pretend everything is back to normal, and what we need to do to sort it out is put Colonel Blimp in charge.
I am increasingly looking forward to retirement myself now.
Boris Johnson’s £12 billion levy will not be enough to fund the NHS and further tax increases are needed, according to a think tank.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the sum would only be sufficient for the short term and would not address the deepening health and social care crisis.
It said that the health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent on top national insurance may need to increase to 3.15 per cent from 2025 to generate an additional £19 billion. This would add £960 to the tax bill a worker earning £40,000
This is utterly bad news, this means the Indian commentary we received at the start of the year during England's tour on India won't be the worst and biased commentary we hear this year.
England fans planning to watch the Ashes on television will have to make do with Australian commentary when the series begins next month.
As Sportsmail revealed in August, BT Sport have bought the live TV rights for the five Tests, but are not planning to send a commentary team to Australia, and will instead rely on a feed provided by host broadcasters Fox and Channel Seven.
Michael Vaughan will be the lone Englishman we hear.
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
Perhaps they should offer pay rises, but that doesn't detract from the point that, as Charles has indicated, a "no jab, no job" policy could well cause an increase in care home deaths. Are you so beholden to your ideology that deaths are no longer important?
Infecting the most vulnerable people with the virus could also increase deaths.
You have to balance the risks. Care home residents have no choice but to be in the home. They have no say and no choice over who looks after them. The risk is negligible for everyone else but care residents are by far and away the most vulnerable to infection.
If the care worker so lacks in care that they don't care if they infect societies most vulnerable individuals with the disease then they shouldn't be working in the sector. That will reduce deaths. Replace them with people who do care enough to get vaccinated.
In the data point I have, 1% of deaths (19) since March were with COVID. Over 95% of residents are double jabbed. Over 85% of staff are double jabbed.
Is the reduction in care quality from sacking staff vs prolonging 19 lives for a short period a worthwhile trade off?
This is utterly bad news, this means the Indian commentary we received at the start of the year during England's tour on India won't be the worst and biased commentary we hear this year.
England fans planning to watch the Ashes on television will have to make do with Australian commentary when the series begins next month.
As Sportsmail revealed in August, BT Sport have bought the live TV rights for the five Tests, but are not planning to send a commentary team to Australia, and will instead rely on a feed provided by host broadcasters Fox and Channel Seven.
Michael Vaughan will be the lone Englishman we hear.
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
I cannot disagree. The carnage of the aftermath of covid on the NHS cannot be exaggerated. Staffing vacancies are huge, beds and ICU are full, postgraduate training in many specialities is a year behind schedule. The consensus amongst colleagues is that it will take 5 years to get back to where we were. There is an interesting rumour that waiting lists will be cut by simply deeming a lot on there as not needed.
Yet the government wants to pretend everything is back to normal, and what we need to do to sort it out is put Colonel Blimp in charge.
I am increasingly looking forward to retirement myself now.
My father and his retired colleagues are getting regular calls offering them silly money to come back and work for the NHS.
latest French opinion poll has Bertrand level with Le Pen for the second run off spot. Both on 16%, Zemmour on 14%. This is the danger for Macron. Le Pen and Zemmour probably need to break very close to 50/50 to let Bertrand through, and he has a genuine chance of beating Macron in round 2 if he gets there. Tough needle to thread but numbers like this show it might be possible.
Boris Johnson’s £12 billion levy will not be enough to fund the NHS and further tax increases are needed, according to a think tank.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the sum would only be sufficient for the short term and would not address the deepening health and social care crisis.
It said that the health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent on top national insurance may need to increase to 3.15 per cent from 2025 to generate an additional £19 billion. This would add £960 to the tax bill a worker earning £40,000
Predicted all of this when Boris Johnson announced this policy.
Pensioners need to start paying their way otherwise the workers of the United Kingdom, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains of taxation.
It is hardly news that the NHS has gone from a bottomless pit to a raging black hole sucking all public spending into its maw. I agree more taxes are going to be needed and, if we go down this route (and it is hard to see an alternative for the reasons @Foxy highlights) other forms of public spending will have to be cut. That does not mean that the NI increase was not necessary nor appropriate. But the budget does need to share the load more fairly.
Listening to Sky and BBC on this report it seems that the conclusions are fairly well accepted but that it was a collective failure of government and science and that it is unlikely to have any great effect other than lessons need to be taken on board now
Kay Burley of Sky hammered Steve Barclay to apologise which he refused to do saying they were following the science
She then interviewed a labour spokesperson who also refused to apologise for endorsing HMG actions at the time despite her protestations
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
I have been in hospital during this for an unrelated condition. The treatment was first rate although follow up has been slower than promised. I am seeing my GP on Friday morning face to face. It may be patchy but my experience is not as bad as yours.
Ditto. I know one shouldn't rely on individual examples but when my vocal cord was paralyzed the response was fantastic. Fortunately it wasn't serious, but could have been.
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
Sympathies.
It's also a really good point. NHS provision was always very patchy; anecdotally from friends and family, it appears to have got much patchier.
Anecdotally same story. Friends say wait times are extraordinary. One as I have mentioned on here waiting for the cancer "Two week wait" was told it would be "6-7 weeks" and I think we know what that would mean. Another for a routine follow up told 11 months. They decided to go private and where they were were told that all such specialists were booked up until January. Why? NHS is saying there will be 11month waits so everyone is going private. This for a pre-cancerous condition.
God only knows what the death toll of this will be in the coming months and years.
My question about such a report: hoe much hindsightism is involved? It seems reasonable to say that locking down a week earlier in March would have saved thousands of lives. With hindsight.
But what advice were the government getting at the time?
Additionally, we had never done a lockdown before in this manner. The entire apparatus of state had to be turned around to face this issue - and the leviathan of state is never good at responding quickly at scale to novel situations.
I have a great deal of sympathy with the politicians who had to deal with this back in March 2020 - especially as the plans we had prepared targeted the wrong sort of disease. What's more problematic for me are the events of November / December 2020.
But we must also bring China into this: if China had been truthful about the scale of the problem they faced back in early 2020, then the world might have been a little more prepared. Their lies and denials could well have led to the loss of countless lives.
All they needed to say to the world was: "This is really, really bad, people." Instead they said: "Move along; nothing to see here."
I recall very clearly the scientists arguing that it would be wrong to lockdown too early because they were worried about "lockdown fatigue" resulting in lockdown breaking down as the pandemic peaked - resulting in more deaths. As it turned out the British public were more willing to accept limitations on their liberty than had been modelled. Ultimate responsibility rests with the politicians and I think they could have been more rigorous in probing why other countries were doing things differently, but going against scientific advice would have been "brave".
The R4 commentary on the report just now saying that anyone looking for "the guilty men" will be disappointed - it looks at systemic failures rather than bad actors.
I look forward to similarly robust reports from Edinburgh, Cardiff & Belfast....
LOL, suddenly it is the regions to blame , not the sad F**kers in Westminster who are supposedly running the whole show. Try to hide your hideous bias just a little bit Haw Haw.
Boris Johnson’s £12 billion levy will not be enough to fund the NHS and further tax increases are needed, according to a think tank.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the sum would only be sufficient for the short term and would not address the deepening health and social care crisis.
It said that the health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent on top national insurance may need to increase to 3.15 per cent from 2025 to generate an additional £19 billion. This would add £960 to the tax bill a worker earning £40,000
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
I cannot disagree. The carnage of the aftermath of covid on the NHS cannot be exaggerated. Staffing vacancies are huge, beds and ICU are full, postgraduate training in many specialities is a year behind schedule. The consensus amongst colleagues is that it will take 5 years to get back to where we were. There is an interesting rumour that waiting lists will be cut by simply deeming a lot on there as not needed.
Yet the government wants to pretend everything is back to normal, and what we need to do to sort it out is put Colonel Blimp in charge.
I am increasingly looking forward to retirement myself now.
I think we're all agreed the NHS is goosed. What exactly would you do about it? I think this is a "all options are bad" problem - I can't see what the government can possibly do about it.
(the exception to this is GPs, where switching funding from "per patient on their books" to "per patient seen" with the ability for patients to go to any practice if theirs cannot fit them in might well significantly help the problem of never being able to get a GP appointment).
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
I cannot disagree. The carnage of the aftermath of covid on the NHS cannot be exaggerated. Staffing vacancies are huge, beds and ICU are full, postgraduate training in many specialities is a year behind schedule. The consensus amongst colleagues is that it will take 5 years to get back to where we were. There is an interesting rumour that waiting lists will be cut by simply deeming a lot on there as not needed.
Yet the government wants to pretend everything is back to normal, and what we need to do to sort it out is put Colonel Blimp in charge.
I am increasingly looking forward to retirement myself now.
You need to be careful with definitions
I suspect most people would think of “waiting lists” as referring to patients who are actively waiting for an urgent procedure or follow up? Seems reasonable?
A big proportion are actually people with chronic diseases who are regularly monitored but are not actually “waiting” for anything specifically.
The government is reported to be considering splitting them out from the “waiting list” numbers and reporting separately. Of course that will have the benefit to them of reducing the headline number. However arguably it’s a more useful way to analyse the stress on the system.
This is utterly bad news, this means the Indian commentary we received at the start of the year during England's tour on India won't be the worst and biased commentary we hear this year.
England fans planning to watch the Ashes on television will have to make do with Australian commentary when the series begins next month.
As Sportsmail revealed in August, BT Sport have bought the live TV rights for the five Tests, but are not planning to send a commentary team to Australia, and will instead rely on a feed provided by host broadcasters Fox and Channel Seven.
Michael Vaughan will be the lone Englishman we hear.
Who in their right mind wouldn't mute the telly whilst listening to TMS?
Its impossible to get the two in sync isnt it 7 sec delay...?
Just look up at the telly when something interesting happens for the replay..... That way you can tell the missus you can multi-task too - by appearing to be doing something vaguely productive at the same time... "Sorting out my tax" doesn't get questioned at any length.
Do we know who's paying for Johnson's Spanish holiday yet?
He is staying at the private Villa of Zack Goldsmith, who he made a peer last year. One favour deserves another...
TBF I believe Goldsmith is a genuine friend (doesn’t his half brother employ Carrie?) so it’s not quite as simple as you maliciously pretend
So the attack line will be "rich bastard privileged self-serving ingrown mutually-backscratching inbred exclusionary Tories" rather than "rich bastard privileged corrupt self-serving donor-backscratching Tories".
Coming to a twitter-feed near you...
Talking of Angela Rayner, I see that she has been Fullfact-ed again:
(Rather technical, but then it always is. You should see the Factchecking part of France24, which has yet to apply itself to Mr Macron: https://www.france24.com/en/fight-the-fake)
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
The bulk of care home funding comes from local authorities who don’t have the ability to pay higher fees at the moment
Increasing staff wages - which would be a good thing - requires a significant increase in government spending.
There is currently a structural shortage of beds in the space so we can’t afford operators to go out of business
There is the cash to offer Nurses a 3% pay rise but not enough cash to pay care staff a penny more than the minimum wage? For a night shift job providing close personal care to societies most vulnerable people? 🤔
The interesting thing is that many universities now are offering degrees in social care. So we have people going to university, getting a degree in social care, then working in the social care sector ... For minimum wage. 🤦♂️
To reiterate Charles' point, the bulk of care home funding comes form local authorities - the bulk of whose cash comes from central government.
Central government has over many years (since Thatcher) legislated responsibilities on to local government without giving it the means to pay. It's neat way of cutting government sending and devolving the blame form whoever is in No10.
That applies in spades to social care. Local authorities effectively have responsibility without either power or sufficient resources.
Mr. Eagles, largely agree. The Christmas fiasco may also have repercussions this time, with more people going for a big family Christmas, if they can, ironically increasing transmission rates.
The pandemic phase of this is over. Why should we care about "case rates" now when everybody who wants to be is vaccinated.
If anyone unvaccinated gets it that's their choice. If anyone vaccinated gets it we've done what we reasonably can for them.
Because the vaccines lose a bit of effectiveness hence the booster jab.
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
Perhaps they should offer pay rises, but that doesn't detract from the point that, as Charles has indicated, a "no jab, no job" policy could well cause an increase in care home deaths. Are you so beholden to your ideology that deaths are no longer important?
Infecting the most vulnerable people with the virus could also increase deaths.
You have to balance the risks. Care home residents have no choice but to be in the home. They have no say and no choice over who looks after them. The risk is negligible for everyone else but care residents are by far and away the most vulnerable to infection.
If the care worker so lacks in care that they don't care if they infect societies most vulnerable individuals with the disease then they shouldn't be working in the sector. That will reduce deaths. Replace them with people who do care enough to get vaccinated.
That of course, assumes that replacement workers are available. Which they aren't. Possibly if the wages were a lot higher they might be.
You're right, of course, that Care Home residents aren't the ones making the choices, but I'd sooner have a vaccinated resident cared for by a PPE swathed non-vaccinated carer than no carer at all.
And, before you jump down my throat, remember I'm an old man, double vaccinated, who has tested positive for Covid. As has my (almost) equally aged wife. I seem to be shaking it off; she's not quite as well.
Wonder if there's evidence of Johnson ignoring scientific advice, like Sturgeon:
NICOLA Sturgeon has been urged to “come clean” after it was reported she overruled advisors who suggested telling the public about a coronavirus outbreak at a major conference.
Tories throwing squirrels out like confetti, their top PR Lady Haw Haw having kittens at the bad press for Boris, tries valiantly to point to it all being Sturgeon's fault. How pathetic can you cretins get. LOL it was a wee lassie did it and then ran away.
Mr. Eagles, largely agree. The Christmas fiasco may also have repercussions this time, with more people going for a big family Christmas, if they can, ironically increasing transmission rates.
The pandemic phase of this is over. Why should we care about "case rates" now when everybody who wants to be is vaccinated.
If anyone unvaccinated gets it that's their choice. If anyone vaccinated gets it we've done what we reasonably can for them.
Because the vaccines lose a bit of effectiveness hence the booster jab.
See my response to Mr T's post. Our booster was scheduled for today. If it had been 10 days ago....... I wonder.
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
Perhaps they should offer pay rises, but that doesn't detract from the point that, as Charles has indicated, a "no jab, no job" policy could well cause an increase in care home deaths. Are you so beholden to your ideology that deaths are no longer important?
Infecting the most vulnerable people with the virus could also increase deaths.
You have to balance the risks. Care home residents have no choice but to be in the home. They have no say and no choice over who looks after them. The risk is negligible for everyone else but care residents are by far and away the most vulnerable to infection.
If the care worker so lacks in care that they don't care if they infect societies most vulnerable individuals with the disease then they shouldn't be working in the sector. That will reduce deaths. Replace them with people who do care enough to get vaccinated.
That of course, assumes that replacement workers are available. Which they aren't. Possibly if the wages were a lot higher they might be.
You're right, of course, that Care Home residents aren't the ones making the choices, but I'd sooner have a vaccinated resident cared for by a PPE swathed non-vaccinated carer than no carer at all.
And, before you jump down my throat, remember I'm an old man, double vaccinated, who has tested positive for Covid. As has my (almost) equally aged wife. I seem to be shaking it off; she's not quite as well.
Sorry to hear that OKC. All the best for both of you.
Do we know who's paying for Johnson's Spanish holiday yet?
He is staying at the private Villa of Zack Goldsmith, who he made a peer last year. One favour deserves another...
TBF I believe Goldsmith is a genuine friend (doesn’t his half brother employ Carrie?) so it’s not quite as simple as you maliciously pretend
It is far more malicious , you defend your chums as you are in the same crowd, spread the spoils around your small coterie whilst the poor pick up the tab for your stupidity and pocketing of all the cash.
Boris Johnson’s £12 billion levy will not be enough to fund the NHS and further tax increases are needed, according to a think tank.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the sum would only be sufficient for the short term and would not address the deepening health and social care crisis.
It said that the health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent on top national insurance may need to increase to 3.15 per cent from 2025 to generate an additional £19 billion. This would add £960 to the tax bill a worker earning £40,000
Predicted all of this when Boris Johnson announced this policy.
Pensioners need to start paying their way otherwise the workers of the United Kingdom, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains of taxation.
Is that before or after staff working in the NHS and social care have had their pay levelled up? (And education, armed forces...)
As the dominant employer or purchaser in many of those sectors, the government has been able to do a decent job of keeping pay towards the bottom of the "reasonably competitive" range. Enough to prevent massive staff shortages, but not much more.
There are lots of reasons why that's reasonable, including stability, pensions and sense of vocation, but they only stretch so far. At a certain point, too many people leave the system and not enough join.
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
Perhaps they should offer pay rises, but that doesn't detract from the point that, as Charles has indicated, a "no jab, no job" policy could well cause an increase in care home deaths. Are you so beholden to your ideology that deaths are no longer important?
Infecting the most vulnerable people with the virus could also increase deaths.
You have to balance the risks. Care home residents have no choice but to be in the home. They have no say and no choice over who looks after them. The risk is negligible for everyone else but care residents are by far and away the most vulnerable to infection.
If the care worker so lacks in care that they don't care if they infect societies most vulnerable individuals with the disease then they shouldn't be working in the sector. That will reduce deaths. Replace them with people who do care enough to get vaccinated.
That of course, assumes that replacement workers are available. Which they aren't. Possibly if the wages were a lot higher they might be.
You're right, of course, that Care Home residents aren't the ones making the choices, but I'd sooner have a vaccinated resident cared for by a PPE swathed non-vaccinated carer than no carer at all.
And, before you jump down my throat, remember I'm an old man, double vaccinated, who has tested positive for Covid. As has my (almost) equally aged wife. I seem to be shaking it off; she's not quite as well.
Send my best wishes to your good lady (sounds like I don't need to waste them on you!)
Listening to Sky and BBC on this report it seems that the conclusions are fairly well accepted but that it was a collective failure of government and science and that it is unlikely to have any great effect other than lessons need to be taken on board now
Kay Burley of Sky hammered Steve Barclay to apologise which he refused to do saying they were following the science
She then interviewed a labour spokesperson who also refused to apologise for endorsing HMG actions at the time despite her protestations
Yes, I'm habitually mild-mannered but I've felt for a long time that on this issue we could do with more aggressive opposition so that the assumptions are more rigorously challenged. Being moderate and judicious and unthreatening is usually good, but tens of thousands of death call for an immoderate response, so that Ministers think "Are we quite sure there is no other option?".
Speaking as a saver who has been punished since the start of the great financial crisis all I can is hurrah to this news.
Interest rates in Britain will rise before Christmas, according to a fresh City forecast, citing the more hawkish tone of Bank of England rate-setters.
Economists at Bank of America predict a first modest rise in the base rate of 0.15 percentage points in December, taking the benchmark rate to 0.25 per cent. They forecast a second rise of 0.25 points to 0.5 per cent next February. Previously, they had not expected any tightening of policy until February next year.
Robert Wood, UK economist at Bank of America, said that he expected the Bank of England to push up interest rates soon to preserve its inflation-fighting credibility in the face of rising prices.
My question about such a report: hoe much hindsightism is involved? It seems reasonable to say that locking down a week earlier in March would have saved thousands of lives. With hindsight.
But what advice were the government getting at the time?
Additionally, we had never done a lockdown before in this manner. The entire apparatus of state had to be turned around to face this issue - and the leviathan of state is never good at responding quickly at scale to novel situations.
I have a great deal of sympathy with the politicians who had to deal with this back in March 2020 - especially as the plans we had prepared targeted the wrong sort of disease. What's more problematic for me are the events of November / December 2020.
But we must also bring China into this: if China had been truthful about the scale of the problem they faced back in early 2020, then the world might have been a little more prepared. Their lies and denials could well have led to the loss of countless lives.
All they needed to say to the world was: "This is really, really bad, people." Instead they said: "Move along; nothing to see here."
I recall very clearly the scientists arguing that it would be wrong to lockdown too early because they were worried about "lockdown fatigue" resulting in lockdown breaking down as the pandemic peaked - resulting in more deaths. As it turned out the British public were more willing to accept limitations on their liberty than had been modelled. Ultimate responsibility rests with the politicians and I think they could have been more rigorous in probing why other countries were doing things differently, but going against scientific advice would have been "brave".
The R4 commentary on the report just now saying that anyone looking for "the guilty men" will be disappointed - it looks at systemic failures rather than bad actors.
I look forward to similarly robust reports from Edinburgh, Cardiff & Belfast....
LOL, suddenly it is the regions to blame , not the sad F**kers in Westminster who are supposedly running the whole show. Try to hide your hideous bias just a little bit Haw Haw.
Mr. Eagles, largely agree. The Christmas fiasco may also have repercussions this time, with more people going for a big family Christmas, if they can, ironically increasing transmission rates.
The pandemic phase of this is over. Why should we care about "case rates" now when everybody who wants to be is vaccinated.
If anyone unvaccinated gets it that's their choice. If anyone vaccinated gets it we've done what we reasonably can for them.
Because the vaccines lose a bit of effectiveness hence the booster jab.
See my response to Mr T's post. Our booster was scheduled for today. If it had been 10 days ago....... I wonder.
Listening to Sky and BBC on this report it seems that the conclusions are fairly well accepted but that it was a collective failure of government and science and that it is unlikely to have any great effect other than lessons need to be taken on board now
Kay Burley of Sky hammered Steve Barclay to apologise which he refused to do saying they were following the science
She then interviewed a labour spokesperson who also refused to apologise for endorsing HMG actions at the time despite her protestations
Yes, I'm habitually mild-mannered but I've felt for a long time that on this issue we could do with more aggressive opposition so that the assumptions are more rigorously challenged. Being moderate and judicious and unthreatening is usually good, but tens of thousands of death call for an immoderate response, so that Ministers think "Are we quite sure there is no other option?".
Welcome to the The Opposition Must Start Opposing Club.
And before you say it no, the answer isn't to go back to Jezza. Although I have long said at least he knew what an Opposition was for and would have given the govt a much harder ride these past 18 months.
Boris Johnson’s £12 billion levy will not be enough to fund the NHS and further tax increases are needed, according to a think tank.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the sum would only be sufficient for the short term and would not address the deepening health and social care crisis.
It said that the health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent on top national insurance may need to increase to 3.15 per cent from 2025 to generate an additional £19 billion. This would add £960 to the tax bill a worker earning £40,000
Predicted all of this when Boris Johnson announced this policy.
Pensioners need to start paying their way otherwise the workers of the United Kingdom, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains of taxation.
I agree and there has to be IHT and CGT rises
Whoever wins the next election needs to bite the bullet in the early years and get this done and out the way, whatever it is. So it is out the way for the 2028/2029 election.
Wonder if there's evidence of Johnson ignoring scientific advice, like Sturgeon:
NICOLA Sturgeon has been urged to “come clean” after it was reported she overruled advisors who suggested telling the public about a coronavirus outbreak at a major conference.
Tories throwing squirrels out like confetti, their top PR Lady Haw Haw having kittens at the bad press for Boris, tries valiantly to point to it all being Sturgeon's fault. How pathetic can you cretins get. LOL it was a wee lassie did it and then ran away.
So Sturgeon ignoring advice is absolutely fine, while Johnson following it is dreadful? Got it.
Boris Johnson’s £12 billion levy will not be enough to fund the NHS and further tax increases are needed, according to a think tank.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the sum would only be sufficient for the short term and would not address the deepening health and social care crisis.
It said that the health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent on top national insurance may need to increase to 3.15 per cent from 2025 to generate an additional £19 billion. This would add £960 to the tax bill a worker earning £40,000
Predicted all of this when Boris Johnson announced this policy.
Pensioners need to start paying their way otherwise the workers of the United Kingdom, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains of taxation.
Is that before or after staff working in the NHS and social care have had their pay levelled up? (And education, armed forces...)
As the dominant employer or purchaser in many of those sectors, the government has been able to do a decent job of keeping pay towards the bottom of the "reasonably competitive" range. Enough to prevent massive staff shortages, but not much more.
There are lots of reasons why that's reasonable, including stability, pensions and sense of vocation, but they only stretch so far. At a certain point, too many people leave the system and not enough join.
These are voters too remember, and millions of them. What will they think when their employer spends the next 3 years campaigning on High Pay and Wage inflation being good for the country whilst they are excluded?
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
Perhaps they should offer pay rises, but that doesn't detract from the point that, as Charles has indicated, a "no jab, no job" policy could well cause an increase in care home deaths. Are you so beholden to your ideology that deaths are no longer important?
Infecting the most vulnerable people with the virus could also increase deaths.
You have to balance the risks. Care home residents have no choice but to be in the home. They have no say and no choice over who looks after them. The risk is negligible for everyone else but care residents are by far and away the most vulnerable to infection.
If the care worker so lacks in care that they don't care if they infect societies most vulnerable individuals with the disease then they shouldn't be working in the sector. That will reduce deaths. Replace them with people who do care enough to get vaccinated.
That of course, assumes that replacement workers are available. Which they aren't. Possibly if the wages were a lot higher they might be.
You're right, of course, that Care Home residents aren't the ones making the choices, but I'd sooner have a vaccinated resident cared for by a PPE swathed non-vaccinated carer than no carer at all.
And, before you jump down my throat, remember I'm an old man, double vaccinated, who has tested positive for Covid. As has my (almost) equally aged wife. I seem to be shaking it off; she's not quite as well.
Best wishes to you and your wife for a full recovery, OKC.
Boris Johnson’s £12 billion levy will not be enough to fund the NHS and further tax increases are needed, according to a think tank.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the sum would only be sufficient for the short term and would not address the deepening health and social care crisis.
It said that the health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent on top national insurance may need to increase to 3.15 per cent from 2025 to generate an additional £19 billion. This would add £960 to the tax bill a worker earning £40,000
Predicted all of this when Boris Johnson announced this policy.
Pensioners need to start paying their way otherwise the workers of the United Kingdom, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains of taxation.
I agree and there has to be IHT and CGT rises
That is something I see coming.
On pensioner taxes, I'm amused at the outraged demands for subsidy on heat-pumps for exactly the same property-owning people, and that no one is saying how bizarre a demand it is. We have known about the extra expense of poor-quality properties for nearly half a century, and we are seeing insistence for bailouts on the consequences of their own inactions from people who chose to do nothing.
If students have to pay for their won education, give people needing heat-pumps a loan on Student Loan terms secured against equity in the house.
Do we know who's paying for Johnson's Spanish holiday yet?
He is staying at the private Villa of Zack Goldsmith, who he made a peer last year. One favour deserves another...
To be fair, it's generally acknowledged among environmental NGOs that Goldsmith was one of the best Ministerial appointments in this government, and as he isn't an MP he had to be in the Lords to get the job. He knows his brief, believes it's important, and works hard, without lurching into ill-considered measures that sound good but don't work.
Speaking as a saver who has been punished since the start of the great financial crisis all I can is hurrah to this news.
Interest rates in Britain will rise before Christmas, according to a fresh City forecast, citing the more hawkish tone of Bank of England rate-setters.
Economists at Bank of America predict a first modest rise in the base rate of 0.15 percentage points in December, taking the benchmark rate to 0.25 per cent. They forecast a second rise of 0.25 points to 0.5 per cent next February. Previously, they had not expected any tightening of policy until February next year.
Robert Wood, UK economist at Bank of America, said that he expected the Bank of England to push up interest rates soon to preserve its inflation-fighting credibility in the face of rising prices.
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Attempts to suggest it was all crap or all down to Boris will fail because people know it was unprecedented and that their were successes. It's also unnecessary, as targeted criticism as you outline will work to hold him to account. Whereas implying it's all his fault gives him an out to imply criticism is unreasonable.
My mum's probate came through this week, 23 months after her death. Mainly due to delays in approval.
Rishi will be getting a chunky windfall from IHT catching up, plus of course increased mortality amongst oldsters.
In due course he will be getting a windfall from a proportion of the 200k (my estimate) properties currently clogged up by Covid rental restrictions where LLs sell-up and get out.
Together that will be a few billion at least. On top of CHT increases.
My question about such a report: hoe much hindsightism is involved? It seems reasonable to say that locking down a week earlier in March would have saved thousands of lives. With hindsight.
But what advice were the government getting at the time?
Additionally, we had never done a lockdown before in this manner. The entire apparatus of state had to be turned around to face this issue - and the leviathan of state is never good at responding quickly at scale to novel situations.
I have a great deal of sympathy with the politicians who had to deal with this back in March 2020 - especially as the plans we had prepared targeted the wrong sort of disease. What's more problematic for me are the events of November / December 2020.
But we must also bring China into this: if China had been truthful about the scale of the problem they faced back in early 2020, then the world might have been a little more prepared. Their lies and denials could well have led to the loss of countless lives.
All they needed to say to the world was: "This is really, really bad, people." Instead they said: "Move along; nothing to see here."
I recall very clearly the scientists arguing that it would be wrong to lockdown too early because they were worried about "lockdown fatigue" resulting in lockdown breaking down as the pandemic peaked - resulting in more deaths. As it turned out the British public were more willing to accept limitations on their liberty than had been modelled. Ultimate responsibility rests with the politicians and I think they could have been more rigorous in probing why other countries were doing things differently, but going against scientific advice would have been "brave".
The R4 commentary on the report just now saying that anyone looking for "the guilty men" will be disappointed - it looks at systemic failures rather than bad actors.
I look forward to similarly robust reports from Edinburgh, Cardiff & Belfast....
Forgive my cynicism (esp. as I like their housing heating policy from yesterday), but presumably Sturgeon will submit hundreds of pages of evidence one hour before the hearing after sitting on it for months, then claim that she has been exonerated.
It is rather unfortunate that the header uses the only technically accurate "highest death toll in Europe" trope, which is very misleading.
However, Mike, thanks for the article.
Another unionist halfwitted whiner trying to deflect from Boris's disaster
My question about such a report: hoe much hindsightism is involved? It seems reasonable to say that locking down a week earlier in March would have saved thousands of lives. With hindsight.
But what advice were the government getting at the time?
Additionally, we had never done a lockdown before in this manner. The entire apparatus of state had to be turned around to face this issue - and the leviathan of state is never good at responding quickly at scale to novel situations.
I have a great deal of sympathy with the politicians who had to deal with this back in March 2020 - especially as the plans we had prepared targeted the wrong sort of disease. What's more problematic for me are the events of November / December 2020.
But we must also bring China into this: if China had been truthful about the scale of the problem they faced back in early 2020, then the world might have been a little more prepared. Their lies and denials could well have led to the loss of countless lives.
All they needed to say to the world was: "This is really, really bad, people." Instead they said: "Move along; nothing to see here."
I recall very clearly the scientists arguing that it would be wrong to lockdown too early because they were worried about "lockdown fatigue" resulting in lockdown breaking down as the pandemic peaked - resulting in more deaths. As it turned out the British public were more willing to accept limitations on their liberty than had been modelled. Ultimate responsibility rests with the politicians and I think they could have been more rigorous in probing why other countries were doing things differently, but going against scientific advice would have been "brave".
The R4 commentary on the report just now saying that anyone looking for "the guilty men" will be disappointed - it looks at systemic failures rather than bad actors.
I look forward to similarly robust reports from Edinburgh, Cardiff & Belfast....
Forgive my cynicism (esp. as I like their housing heating policy from yesterday), but presumably Sturgeon will submit hundreds of pages of evidence one hour before the hearing after sitting on it for months, then claim that she has been exonerated.
It is rather unfortunate that the header uses the only technically accurate "highest death toll in Europe" trope, which is very misleading.
However, Mike, thanks for the article.
Another unionist halfwitted whiner trying to deflect from Boris's disaster
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Attempts to suggest it was all crap or all down to Boris will fail because people know it was unprecedented and that their were successes. It's also unnecessary, as targeted criticism as you outline will work to hold him to account. Whereas implying it's all his fault gives him an out to imply criticism is unreasonable.
But there will be reams of bile from the usual suspects as long as threads are provided to feed it
The government keeps saying that at least the NHS hasn’t collapsed but it fucking has. Anyone who has tried to use the NHS other than for a jab in the last 2 years will tell you that.
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
Sympathies.
It's also a really good point. NHS provision was always very patchy; anecdotally from friends and family, it appears to have got much patchier.
Anecdotally same story. Friends say wait times are extraordinary. One as I have mentioned on here waiting for the cancer "Two week wait" was told it would be "6-7 weeks" and I think we know what that would mean. Another for a routine follow up told 11 months. They decided to go private and where they were were told that all such specialists were booked up until January. Why? NHS is saying there will be 11month waits so everyone is going private. This for a pre-cancerous condition.
God only knows what the death toll of this will be in the coming months and years.
But it is patchy. I've mentioned an ex-colleague who thought he had long covid, but discovered a few months ago that it was cancer that had spread. He seems very happy with the treatment he has been getting (and it seems to be working - hurrah!)
With so many vacancies what's the reason that virtually anyone on UC couldn't get a much better job?
Childcare? Skills? Unemployable?
We need to be much more innovative in supporting people into work here.
It's far far better for you and everyone else if you work.
It's normal in career progression to get cumulative steps of slightly better pay rather than much better in a single step.
For those working on UC anyone who gets a better pay rise they know they'll have to work harder but the reality is that the state will effectively tax them 75% of every extra penny they earn.
If you were facing a real tax rate of 75% would that incentivise you to look for a slightly better paid job?
No, and it needs sorting.
Nevertheless, if that £20 extra a week was critical to me and I could get, say, £50 a week more net by working then I'd do it.
Incidentally, with my day job hat on, it's interesting to see that 93% of voters favour the government acting to nudge diet to reduce meat consumption and subsidise plant-based food. An overwhelming majority also favour tax rises on themselves to address the climate issue. It's quite an impressive set of results:
With so many vacancies what's the reason that virtually anyone on UC couldn't get a much better job?
Childcare? Skills? Unemployable?
We need to be much more innovative in supporting people into work here.
It's far far better for you and everyone else if you work.
It's normal in career progression to get cumulative steps of slightly better pay rather than much better in a single step.
For those working on UC anyone who gets a better pay rise they know they'll have to work harder but the reality is that the state will effectively tax them 75% of every extra penny they earn.
If you were facing a real tax rate of 75% would that incentivise you to look for a slightly better paid job?
No, and it needs sorting.
Nevertheless, if that £20 extra a week was critical to me and I could get, say, £50 a week more net by working then I'd do it.
What proportion of the country would think it was okay in those circumstances to earn £80 cash a week in hand illegally and not taxed instead of earning an extra £80 on paye and ending up flat after the UC cut?
I'd imagine that proportion is pretty high, and closer to the decisions many people will be facing.
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Was test, trace and isolate a clusterfuck ?
The UK's testing system is among the best in the world.
The problem was that trace and isolate was never going to be among the best in the world.
The mistake was spending too much money trying to make it among the best in the world.
With so many vacancies what's the reason that virtually anyone on UC couldn't get a much better job?
Childcare? Skills? Unemployable?
We need to be much more innovative in supporting people into work here.
It's far far better for you and everyone else if you work.
It's normal in career progression to get cumulative steps of slightly better pay rather than much better in a single step.
For those working on UC anyone who gets a better pay rise they know they'll have to work harder but the reality is that the state will effectively tax them 75% of every extra penny they earn.
If you were facing a real tax rate of 75% would that incentivise you to look for a slightly better paid job?
No, and it needs sorting.
Nevertheless, if that £20 extra a week was critical to me and I could get, say, £50 a week more net by working then I'd do it.
What proportion of the country would think it was okay in those circumstances to earn £80 cash a week in hand illegally and not taxed instead of earning an extra £80 on paye and ending up flat after the UC cut?
I'd imagine that proportion is pretty high, and closer to the decisions many people will be facing.
I place quite a lot of store on 50% being a reasonable "felt-fair" maximum, which I would make both the taper, and perhaps the top rate of tax.
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
You don’t need to look for a figure from the past for a comparison.
Equivalent events were still going on in France at the same time and they left Eurodisney open after cases were found among staff, so you’d need to apply the same criticism to Emmanuel Macron.
Incidentally, with my day job hat on, it's interesting to see that 93% of voters favour the government acting to nudge diet to reduce meat consumption and subsidise plant-based food. An overwhelming majority also favour tax rises on themselves to address the climate issue. It's quite an impressive set of results:
On a tangent, I saw the BBC Merson Football and Gambling programme and it is a stark reminder/explainer that the brain can be manipulated and even become diseased through advertising. Better control of advertising on unhealthy food and gambling are both long over due.
I am generally in favour of a liberal gambling regime, but getting the regulations right and balanced is key to that being sustainable.
My mum's probate came through this week, 23 months after her death. Mainly due to delays in approval.
My mother's probate took 19 months! The probate for the Irish part of her estate was 6 weeks. I have no idea why it has to take such an incredible amount of time. Surely most of it could be automated in a 'trusted cadaver' scheme.
One thing I've noticed is how the activist Left (FBPE etc) refer to the UK as "plague island" - as if there is nowhere else in the UK that has coronavirus.
A professional colleague of mine who's a Labour member (and good personal friend) texted this to me recently as he spent a week in Mallorca - and it told me so much. He also sends me James O'Brien memes, which I think he expects me to find funny, but doesn't like any jokes at Greta's expense.
I ribbingly suggested to him he doesn't spend quite so much time online in his Twitter bubble.
Incidentally, with my day job hat on, it's interesting to see that 93% of voters favour the government acting to nudge diet to reduce meat consumption and subsidise plant-based food. An overwhelming majority also favour tax rises on themselves to address the climate issue. It's quite an impressive set of results:
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Was test, trace and isolate a clusterfuck ?
The UK's testing system is among the best in the world.
The problem was that trace and isolate was never going to be among the best in the world.
The mistake was spending too much money trying to make it among the best in the world.
The testing part was good the isolation part was utterly shite.
I once got pinged and told I had to isolate for 1 day,
Which meant they had missed the first thirteen days of isolation.
I wonder how many people who want action taken on climate change are already complaining about higher energy costs.
Plenty, I imagine, and they'd have a point. If we had installed more renewable capacity, we wouldn't be having to burn so much expensive gas to generate our electricity.
Incidentally, with my day job hat on, it's interesting to see that 93% of voters favour the government acting to nudge diet to reduce meat consumption and subsidise plant-based food. An overwhelming majority also favour tax rises on themselves to address the climate issue. It's quite an impressive set of results:
Incidentally, with my day job hat on, it's interesting to see that 93% of voters favour the government acting to nudge diet to reduce meat consumption and subsidise plant-based food. An overwhelming majority also favour tax rises on themselves to address the climate issue. It's quite an impressive set of results:
So you think nobody will complain about the current rising energy costs ?
People will always say they approve of whatever the 'good cause' is but then complain about rising costs and taxes and demand subsidies (the extra taxes to fund them being paid by 'people like them').
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Attempts to suggest it was all crap or all down to Boris will fail because people know it was unprecedented and that their were successes. It's also unnecessary, as targeted criticism as you outline will work to hold him to account. Whereas implying it's all his fault gives him an out to imply criticism is unreasonable.
Yep I think that is spot on. The problem for me is that the mistakes they made were so fundamental and were pointed out at the time so hindsight is no defence.
The biggest failure - which TSE doesn't even mention in his list amongst all his other valid criticisms - is the way in which certain sections of society, most notably care home residents, were just left to die. I genuinely got the impression - which I still maintain - that the Government view was simply that they were not important enough to bother about because they were old and would be dead soon anyway. Now clearly I have to recognise that my view could be driven by my antipathy towards Johnson and his Government but it is a perception that I cannot shake and one I think strikes home with many other people whatever their political persuasion.
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Attempts to suggest it was all crap or all down to Boris will fail because people know it was unprecedented and that their were successes. It's also unnecessary, as targeted criticism as you outline will work to hold him to account. Whereas implying it's all his fault gives him an out to imply criticism is unreasonable.
But there will be reams of bile from the usual suspects as long as threads are provided to feed it
You seem very unhappy here squareroot2. Are you suggesting that PB ignores totally what is leading the news in five national papers?
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
Incidentally, with my day job hat on, it's interesting to see that 93% of voters favour the government acting to nudge diet to reduce meat consumption and subsidise plant-based food. An overwhelming majority also favour tax rises on themselves to address the climate issue. It's quite an impressive set of results:
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Attempts to suggest it was all crap or all down to Boris will fail because people know it was unprecedented and that their were successes. It's also unnecessary, as targeted criticism as you outline will work to hold him to account. Whereas implying it's all his fault gives him an out to imply criticism is unreasonable.
Yep I think that is spot on. The problem for me is that the mistakes they made were so fundamental and were pointed out at the time so hindsight is no defence.
The biggest failure - which TSE doesn't even mention in his list amongst all his other valid criticisms - is the way in which certain sections of society, most notably care home residents, were just left to die. I genuinely got the impression - which I still maintain - that the Government view was simply that they were not important enough to bother about because they were old and would be dead soon anyway. Now clearly I have to recognise that my view could be driven by my antipathy towards Johnson and his Government but it is a perception that I cannot shake and one I think strikes home with many other people whatever their political persuasion.
Jodie Comer's performance in Help should itself have brought the government down.
I wonder how many people who want action taken on climate change are already complaining about higher energy costs.
Plenty, I imagine, and they'd have a point. If we had installed more renewable capacity, we wouldn't be having to burn so much expensive gas to generate our electricity.
Have leccy prices gone up that much. I know we were suffering in September when the wind wasn't blowing, but isn't the problem that our central heating systems run on gas?
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
Perhaps they should offer pay rises, but that doesn't detract from the point that, as Charles has indicated, a "no jab, no job" policy could well cause an increase in care home deaths. Are you so beholden to your ideology that deaths are no longer important?
Infecting the most vulnerable people with the virus could also increase deaths.
You have to balance the risks. Care home residents have no choice but to be in the home. They have no say and no choice over who looks after them. The risk is negligible for everyone else but care residents are by far and away the most vulnerable to infection.
If the care worker so lacks in care that they don't care if they infect societies most vulnerable individuals with the disease then they shouldn't be working in the sector. That will reduce deaths. Replace them with people who do care enough to get vaccinated.
That of course, assumes that replacement workers are available. Which they aren't. Possibly if the wages were a lot higher they might be.
You're right, of course, that Care Home residents aren't the ones making the choices, but I'd sooner have a vaccinated resident cared for by a PPE swathed non-vaccinated carer than no carer at all.
And, before you jump down my throat, remember I'm an old man, double vaccinated, who has tested positive for Covid. As has my (almost) equally aged wife. I seem to be shaking it off; she's not quite as well.
Send my best wishes to your good lady (sounds like I don't need to waste them on you!)
Thanks. I think! Bit of a role reversal at the moment.
This egregious attempt to let Boris off the hook by lazy appeal to 'hindsighting' needs to be called out and ground down. It's utter nonsense.
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
"Permitting events like Cheltenham to continue" ... this entire line of thinking is outrageously authoritarian.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
I had an interesting couple of meetings yesterday about the “no jab no job” policy in the care homes sector
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
When Philip_Thompson was strongly advocating the "no jab, no job" policy a few days ago, I did point out that it could actually result in an increase in potential deaths in care homes due to lack of staff.
Then the care homes should demand more cash and offer a pay rise and not pay minimum wage. Pay peanuts and get monkeys.
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
Perhaps they should offer pay rises, but that doesn't detract from the point that, as Charles has indicated, a "no jab, no job" policy could well cause an increase in care home deaths. Are you so beholden to your ideology that deaths are no longer important?
Infecting the most vulnerable people with the virus could also increase deaths.
You have to balance the risks. Care home residents have no choice but to be in the home. They have no say and no choice over who looks after them. The risk is negligible for everyone else but care residents are by far and away the most vulnerable to infection.
If the care worker so lacks in care that they don't care if they infect societies most vulnerable individuals with the disease then they shouldn't be working in the sector. That will reduce deaths. Replace them with people who do care enough to get vaccinated.
That of course, assumes that replacement workers are available. Which they aren't. Possibly if the wages were a lot higher they might be.
You're right, of course, that Care Home residents aren't the ones making the choices, but I'd sooner have a vaccinated resident cared for by a PPE swathed non-vaccinated carer than no carer at all.
And, before you jump down my throat, remember I'm an old man, double vaccinated, who has tested positive for Covid. As has my (almost) equally aged wife. I seem to be shaking it off; she's not quite as well.
Exactly. Obviously it is preferable to have vaccinated carers rather than unvaccinated carers, but the reality is that the current shortage of care staff is such that the choice could well be between an unvaccinated carer and no carer. I'm not sure how Philip is failing to grasp this.
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Attempts to suggest it was all crap or all down to Boris will fail because people know it was unprecedented and that their were successes. It's also unnecessary, as targeted criticism as you outline will work to hold him to account. Whereas implying it's all his fault gives him an out to imply criticism is unreasonable.
Yep I think that is spot on. The problem for me is that the mistakes they made were so fundamental and were pointed out at the time so hindsight is no defence.
The biggest failure - which TSE doesn't even mention in his list amongst all his other valid criticisms - is the way in which certain sections of society, most notably care home residents, were just left to die. I genuinely got the impression - which I still maintain - that the Government view was simply that they were not important enough to bother about because they were old and would be dead soon anyway. Now clearly I have to recognise that my view could be driven by my antipathy towards Johnson and his Government but it is a perception that I cannot shake and one I think strikes home with many other people whatever their political persuasion.
I think we need to differentiate between the government - Boris and his gang - and government - the whole alphabet soup of NHS, PHE, SAGE etc.
And on the care homes deaths the NHS looks like it bears greatest responsibility.
I wonder how many people who want action taken on climate change are already complaining about higher energy costs.
Plenty, I imagine, and they'd have a point. If we had installed more renewable capacity, we wouldn't be having to burn so much expensive gas to generate our electricity.
If the wind won't blow and the sun won't shine....
The problem we have is not that we have installed too little renewable capacity but that we have installed the wrong sort - or rather we have failed to install all of the right sort. Even if we had more than 100% capacity from wind and solar we would still have periods when we had shortages. What we have failed to install are the reliable renewables such as tidal.
If we choose a future of restricted or no hydrocarbon energy sources (and it is a choice not an inevitability) then we need something reliable to replace it for filling in the gaps between the mainstay renewables. Basically that means tidal or nuclear.
England is horribly behind in its current phase of vaccine roll-out: boosters and teens. Proof-points: - Teens: England is falling way behind Scotland, which started at the same time. - Boosters: England is falling way its own pace of 2nd doses earlier in the year. (1/4)
Yup. March 2020 was a tragedy, and one that ought to haunt all those involved. Different decisions would have kept more people alive and reduced the length of the Spring/early Summer lockdown. Even postponing infections until a time when treatments were better worked out would have been worth doing.
But the haunting ought to be tempered by the question of whether we would have done any better. I'm reminded of the story of FM Montgomery having a troubled night on his deathbed, as he struggled with the idea of having to explain to God why he had killed all those men at El Alamein.
But the clustershambles that was Christmas 2020... that's a different matter. And on that one, Starmer did push for more restrictions earlier. And he was right to do so. Lives would have been saved and we wouldn't have needed such a long post-Christmas lockdown.
And BoJo mocked him has some combination of Scrooge and the Grinch for his pains.
Just learnt some fun etymology that I can't wait to share. Apologies if this is common knowledge and I'm just catching up..
Arctic literally means "of the bear" from the Greek for bear - arktos, and Antarctic is a contraction of Anti-Arctic - so literally "opposite of the bear"
And the Arctic has bears, the Antarctic doesn't; so it all makes sense, right?
Well, not really.. The Arctic was named long before anyone involved in naming it went there and saw bears. Arktikos was the Greek word for northern because The Great Bear, Ursa Major, was in the northern sky, and the existence or not of bears is just a pleasing coincidence
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Attempts to suggest it was all crap or all down to Boris will fail because people know it was unprecedented and that their were successes. It's also unnecessary, as targeted criticism as you outline will work to hold him to account. Whereas implying it's all his fault gives him an out to imply criticism is unreasonable.
But there will be reams of bile from the usual suspects as long as threads are provided to feed it
You seem very unhappy here squareroot2. Are you suggesting that PB ignores totally what is leading the news in five national papers?
I've said before I can just about forgive the government their initial mistakes because a lot of other countries made them as well but what I cannot forgive is
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
Was test, trace and isolate a clusterfuck ?
The UK's testing system is among the best in the world.
The problem was that trace and isolate was never going to be among the best in the world.
The mistake was spending too much money trying to make it among the best in the world.
The testing was one thing where we compare very favourably with other countries: 1. ONS survey. 2. Genome sequencing. 3. Volume of testing completed.
But testing alone achieves nothing. It provides you with information, but to derive any advantage from the information you have to act on it. We didn't.
People on twitter could see that something was happening in Kent at the end of November, that infection rates weren't declining despite lockdown, but the government did nothing with that information until it was nearly Christmas and missed the chance to avert the worst.
There were so many other opportunities to act on the testing information that were squandered. It meant that all we gained from the billions spent was a more accurate count of cases. Pointless.
Comments
I’m just pointing out that spending choices are choices. The care home sector competes with retail and hospitality for staff - and the latter two have better conditions (the nature of the job / shifts etc not the employment conditions per se)
England fans planning to watch the Ashes on television will have to make do with Australian commentary when the series begins next month.
As Sportsmail revealed in August, BT Sport have bought the live TV rights for the five Tests, but are not planning to send a commentary team to Australia, and will instead rely on a feed provided by host broadcasters Fox and Channel Seven.
Michael Vaughan will be the lone Englishman we hear.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-10081751/Ashes-fans-listening-Australian-commentary-BT-Sport-opting-NOT-send-team.html
Who on earth is going to pay for this? By the time you've got the insulation good enough for heat pumps, and installed the things, you'll be the wrong side of £20k a house. Average that out between now and 2050 and its £700 a year - that's twice my current gas bill before you've paid for any energy to run the heat pumps.
*it's not much of an upgrade either is it! Loseing 4" internal space off every external wall really won't improve smaller houses.
When it's done you've replaced instant cheap heating and instant unlimited boiling hot water with heating which takes literally takes all day to come up to temperature (so you have to run it all the time - my gas heating only kicks in for 30mins in the morning and 3 hours in the evening) and hot water in a tank (so you can run it out if you're in the shower too long). Oh, and it's going to be more expensive to run (I could easily generate my own electricity from my mains gas for less than I'm currently being charged for it).
It's about time we told the politicians absolutely no way are they doing this to us.
It is rather unfortunate that the header uses the only technically accurate "highest death toll in Europe" trope, which is very misleading.
However, Mike, thanks for the article.
https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/118499-Rapport.pdf
It's also a really good point. NHS provision was always very patchy; anecdotally from friends and family, it appears to have got much patchier.
Yet the government wants to pretend everything is back to normal, and what we need to do to sort it out is put Colonel Blimp in charge.
I am increasingly looking forward to retirement myself now.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the sum would only be sufficient for the short term and would not address the deepening health and social care crisis.
It said that the health and social care levy of 1.25 per cent on top national insurance may need to increase to 3.15 per cent from 2025 to generate an additional £19 billion. This would add £960 to the tax bill a worker earning £40,000
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/universities-and-court-system-face-deeper-cuts-after-splurge-7vlr5c68t
Predicted all of this when Boris Johnson announced this policy.
Pensioners need to start paying their way otherwise the workers of the United Kingdom, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains of taxation.
Is the reduction in care quality from sacking staff vs prolonging 19 lives for a short period a worthwhile trade off?
Kay Burley of Sky hammered Steve Barclay to apologise which he refused to do saying they were following the science
She then interviewed a labour spokesperson who also refused to apologise for endorsing HMG actions at the time despite her protestations
God only knows what the death toll of this will be in the coming months and years.
What exactly would you do about it? I think this is a "all options are bad" problem - I can't see what the government can possibly do about it.
(the exception to this is GPs, where switching funding from "per patient on their books" to "per patient seen" with the ability for patients to go to any practice if theirs cannot fit them in might well significantly help the problem of never being able to get a GP appointment).
I suspect most people would think of “waiting lists” as referring to patients who are actively waiting for an urgent procedure or follow up? Seems reasonable?
A big proportion are actually people with chronic diseases who are regularly monitored but are not actually “waiting” for anything specifically.
The government is reported to be considering splitting them out from the “waiting list” numbers and reporting separately. Of course that will have the benefit to them of reducing the headline number. However arguably it’s a more useful way to analyse the stress on the system.
Coming to a twitter-feed near you...
Talking of Angela Rayner, I see that she has been Fullfact-ed again:
https://fullfact.org/economy/angela-rayner-wrong-wage-growth/
(Rather technical, but then it always is. You should see the Factchecking part of France24, which has yet to apply itself to Mr Macron:
https://www.france24.com/en/fight-the-fake)
Central government has over many years (since Thatcher) legislated responsibilities on to local government without giving it the means to pay. It's neat way of cutting government sending and devolving the blame form whoever is in No10.
That applies in spades to social care. Local authorities effectively have responsibility without either power or sufficient resources.
You're right, of course, that Care Home residents aren't the ones making the choices, but I'd sooner have a vaccinated resident cared for by a PPE swathed non-vaccinated carer than no carer at all.
And, before you jump down my throat, remember I'm an old man, double vaccinated, who has tested positive for Covid. As has my (almost) equally aged wife. I seem to be shaking it off; she's not quite as well.
I wonder.
As the dominant employer or purchaser in many of those sectors, the government has been able to do a decent job of keeping pay towards the bottom of the "reasonably competitive" range. Enough to prevent massive staff shortages, but not much more.
There are lots of reasons why that's reasonable, including stability, pensions and sense of vocation, but they only stretch so far. At a certain point, too many people leave the system and not enough join.
In short a custard cousin is two or more men who have made the beast with two backs with the same female, but not concurrently.
Interest rates in Britain will rise before Christmas, according to a fresh City forecast, citing the more hawkish tone of Bank of England rate-setters.
Economists at Bank of America predict a first modest rise in the base rate of 0.15 percentage points in December, taking the benchmark rate to 0.25 per cent. They forecast a second rise of 0.25 points to 0.5 per cent next February. Previously, they had not expected any tightening of policy until February next year.
Robert Wood, UK economist at Bank of America, said that he expected the Bank of England to push up interest rates soon to preserve its inflation-fighting credibility in the face of rising prices.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/interest-rate-rise-is-likely-this-year-warns-city-pbszvcf52
And before you say it no, the answer isn't to go back to Jezza. Although I have long said at least he knew what an Opposition was for and would have given the govt a much harder ride these past 18 months.
I don't understand how this is all sustainable.
On pensioner taxes, I'm amused at the outraged demands for subsidy on heat-pumps for exactly the same property-owning people, and that no one is saying how bizarre a demand it is. We have known about the extra expense of poor-quality properties for nearly half a century, and we are seeing insistence for bailouts on the consequences of their own inactions from people who chose to do nothing.
If students have to pay for their won education, give people needing heat-pumps a loan on Student Loan terms secured against equity in the house.
Vaccines are a good thing and highly effective. They are not 100%, however.
My mum's probate came through this week, 23 months after her death. Mainly due to delays in approval.
Rishi will be getting a chunky windfall from IHT catching up, plus of course increased mortality amongst oldsters.
In due course he will be getting a windfall from a proportion of the 200k (my estimate) properties currently clogged up by Covid rental restrictions where LLs sell-up and get out.
Together that will be a few billion at least. On top of CHT increases.
Nevertheless, if that £20 extra a week was critical to me and I could get, say, £50 a week more net by working then I'd do it.
So why does the establishment think it preferable to restrict people in this country to restricting international travel during a global pandemic ?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/world/asia/hong-kong-population-drop.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/11/uk-public-backs-carbon-tax-high-flyer-levy-and-heat-pump-grants-study-shows
I'd imagine that proportion is pretty high, and closer to the decisions many people will be facing.
The UK's testing system is among the best in the world.
The problem was that trace and isolate was never going to be among the best in the world.
The mistake was spending too much money trying to make it among the best in the world.
It was Dec 2020. Found out new more transmissible variant with vaccine now here. All of country should have been put in tier 4/lockdown.
https://twitter.com/ThatRyanChap/status/1447834912309104643?s=20
Equivalent events were still going on in France at the same time and they left Eurodisney open after cases were found among staff, so you’d need to apply the same criticism to Emmanuel Macron.
I am generally in favour of a liberal gambling regime, but getting the regulations right and balanced is key to that being sustainable.
I wonder how many people who want action taken on climate change are already complaining about higher energy costs.
A professional colleague of mine who's a Labour member (and good personal friend) texted this to me recently as he spent a week in Mallorca - and it told me so much. He also sends me James O'Brien memes, which I think he expects me to find funny, but doesn't like any jokes at Greta's expense.
I ribbingly suggested to him he doesn't spend quite so much time online in his Twitter bubble.
I once got pinged and told I had to isolate for 1 day,
Which meant they had missed the first thirteen days of isolation.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmsctech/92/9203.htm
People will always say they approve of whatever the 'good cause' is but then complain about rising costs and taxes and demand subsidies (the extra taxes to fund them being paid by 'people like them').
The biggest failure - which TSE doesn't even mention in his list amongst all his other valid criticisms - is the way in which certain sections of society, most notably care home residents, were just left to die. I genuinely got the impression - which I still maintain - that the Government view was simply that they were not important enough to bother about because they were old and would be dead soon anyway. Now clearly I have to recognise that my view could be driven by my antipathy towards Johnson and his Government but it is a perception that I cannot shake and one I think strikes home with many other people whatever their political persuasion.
I think!
Bit of a role reversal at the moment.
And on the care homes deaths the NHS looks like it bears greatest responsibility.
The problem we have is not that we have installed too little renewable capacity but that we have installed the wrong sort - or rather we have failed to install all of the right sort. Even if we had more than 100% capacity from wind and solar we would still have periods when we had shortages. What we have failed to install are the reliable renewables such as tidal.
If we choose a future of restricted or no hydrocarbon energy sources (and it is a choice not an inevitability) then we need something reliable to replace it for filling in the gaps between the mainstay renewables. Basically that means tidal or nuclear.
But the haunting ought to be tempered by the question of whether we would have done any better. I'm reminded of the story of FM Montgomery having a troubled night on his deathbed, as he struggled with the idea of having to explain to God why he had killed all those men at El Alamein.
But the clustershambles that was Christmas 2020... that's a different matter. And on that one, Starmer did push for more restrictions earlier. And he was right to do so. Lives would have been saved and we wouldn't have needed such a long post-Christmas lockdown.
And BoJo mocked him has some combination of Scrooge and the Grinch for his pains.
Would love to see how closely the map Kwarteng handed Sunak yesterday resembles Tory gains in 2019.
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1447841221121126401?s=20
Arctic literally means "of the bear" from the Greek for bear - arktos, and Antarctic is a contraction of Anti-Arctic - so literally "opposite of the bear"
And the Arctic has bears, the Antarctic doesn't; so it all makes sense, right?
Well, not really.. The Arctic was named long before anyone involved in naming it went there and saw bears. Arktikos was the Greek word for northern because The Great Bear, Ursa Major, was in the northern sky, and the existence or not of bears is just a pleasing coincidence
1. ONS survey.
2. Genome sequencing.
3. Volume of testing completed.
But testing alone achieves nothing. It provides you with information, but to derive any advantage from the information you have to act on it. We didn't.
People on twitter could see that something was happening in Kent at the end of November, that infection rates weren't declining despite lockdown, but the government did nothing with that information until it was nearly Christmas and missed the chance to avert the worst.
There were so many other opportunities to act on the testing information that were squandered. It meant that all we gained from the billions spent was a more accurate count of cases. Pointless.