Isn't it extraordinary that at the beginning of February the World Health Organisation tweeted that they didn't want international trade and travel to be interrupted? Isn't their priority supposed to be the health of people around the world?
A question that has puzzled me a bit - clearly London is running a bit ahead of the rest of the country but, since we slammed on the brakes at the same rate everywhere, does it not follow that the peak will take place at the same time everywhere, just with a lower amplitude outside London? I've heard several colleagues say that the peak will be deferred (i.e., later) outside London but I don't see, from a social distancing perspective why this should be the case. Am I missing something?
Doesn't the percentage of immune people locally come into the formula ?
That was my uneducated understanding. Peak was when you reached the top of the curve and this occurred when the virus was running out of targets reducing the rate of spread. If you restrict too soon then there will still be plenty of targets for any remaining virus once the restrictions come off. It comes back to the same question: have the east Asians merely deferred pain or have they avoided it?
I don't think anywhere across the country are there enough immune people for this to have an effect yet (if we assume 3% are infected that still gives a huge reservoir of people without immunity). Simply - if we isolate entirely we cannot infect others. It means that next time there are more people to infect so we have a similar epidemic (without other actions) but the number of people infected in this first epidemic should theoretically depend only upon the efficiency of the lockdown.
But you're still going to get that effect quicker, the more infected people you start with. Even if the rate of spreading is slowed by a lockdown.
It really depends on the percentage infected now though. I suspect that is not massively high so the effect will likely not be massive so the bigger effect will be the number of people who are infected at the time of the lockdown. For future waves it will matter but the number of infected and putatively immune is going to have a marginal effect on the growth rate I fear.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
That might the hardest of the 3 to get rid of. But if inflation stays steady above 2.5% it could be a good time to ditch that as the minimum, and maybe the earnings link too.
Why bother though, unless you're expecting inflation to fall again too?
Isn't it extraordinary that at the beginning of February the World Health Organisation tweeted that they didn't want international trade and travel to be interrupted? Isn't their priority supposed to be the health of people around the world?
Indeed! And to bring some semblance of normality I am sat at my desk in a 3 piece suit. #dressupfriday
With cufflinks like David Cameron or Jacob Rees-Mogg, or ordinary, buttoned single cuffs like our man-of-the-people, Eton and Oxford Prime Minister?
Double-cuff shirts are the only shirts. Lets have a bit of fucking decorum
You mean you wear one of those ghastly new fangled shirts where the collar and cuffs are attached to the shirt itself? The world really is going to hell in a handbasket.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
A question that has puzzled me a bit - clearly London is running a bit ahead of the rest of the country but, since we slammed on the brakes at the same rate everywhere, does it not follow that the peak will take place at the same time everywhere, just with a lower amplitude outside London? I've heard several colleagues say that the peak will be deferred (i.e., later) outside London but I don't see, from a social distancing perspective why this should be the case. Am I missing something?
Doesn't the percentage of immune people locally come into the formula ?
That was my uneducated understanding. Peak was when you reached the top of the curve and this occurred when the virus was running out of targets reducing the rate of spread. If you restrict too soon then there will still be plenty of targets for any remaining virus once the restrictions come off. It comes back to the same question: have the east Asians merely deferred pain or have they avoided it?
I don't think anywhere across the country are there enough immune people for this to have an effect yet (if we assume 3% are infected that still gives a huge reservoir of people without immunity). Simply - if we isolate entirely we cannot infect others. It means that next time there are more people to infect so we have a similar epidemic (without other actions) but the number of people infected in this first epidemic should theoretically depend only upon the efficiency of the lockdown.
But you're still going to get that effect quicker, the more infected people you start with. Even if the rate of spreading is slowed by a lockdown.
It really depends on the percentage infected now though. I suspect that is not massively high so the effect will likely not be massive so the bigger effect will be the number of people who are infected at the time of the lockdown. For future waves it will matter but the number of infected and putatively immune is going to have a marginal effect on the growth rate I fear.
Your blockquotes are still going awry
With exponential growth, a small difference in starting infection rates quickly becomes important. cf. New York.
We know that social contact these days is out. We know that alcohol above 70% kills the virus. We know that hydroxychloroqin has proven an effective treatment in some cases and is a derivative of quinine. We now find out that lying on your front can stop you needing a ventilator. So really, the solution is to get sh*t-faced on maximum strength G&T, alone, and end up passing out face forward.
We do not know that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine have been proven effective, though studies are ongoing. The Chinese study communicated yesterday showed no effect. In addition it can interfere with cardiac conduction, potentially an issue with COVID19 myocarditis. I appreciate there is a certain amount of levity in your comment, but would be cautious about the rush to judgement.
In terms of positioning, there is an interesting review of prone ventilation for ARDS here:
There are some benefits, and some downsides. The better oxygenation and reduced lung injury vs increased cardiac arrest.
A little breathless, and tight chest, coughing again, but O2 sats OK, and still no fever.
Testing later. The view is that leaving it a couple of days after symptoms appear increases the chances of an accurate result. It shouldn't increase my self isolation or alter treatment in the short term.
Fingers crossed for you, Foxy. A question that has puzzled me a bit - clearly London is running a bit ahead of the rest of the country but, since we slammed on the brakes at the same rate everywhere, does it not follow that the peak will take place at the same time everywhere, just with a lower amplitude outside London? I've heard several colleagues say that the peak will be deferred (i.e., later) outside London but I don't see, from a social distancing perspective why this should be the case. Am I missing something?
Yes, I would expect the peak to be near simultaneous across the country, but lower in amplitude in less affected areas too.
There may well be patchy peaks reflecting local variation, such as a big outbreak in large nursing home etc.
I think the problem in Leicester is not yet overwhelming numbers (we reported 9 fatalities in total yesterday, for a population of a million) but more the numbers of staff needing to self isolate, including myself.
Yes - I've heard that here as well, albeit the number of cases is also manageable locally (indeed, quite low I'm told). Given this, it feels like the local peak will be bad but manageable. But friends at hospitals in Herts tell me they are expecting the London overflow to go there, and all the anecdata from colleagues suggests that London is in a bad shape. Hence (and especially given the, I suspect, weaker social distancing there) that the plateau there will be worse than elsewhere in the country.
We did 6000 tests yesterday we have ramped down from 8000 in some days last week.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
Quite - the rough sleeper problem gets you to addiction support, mental health. Which then gets you to people asking why can't we force people to take mental health treatment - which lead you to the progressive view of medical intervention & incarceration of mental patients.
The short version - we have decided, as a society, *not* to lock up Crumbling Michael and chums, forced feed them their medicine and force them to behave (as we define it) by hitting them with sticks. It would now be illegal and no doctor would co-operate. The result is rough sleeping.
You can shelter the rough sleepers for a short period. But in the longer term they will be back outside.
It is an interesting question whether it is they who are the problem - or us. After all, apes are not evolved to live in artificial boxes, with other apes a metre or 2 away all the time...
Is it just me or are people getting slightly carried away thinking that we’ve already got this bug defeated? Lots of talk about what we do when this ends and things schools going back for the summer term. We still have weeks of this and the damage has not peaked yet.
I worry about the psychology at play. Reminds me when I once got excited about the Christmas holiday in October. It was a long old slog.
Do we really believe that all those paid by government out of work will have jobs at the end of all this? Unemployment is going up.
What jobs are going to go in your opinion? There is going to be hella pent up demand...
Travel and tourism will be decimated. Not sure demand will be higher, everyone will be poorer.
Why would *everyone* be poorer? There's nothing to spend money on. Even working from home alone entails massive savings on transport, food and coffee.
There is the minor detail that those "massive savings" were the income for a large slice of our population.
Yes, but Jonathan specifically said 'travel and tourism will be decimated'. I work partly in tourism and partly in fmcg (that side is still going), and I can see *a lot* of pent up demand when restrictions are lifted. My Dad has calculated he's saving £350 a month on his commute and bits and bobs during the day (offset only slightly by his eating more at home and increased leccy bills), and he won't be alone.
Is it just me or are people getting slightly carried away thinking that we’ve already got this bug defeated? Lots of talk about what we do when this ends and things schools going back for the summer term. We still have weeks of this and the damage has not peaked yet.
I worry about the psychology at play. Reminds me when I once got excited about the Christmas holiday in October. It was a long old slog.
Its more the cure is nearly as bad as the disease.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
We know that social contact these days is out. We know that alcohol above 70% kills the virus. We know that hydroxychloroqin has proven an effective treatment in some cases and is a derivative of quinine. We now find out that lying on your front can stop you needing a ventilator. So really, the solution is to get sh*t-faced on maximum strength G&T, alone, and end up passing out face forward.
We do not know that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine have been proven effective, though studies are ongoing. The Chinese study communicated yesterday showed no effect. In addition it can interfere with cardiac conduction, potentially an issue with COVID19 myocarditis. I appreciate there is a certain amount of levity in your comment, but would be cautious about the rush to judgement.
In terms of positioning, there is an interesting review of prone ventilation for ARDS here:
There are some benefits, and some downsides. The better oxygenation and reduced lung injury vs increased cardiac arrest.
Have to say that. although I'm obviously out of date now, I don't see HOW chloroquine could work on a virus and agree with Dr F that there could be cardiac problems. There's also the possibility, according to the BNF, of ophthalmic problems, although it probably has to be used for a while to get those.
The mooted mechanism is through mediating the inflammatory response to the virus, and possibly boosting host virucidal response.
Eye problems are with long term use generally, but there are cases of acute toxicity. It is a problem in Africa, where the response to a fever is to think it a flare up of malaria, and swallow a handful of chloroquine from the market.
Dr F, I'm obliged. Can see how the inflammatory response MIGHT be reduced, but as the articles you kindly referenced points out some work ..... quite a lot of work ..... of a significantly higher standard is required.
I'm also quite concerned that, apparently, one of the authors of the report is also editor of the journal where it was published.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Is it just me or are people getting slightly carried away thinking that we’ve already got this bug defeated? Lots of talk about what we do when this ends and things schools going back for the summer term. We still have weeks of this and the damage has not peaked yet.
I worry about the psychology at play. Reminds me when I once got excited about the Christmas holiday in October. It was a long old slog.
Its more the cure is nearly as bad as the disease.
I guess it’s generally preferable to be poor than dead. The trick is to avoid both.
Our Chief Executive has spent time studying the scheme for the self employed. His summary is:
A new self-employed income support scheme will pay self-employed people a taxable grant worth 80% of average monthly income, capped at £2,500pm
income will be calculated by taking the average of income over the last three years
self-employed people can claim these grants and continue to work.
the scheme is only open to anyone with trading profits of up to £50k. Self-employed people who earn more will not qualify.
the scheme is only those who have submitted a tax return for 2019
there are no steps to take. HMRC will contact eligible self-employed people directly and pay the grant straight into their bank account after inviting them to fill out an online form
the self-employed income support scheme will be open to people across UK for at least 3 months. However, the scheme is unlikely to be up and running before the end of June
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
The ridiculousness of Isam's comment really doesn't need exposing. Leave it there and as each day passes it will shrivel under the intensity of its self-immolation.
Business Minister we have done 6300 tests today we are ramping up.
Maitless- 9 days ago PM told us 10000 a day from this week. If you have ramped up from 5000 to 6000 in 9 days why tell us you ......
Reality has physical limits - if the volumes of reagents aren't there (for example), you can't just magic them into existence. 10,000 may be the aspiration - and you may have the labs all set, the staff etc, but all it takes is one thing missing in the chain.
In other news, the LibDems have postponed their leadership election until 2021.
From a betting perspective I reckon this makes Davey a good bet: he'll effectively have been doing the job for over a year and may well be a shoo-in when the vote eventually comes. Currently 2.3 on BFE.
I think it is a three horse race between Ed Davey, Layla Moran and Daisy Cooper. I just can't see any of the other eight LibDem MPs being elected leader.
Layla Moran comes with a lot of baggage. Poor value at 2.28.
If Ed Davey is seen as too dull and uninspiring, Daisy Cooper might be value at 11.5. She has a good track record, speaks well and now has an extra year to get parliamentary experience and visibility.
The US is heading for catastrophe. No one more unsuitable at this time could have been at the helm than Donald Trump. It's not all down to him. The systemic failures have been visible to all who were prepared to look. Now it's about to come crashing down. This will end the dominance of the United States as the world's great superpower.
Authorities in Northern Ireland, which has recorded 10 deaths and 241 cases of infection, plan to use an army base in county Down as a morgue and to set up field hospitals at several sites, possibly including Belfast’s Titanic quarter and the former Maze prison. The health minister, Robin Swann, has warned deaths could exceed the more than 3,500 people killed during the Troubles.
Our Chief Executive has spent time studying the scheme for the self employed. His summary is:
A new self-employed income support scheme will pay self-employed people a taxable grant worth 80% of average monthly income, capped at £2,500pm
income will be calculated by taking the average of income over the last three years
self-employed people can claim these grants and continue to work.
the scheme is only open to anyone with trading profits of up to £50k. Self-employed people who earn more will not qualify.
the scheme is only those who have submitted a tax return for 2019
there are no steps to take. HMRC will contact eligible self-employed people directly and pay the grant straight into their bank account after inviting them to fill out an online form
the self-employed income support scheme will be open to people across UK for at least 3 months. However, the scheme is unlikely to be up and running before the end of June
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
You are wrong - there has been a 'system of sorts' certainly since 1600 - the scale has changed of course but all systems have operated on the basis of 'stick and carrot' the balance varying with the prevailing circumstances. No proper system can exist unless the vast majority work and are willing to support those who don't/can't for whatever reason. We have a system called politics to resolve the tensions, in our case based on democracy. I like it.
For how long? The public can't be eating that much more, and there must be a physical limit to most people's stockpiling.
No, the issue is that 20-30% of our intake comes from eating out. Lunches, work canteens, nights out, pubs etc... All of this now has to be replaced by home cooking.
Its not just that. Work from home + full fridges and cupboards means food gets eaten faster. Also these aren't normal times. People think they need to keep 14 days of food at home in stock at all times - so that means a lot of sizable top-up shops. The data is clear - more consumers making more trips and buying more on those trips. It has slowed down vs last week but its still way above anything normal.
Am I the only person who is eating less now than before ?
And I've only had 1 unit of alcohol in the last 11 days and that was only a Fosters Radler so barely counts.
I'm also exercising more.
These have not been conscious decisions but rather seem to have happened 'naturally'.
I'm still working so its not as if my lifestyle has changed.
My personal weight loss programme has received an unexpected boost, Richard.
It's an ill wind...
With the kettle and biscuit tin close at hand - I'm finding the devil is winning!
Authorities in Northern Ireland, which has recorded 10 deaths and 241 cases of infection, plan to use an army base in county Down as a morgue and to set up field hospitals at several sites, possibly including Belfast’s Titanic quarter and the former Maze prison. The health minister, Robin Swann, has warned deaths could exceed the more than 3,500 people killed during the Troubles.
Same thing happens with flu every year but we just don't report it.
The US is heading for catastrophe. No one more unsuitable at this time could have been at the helm than Donald Trump. It's not all down to him. The systemic failures have been visible to all who were prepared to look. Now it's about to come crashing down. This will end the dominance of the United States as the world's great superpower.
It's not much better in London, mind.
With or without this virus the US would no longer be the dominant superpower and the virus began in China, supposedly the main challenger for US hegemony
For how long? The public can't be eating that much more, and there must be a physical limit to most people's stockpiling.
Part of it is simply eating differences - you now have a large number of people eating lunch at home who previously would have been grabbing a sandwich at pret, or in the office or school canteen or whatever.
Looks like the 19/3 and 20/3 figures are the clear outliers with some crossover so more were done on 19/3 but considerably fewer on 20/3 but the average was consistent with the rest of the week.
To call it "8000 some days" is entirely misleadng nonsense, for one thing "days" needs to be a minimum of two days to meet the definition of the word "days".
Is it just me or are people getting slightly carried away thinking that we’ve already got this bug defeated? Lots of talk about what we do when this ends and things schools going back for the summer term.
Normalcy bias like that which you describe is the death throes of society as we knew it. It bemuses me that people like Jeremy Warner are dribbling on about the economic impact as if, somehow, it will be business as normal before long. They have no idea.
There were 3 things that could have rebooted the human race. An alien invasion, a meteorite strike or a global virus.
To paraphrase Boromir, 'It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much over such a little thing.'
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
I've attended a couple of trade shows here and the scale of the place is astonishing. Lots of hotel accommodation nearby too, which I suspect will be used for NHS staff. Seems like a good plan being executed well.
Authorities in Northern Ireland, which has recorded 10 deaths and 241 cases of infection, plan to use an army base in county Down as a morgue and to set up field hospitals at several sites, possibly including Belfast’s Titanic quarter and the former Maze prison. The health minister, Robin Swann, has warned deaths could exceed the more than 3,500 people killed during the Troubles.
Same thing happens with flu every year but we just don't report it.
Isn't it extraordinary that at the beginning of February the World Health Organisation tweeted that they didn't want international trade and travel to be interrupted? Isn't their priority supposed to be the health of people around the world?
Their priority is likely to be their own personal interests and those of their staff first.
Do we really believe that all those paid by government out of work will have jobs at the end of all this? Unemployment is going up.
What jobs are going to go in your opinion? There is going to be hella pent up demand...
Travel and tourism will be decimated. Not sure demand will be higher, everyone will be poorer.
Why would *everyone* be poorer? There's nothing to spend money on. Even working from home alone entails massive savings on transport, food and coffee.
There is the minor detail that those "massive savings" were the income for a large slice of our population.
Yes, but Jonathan specifically said 'travel and tourism will be decimated'. I work partly in tourism and partly in fmcg (that side is still going), and I can see *a lot* of pent up demand when restrictions are lifted. My Dad has calculated he's saving £350 a month on his commute and bits and bobs during the day (offset only slightly by his eating more at home and increased leccy bills), and he won't be alone.
The US is heading for catastrophe. No one more unsuitable at this time could have been at the helm than Donald Trump. It's not all down to him. The systemic failures have been visible to all who were prepared to look. Now it's about to come crashing down. This will end the dominance of the United States as the world's great superpower.
It's not much better in London, mind.
With or without this virus the US would no longer be the dominant superpower and the virus began in China, supposedly the main challenger for US hegemony
True.
This acts as the dramatic accelerator. At this rate China will be trading at 80-90% capacity by end of the year whilst the US is on its knees.
I derive no pleasure from stating this. I love America and Americans. But it's fucked.
Is it just me or are people getting slightly carried away thinking that we’ve already got this bug defeated? Lots of talk about what we do when this ends and things schools going back for the summer term. We still have weeks of this and the damage has not peaked yet.
I worry about the psychology at play. Reminds me when I once got excited about the Christmas holiday in October. It was a long old slog.
Its more the cure is nearly as bad as the disease.
I guess it’s generally preferable to be poor than dead. The trick is to avoid both.
But is 99 not-poor people and 1 dead better or worse than 100 poor all alive? I know those numbers are simplistic but that's the sort of trade off we are talking about.
Our Chief Executive has spent time studying the scheme for the self employed. His summary is:
A new self-employed income support scheme will pay self-employed people a taxable grant worth 80% of average monthly income, capped at £2,500pm
income will be calculated by taking the average of income over the last three years
self-employed people can claim these grants and continue to work.
the scheme is only open to anyone with trading profits of up to £50k. Self-employed people who earn more will not qualify.
the scheme is only those who have submitted a tax return for 2019
there are no steps to take. HMRC will contact eligible self-employed people directly and pay the grant straight into their bank account after inviting them to fill out an online form
the self-employed income support scheme will be open to people across UK for at least 3 months. However, the scheme is unlikely to be up and running before the end of June
Start of June I thought.
Which is not an enormous help with the cash flow of those eligible. And the uncertainty of who they are will make the bank more cautious. Its a seriously good effort but anyone who claims there is an easy solution to this is deluding themselves.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
The OAPension was introduced by the Liberal Govt of 1905-10. Following, IIRC, the policy of the German Govt under Bismarck.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
World war deaths are more terrifying and more scary however, and often more traumatic and horrible. Further, they were generally “lost” lives - i.e. young people who’d otherwise have lived for decades more as opposed to being skewed to the elderly who might have passed on in 6-18 months of ‘something else’ anyway.
Finally, WW2 deaths were against a population of c.40 million not c.65 million so the ratio was far higher.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
The testing will increase but there are multiple supply chain issues. Last week the Germans closed down any export of medical supplies as did France. The result was the UK was left exposed as we had become too dependent on Germany especially.
There are a number of UK SMEs such as MWE, Penlon or Primer Design that have had to expand dramatically in the space of a week or two at the same time as deal with staff being off sick or self isolating.
The result is better than it could have been and there is little point now in criticising politicians. The hollowing out of our production capabilities has been allowed to occur for 20 years.
Realistic to see 10,000 tests a day by end of next week.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
The Tories hardly ran a pure free market campaign even in 2019. Given no party since WW2 has won a general election after 10 years in power bar Major's Tories in 1992 the odds are against another term for the Tories anyway, however I can't see Starmer winning an outright majority either
We know that social contact these days is out. We know that alcohol above 70% kills the virus. We know that hydroxychloroqin has proven an effective treatment in some cases and is a derivative of quinine. We now find out that lying on your front can stop you needing a ventilator. So really, the solution is to get sh*t-faced on maximum strength G&T, alone, and end up passing out face forward.
We do not know that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine have been proven effective, though studies are ongoing. The Chinese study communicated yesterday showed no effect. In addition it can interfere with cardiac conduction, potentially an issue with COVID19 myocarditis. I appreciate there is a certain amount of levity in your comment, but would be cautious about the rush to judgement.
In terms of positioning, there is an interesting review of prone ventilation for ARDS here:
There are some benefits, and some downsides. The better oxygenation and reduced lung injury vs increased cardiac arrest.
Have to say that. although I'm obviously out of date now, I don't see HOW chloroquine could work on a virus and agree with Dr F that there could be cardiac problems. There's also the possibility, according to the BNF, of ophthalmic problems, although it probably has to be used for a while to get those.
The mooted mechanism is through mediating the inflammatory response to the virus, and possibly boosting host virucidal response.
Eye problems are with long term use generally, but there are cases of acute toxicity. It is a problem in Africa, where the response to a fever is to think it a flare up of malaria, and swallow a handful of chloroquine from the market.
Dr F, I'm obliged. Can see how the inflammatory response MIGHT be reduced, but as the articles you kindly referenced points out some work ..... quite a lot of work ..... of a significantly higher standard is required.
I'm also quite concerned that, apparently, one of the authors of the report is also editor of the journal where it was published.
I was more twitched by 5 of the 16 in the hydroxychloroquine group being removed from the results. 1 died, 3 transferred to ICU and one stopped because of side effects, leaving 11 to be analysed.
If I reported myself as the most successful political gambler on this site, by excluding all my losing bets, you would get the picture!
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
They paid in national insurance just as this generation will have to do and national insurance was set up in the first place to find the state pension
Do we really believe that all those paid by government out of work will have jobs at the end of all this? Unemployment is going up.
What jobs are going to go in your opinion? There is going to be hella pent up demand...
Travel and tourism will be decimated. Not sure demand will be higher, everyone will be poorer.
Why would *everyone* be poorer? There's nothing to spend money on. Even working from home alone entails massive savings on transport, food and coffee.
There is the minor detail that those "massive savings" were the income for a large slice of our population.
Yes, but Jonathan specifically said 'travel and tourism will be decimated'. I work partly in tourism and partly in fmcg (that side is still going), and I can see *a lot* of pent up demand when restrictions are lifted. My Dad has calculated he's saving £350 a month on his commute and bits and bobs during the day (offset only slightly by his eating more at home and increased leccy bills), and he won't be alone.
Which is why there will be an inflationary spike
Which is just a more lugubrious way of saying there will be lots of demand.
Just gone on my Sky app and Sky are allowing you to suspend the Sky Sports package with immediate effect but still allow access to their sport channels.
They will re-instate the charge when sport becomes active again
Fair play to Sky
OTOH if you get Sky Sports through Virgin it is impossible to negotiate a discount because they are not fielding calls, texts, emails or chat.
Hypothetical. If the virus killed people quietly in ther sleep would we having this lockdown? Is it to avoid the awful sight of overwhelmed medical staff, with serious threat of their infection, that is the bigger driver than preserving life?
Do we really believe that all those paid by government out of work will have jobs at the end of all this? Unemployment is going up.
What jobs are going to go in your opinion? There is going to be hella pent up demand...
Travel and tourism will be decimated. Not sure demand will be higher, everyone will be poorer.
Why would *everyone* be poorer? There's nothing to spend money on. Even working from home alone entails massive savings on transport, food and coffee.
There is the minor detail that those "massive savings" were the income for a large slice of our population.
Yes, but Jonathan specifically said 'travel and tourism will be decimated'. I work partly in tourism and partly in fmcg (that side is still going), and I can see *a lot* of pent up demand when restrictions are lifted. My Dad has calculated he's saving £350 a month on his commute and bits and bobs during the day (offset only slightly by his eating more at home and increased leccy bills), and he won't be alone.
Which is why there will be an inflationary spike
Which is just a more lugubrious way of saying there will be lots of demand.
Lots of money, and a shortage of supply.
After the spike, it's actually possible we enter a world of lower demand, as people stop spending to recover their own finances.
Just gone on my Sky app and Sky are allowing you to suspend the Sky Sports package with immediate effect but still allow access to their sport channels.
They will re-instate the charge when sport becomes active again
Fair play to Sky
OTOH if you get Sky Sports through Virgin it is impossible to negotiate a discount because they are not fielding calls, texts, emails or chat.
Branson.
Liberty Media Group, actually.
I dropped Sky Sports from Virgin Media two weeks ago.
Is it just me or are people getting slightly carried away thinking that we’ve already got this bug defeated? Lots of talk about what we do when this ends and things schools going back for the summer term. We still have weeks of this and the damage has not peaked yet.
I worry about the psychology at play. Reminds me when I once got excited about the Christmas holiday in October. It was a long old slog.
Its more the cure is nearly as bad as the disease.
I guess it’s generally preferable to be poor than dead. The trick is to avoid both.
But is 99 not-poor people and 1 dead better or worse than 100 poor all alive? I know those numbers are simplistic but that's the sort of trade off we are talking about.
Yes - and the life expectancy of those dying is on average very short.
We can't maintain this binary approach for more than a few weeks.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
In Saxon England, the tithe (10% of income) taken by the Church was in effect welfare, as priests were chosen by the villagers, and the food distributed to the parish poor. It was only in later times that the Church decided that the glory of God was better served by building Cathedrals.
Just gone on my Sky app and Sky are allowing you to suspend the Sky Sports package with immediate effect but still allow access to their sport channels.
They will re-instate the charge when sport becomes active again
Fair play to Sky
OTOH if you get Sky Sports through Virgin it is impossible to negotiate a discount because they are not fielding calls, texts, emails or chat.
Branson.
Virgin have an online site to stop paying for Sky sports - and you can still watch the channels.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
They paid in national insurance just as this generation will have to do and national insurance was set up in the first place to find the state pension
Immaterial. NI ceased paying the pension many decades ago.
Not saying they shouldn't get their pensions. Just that they should be taxed on them the same as any other income.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
WRT Normalcy Bias there is also the opposite effect of Overreaction Bias. Both are cognitive distortions and sentiments that are accused of displaying either should be assessed as dispassionately and as empirically as possible.
Hypothetical. If the virus killed people quietly in ther sleep would we having this lockdown? Is it to avoid the awful sight of overwhelmed medical staff, with serious threat of their infection, that is the bigger driver than preserving life?
No and yes.
But the two are related. If the health system collapses then its not just coronavirus deaths that are an issue - coronavirus deaths would sky rocket due to the lack of a working healthcare system and other preventable deaths sky rocket too. Plus cancer treatments etc get cancelled or delayed causing more deaths down the line.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
PS I think the new figure of 20,000 UK deaths is maybe still too high. I would suggest around 5,000.
WRT Normalcy Bias there is also the opposite effect of Overreaction Bias. Both are cognitive distortions and sentiments that are accused of displaying either should be assessed as dispassionately and as empirically as possible.
Indeed. There are some people here (mentioning no names) who I imagine as panicking every sunset because they think it'll never be light again.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
PS I think the new figure of 20,000 UK deaths is maybe still too high. I would suggest around 5,000.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
They paid in national insurance just as this generation will have to do and national insurance was set up in the first place to find the state pension
Immaterial. NI ceased paying the pension many decades ago.
Not saying they shouldn't get their pensions. Just that they should be taxed on them the same as any other income.
There is also the anomaly that the increasing number of folk working after normal retirement age, do not pay NI, while their peers below the age do.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
The OAPension was introduced by the Liberal Govt of 1905-10. Following, IIRC, the policy of the German Govt under Bismarck.
True - 300 years after the first government action on poverty - with various measures in the 19c prompted by the poverty at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout the basis of all systems linked to the thinker Jeremy Bentham
'Less eligibility was a British government policy passed into law in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It stated that conditions in workhouses had to be worse than conditions available outside so that there was a deterrence to claiming poor relief'.
Of course it sounds harsh to us in the 21st century worded in that way - but versions pervade all social welfare systems pretty much everywhere. Is the only way to ensure consent.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
They paid in national insurance just as this generation will have to do and national insurance was set up in the first place to find the state pension
Immaterial. NI ceased paying the pension many decades ago.
Not saying they shouldn't get their pensions. Just that they should be taxed on them the same as any other income.
NI contributions and credits are still used to determine eligibility for the state pension even now, it looks like Sunak will extend NI contributions to the self employed too, even the over 65s might have to keep paying them eventually
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
They paid in national insurance just as this generation will have to do and national insurance was set up in the first place to find the state pension
Immaterial. NI ceased paying the pension many decades ago.
Not saying they shouldn't get their pensions. Just that they should be taxed on them the same as any other income.
NI contributions and credits are still used to determine eligibility for the state pension even now, it looks like Sunak will extend NI contributions to the self employed too, even the over 65s might have to keep paying them eventually
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
PS I think the new figure of 20,000 UK deaths is maybe still too high. I would suggest around 5,000.
Yesterday an expert said that 5,700 was possible. I can't remember which one.
Just gone on my Sky app and Sky are allowing you to suspend the Sky Sports package with immediate effect but still allow access to their sport channels.
They will re-instate the charge when sport becomes active again
Fair play to Sky
Is it automatic or do we need to apply for it?
It looks as if you need to do it through the my sky app and it is easy to do
I do not think it is automatic at this stage
Anyone who is still paying for Sky at all has too much money.
My advice take your card out . Spot the fact you still get nearly all the channels and make a decision based on that.
Sport is the only reason I have Sky and someday it will be back
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
PS I think the new figure of 20,000 UK deaths is maybe still too high. I would suggest around 5,000.
With two thirds of those having their departure this year hastened?
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
The OAPension was introduced by the Liberal Govt of 1905-10. Following, IIRC, the policy of the German Govt under Bismarck.
True - 300 years after the first government action on poverty - with various measures in the 19c prompted by the poverty at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout the basis of all systems linked to the thinker Jeremy Bentham
'Less eligibility was a British government policy passed into law in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It stated that conditions in workhouses had to be worse than conditions available outside so that there was a deterrence to claiming poor relief'.
Of course it sounds harsh to us in the 21st century worded in that way - but versions pervade all social welfare systems pretty much everywhere. Is the only way to ensure consent.
It doesn't sound harsh. It's pretty obvious. Slanted more positively, it's the 'more eligibility principle' - the principle that we must make working (for those who can) more eligible than not working.
The US is heading for catastrophe. No one more unsuitable at this time could have been at the helm than Donald Trump. It's not all down to him. The systemic failures have been visible to all who were prepared to look. Now it's about to come crashing down. This will end the dominance of the United States as the world's great superpower.
It's not much better in London, mind.
With or without this virus the US would no longer be the dominant superpower and the virus began in China, supposedly the main challenger for US hegemony
True.
This acts as the dramatic accelerator. At this rate China will be trading at 80-90% capacity by end of the year whilst the US is on its knees.
I derive no pleasure from stating this. I love America and Americans. But it's fucked.
China will only be trading at that capacity if as it eases lockdown the virus does not start spreading again or people start developing herd immunity.
In fact of the big powers I would say India will come out of this best, it was not at fault for causing the virus like China and it went into lockdown at an earlier stage than the US and Europe did and it is also a faster growing population than China and a free market democracy
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
PS I think the new figure of 20,000 UK deaths is maybe still too high. I would suggest around 5,000.
Yesterday an expert said that 5,700 was possible. I can't remember which one.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
They paid in national insurance just as this generation will have to do and national insurance was set up in the first place to find the state pension
Immaterial. NI ceased paying the pension many decades ago.
Not saying they shouldn't get their pensions. Just that they should be taxed on them the same as any other income.
There is also the anomaly that the increasing number of folk working after normal retirement age, do not pay NI, while their peers below the age do.
Indeed. Merging NI and Income Tax is the solution. Actually its part of the solution not the whole thing.
I want to write a guest article to propose on this but can't get the size down to a reasonable size.
We know that social contact these days is out. We know that alcohol above 70% kills the virus. We know that hydroxychloroqin has proven an effective treatment in some cases and is a derivative of quinine. We now find out that lying on your front can stop you needing a ventilator. So really, the solution is to get sh*t-faced on maximum strength G&T, alone, and end up passing out face forward.
We do not know that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine have been proven effective, though studies are ongoing. The Chinese study communicated yesterday showed no effect. In addition it can interfere with cardiac conduction, potentially an issue with COVID19 myocarditis. I appreciate there is a certain amount of levity in your comment, but would be cautious about the rush to judgement.
In terms of positioning, there is an interesting review of prone ventilation for ARDS here:
There are some benefits, and some downsides. The better oxygenation and reduced lung injury vs increased cardiac arrest.
Have to say that. although I'm obviously out of date now, I don't see HOW chloroquine could work on a virus and agree with Dr F that there could be cardiac problems. There's also the possibility, according to the BNF, of ophthalmic problems, although it probably has to be used for a while to get those.
The mooted mechanism is through mediating the inflammatory response to the virus, and possibly boosting host virucidal response.
Eye problems are with long term use generally, but there are cases of acute toxicity. It is a problem in Africa, where the response to a fever is to think it a flare up of malaria, and swallow a handful of chloroquine from the market.
Dr F, I'm obliged. Can see how the inflammatory response MIGHT be reduced, but as the articles you kindly referenced points out some work ..... quite a lot of work ..... of a significantly higher standard is required.
I'm also quite concerned that, apparently, one of the authors of the report is also editor of the journal where it was published.
I was more twitched by 5 of the 16 in the hydroxychloroquine group being removed from the results. 1 died, 3 transferred to ICU and one stopped because of side effects, leaving 11 to be analysed.
If I reported myself as the most successful political gambler on this site, by excluding all my losing bets, you would get the picture!
Yes. Strong touch of the Wakefields about the whole thing.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
PS I think the new figure of 20,000 UK deaths is maybe still too high. I would suggest around 5,000.
With two thirds of those having their departure this year hastened?
A long lockdown is like reverse Darwinism - sacrifice the young and productive to protect the old.
The US is heading for catastrophe. No one more unsuitable at this time could have been at the helm than Donald Trump. It's not all down to him. The systemic failures have been visible to all who were prepared to look. Now it's about to come crashing down. This will end the dominance of the United States as the world's great superpower.
It's not much better in London, mind.
With or without this virus the US would no longer be the dominant superpower and the virus began in China, supposedly the main challenger for US hegemony
True.
This acts as the dramatic accelerator. At this rate China will be trading at 80-90% capacity by end of the year whilst the US is on its knees.
I derive no pleasure from stating this. I love America and Americans. But it's fucked.
China will only be trading at that capacity if as it eases lockdown the virus does not start spreading again or people start developing herd immunity.
In fact I would say India will come out of this best, it was not at fault for causing the virus like China and it went into lockdown earlier than the US and Europe did and it is also a faster growing population than China and a free market democracy
I hope India does well. The climatic conditions seem to be in its favour. But it's such a family oriented culture, and people live, travel and work in very close quarters.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
In Saxon England, the tithe (10% of income) taken by the Church was in effect welfare, as priests were chosen by the villagers, and the food distributed to the parish poor. It was only in later times that the Church decided that the glory of God was better served by building Cathedrals.
The building of cathedrals was effectively workfare - work for generations of artisans. Bit like the castles.
Fun fact - if you visit Corfe castle, you will notice that the old villages houses have strange basements. These used to be ground floor. Making stones for the castle was an occupation over the centuries - as the clippings were throw outside, the ground level raised. Centuries of paid employment raised ground level by 10 foot or so.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
PS I think the new figure of 20,000 UK deaths is maybe still too high. I would suggest around 5,000.
With two thirds of those having their departure this year hastened?
A long lockdown is like reverse Darwinism - sacrifice the young and productive to protect the old.
Another term would be Socialsim.
How are the young and productive being sacrificed?
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
The only link needed is to average earnings - including if negative.
This is what ensures that pensioners do not over time become impoverished relative to the rest of society.
Because contrary to what some believe, poverty IS relative. That this is so is why the earnings link is crucial and why when the triple lock goes - as it must and will - it is the earnings link and only the earnings link which should be retained.
Pensioners to rise and fall with the general tide.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
The OAPension was introduced by the Liberal Govt of 1905-10. Following, IIRC, the policy of the German Govt under Bismarck.
True - 300 years after the first government action on poverty - with various measures in the 19c prompted by the poverty at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout the basis of all systems linked to the thinker Jeremy Bentham
'Less eligibility was a British government policy passed into law in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It stated that conditions in workhouses had to be worse than conditions available outside so that there was a deterrence to claiming poor relief'.
Of course it sounds harsh to us in the 21st century worded in that way - but versions pervade all social welfare systems pretty much everywhere. Is the only way to ensure consent.
It doesn't sound harsh. It's pretty obvious. Slanted more positively, it's the 'more eligibility principle' - the principle that we must make working (for those who can) more eligible than not working.
We don't really do that - and haven't for a long time. Hence the long term not seeking work group.
A UBI is simpler than pretending we would leave people to starve. Which we won't.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
They paid in national insurance just as this generation will have to do and national insurance was set up in the first place to find the state pension
Immaterial. NI ceased paying the pension many decades ago.
Not saying they shouldn't get their pensions. Just that they should be taxed on them the same as any other income.
There is also the anomaly that the increasing number of folk working after normal retirement age, do not pay NI, while their peers below the age do.
This can be especially aggravating as over 65s cannot be 'retired' by their employer as before.
So 'Old Fred' continues on working, no longer paying NI, even though he's long past his best.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
The OAPension was introduced by the Liberal Govt of 1905-10. Following, IIRC, the policy of the German Govt under Bismarck.
True - 300 years after the first government action on poverty - with various measures in the 19c prompted by the poverty at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout the basis of all systems linked to the thinker Jeremy Bentham
'Less eligibility was a British government policy passed into law in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It stated that conditions in workhouses had to be worse than conditions available outside so that there was a deterrence to claiming poor relief'.
Of course it sounds harsh to us in the 21st century worded in that way - but versions pervade all social welfare systems pretty much everywhere. Is the only way to ensure consent.
It doesn't sound harsh. It's pretty obvious. Slanted more positively, it's the 'more eligibility principle' - the principle that we must make working (for those who can) more eligible than not working.
We don't really do that - and haven't for a long time. Hence the long term not seeking work group.
A UBI is simpler than pretending we would leave people to starve. Which we won't.
Tax credits and the minimum wage are examples of the 'more eligibility' principle at work.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
I still say if normal flu infections and deaths were reported in the way this virus has, we would live on a similar state of panic. We hear the line that ‘flu has a vaccine’ as if that makes it harmless, but it still kills more people than this disease is likely to each year,
What - it kills 500,000 per year in the UK alone? My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
Anyone who thought that the response has been an over reaction needs to sit and watch the news over the next week. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. More through luck than design the UK will be less affected than most other G7 nations.
PS I think the new figure of 20,000 UK deaths is maybe still too high. I would suggest around 5,000.
With two thirds of those having their departure this year hastened?
A long lockdown is like reverse Darwinism - sacrifice the young and productive to protect the old.
Another term would be Socialsim.
How are the young and productive being sacrificed?
Their earnings have been smashed or jobs removed.
More delay to getting on housing ladder.
Pension funds left bleeding.
Huge debts thrusted upon them which will take years to pay off.
The US is heading for catastrophe. No one more unsuitable at this time could have been at the helm than Donald Trump. It's not all down to him. The systemic failures have been visible to all who were prepared to look. Now it's about to come crashing down. This will end the dominance of the United States as the world's great superpower.
It's not much better in London, mind.
With or without this virus the US would no longer be the dominant superpower and the virus began in China, supposedly the main challenger for US hegemony
True.
This acts as the dramatic accelerator. At this rate China will be trading at 80-90% capacity by end of the year whilst the US is on its knees.
I derive no pleasure from stating this. I love America and Americans. But it's fucked.
China will only be trading at that capacity if as it eases lockdown the virus does not start spreading again or people start developing herd immunity.
In fact I would say India will come out of this best, it was not at fault for causing the virus like China and it went into lockdown at an earlier stage than the US and Europe did and it is also a faster growing population than China and a free market democracy
Have you been there? Or anywhere in the third world? Lockdown and social distancing in a Delhi slum are going to be immeasurably less effective than in London or NYC.
a) Nothing on DC pensions where people have these in a drawdown, which is the norm these days outside of the public sector. If your pot is slashed and you are currently taking a pension, it won't matter if markets recover if you have had to take a disproportion amount out now to maintain your income. I can't see any solution to this. Even if the Govt makes payment to these pensioners so they don't have to take money now, how long can they do that for? For employees and self employed it will last until this is over. For DC pensioners it might last years after (hopefully not).
b) Anything for single person limited companies? I notice comments yesterday about them being tax avoiders on here. For most this is not true. Some are forced into contracting by their clients (in reality IR35 cases). Most aren't contractors but running proper businesses (as I used to). At any one time I had around 150 customers. I was legally an employee, although in practice self employed and I ploughed the profits back into the business. I would have therefore failed to qualify under either arrangement. As it happens I am now retired and probably wouldn't have qualified for other reasons and wouldn't have wanted to; but for others?
c) What the hell was Alok Sharma talking about on the TV this morning stating that average self employed person with profits of £50K has earnings of £200K. Sounds like he doesn't know what profits and earnings are or lives in cloud cuckooland. As it happens I don't disagree with the £50K limit and actually think the bailout for employees and self employed at 80% is actually too generous, but he gives the impression of not having a clue.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
The OAPension was introduced by the Liberal Govt of 1905-10. Following, IIRC, the policy of the German Govt under Bismarck.
True - 300 years after the first government action on poverty - with various measures in the 19c prompted by the poverty at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout the basis of all systems linked to the thinker Jeremy Bentham
'Less eligibility was a British government policy passed into law in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It stated that conditions in workhouses had to be worse than conditions available outside so that there was a deterrence to claiming poor relief'.
Of course it sounds harsh to us in the 21st century worded in that way - but versions pervade all social welfare systems pretty much everywhere. Is the only way to ensure consent.
It doesn't sound harsh. It's pretty obvious. Slanted more positively, it's the 'more eligibility principle' - the principle that we must make working (for those who can) more eligible than not working.
We don't really do that - and haven't for a long time. Hence the long term not seeking work group.
A UBI is simpler than pretending we would leave people to starve. Which we won't.
Tax credits and the minimum wage are examples of the 'more eligibility' principle at work.
A UBI is about accepting that we will not let people starve, no matter what, Ensuring that all work makes you better off is part of that - eliminating the poverty trap(s)
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
But I'm looking forwards, not backwards.
State pensioners have done very well for a decade out of the triple lock. That ends now.
We pensioners are goona get fuck all help in terms of who hets medical help if we get covid.. leave our effing pensions alone!!
As I predicted.
Indeed. The most selfish generation at it again. Nowhere near the level of self sacrifice their parents generation went through and nothing close to what they are asking of their children and grandchildren.
What a horrible comment, how you can call yourself a conservative is beyond me.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
That's fine except they're ensuring my generation will never get such a good pension as they pulled the ladder up after themselves. Least we can do now is merge NI and Income Tax together so their good pension gets taxed like any other income.
They paid in national insurance just as this generation will have to do and national insurance was set up in the first place to find the state pension
Immaterial. NI ceased paying the pension many decades ago.
Not saying they shouldn't get their pensions. Just that they should be taxed on them the same as any other income.
There is also the anomaly that the increasing number of folk working after normal retirement age, do not pay NI, while their peers below the age do.
Indeed. Merging NI and Income Tax is the solution. Actually its part of the solution not the whole thing.
I want to write a guest article to propose on this but can't get the size down to a reasonable size.
A mini-series? If you could end each episode on a cliffhanger all the better.
What I think we are seeing in response to this virus is a change in the collective mindset towards, well, collectivism. We are (nearly) all much more conscious that we are affected by the behaviour of others and likewise them with us. We are more willing to recognise that, for example, people should not be penalised for doing the right thing and that society collectively needs to bail them out. We are (or at least I am) more aware of how many vulnerable people there are in our society and how important it is to help them.
Will we ever go back to people waiting weeks for their benefits and a vicious sanctions regime? Surely not.
If we can house the homeless now why the hell did we not do it years ago?
If the economy can sustain whateverittakes economics what were the arguments about relatively modest differences in public spending about?
After WW2 the country threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government who transformed our society, mainly for the good. I can see such a leftward swing happening again. I wonder if our ever flexible Boris and the clever Rishi just might be able to harness it as the Tory party reinvents itself once again.
Assuming the feeling lasts - a big if - there may be some changes. However, some social phenomena are not that simple. Some rough sleepers , eg, always prefer the streets to the alternatives. It seems to be just a quirk of human nature. Regarding the benefit system - it goes back at least as far as the 1600 Poor Laws remember and from day 1 there has always been a tension between desire to help those in poverty through no fault of their own and the idle and feckless. While over time the terminology has changed, in essence the tension remains. Those who work hard and save will always resent those who don't and game the system.
There was effectively no system to game before the collective experience of World War II.
That is quite wrong - the mythology of no health care before the NHS, for example. The NHS was conceived as a tidying & simplification of the existing tangle of (inadequate) health care provision.
The welfare state has very, very old roots.
I wasn't talking about the NHS specifically, but the haphazard patchwork of charity and poor relief that existed before the welfare state. There was no unified or national system at any significant level. My grandfather worked as a surgeon up to and during World War II, and was aghast at the general condition of some of the patient he took on effectively as charity cases.
Which was why it was on the todo list of the Chamberlin government.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
Quite - the 1601 Poor Laws were enacted by government - the essence of collective action.
The OAPension was introduced by the Liberal Govt of 1905-10. Following, IIRC, the policy of the German Govt under Bismarck.
True - 300 years after the first government action on poverty - with various measures in the 19c prompted by the poverty at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout the basis of all systems linked to the thinker Jeremy Bentham
'Less eligibility was a British government policy passed into law in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It stated that conditions in workhouses had to be worse than conditions available outside so that there was a deterrence to claiming poor relief'.
Of course it sounds harsh to us in the 21st century worded in that way - but versions pervade all social welfare systems pretty much everywhere. Is the only way to ensure consent.
It doesn't sound harsh. It's pretty obvious. Slanted more positively, it's the 'more eligibility principle' - the principle that we must make working (for those who can) more eligible than not working.
We don't really do that - and haven't for a long time. Hence the long term not seeking work group.
A UBI is simpler than pretending we would leave people to starve. Which we won't.
Tax credits and the minimum wage are examples of the 'more eligibility' principle at work.
A UBI is about accepting that we will not let people starve, no matter what, Ensuring that all work makes you better off is part of that - eliminating the poverty trap(s)
I've never heard a remotely convincing argument for one.
Comments
It really depends on the percentage infected now though. I suspect that is not massively high so the effect will likely not be massive so the bigger effect will be the number of people who are infected at the time of the lockdown. For future waves it will matter but the number of infected and putatively immune is going to have a marginal effect on the growth rate I fear.
With exponential growth, a small difference in starting infection rates quickly becomes important. cf. New York.
We did 6000 tests yesterday we have ramped down from 8000 in some days last week.
It's a complete joke.
Quite - the rough sleeper problem gets you to addiction support, mental health. Which then gets you to people asking why can't we force people to take mental health treatment - which lead you to the progressive view of medical intervention & incarceration of mental patients.
The short version - we have decided, as a society, *not* to lock up Crumbling Michael and chums, forced feed them their medicine and force them to behave (as we define it) by hitting them with sticks. It would now be illegal and no doctor would co-operate. The result is rough sleeping.
You can shelter the rough sleepers for a short period. But in the longer term they will be back outside.
It is an interesting question whether it is they who are the problem - or us. After all, apes are not evolved to live in artificial boxes, with other apes a metre or 2 away all the time...
Business Minister we have done 6300 tests today we are ramping up.
Maitless- 9 days ago PM told us 10000 a day from this week. If you have ramped up from 5000 to 6000 in 9 days why tell us you ......
I worry about the psychology at play. Reminds me when I once got excited about the Christmas holiday in October. It was a long old slog.
Pensions and unemployment benefits were of a fair age at that point, incidentally.
The myth that 1945 invented collective action on such things doesn't stand much inspection.
I'm also quite concerned that, apparently, one of the authors of the report is also editor of the journal where it was published.
My God, that means 80% of all deaths in this country are from flu.
No, wait. They're not.
The reason this virus is scary is because if we don't do massively disruptive things, it will kill more people in this country in one season than died in all of World War II. Military and civilian alike.
That could be why there's a little bit of concern about it.
A new self-employed income support scheme will pay self-employed people a taxable grant worth 80% of average monthly income, capped at £2,500pm
income will be calculated by taking the average of income over the last three years
self-employed people can claim these grants and continue to work.
the scheme is only open to anyone with trading profits of up to £50k. Self-employed people who earn more will not qualify.
the scheme is only those who have submitted a tax return for 2019
there are no steps to take. HMRC will contact eligible self-employed people directly and pay the grant straight into their bank account after inviting them to fill out an online form
the self-employed income support scheme will be open to people across UK for at least 3 months. However, the scheme is unlikely to be up and running before the end of June
Test per day:
11/03 1,215
12/03 1,698
13/03 3,597
14/03 4,975
15/03 2,533
16/03 3,829
17/03 6,337
18/03 5,779
19/03 8,400
20/03 2,355
21/03 5,824
22/03 5,522
23/03 5,605
24/03 6,491
25/03 6,583
26/03 7,847
Looks like a slow but erratic increase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_United_Kingdom#Statistics
No offence, Isam
Layla Moran comes with a lot of baggage. Poor value at 2.28.
If Ed Davey is seen as too dull and uninspiring, Daisy Cooper might be value at 11.5. She has a good track record, speaks well and now has an extra year to get parliamentary experience and visibility.
It's not much better in London, mind.
https://twitter.com/chroniclelive/status/1243258923412369408?s=21
To call it "8000 some days" is entirely misleadng nonsense, for one thing "days" needs to be a minimum of two days to meet the definition of the word "days".
There were 3 things that could have rebooted the human race. An alien invasion, a meteorite strike or a global virus.
To paraphrase Boromir, 'It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much over such a little thing.'
I've attended a couple of trade shows here and the scale of the place is astonishing. Lots of hotel accommodation nearby too, which I suspect will be used for NHS staff. Seems like a good plan being executed well.
Any more info on the ventilators?
There's plenty of fake news on here as well as elsewhere form those with agendas sadly.
This acts as the dramatic accelerator. At this rate China will be trading at 80-90% capacity by end of the year whilst the US is on its knees.
I derive no pleasure from stating this. I love America and Americans. But it's fucked.
Indeed my parents and many others have been delivering food and supplies to those who need it and the fact most over 60s worked and contributed all their lives and have a good pension and own their own property is nothing to complain about
Finally, WW2 deaths were against a population of c.40 million not c.65 million so the ratio was far higher.
There are a number of UK SMEs such as MWE, Penlon or Primer Design that have had to expand dramatically in the space of a week or two at the same time as deal with staff being off sick or self isolating.
The result is better than it could have been and there is little point now in criticising politicians. The hollowing out of our production capabilities has been allowed to occur for 20 years.
Realistic to see 10,000 tests a day by end of next week.
Given no party since WW2 has won a general election after 10 years in power bar Major's Tories in 1992 the odds are against another term for the Tories anyway, however I can't see Starmer winning an outright majority either
If I reported myself as the most successful political gambler on this site, by excluding all my losing bets, you would get the picture!
Nobody does Normalcy Bias better than Donald J Trump.
Branson.
After the spike, it's actually possible we enter a world of lower demand, as people stop spending to recover their own finances.
I dropped Sky Sports from Virgin Media two weeks ago.
We can't maintain this binary approach for more than a few weeks.
https://www.virginmedia.com/help/thinking-of-leaving/talk-to-us
Not saying they shouldn't get their pensions. Just that they should be taxed on them the same as any other income.
But the two are related. If the health system collapses then its not just coronavirus deaths that are an issue - coronavirus deaths would sky rocket due to the lack of a working healthcare system and other preventable deaths sky rocket too. Plus cancer treatments etc get cancelled or delayed causing more deaths down the line.
'Less eligibility was a British government policy passed into law in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It stated that conditions in workhouses had to be worse than conditions available outside so that there was a deterrence to claiming poor relief'.
Of course it sounds harsh to us in the 21st century worded in that way - but versions pervade all social welfare systems pretty much everywhere. Is the only way to ensure consent.
In fact of the big powers I would say India will come out of this best, it was not at fault for causing the virus like China and it went into lockdown at an earlier stage than the US and Europe did and it is also a faster growing population than China and a free market democracy
I want to write a guest article to propose on this but can't get the size down to a reasonable size.
Another term would be Socialsim.
Asia generally acted hard and fast and it will emerge from this stronger than Europe and the US.
We are in the early stages of a geographic, economic and ontological shift.
Fun fact - if you visit Corfe castle, you will notice that the old villages houses have strange basements. These used to be ground floor. Making stones for the castle was an occupation over the centuries - as the clippings were throw outside, the ground level raised. Centuries of paid employment raised ground level by 10 foot or so.
This is what ensures that pensioners do not over time become impoverished relative to the rest of society.
Because contrary to what some believe, poverty IS relative. That this is so is why the earnings link is crucial and why when the triple lock goes - as it must and will - it is the earnings link and only the earnings link which should be retained.
Pensioners to rise and fall with the general tide.
A UBI is simpler than pretending we would leave people to starve. Which we won't.
So 'Old Fred' continues on working, no longer paying NI, even though he's long past his best.
More delay to getting on housing ladder.
Pension funds left bleeding.
Huge debts thrusted upon them which will take years to pay off.
Approve 46.0%
Disapprove 49.5%
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
a) Nothing on DC pensions where people have these in a drawdown, which is the norm these days outside of the public sector. If your pot is slashed and you are currently taking a pension, it won't matter if markets recover if you have had to take a disproportion amount out now to maintain your income. I can't see any solution to this. Even if the Govt makes payment to these pensioners so they don't have to take money now, how long can they do that for? For employees and self employed it will last until this is over. For DC pensioners it might last years after (hopefully not).
b) Anything for single person limited companies? I notice comments yesterday about them being tax avoiders on here. For most this is not true. Some are forced into contracting by their clients (in reality IR35 cases). Most aren't contractors but running proper businesses (as I used to). At any one time I had around 150 customers. I was legally an employee, although in practice self employed and I ploughed the profits back into the business. I would have therefore failed to qualify under either arrangement. As it happens I am now retired and probably wouldn't have qualified for other reasons and wouldn't have wanted to; but for others?
c) What the hell was Alok Sharma talking about on the TV this morning stating that average self employed person with profits of £50K has earnings of £200K. Sounds like he doesn't know what profits and earnings are or lives in cloud cuckooland. As it happens I don't disagree with the £50K limit and actually think the bailout for employees and self employed at 80% is actually too generous, but he gives the impression of not having a clue.