Anybody still thinks we are going to get a South Korean type system without certain sections of the media making a hell of a racket and special interest grouping mounting long winded legal challenges....
Somebody clearly very keen to leak to the Guardian all this.
My understanding like the flour shortage. It is because they are produced for industry, they are in very large formats, which is no good for home use e.g. nobody at home can use 25kg bags of flour before it goes off.
Nobody can use a 9 gallon barrel of cask ale in 3 months?
72 bed home so that's 18% of entire population, with undisclosed number of further unresolved cases. Sobering.
Over 50% of hospital deaths from Covid-19 are aged over 80, and the unreported deaths from care homes are estimated to be 50% of the total, so likely 2/3rds of all Covid deaths are 80+, and 6% under 40
People over 80 don't matter - in fact, think of the money we're going save because they've died.
Some Age UK stats:
Older people in care homes • 400,000 older people • Average age 85 years • 66% Cognitive impairment • 40% depression • 75% classified “severely disabled”
That depression stat is frightening (they all are). Personal decision but if that was me I'd wanna be euthanased. Not that that should dictate our policy in this instance.
I`m with you - though I`d have topped myself before getting to that stage.
My son in laws parents, both in their late eighties, are in a terrible way with his mother in dementia care and his father needing hospital or nursing care and not able to get either, but both are fighting to live
When you arrive in old age you may find it harder to face your own death
Yes, I hear you BigG.
My mum and dad are in their 80s. Mum is in a nursing home. Dad is on his own (with brief daily carer visits) and has Alzheimer`s desease. Under lockdown, of course, I can`t visit either. It`s tragic. I may never see them again and, equally importantly, they may never see each other again. They`ve been married for over 50 years and never been apart.
My experience with mum`s nursing home has been an experience and an education. Mum exists. I wouldn`t call it a life. The living dead. The home banned visitors before the government advised them to do so. The care home manager was honest - she said "if the virus gets it it would be bad for business". These private homes are farming old folk for profit. Sorry - but that`s how I see it. I`m generally not for state ownership of things, but I`ve come to believe that private companies shouldn`t be allowed anywhere near this sector.
It’s depressing to realise (I’ve worked with a serious real estate investor in the space) but local authority homes are usually much worse than private ones
I'm not sure that a Vat of Popcorn exists big enough to keep me happy during the final battle of good vs evil. What a time to join the Labour Party!
If you do not mind me asking how do you see this concluding ?
With a Labour MP issuing a legal suit against the Labour Party for its Crime of not issuing the report which it's a massive illegal breech of Data Protection. The Real Enemy of the loons has always been the Labour Party. And in signing a letter demanding that the Labour Party illegally publish a report which the leader/deputy/moderates know nothing about which would thus sink the Labour Party for libel / data protection they have finally gone over the top in their war against themselves.
It would be quicker and simpler for Starmer to expel the MPs who signed this death warrant demand. As the Tories already have a whopping majority it makes no difference to the parliamentary maths. Expel them all now and be done with it.
Thank you for answering my query.
It does look as if Starmer needs to stand strong or face a nightmare of a problem
I hope he wins through for your sake but also the country
To be fair to Boris he did throw out all the bad guys, but you will agree even he didn't manage it within the first fortnight.
I'm not sure that a Vat of Popcorn exists big enough to keep me happy during the final battle of good vs evil. What a time to join the Labour Party!
If you do not mind me asking how do you see this concluding ?
With a Labour MP issuing a legal suit against the Labour Party for its Crime of not issuing the report which it's a massive illegal breech of Data Protection. The Real Enemy of the loons has always been the Labour Party. And in signing a letter demanding that the Labour Party illegally publish a report which the leader/deputy/moderates know nothing about which would thus sink the Labour Party for libel / data protection they have finally gone over the top in their war against themselves.
It would be quicker and simpler for Starmer to expel the MPs who signed this death warrant demand. As the Tories already have a whopping majority it makes no difference to the parliamentary maths. Expel them all now and be done with it.
Appealing - begone Burgon, McDonnell and most pleasingly Lavery....
One could think Starmer wants, and is planning for, a big fight with the lunatic fringe that loved Corbyn. However he surely doesn’t want that fight to be now, when nobody is paying attention.
I’d think he wants mad Corbynites to heckle him and walk out of this conference speech, and then for the 2021 conference to be conspicuous by their absence.
OK fellers, if there is anyone who can help I'd be grateful.
I've got a lenovo desktop computer, about three years old (2017) which isn't top of the range but has always worked perfectly well. Today, instead of starting up, it sits there with its LED on, and its fan spinning, and nothing getting through to either monitor.
It's not the cables, it's not the monitors, it's not anything I've plugged in and I haven't done any software updates recently (Microsoft may of course have attempted one without asking me, which is not unusual for them). So I think it might be a hardware problem, which would be bloody annoying as it would be a nightmare to get it fixed right now.
However, I wondered if anyone had come across something similar and might know of a fix?
If worst comes to worst, I can manage without it, but it makes life more difficult.
There was something about a dodgy Windows 10 patch recently but then there always is. To rule out Windows, you could try booting off a flash drive or dvd, assuming you have either lying about with a bootable OS on, which I doubt.
Does it POST (power on self test) when you power it on? In other words, do you see any output (from the bios) before it gets to Windows?
From what you say, I'd be inclined to suspect RAM and if you know what you are doing you could try removing all bar one DIMM (assuming you have more than one to start with). I'm assuming you've not got a secondary graphics card.
HAven't got a flash drive and even the DVD drive won't open.
What the hell is a DIMM? (Which probably suggests I don't know what I'm doing anyway.)
No, I haven't got a secondary graphics card. Never needed it.
Nothing gets through to the monitors at all. The fan works, and the LED on light, but nothing else.
A dimm is a memory (RAM) stick. You probably have two or four of them. My suspicion is that one of them has failed.
Get on Youtube and look for the channel of a chap called Carey Holzman. He is a rather long-winded American IT guy who posts videos on the theme, customer X has sent this dead PC and here is an hour or two of troubleshooting and fixing. Watch a couple and work out if you can do what he suggests or if you need to call in the professionals. I expect there are self-employed IT techs in your part of Wales, or if this is a second system you could wait till lockdown ends.
Holzman is slow and clear, unlike many of the youtube pc builders who assume a lot of prior experience.
@ydoethur Looks like you will need to order a new system. Check ebay and the like to see if you can get same model. My wife dropped her laptop last week and burst the screen, I got her a cracking Lenovo T450 laptop for £200, delivered in a day.
Depends what you really need - are you just using it for email and browsing?
Thank you to both for the further tips. I will do some investigating tomorrow, as Holzman had a video that showed a computer with exactly the same problem as mine and it did indeed turn out to be RAM. And my computer does not do puns, but I hope I am not too DIMM to test that out myself.
Otherwise, I might order new. The Novatech didn't look ridiculously expensive and the Lenovo is OK but definitely has limitations.
I use that computer mostly for work - word processing, powerpoint, remote meetings etc. I have a Mac which I use for photos and music, which is why it's not a total disaster if the Lenovo is a dead loss and I can't replace it - I can use the Mac instead. However, it's only got one screen functionality so it's a bit limiting.
Thank you all again for your most helpful suggestions.
It’s depressing to realise (I’ve worked with a serious real estate investor in the space) but local authority homes are usually much worse than private ones
Of course many of these so-called "local authority homes" aren't run by the local authority at all but by private companies under contract.
Inevitably, what they can provide for the money they get from the local authority isn't going to match with the more luxurious end of the sector - in London and the SE £1000-£1200 pw is nothing unusual in care home fees.
Could he have a problem with Labour leavers? I know of some that were pretty angry about attempts to prevent Brexit, which he was heavily involved in.
If the electorate in England really does end up cleaving along a durable Leave/Remain faultline, in much the same way as the Yes/No split has become set in stone in Scotland, then Labour might as well give up and go home.
On keep Brexit/reverse Brexit lines maybe, on hard Brexit/soft Brexit lines maybe not
You know his Dad didn’t leave him £10bn right? From memory he and his sisters each inherited about £12m (a very nice amount to be clear)
That was for the taxman Charles , how much in the tax havens.
Most of it is on the company, which is owned by the U.K. settlement trust. Hugh may, at the trustees discretion, be entitled to income but he can’t realise the assets which are professionally managed
It's time for the government to dump Huawei from 5G.
I'm looking forward to getting my Huawei Mate Xs this week.
There's been rumours at work that the company is about to ban Huawei devices for any work correspondence. Not such a big deal for me as I get a device, but loads of junior level people don't and you need to be contactible pretty much at any time and have access to work emails at any time too. Then again, I haven't seen a lot of people with Huawei devices, mostly iPhones and Samsungs.
Staff are expected to purchase their own device in order to access work emails?
The employer needs to be told to feck right off.
Lol as if anyone who works for us doesn't have a smartphone.
I think what Sandy meant was you want me accessing work stuff on a phone you supply a phone as your apps are going nowhere near my private phone. Which is much the stance I take with my company.
That's not what I was thinking but strengthens the argument!
Part of the reason for my reluctance for that is that my company states it has the ability to check your phone for company data when you leave. HR is not thumbing through my personal phone thanks. I suspect a lot of firms have that sort of clause
And what happens if you “lose” your phone before quitting?
Remote wipe, I am not happy having that in the hands of my company either for a personal device which is why I refused to install their apps
Good Lady has been busy for pud - burnt orange souffle with baci di dama biscuits flavoured with rosemary.
(I think Ms Cyclefree might approve...!)
Don't tell her it is burnt or you'll be wearing it!
No chance....!
(Apparently it means it was caramalised with brown sugar. I did check.... Posh nosh though. A spare in the fridge, if anyone wants to break lockdown....)
"Does anyone really believe we were told not to wear masks because the science showed that wearing masks was dangerous - rather than because masks were in short supply?"
I do. I suggest you send away for the many reports complied by the Health and Safety Laboratory in Buxton on that very issue. They were spun off from the HSE but many of the research reports continued to be commissioned by HSE Specialist Inspectors.
I'm sure you are fully cognisant of how you need tuition in how to use FFP2 and FFP3 masks properly
At least, the simple dust masks aren't expensive and do keep rocks out your nasal passages. You can wear them if you like. But it's not a conspiracy to hide anything.
We're not talking about FFP2 or FFP3 masks.
If you're claiming wearing masks is actually dangerous, you need to explain why.
More journalists on the ball: "Will that data (on Covid deaths outside hospitals) be released to the public?"
"All ONS data is public".....
Nor is it exactly the first time we've had this same question about the death in care homes reporting issue raised at one of these briefings, to which one or other of the Government advisers has given a slow and patient response.
Still doesn't seem to be sinking in though.
You’re making a fundamental category error.
Questions are to provide a sound bite for the pre-designed story for the evening news. NOT to elicit an answer.
Anybody still thinks we are going to get a South Korean type system without certain sections of the media making a hell of a racket and special interest grouping mounting long winded legal challenges....
Somebody clearly very keen to leak to the Guardian all this.
Just wanted to check: the Edward Snowden they quote, he’s the international fugitive from justice who is hanging out with Putin right?
I remember the days when Julian Assange was the darling of the Guardianistas...whatever happened to him?
At least Salmond was found not guilty (not proven?) of rape rather than jumping bail to avoid investigation
Assange was, and has always been a consistent character.
1) He is a committed negative nationalist (against the Western government in general). 2) He has a commitment to publishing things that people don't want published. 3) What he has published has always been accurate. 4) His commentaries on what it means are bizzare, often ridiculous and quite often at odds with what he is publishing 5) He fillets what he publishes to go with his political beliefs. 6) This means he doesn't publish stuff that embarrasses enemies of The West - such as Putin's Russia.
He has always done the above.
The Guardianistas loved him when he was publishing embarrassments to George Bush II.
When he published embarrassments to Hilary Clinton they regarded it as an outrage.
They have a touching belief that if extradited to America, Assange will suddenly admit to being an FSB agent, that all the leaks came from the FSB and that Trump ordered the publication.
I saw earlier someone saying that the Spanish lockdown had been relaxed today. It has, but it remains significantly more severe than what is operating in the UK. So please don't get carried away!
I wonder if it will bear any resemblance to this. From a mate who lives in Spain
That has already been called out as fake news - it appeared on Facebook earlier today and caused a lot of angst and a fair bit of amusement.
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
It's a matter of changing mindset from 'I have to keep what I have' to 'what can I do now to benefit from the situation?' If most people in your line of work are running around going 'I'm doomed' then maybe you are better spending your time working out how you can get ahead of them. In my own field, there are going to be real difficulties about losing custom from East Asia. The answer is not 'how do I get that back?' it's 'what can I do instead and how can I get there first?'
Sorry, but despite the histrionic language used by some, the costs of the lockdown are going to be measured primarily in terms of wealth, not lives. And the prophets of economic doom hardly seem to have placed the lives of the poor high on their agenda previously.
YOu seem like the kind of person who is quite happy to see hundreds of thousands of working class people sicken and die during a horrible recesssion so long as the fabulously wealthy get a little poorer.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
I can only hope that you're right about borrowing. If we get to the point of fresh lending only being available at substantial rates of interest then that's effectively as bad as a gilt strike itself: yes, the Government can take the additional debt on now but would be guaranteeing at least a partial default at some point in the future. The dreaded debt vortex that we spent so much time talking about in relation to Greece and Italy during the Eurozone crisis.
That is an absolutely horrendous percentage positive, suggesting quite significant undercounting of true new cases. Italy only had one day, IIRC, above 40%.
The ratio seems to me to tell us very little - it could just be that due to the numbers of tests they are better targeted to the Rona-positive population.
My doctor friends tell me that they are getting better and better at diagnosing COVID19 - to the point they are keeping score on their accuracy. Combined with targeting a lot of the testing on those presenting with symptoms, this suggests selection bias in the outcome....
I trust people are aware that in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and I suspect others there have been serious outbreaks and deaths in care homes. It is of course tragic and sad but I'm pretty sure most countries have treated their elderly in much the same way - no doubt with errors - but not I think with malice. Remember it is the nature of the beast we are dealing with that the elderly and infirm are those most at risk.
Indeed. But our government was unique - among the ones not run by complete loonies - in the delusion that it would be possible to let the virus run through about two thirds of the population while "cocooning" the vulnerable.
One might have expected even politicians as dim as Johnson and Hancock to question how that would be done for care homes.
Interesting to see you are now describing the Social Democratic government of Sweden as 'complete loonies'!
Idiot.
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
72 bed home so that's 18% of entire population, with undisclosed number of further unresolved cases. Sobering.
Over 50% of hospital deaths from Covid-19 are aged over 80, and the unreported deaths from care homes are estimated to be 50% of the total, so likely 2/3rds of all Covid deaths are 80+, and 6% under 40
People over 80 don't matter - in fact, think of the money we're going save because they've died.
Some Age UK stats:
Older people in care homes • 400,000 older people • Average age 85 years • 66% Cognitive impairment • 40% depression • 75% classified “severely disabled”
That depression stat is frightening (they all are). Personal decision but if that was me I'd wanna be euthanased. Not that that should dictate our policy in this instance.
I`m with you - though I`d have topped myself before getting to that stage.
My son in laws parents, both in their late eighties, are in a terrible way with his mother in dementia care and his father needing hospital or nursing care and not able to get either, but both are fighting to live
When you arrive in old age you may find it harder to face your own death
Yes, I hear you BigG.
My mum and dad are in their 80s. Mum is in a nursing home. Dad is on his own (with brief daily carer visits) and has Alzheimer`s desease. Under lockdown, of course, I can`t visit either. It`s tragic. I may never see them again and, equally importantly, they may never see each other again. They`ve been married for over 50 years and never been apart.
My experience with mum`s nursing home has been an experience and an education. Mum exists. I wouldn`t call it a life. The living dead. The home banned visitors before the government advised them to do so. The care home manager was honest - she said "if the virus gets it it would be bad for business". These private homes are farming old folk for profit. Sorry - but that`s how I see it. I`m generally not for state ownership of things, but I`ve come to believe that private companies shouldn`t be allowed anywhere near this sector.
It’s depressing to realise (I’ve worked with a serious real estate investor in the space) but local authority homes are usually much worse than private ones
Local Authority owned homes are few and far between, they now tend to be owned and managed by charitable trusts, who at the very least hike the fees for self funders to compensate for the reduced rate they receive from council funded residents, they also offset the reduced fees by paying minimal staff wages. Pay peanuts get etc.
The irony for self-funders is that the monetary difference between a home that looks and smells like a kennel and one that has the appearance and standards of a country house hotel is comparatively small. Both are expensive but only one is value for money.
I'm not sure that a Vat of Popcorn exists big enough to keep me happy during the final battle of good vs evil. What a time to join the Labour Party!
If you do not mind me asking how do you see this concluding ?
With a Labour MP issuing a legal suit against the Labour Party for its Crime of not issuing the report which it's a massive illegal breech of Data Protection. The Real Enemy of the loons has always been the Labour Party. And in signing a letter demanding that the Labour Party illegally publish a report which the leader/deputy/moderates know nothing about which would thus sink the Labour Party for libel / data protection they have finally gone over the top in their war against themselves.
It would be quicker and simpler for Starmer to expel the MPs who signed this death warrant demand. As the Tories already have a whopping majority it makes no difference to the parliamentary maths. Expel them all now and be done with it.
Thank you for answering my query.
It does look as if Starmer needs to stand strong or face a nightmare of a problem
I hope he wins through for your sake but also the country
To be fair to Boris he did throw out all the bad guys, but you will agree even he didn't manage it within the first fortnight.
Yes I do agree with you but this looks like a mutiny against his authority with as I understand it some serious legal implications
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
It's a matter of changing mindset from 'I have to keep what I have' to 'what can I do now to benefit from the situation?' If most people in your line of work are running around going 'I'm doomed' then maybe you are better spending your time working out how you can get ahead of them. In my own field, there are going to be real difficulties about losing custom from East Asia. The answer is not 'how do I get that back?' it's 'what can I do instead and how can I get there first?'
Sorry, but despite the histrionic language used by some, the costs of the lockdown are going to be measured primarily in terms of wealth, not lives. And the prophets of economic doom hardly seem to have placed the lives of the poor high on their agenda previously.
YOu seem like the kind of person who is quite happy to see hundreds of thousands of working class people sicken and die during a horrible recesssion so long as the fabulously wealthy get a little poorer.
You seem like the kind of person you enjoys slicing babies thinly and eating them on toast.
I trust people are aware that in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and I suspect others there have been serious outbreaks and deaths in care homes. It is of course tragic and sad but I'm pretty sure most countries have treated their elderly in much the same way - no doubt with errors - but not I think with malice. Remember it is the nature of the beast we are dealing with that the elderly and infirm are those most at risk.
Indeed. But our government was unique - among the ones not run by complete loonies - in the delusion that it would be possible to let the virus run through about two thirds of the population while "cocooning" the vulnerable.
One might have expected even politicians as dim as Johnson and Hancock to question how that would be done for care homes.
Interesting to see you are now describing the Social Democratic government of Sweden as 'complete loonies'!
Idiot.
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
You really like spraying the insults around, don't you
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
It's a matter of changing mindset from 'I have to keep what I have' to 'what can I do now to benefit from the situation?' If most people in your line of work are running around going 'I'm doomed' then maybe you are better spending your time working out how you can get ahead of them. In my own field, there are going to be real difficulties about losing custom from East Asia. The answer is not 'how do I get that back?' it's 'what can I do instead and how can I get there first?'
Sorry, but despite the histrionic language used by some, the costs of the lockdown are going to be measured primarily in terms of wealth, not lives. And the prophets of economic doom hardly seem to have placed the lives of the poor high on their agenda previously.
YOu seem like the kind of person who is quite happy to see hundreds of thousands of working class people sicken and die during a horrible recesssion so long as the fabulously wealthy get a little poorer.
You seem like the kind of person you enjoys slicing babies thinly and eating them on toast.
I trust people are aware that in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and I suspect others there have been serious outbreaks and deaths in care homes. It is of course tragic and sad but I'm pretty sure most countries have treated their elderly in much the same way - no doubt with errors - but not I think with malice. Remember it is the nature of the beast we are dealing with that the elderly and infirm are those most at risk.
Indeed. But our government was unique - among the ones not run by complete loonies - in the delusion that it would be possible to let the virus run through about two thirds of the population while "cocooning" the vulnerable.
One might have expected even politicians as dim as Johnson and Hancock to question how that would be done for care homes.
Interesting to see you are now describing the Social Democratic government of Sweden as 'complete loonies'!
Idiot.
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
No, because there is none, especially without mass testing which Sweden, unlike say South Korea, is not doing,
A pillar of capitalism is you can’t reward the winners without punishing the losers. I worry our government has been co-opted ... to protect the wealth of the top 10, if not 1, percent
Modern-day “capitalism” in America is to flatten the risk curve for people who already have money, by borrowing from future generations with debt-fueled bailouts for companies. We have consciously decided to reduce the downside for the wealthy
I trust people are aware that in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and I suspect others there have been serious outbreaks and deaths in care homes. It is of course tragic and sad but I'm pretty sure most countries have treated their elderly in much the same way - no doubt with errors - but not I think with malice. Remember it is the nature of the beast we are dealing with that the elderly and infirm are those most at risk.
Indeed. But our government was unique - among the ones not run by complete loonies - in the delusion that it would be possible to let the virus run through about two thirds of the population while "cocooning" the vulnerable.
One might have expected even politicians as dim as Johnson and Hancock to question how that would be done for care homes.
Interesting to see you are now describing the Social Democratic government of Sweden as 'complete loonies'!
Idiot.
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
No, because there is none, especially without mass testing which Sweden, unlike say South Korea, is not doing,
Indeed. I suspected you couldn't understand the difference.
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
It's a matter of changing mindset from 'I have to keep what I have' to 'what can I do now to benefit from the situation?' If most people in your line of work are running around going 'I'm doomed' then maybe you are better spending your time working out how you can get ahead of them. In my own field, there are going to be real difficulties about losing custom from East Asia. The answer is not 'how do I get that back?' it's 'what can I do instead and how can I get there first?'
Sorry, but despite the histrionic language used by some, the costs of the lockdown are going to be measured primarily in terms of wealth, not lives. And the prophets of economic doom hardly seem to have placed the lives of the poor high on their agenda previously.
YOu seem like the kind of person who is quite happy to see hundreds of thousands of working class people sicken and die during a horrible recesssion so long as the fabulously wealthy get a little poorer.
You seem like the kind of person you enjoys slicing babies thinly and eating them on toast.
LOL what an absurd comment
Indeed.
Any true conservative would only eat babies when roasted and served with potato salad.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
I can only hope that you're right about borrowing. If we get to the point of fresh lending only being available at substantial rates of interest then that's effectively as bad as a gilt strike itself: yes, the Government can take the additional debt on now but would be guaranteeing at least a partial default at some point in the future. The dreaded debt vortex that we spent so much time talking about in relation to Greece and Italy during the Eurozone crisis.
There won't be a gilt strike from the Bank of England so we'll be all right. Greece and Italy are in schtuck because they can't print more drachma or lira and Germany (or more recently Holland) won't support them. They should never have joined the Euro but now they can't leave.
ETA we will have to deal with debt later but right now, it's not the most important thing or anywhere near.
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
It's a matter of changing mindset from 'I have to keep what I have' to 'what can I do now to benefit from the situation?' If most people in your line of work are running around going 'I'm doomed' then maybe you are better spending your time working out how you can get ahead of them. In my own field, there are going to be real difficulties about losing custom from East Asia. The answer is not 'how do I get that back?' it's 'what can I do instead and how can I get there first?'
Sorry, but despite the histrionic language used by some, the costs of the lockdown are going to be measured primarily in terms of wealth, not lives. And the prophets of economic doom hardly seem to have placed the lives of the poor high on their agenda previously.
YOu seem like the kind of person who is quite happy to see hundreds of thousands of working class people sicken and die during a horrible recesssion so long as the fabulously wealthy get a little poorer.
You seem like the kind of person you enjoys slicing babies thinly and eating them on toast.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
I can only hope that you're right about borrowing. If we get to the point of fresh lending only being available at substantial rates of interest then that's effectively as bad as a gilt strike itself: yes, the Government can take the additional debt on now but would be guaranteeing at least a partial default at some point in the future. The dreaded debt vortex that we spent so much time talking about in relation to Greece and Italy during the Eurozone crisis.
If we reached that point goodness knows where sterling might be. Low enough to kill untold thousands throuugh the NHS not being able to afford drugs?
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
It's a matter of changing mindset from 'I have to keep what I have' to 'what can I do now to benefit from the situation?' If most people in your line of work are running around going 'I'm doomed' then maybe you are better spending your time working out how you can get ahead of them. In my own field, there are going to be real difficulties about losing custom from East Asia. The answer is not 'how do I get that back?' it's 'what can I do instead and how can I get there first?'
Sorry, but despite the histrionic language used by some, the costs of the lockdown are going to be measured primarily in terms of wealth, not lives. And the prophets of economic doom hardly seem to have placed the lives of the poor high on their agenda previously.
YOu seem like the kind of person who is quite happy to see hundreds of thousands of working class people sicken and die during a horrible recesssion so long as the fabulously wealthy get a little poorer.
You seem like the kind of person you enjoys slicing babies thinly and eating them on toast.
Gov Cuomo announcing the north east states are establishing a joint committee to plan for reopening the economy. Each state will appoint an economic development official, a public health official, and each governor's chief of staff.
A pillar of capitalism is you can’t reward the winners without punishing the losers. I worry our government has been co-opted ... to protect the wealth of the top 10, if not 1, percent
Modern-day “capitalism” in America is to flatten the risk curve for people who already have money, by borrowing from future generations with debt-fueled bailouts for companies. We have consciously decided to reduce the downside for the wealthy
The capital structure of private firms is meant to balance upside and downside. CNBC/Trump want to protect current equity holders at the expense of future generations with rescue packages that explode the deficit.
The rescue package should protect people, not businesses. From 2017 to 2019, the CEOs of Delta, American, United, and Carnival Cruises earned over $150 million in compensation. But, now … “We’re in this together” (i.e., “bail our asses out”).
And what happens if they (gasp!), go out of business? Simple, the equity holders, and unsecured debt holders, get wiped out. These are the cohorts who, despite the recent meltdown, have registered a 3.3x increase in the Dow since the lows of 2008.
I trust people are aware that in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and I suspect others there have been serious outbreaks and deaths in care homes. It is of course tragic and sad but I'm pretty sure most countries have treated their elderly in much the same way - no doubt with errors - but not I think with malice. Remember it is the nature of the beast we are dealing with that the elderly and infirm are those most at risk.
Indeed. But our government was unique - among the ones not run by complete loonies - in the delusion that it would be possible to let the virus run through about two thirds of the population while "cocooning" the vulnerable.
One might have expected even politicians as dim as Johnson and Hancock to question how that would be done for care homes.
Interesting to see you are now describing the Social Democratic government of Sweden as 'complete loonies'!
Idiot.
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
No, because there is none, especially without mass testing which Sweden, unlike say South Korea, is not doing,
Indeed. I suspected you couldn't understand the difference.
You clearly do not understand that if you do not have a lockdown by definition the virus will spread more widely and you will be pursuing a herd immunity policy, even if by default.
If you pursue mass testing and tracing you might be able to avoid a lockdown and pursuing herd immunity but Sweden is not mass testing
I'm not sure that a Vat of Popcorn exists big enough to keep me happy during the final battle of good vs evil. What a time to join the Labour Party!
If you do not mind me asking how do you see this concluding ?
With a Labour MP issuing a legal suit against the Labour Party for its Crime of not issuing the report which it's a massive illegal breech of Data Protection. The Real Enemy of the loons has always been the Labour Party. And in signing a letter demanding that the Labour Party illegally publish a report which the leader/deputy/moderates know nothing about which would thus sink the Labour Party for libel / data protection they have finally gone over the top in their war against themselves.
It would be quicker and simpler for Starmer to expel the MPs who signed this death warrant demand. As the Tories already have a whopping majority it makes no difference to the parliamentary maths. Expel them all now and be done with it.
Thank you for answering my query.
It does look as if Starmer needs to stand strong or face a nightmare of a problem
I hope he wins through for your sake but also the country
To be fair to Boris he did throw out all the bad guys, but you will agree even he didn't manage it within the first fortnight.
Yes I do agree with you but this looks like a mutiny against his authority with as I understand it some serious legal implications
Better get it over with now than in four years time. Assuming he doesn't muck it up he will come out the other end stronger.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
on top of the lost-forever consumption (restaurants, travel etc.) a lot of the tangibles won't come back (fashion has lost a season), and a lot of consumption will be reassessed (cars, holidays). This huge hit to our consumption-based economy will mean we simply can't afford the welfare and health we now demand. With taxes very close to a post-war high already. something is going to give. and that won't be pretty. printing money really doesn't solve this either.
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
It's a matter of changing mindset from 'I have to keep what I have' to 'what can I do now to benefit from the situation?' If most people in your line of work are running around going 'I'm doomed' then maybe you are better spending your time working out how you can get ahead of them. In my own field, there are going to be real difficulties about losing custom from East Asia. The answer is not 'how do I get that back?' it's 'what can I do instead and how can I get there first?'
Sorry, but despite the histrionic language used by some, the costs of the lockdown are going to be measured primarily in terms of wealth, not lives. And the prophets of economic doom hardly seem to have placed the lives of the poor high on their agenda previously.
YOu seem like the kind of person who is quite happy to see hundreds of thousands of working class people sicken and die during a horrible recesssion so long as the fabulously wealthy get a little poorer.
You seem like the kind of person you enjoys slicing babies thinly and eating them on toast.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
I can only hope that you're right about borrowing. If we get to the point of fresh lending only being available at substantial rates of interest then that's effectively as bad as a gilt strike itself: yes, the Government can take the additional debt on now but would be guaranteeing at least a partial default at some point in the future. The dreaded debt vortex that we spent so much time talking about in relation to Greece and Italy during the Eurozone crisis.
There won't be a gilt strike from the Bank of England so we'll be all right. Greece and Italy are in schtuck because they can't print more drachma or lira and Germany (or more recently Holland) won't support them. They should never have joined the Euro but now they can't leave.
Amusing counterfactual:
Supposing the EU had insisted everyone follow the rules they had set down for joining the single currency.
That would have meant only Luxembourg could actually have joined it.
But suppose a little flexibility had been shown, so that only France, Germany, Austria, the Benelux countries and Denmark had joined (ignoring the fact, for the moment, that Denmark has not and probably never will).
Would that have been better or worse for the Euro?
I think it would probably have left Germany in a very nasty recession that it couldn't get out of via overspending on its manufactured goods in the periphery (Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece) and would therefore have been a failure on all counts.
Even in Scotland more people support the monarchy than oppose it, the fact some Celtic supporters (who have always been Nat and republican) turned out to buy a record really means nothing, you need little more than 1 man and his dog buying a record to top the Scottish charts
I can give you a little advice. Wear a nuisance mask if you must but treat it as fashion wear. if you wear gloves, assume they becomes contaminated and learn how to take them off (doffing) without contaminating your skin. Not as easy as it looks. if you sneeze or cough in your mask, treat it as contaminated. You will touch your face, everyone does. Wash your hands immediately. The two-metre rule is there for a reason, respect it.
Everyone calls this common sense, Unfortunately it needs to be learned.
I trust people are aware that in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and I suspect others there have been serious outbreaks and deaths in care homes. It is of course tragic and sad but I'm pretty sure most countries have treated their elderly in much the same way - no doubt with errors - but not I think with malice. Remember it is the nature of the beast we are dealing with that the elderly and infirm are those most at risk.
Indeed. But our government was unique - among the ones not run by complete loonies - in the delusion that it would be possible to let the virus run through about two thirds of the population while "cocooning" the vulnerable.
One might have expected even politicians as dim as Johnson and Hancock to question how that would be done for care homes.
Interesting to see you are now describing the Social Democratic government of Sweden as 'complete loonies'!
Idiot.
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
No, because there is none, especially without mass testing which Sweden, unlike say South Korea, is not doing,
Indeed. I suspected you couldn't understand the difference.
You clearly do not understand that if you do not have a lockdown by definition the virus will spread more widely and you will be pursuing a herd immunity policy, even if by default.
If you pursue mass testing and tracing you might be able to avoid a lockdown and pursuing herd immunity but Sweden is not mass testing
You really are unbelievably thick, aren't you?
Obviously Sweden is trying to avoid a majority of its population getting the virus. Advocates of the Swedish strategy are even claiming they will succeed.
You may not agree - I don't agree myself - but to say that "by definition" not having a lockdown means the virus will spread until herd immunity stops it, and to imply that that is what the Swedish government is trying to do, is just plain stupid. Obviously the idea of the Swedish strategy is that social distancing will succeed without the need for a lockdown.
Even in Scotland more people support the monarchy than oppose it, the fact most Celtic supporters (who have always been Nat and republican) turned out to buy a record really means nothing, you need little more than 1 man and his dog buying a record to top the Scottish charts
It wasn't a record you numpty, I'm suggesting that if it was it might do quite well come 2021.
You could send in truncheon wielding civil guards at any public recitals of it, so win win.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
on top of the lost-forever consumption (restaurants, travel etc.) a lot of the tangibles won't come back (fashion has lost a season), and a lot of consumption will be reassessed (cars, holidays). This huge hit to our consumption-based economy will mean we simply can't afford the welfare and health we now demand. With taxes very close to a post-war high already. something is going to give. and that won't be pretty. printing money really doesn't solve this either.
Yep. This is where we are at.
I imagine Sunak realises this and is defecating building materials at the moment, the sooner the rest of the country wises up to this fact the better.
It'll certainly do wonders for uniting the mood of my nation.
If she does that I'll be the first to queue all night on the parade route .... well armed with a bag of rotting fruit and bad eggs. Particularly if her odious father has the brass neck to show his face!
It'll certainly do wonders for uniting the mood of my nation.
It may annoy diehard republican Nats like you but for the rest of us we will be very happy for them and many of us will join in the celebrations
I expect it to be ignored by most of the Country
The only royal that matters right now is the Queen, the rest are a diminishing sideshow
And of course my youngest sons wedding in August has been pushed back to 2021 together with thousands of others
In a few years Prince Charles will be King and after him Prince William will be King, Princess Beatrice is still 9th in line to the throne, in the unfortunate event of an accident or terrorist attack which killed those above her she would be Queen
Even in Scotland more people support the monarchy than oppose it, the fact some Celtic supporters (who have always been Nat and republican) turned out to buy a record really means nothing, you need little more than 1 man and his dog buying a record to top the Scottish charts
There is supporting the monarchy then there is getting excited about a nobody marrying a rich nobody neither of whom have done anything to gain the respect of the people. An event most people I would think will ignore.
I can give you a little advice. Wear a nuisance mask if you must but treat it as fashion wear. if you wear gloves, assume they becomes contaminated and learn how to take them off (doffing) without contaminating your skin. Not as easy as it looks. if you sneeze or cough in your mask, treat it as contaminated. You will touch your face, everyone does. Wash your hands immediately. The two-metre rule is there for a reason, respect it.
Everyone calls this common sense, Unfortunately it needs to be learned.
You didn't read the comment you were replying to. Here it is again -
"If you're claiming wearing masks is actually dangerous, you need to explain why."
If Boris is making a list based on anecdata, I've recently heard mumblings around the need for dentists, chiropodists, children's clothes (the buggers keep growing even if you don't feed them) and opticians.
If it can be done safely(one in, one out, different chairs etc.), barbers/hairdressers. I've bought some hair clippers but am wary of having a go, as it might be a complete disaster.
I haven't been to a hairdresser for many years.. it probably shows, but the money it's saved me must be well past the "new computer" or "weekend break" level, and approaching the value of a decent second-hand car. And then there's convenience and cumulative time-savings.
You can't go too wrong with clippers, provided short hair suits you. The trick is sorting out your mirror setup. Two mirrors if you can arrange it, and get your head around "how to move my hand while watching a reflection of my reflection" to sort out the back of your head ...
I did wonder whether the long-term effects of this pandemic would be a change to men's hairstyles and more hair-related self-reliance!
It'll certainly do wonders for uniting the mood of my nation.
It may annoy diehard republican Nats like you but for the rest of us we will be very happy for them and many of us will join in the celebrations
I expect it to be ignored by most of the Country
The only royal that matters right now is the Queen, the rest are a diminishing sideshow
And of course my youngest sons wedding in August has been pushed back to 2021 together with thousands of others
In a few years Prince Charles will be King and after him Prince William will be King, Princess Beatrice is still 9th in line to the throne, in the unfortunate event of an accident or terrorist attack which killed those above her she would be Queen
Sadly you are off to a fantasy land again
The monarchy only continues with the consent of the people.
I doubt it will survive in its present form after the Queen, it will be greatly diminished even then
Fascinating crazy fact of today: the last time a Duke of York inherited the title from his father was 1402.
After that:
In 1415 the Duke of York was killed at Agincourt, leaving a young nephew (probably really a half-nephew) as his heir, who was granted the title in 1432. This heir, Richard, was killed in 1460 and the title forfeited (to be clear - his son did not inherit as the inheritance of a title had to be confirmed by the King, and Henry VI could not do so). However, the point was moot because his son Edward, Earl of March seized the crown anyway.
Since then, every single Duke of York has either died without male heirs (1483) or become King (e.g. 1509, 1910, 1936).
And Andrew looks likely to follow the first tradition although if anything could cause a Republic it would be the thought of him becoming King.
It'll certainly do wonders for uniting the mood of my nation.
It may annoy diehard republican Nats like you but for the rest of us we will be very happy for them and many of us will join in the celebrations
Well, I'm a monarchist, and my reaction is What a nauseatingly vain and silly woman. But perhaps she aspires to be the princess of people's hearts.
You are a leftwinger, hardly a diehard monarchist
I have voted tory in every GE since 1979 bar one (Lidb Dem, because my safe seat Conservative MP was a lazy slob), I have privately educated my children, and the political development I would most like to see is the repeal of the Hunting Act, so a pretty impressive deep cover operation. But you are right in that I would not actually go to the barricades to ensure the succession of Chas n Mills, or indeed Baldy, so diehard would overstate it.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
on top of the lost-forever consumption (restaurants, travel etc.) a lot of the tangibles won't come back (fashion has lost a season), and a lot of consumption will be reassessed (cars, holidays). This huge hit to our consumption-based economy will mean we simply can't afford the welfare and health we now demand. With taxes very close to a post-war high already. something is going to give. and that won't be pretty. printing money really doesn't solve this either.
Yep. This is where we are at.
I imagine Sunak realises this and is defecating building materials at the moment, the sooner the rest of the country wises up to this fact the better.
he's a Goldman guy, he knows. Also UK is uniquely ill placed to handle this.
1) We tax property occupancy and transactions higher than anywhere else in the world. That is going to hurt. 2) We tax middle income earners on their income far lower than pretty much anywhere in Europe and rely on a very narrow base for income related taxes. Raising basic rate to 30% a la most Europe is going to hurt. 3) We are far more reliant on trade and invisible exports of services. And are so vulnerable to trade freezing up. The hit to the Golden Goose of London as the only alpha + city in Europe is going to hurt. 4) We have higher state support for social insurance (welfare), health (NHS) and housing (social housing) than most countries. Losing that is going to hurt
Fascinating crazy fact of today: the last time a Duke of York inherited the title from his father was 1402.
After that:
In 1415 the Duke of York was killed at Agincourt, leaving a young nephew (probably really a half-nephew) as his heir, who was granted the title in 1432. This heir, Richard, was killed in 1460 and the title forfeited (to be clear - his son did not inherit as the inheritance of a title had to be confirmed by the King, and Henry VI could not do so). However, the point was moot because his son Edward, Earl of March seized the crown anyway.
Since then, every single Duke of York has either died without male heirs (1483) or become King (e.g. 1509, 1910, 1936).
And Andrew looks likely to follow the first tradition although if anything could cause a Republic it would be the thought of him becoming King.
I was of the opinion that had Corbyn ever become PM, a Peter Wright style coup would have followed and Prince Andrew would have been installed as the titular PM!
Mr Chris, Do you wear a face mask to protect you or others? If it's you ... A person coughs in your face. The warm droplet if it's big enough stays on the outside of the mask and rapidly evaporates. You now have virus on the mask. How do you take off your mask? People who wear a mask take bigger risks. I'm not a behavioural scientist but I might take their word for this. They become sloppy.
Not you personally, but those pesky other people do.
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
on top of the lost-forever consumption (restaurants, travel etc.) a lot of the tangibles won't come back (fashion has lost a season), and a lot of consumption will be reassessed (cars, holidays). This huge hit to our consumption-based economy will mean we simply can't afford the welfare and health we now demand. With taxes very close to a post-war high already. something is going to give. and that won't be pretty. printing money really doesn't solve this either.
Yep. This is where we are at.
I imagine Sunak realises this and is defecating building materials at the moment, the sooner the rest of the country wises up to this fact the better.
he's a Goldman guy, he knows. Also UK is uniquely ill placed to handle this.
1) We tax property occupancy and transactions higher than anywhere else in the world. That is going to hurt. 2) We tax middle income earners on their income far lower than pretty much anywhere in Europe and rely on a very narrow base for income related taxes. Raising basic rate to 30% a la most Europe is going to hurt. 3) We are far more reliant on trade and invisible exports of services. And are so vulnerable to trade freezing up. The hit to the Golden Goose of London as the only alpha + city in Europe is going to hurt. 4) We have higher state support for social insurance (welfare), health (NHS) and housing (social housing) than most countries. Losing that is going to hurt
As an ex-Goldman guy myself, I tend to agree with most of your concerns about the UK economy. The high level of stamp duty, for example, is utter madness as it dicourages the efficient allocation of a scarce resource.
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Yeah, this is some great depression level stuff. I have access to some limited economic data through my job and it's hard to see how this doesn't result in a near fatal blow to the high street. There won't be any reason to leave our homes soon - there won't be anywhere left open to go.
The tax base is clearly going to take a kicking, it's not a question of us all paying more tax, it's going to be a fact that there simply aren't enough people left working to pay enough tax to keep public services going. Austerity will seem mild compared to the cuts that will need to be made.
The alternative is we print a load of funny money. Which I think is where we are headed.
Yes, I don’t see Boris making more cuts. They will print money to avoid economic disaster.
Indeed. The future is really going to pay for this one.
Or we will discover the debt and deficit hawks have been talking nonsense for the past decade and a half. Our current situation is unprecedented (I think) in that it is not a normal market failure of supply or demand that can be fixed by government stepping in. This is where we have "voluntarily" shut down large sections of the economy. Maybe when lockdown ends, it will return to normal. Maybe it won't. Who knows? The Treasury must be prepared to act but it is hard to know in advance what will be needed and where.
You print money but keep it as a specific liability (monetisation of debt). You then have a specific surcharge (a Corona solidarity charge) that can only be applied to paying down this liability. And once it’s gone it’s gone.
If Boris is making a list based on anecdata, I've recently heard mumblings around the need for dentists, chiropodists, children's clothes (the buggers keep growing even if you don't feed them) and opticians.
If it can be done safely(one in, one out, different chairs etc.), barbers/hairdressers. I've bought some hair clippers but am wary of having a go, as it might be a complete disaster.
I haven't been to a hairdresser for many years.. it probably shows, but the money it's saved me must be well past the "new computer" or "weekend break" level, and approaching the value of a decent second-hand car. And then there's convenience and cumulative time-savings.
You can't go too wrong with clippers, provided short hair suits you. The trick is sorting out your mirror setup. Two mirrors if you can arrange it, and get your head around "how to move my hand while watching a reflection of my reflection" to sort out the back of your head ...
I did wonder whether the long-term effects of this pandemic would be a change to men's hairstyles and more hair-related self-reliance!
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
on top of the lost-forever consumption (restaurants, travel etc.) a lot of the tangibles won't come back (fashion has lost a season), and a lot of consumption will be reassessed (cars, holidays). This huge hit to our consumption-based economy will mean we simply can't afford the welfare and health we now demand. With taxes very close to a post-war high already. something is going to give. and that won't be pretty. printing money really doesn't solve this either.
Yep. This is where we are at.
I imagine Sunak realises this and is defecating building materials at the moment, the sooner the rest of the country wises up to this fact the better.
he's a Goldman guy, he knows. Also UK is uniquely ill placed to handle this.
1) We tax property occupancy and transactions higher than anywhere else in the world. That is going to hurt. 2) We tax middle income earners on their income far lower than pretty much anywhere in Europe and rely on a very narrow base for income related taxes. Raising basic rate to 30% a la most Europe is going to hurt. 3) We are far more reliant on trade and invisible exports of services. And are so vulnerable to trade freezing up. The hit to the Golden Goose of London as the only alpha + city in Europe is going to hurt. 4) We have higher state support for social insurance (welfare), health (NHS) and housing (social housing) than most countries. Losing that is going to hurt
As an ex-Goldman guy myself, I tend to agree with most of your concerns about the UK economy. The high level of stamp duty, for example, is utter madness as it dicourages the efficient allocation of a scarce resource.
Interesting discussion. Given where we are, assuming that it's hard to see the lockdown ending until mid May at the earliest and a full opening of restaurants / cinemas until after that, what would you suggest from an economic perspective?
I trust people are aware that in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and I suspect others there have been serious outbreaks and deaths in care homes. It is of course tragic and sad but I'm pretty sure most countries have treated their elderly in much the same way - no doubt with errors - but not I think with malice. Remember it is the nature of the beast we are dealing with that the elderly and infirm are those most at risk.
Indeed. But our government was unique - among the ones not run by complete loonies - in the delusion that it would be possible to let the virus run through about two thirds of the population while "cocooning" the vulnerable.
One might have expected even politicians as dim as Johnson and Hancock to question how that would be done for care homes.
Interesting to see you are now describing the Social Democratic government of Sweden as 'complete loonies'!
Idiot.
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
No, because there is none, especially without mass testing which Sweden, unlike say South Korea, is not doing,
Indeed. I suspected you couldn't understand the difference.
You clearly do not understand that if you do not have a lockdown by definition the virus will spread more widely and you will be pursuing a herd immunity policy, even if by default.
If you pursue mass testing and tracing you might be able to avoid a lockdown and pursuing herd immunity but Sweden is not mass testing
You really are unbelievably thick, aren't you?
Obviously Sweden is trying to avoid a majority of its population getting the virus. Advocates of the Swedish strategy are even claiming they will succeed.
You may not agree - I don't agree myself - but to say that "by definition" not having a lockdown means the virus will spread until herd immunity stops it, and to imply that that is what the Swedish government is trying to do, is just plain stupid. Obviously the idea of the Swedish strategy is that social distancing will succeed without the need for a lockdown.
Yet Sweden already has a death rate higher than all its neighbours, Denmark, Finland and Norway. Either you support a lockdown or you don't, if you don't fine but you cannot criticise the government then on any grounds but the lockdown is too heavy
I trust people are aware that in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and I suspect others there have been serious outbreaks and deaths in care homes. It is of course tragic and sad but I'm pretty sure most countries have treated their elderly in much the same way - no doubt with errors - but not I think with malice. Remember it is the nature of the beast we are dealing with that the elderly and infirm are those most at risk.
Indeed. But our government was unique - among the ones not run by complete loonies - in the delusion that it would be possible to let the virus run through about two thirds of the population while "cocooning" the vulnerable.
One might have expected even politicians as dim as Johnson and Hancock to question how that would be done for care homes.
Interesting to see you are now describing the Social Democratic government of Sweden as 'complete loonies'!
Idiot.
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
No, because there is none, especially without mass testing which Sweden, unlike say South Korea, is not doing,
Indeed. I suspected you couldn't understand the difference.
You clearly do not understand that if you do not have a lockdown by definition the virus will spread more widely and you will be pursuing a herd immunity policy, even if by default.
If you pursue mass testing and tracing you might be able to avoid a lockdown and pursuing herd immunity but Sweden is not mass testing
You really are unbelievably thick, aren't you?
Obviously Sweden is trying to avoid a majority of its population getting the virus. Advocates of the Swedish strategy are even claiming they will succeed.
You may not agree - I don't agree myself - but to say that "by definition" not having a lockdown means the virus will spread until herd immunity stops it, and to imply that that is what the Swedish government is trying to do, is just plain stupid. Obviously the idea of the Swedish strategy is that social distancing will succeed without the need for a lockdown.
Yet Sweden already has a death rate higher than all its neighbours, Denmark, Finland and Norway. Either you support a lockdown or you don't, if you don't fine but you cannot criticise the government then on any grounds but the lockdown is too heavy
You implied Sweden's policy was herd imunity. It isn't.
Even in Scotland more people support the monarchy than oppose it, the fact some Celtic supporters (who have always been Nat and republican) turned out to buy a record really means nothing, you need little more than 1 man and his dog buying a record to top the Scottish charts
There is supporting the monarchy then there is getting excited about a nobody marrying a rich nobody neither of whom have done anything to gain the respect of the people. An event most people I would think will ignore.
Beatrice is 9th in line to the throne, hardly a nobody
Mr Chris, Do you wear a face mask to protect you or others? If it's you ... A person coughs in your face. The warm droplet if it's big enough stays on the outside of the mask and rapidly evaporates. You now have virus on the mask. How do you take off your mask? People who wear a mask take bigger risks. I'm not a behavioural scientist but I might take their word for this. They become sloppy.
Not you personally, but those pesky other people do.
You're saying that wearing a mask is risky because if someone coughs in your face there will be virus on the outside of the mask?
Businesses do fail, often through no fault of their own, when circumstances change. Normally the Right is quite resistant to the state bailing them out. Strangely, some sections of the Right now think not only that businesses should be bailed out, but that hundreds of thousands of lives should be sacrificed to do it. It seems an odd philosophy for conservatives to espouse.
This has moved beyond a silly left-right dispute. If the Treasury runs out of money to prop up all the unemployed before this is all over (because the markets won't lend to it anymore, and it can't print its way out of trouble without ruining everybody through hyperinflation) then we have mass starvation and societal collapse.
It always comes back to a balance: if the number of lives destroyed by the measures taken to combat coronavirus exceeds those destroyed by the virus itself, then at least some of the measures to suppress the virus must be removed. A hypothetical Labour administration would be faced with exactly the same horrible choices as the current one.
The Treasury is a VERY long way from the markets being unwilling to lend, with the interest rate currently close to 0. The trickier decision is how far to push interest rates up without accelerating bankruptcies - it's classic stagflation territory. I'd expect new "recovery bonds" to be issued at gradually higher interest rates until the market price is established.
Some production and services will simply be rolled over as used to happen after prolonged strike action or other disruption - if there's a shortage of new cars that people can afford, more new cars will be made to catch up; if a will needs to be prrocessed and the solicitor was unavailable, it will be processed later with no effect except mild inconvenience. Others will simply not happen - train journeys not taken, hairdressers not visited. Assessment of which businesses will manage best involves looking at which are in the "you can catch up" category.
on top of the lost-forever consumption (restaurants, travel etc.) a lot of the tangibles won't come back (fashion has lost a season), and a lot of consumption will be reassessed (cars, holidays). This huge hit to our consumption-based economy will mean we simply can't afford the welfare and health we now demand. With taxes very close to a post-war high already. something is going to give. and that won't be pretty. printing money really doesn't solve this either.
Yep. This is where we are at.
I imagine Sunak realises this and is defecating building materials at the moment, the sooner the rest of the country wises up to this fact the better.
he's a Goldman guy, he knows. Also UK is uniquely ill placed to handle this.
1) We tax property occupancy and transactions higher than anywhere else in the world. That is going to hurt. 2) We tax middle income earners on their income far lower than pretty much anywhere in Europe and rely on a very narrow base for income related taxes. Raising basic rate to 30% a la most Europe is going to hurt. 3) We are far more reliant on trade and invisible exports of services. And are so vulnerable to trade freezing up. The hit to the Golden Goose of London as the only alpha + city in Europe is going to hurt. 4) We have higher state support for social insurance (welfare), health (NHS) and housing (social housing) than most countries. Losing that is going to hurt
Can you imagine any government taking decisions which will substantially increase taxation and make the voter noticeably poorer within an election cycle?
We need a twenty year moratorium on General Elections, but that isn't going to happen
You implied Sweden's policy was herd imunity. It isn't.
It sort of is a bit, but not very much:
"Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, has described the country’s coronavirus strategy as an attempt to ensure “a slow spread of infection and that the health services are not overwhelmed”, arguing that it is important for a part of the population to acquire immunity.
Tegnell has denied trying to build rapid “herd immunity” to the virus, a strategy originally adopted by the UK and the Netherlands before projected soaring death numbers prompted those countries to change course, but he has conceded that such a policy is “not contradictory” to Sweden’s objectives.
“It is important to have a policy that can be sustained over a longer period, meaning staying home if you are sick,” he said recently. “Locking people up at home won’t work in the longer term. Sooner or later people are going to go out anyway.”
You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.
So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.
For two million job losses read four million, in other words.
Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.
Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)
Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.
God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.
Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.
Yeah, this is some great depression level stuff. I have access to some limited economic data through my job and it's hard to see how this doesn't result in a near fatal blow to the high street. There won't be any reason to leave our homes soon - there won't be anywhere left open to go.
The tax base is clearly going to take a kicking, it's not a question of us all paying more tax, it's going to be a fact that there simply aren't enough people left working to pay enough tax to keep public services going. Austerity will seem mild compared to the cuts that will need to be made.
The alternative is we print a load of funny money. Which I think is where we are headed.
Yes, I don’t see Boris making more cuts. They will print money to avoid economic disaster.
Indeed. The future is really going to pay for this one.
Or we will discover the debt and deficit hawks have been talking nonsense for the past decade and a half. Our current situation is unprecedented (I think) in that it is not a normal market failure of supply or demand that can be fixed by government stepping in. This is where we have "voluntarily" shut down large sections of the economy. Maybe when lockdown ends, it will return to normal. Maybe it won't. Who knows? The Treasury must be prepared to act but it is hard to know in advance what will be needed and where.
You print money but keep it as a specific liability (monetisation of debt). You then have a specific surcharge (a Corona solidarity charge) that can only be applied to paying down this liability. And once it’s gone it’s gone.
The risk with money printing is that the emergencies get a little less... real... every time. Eventually you're printing it to avoid the most minor of recessions.
I think this ends - perhaps twenty years from now - with governments debasing the currency.
Comments
I’d think he wants mad Corbynites to heckle him and walk out of this conference speech, and then for the 2021 conference to be conspicuous by their absence.
(I think Ms Cyclefree might approve...!)
Otherwise, I might order new. The Novatech didn't look ridiculously expensive and the Lenovo is OK but definitely has limitations.
I use that computer mostly for work - word processing, powerpoint, remote meetings etc. I have a Mac which I use for photos and music, which is why it's not a total disaster if the Lenovo is a dead loss and I can't replace it - I can use the Mac instead. However, it's only got one screen functionality so it's a bit limiting.
Thank you all again for your most helpful suggestions.
Inevitably, what they can provide for the money they get from the local authority isn't going to match with the more luxurious end of the sector - in London and the SE £1000-£1200 pw is nothing unusual in care home fees.
(Apparently it means it was caramalised with brown sugar. I did check.... Posh nosh though. A spare in the fridge, if anyone wants to break lockdown....)
If you're claiming wearing masks is actually dangerous, you need to explain why.
Questions are to provide a sound bite for the pre-designed story for the evening news. NOT to elicit an answer.
1) He is a committed negative nationalist (against the Western government in general).
2) He has a commitment to publishing things that people don't want published.
3) What he has published has always been accurate.
4) His commentaries on what it means are bizzare, often ridiculous and quite often at odds with what he is publishing
5) He fillets what he publishes to go with his political beliefs.
6) This means he doesn't publish stuff that embarrasses enemies of The West - such as Putin's Russia.
He has always done the above.
The Guardianistas loved him when he was publishing embarrassments to George Bush II.
When he published embarrassments to Hilary Clinton they regarded it as an outrage.
They have a touching belief that if extradited to America, Assange will suddenly admit to being an FSB agent, that all the leaks came from the FSB and that Trump ordered the publication.
https://twitter.com/brawday/status/1249749690754744320?s=20
It'll certainly do wonders for uniting the mood of my nation.
My doctor friends tell me that they are getting better and better at diagnosing COVID19 - to the point they are keeping score on their accuracy. Combined with targeting a lot of the testing on those presenting with symptoms, this suggests selection bias in the outcome....
Can you really not understand the difference between a policy of achieving herd immunity on the one hand, and a policy of trying to prevent the virus spreading without a lockdown on the other?
The irony for self-funders is that the monetary difference between a home that looks and smells like a kennel and one that has the appearance and standards of a country house hotel is comparatively small. Both are expensive but only one is value for money.
LOL what an absurd comment
https://youtu.be/XrwKRlBsDNc
A pillar of capitalism is you can’t reward the winners without punishing the losers. I worry our government has been co-opted ... to protect the wealth of the top 10, if not 1, percent
Modern-day “capitalism” in America is to flatten the risk curve for people who already have money, by borrowing from future generations with debt-fueled bailouts for companies. We have consciously decided to reduce the downside for the wealthy
Any true conservative would only eat babies when roasted and served with potato salad.
As if toast comes into the equation.
ETA we will have to deal with debt later but right now, it's not the most important thing or anywhere near.
certainly.
The rescue package should protect people, not businesses. From 2017 to 2019, the CEOs of Delta, American, United, and Carnival Cruises earned over $150 million in compensation. But, now … “We’re in this together” (i.e., “bail our asses out”).
And what happens if they (gasp!), go out of business? Simple, the equity holders, and unsecured debt holders, get wiped out. These are the cohorts who, despite the recent meltdown, have registered a 3.3x increase in the Dow since the lows of 2008.
If you pursue mass testing and tracing you might be able to avoid a lockdown and pursuing herd immunity but Sweden is not mass testing
The only royal that matters right now is the Queen, the rest are a diminishing sideshow
And of course my youngest sons wedding in August has been pushed back to 2021 together with thousands of others
Supposing the EU had insisted everyone follow the rules they had set down for joining the single currency.
That would have meant only Luxembourg could actually have joined it.
But suppose a little flexibility had been shown, so that only France, Germany, Austria, the Benelux countries and Denmark had joined (ignoring the fact, for the moment, that Denmark has not and probably never will).
Would that have been better or worse for the Euro?
I think it would probably have left Germany in a very nasty recession that it couldn't get out of via overspending on its manufactured goods in the periphery (Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece) and would therefore have been a failure on all counts.
I can give you a little advice. Wear a nuisance mask if you must but treat it as fashion wear.
if you wear gloves, assume they becomes contaminated and learn how to take them off (doffing) without contaminating your skin. Not as easy as it looks.
if you sneeze or cough in your mask, treat it as contaminated. You will touch your face, everyone does. Wash your hands immediately.
The two-metre rule is there for a reason, respect it.
Everyone calls this common sense, Unfortunately it needs to be learned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVWgXJDBH6Y
Obviously Sweden is trying to avoid a majority of its population getting the virus. Advocates of the Swedish strategy are even claiming they will succeed.
You may not agree - I don't agree myself - but to say that "by definition" not having a lockdown means the virus will spread until herd immunity stops it, and to imply that that is what the Swedish government is trying to do, is just plain stupid. Obviously the idea of the Swedish strategy is that social distancing will succeed without the need for a lockdown.
You could send in truncheon wielding civil guards at any public recitals of it, so win win.
I imagine Sunak realises this and is defecating building materials at the moment, the sooner the rest of the country wises up to this fact the better.
The Queen will be the last really respected monarch and apart from William and Kate the rest are wholly irrelevant and few will notice their passing
"If you're claiming wearing masks is actually dangerous, you need to explain why."
You can't go too wrong with clippers, provided short hair suits you. The trick is sorting out your mirror setup. Two mirrors if you can arrange it, and get your head around "how to move my hand while watching a reflection of my reflection" to sort out the back of your head ...
I did wonder whether the long-term effects of this pandemic would be a change to men's hairstyles and more hair-related self-reliance!
The monarchy only continues with the consent of the people.
I doubt it will survive in its present form after the Queen, it will be greatly diminished even then
After that:
In 1415 the Duke of York was killed at Agincourt, leaving a young nephew (probably really a half-nephew) as his heir, who was granted the title in 1432.
This heir, Richard, was killed in 1460 and the title forfeited (to be clear - his son did not inherit as the inheritance of a title had to be confirmed by the King, and Henry VI could not do so). However, the point was moot because his son Edward, Earl of March seized the crown anyway.
Since then, every single Duke of York has either died without male heirs (1483) or become King (e.g. 1509, 1910, 1936).
And Andrew looks likely to follow the first tradition although if anything could cause a Republic it would be the thought of him becoming King.
1) We tax property occupancy and transactions higher than anywhere else in the world. That is going to hurt.
2) We tax middle income earners on their income far lower than pretty much anywhere in Europe and rely on a very narrow base for income related taxes. Raising basic rate to 30% a la most Europe is going to hurt.
3) We are far more reliant on trade and invisible exports of services. And are so vulnerable to trade freezing up. The hit to the Golden Goose of London as the only alpha + city in Europe is going to hurt.
4) We have higher state support for social insurance (welfare), health (NHS) and housing (social housing) than most countries. Losing that is going to hurt
Sadly now no longer likely.
Do you wear a face mask to protect you or others? If it's you ... A person coughs in your face. The warm droplet if it's big enough stays on the outside of the mask and rapidly evaporates. You now have virus on the mask. How do you take off your mask?
People who wear a mask take bigger risks. I'm not a behavioural scientist but I might take their word for this. They become sloppy.
Not you personally, but those pesky other people do.
What a horrendously unflattering front photograph.
Edit - clearly they agreed with me!
Bernie endorses Joe
Are you sure you've thought this out?
We need a twenty year moratorium on General Elections, but that isn't going to happen
"Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, has described the country’s coronavirus strategy as an attempt to ensure “a slow spread of infection and that the health services are not overwhelmed”, arguing that it is important for a part of the population to acquire immunity.
Tegnell has denied trying to build rapid “herd immunity” to the virus, a strategy originally adopted by the UK and the Netherlands before projected soaring death numbers prompted those countries to change course, but he has conceded that such a policy is “not contradictory” to Sweden’s objectives.
“It is important to have a policy that can be sustained over a longer period, meaning staying home if you are sick,” he said recently. “Locking people up at home won’t work in the longer term. Sooner or later people are going to go out anyway.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/sweden-prepares-to-tighten-coronavirus-measures-as-death-toll-climbs
It doesn't seem to be going well
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-coronavirus-lockdown-doctor-death-certificates-latest-a9462796.html
I think this ends - perhaps twenty years from now - with governments debasing the currency.
Bill Gates?