Why Tories, including the PM, have got to be careful with comments about the elderly – politicalbett

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

I suspect frankly it is you that doesn't know what you are talking about. If there are no checks with government servers there is no defense against fakes simple as that.

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

UBI already exists in this country, we just don't call it that and we have an extremely high real marginal income tax on it.

A sensible UBI introduction would be to merge existing things together, sort out the tax rates so they're sensible, then call it UBI. Not introduce massive new benefits.

A bit like Osborne introducing a Living Wage, based upon the pre-existing Minimum Wage and not dramatically different.

UBI will not work until they sort out housing benefit, specifically in London and the south.

The current numbers require something like £1k a month for an adult, £500 for a child, and an income tax rate of 35% with no personal allowance. Then start making allowances for behavioural changes, all of which will be on the downside for the Chancellor.

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Wait what you're going to fake an ID system that you have access to anyway... ?

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

I suspect frankly it is you that doesn't know what you are talking about. If there are no checks with government servers there is no defense against fakes simple as that.

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

Pulpstar said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

The vaccine passport SHOWS on your phone but the backend is all gov't servers.

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

It's health data which means local storage on BYOD systems is not acceptable. It would need an end to end secure chain.

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

It's health data which means local storage on BYOD systems is not acceptable. It would need an end to end secure chain.

Eh? What health data? The check isn't on the data, it's on the digital signature of the certifying authority.

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

Sighs you have no clue do you, a public key will be leaked. Look how well it worked for dvds when the data was encrypted....clue it lasted days. Keys will be leaked or a weakness found in almost nothing flat.

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

It's health data which means local storage on BYOD systems is not acceptable. It would need an end to end secure chain.

Eh? What health data? The check isn't on the data, it's on the digital signature of the certifying authority.

It is health data because the check is someone's vaccination status. That's health data. Using an encrypted key would end in disaster.

Richard_Nabavi said:

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

Sighs you have no clue do you, a public key will be leaked. Look how well it worked for dvds when the data was encrypted....clue it lasted days. Keys will be leaked or a weakness found in almost nothing flat.

Well done, you've just demonstrated that the entire science of cryptography is bogus. Have you warned GCHQ?

Richard_Nabavi said:

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

Sighs you have no clue do you, a public key will be leaked. Look how well it worked for dvds when the data was encrypted....clue it lasted days. Keys will be leaked or a weakness found in almost nothing flat.

Well done, you've just demonstrated that the entire science of cryptography is bogus. Have you warned GCHQ?

MattW said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

Sighs you have no clue do you, a public key will be leaked. Look how well it worked for dvds when the data was encrypted....clue it lasted days. Keys will be leaked or a weakness found in almost nothing flat.

Well done, you've just demonstrated that the entire science of cryptography is bogus. Have you warned GCHQ?

There was me thinking that Public Key were ... public.

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

lololol - people are already going to nightclubs you apologist loon. They're going in confidence. A vax passport n 2 months is the ultimate stable door closed late.

It depends what horse in the stable you're trying to protect.

If its to prevent Covid cases spreading now, then you're right.

If its to prevent the NHS collapsing under the strain of Covid cases during winter flu season then a vax passport in 2 months time (plus the exit wave of the virus burning out in the summer) is timed to perfection.

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

lololol - people are already going to nightclubs you apologist loon. They're going in confidence. A vax passport n 2 months is the ultimate stable door closed late.

It depends what horse in the stable you're trying to protect.

If its to prevent Covid cases spreading now, then you're right.

If its to prevent the NHS collapsing under the strain of Covid cases during winter flu season then a vax passport in 2 months time (plus the exit wave of the virus burning out in the summer) is timed to perfection.

Why would Covid cause a winter collapse? Haven't you and the other Unlock Now Forever advocates told us that its all over? Come on, you aren't backing a vax passport are you?

Flatlander said:

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

Sighs you have no clue do you, a public key will be leaked. Look how well it worked for dvds when the data was encrypted....clue it lasted days. Keys will be leaked or a weakness found in almost nothing flat.

How does my browser accept an SSL certificate as legit? Not via Digicert or whoever signed it.

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

lololol - people are already going to nightclubs you apologist loon. They're going in confidence. A vax passport n 2 months is the ultimate stable door closed late.

It depends what horse in the stable you're trying to protect.

If its to prevent Covid cases spreading now, then you're right.

If its to prevent the NHS collapsing under the strain of Covid cases during winter flu season then a vax passport in 2 months time (plus the exit wave of the virus burning out in the summer) is timed to perfection.

Why would Covid cause a winter collapse? Haven't you and the other Unlock Now Forever advocates told us that its all over? Come on, you aren't backing a vax passport are you?

I'm not no, but the entire logic for months from the government and the scientists is that the point of biggest risk is in the winter when people are inside and there's the winter flu season in addition to Covid.

So if you're doing a vaxport, there's little point in doing it now and suppressing the summer spread. The entirely logical time to do it, is in time for Freshers in September.

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

UBI already exists in this country, we just don't call it that and we have an extremely high real marginal income tax on it.

A sensible UBI introduction would be to merge existing things together, sort out the tax rates so they're sensible, then call it UBI. Not introduce massive new benefits.

A bit like Osborne introducing a Living Wage, based upon the pre-existing Minimum Wage and not dramatically different.

UBI will not work until they sort out housing benefit, specifically in London and the south.

The current numbers require something like £1k a month for an adult, £500 for a child, and an income tax rate of 35% with no personal allowance. Then start making allowances for behavioural changes, all of which will be on the downside for the Chancellor.

A properly-implemented UBI will make behaviour changes be on the upside for the Chancellor not the downside.

Currently people feel like its not worth working as they'll "lose their benefits" which is true, marginal tax rates of over 75% and effectively 90% exist. Getting rid of that will well and truly make work pay.

As a point of principle, I find it immoral for anyone to be facing a marginal tax rate of over 50%. That to me applies equally to those earning over £100k losing their tax-free allowance, and those on minimum wage losing their UC.

The only ways to get the UC withdrawal under 50%, are to either reduce the payments to those at the very bottom end, or to increase income tax for everyone.

I agree that the tax and benefits system is way too complex, with perverse incentives all over the place. While UC has straightened out a lot of the problems and silly 16-hour rules that existed previously, the next change is going to result in a lot of losers though, which makes it much more difficult politically.

It may be difficult, but if some are being taxed 75% and others are being taxed 40% then I don't care if the 40% see their taxes rise marginally if it pays to lower the tax rates for those on 75%,

Long-term making work pay and having flatter, lower tax rates leads to the pie being grown and more tax receipts/lower expenditure overall.

felix said:

Philip_Thompson said:

felix said:

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

UBI already exists in this country, we just don't call it that and we have an extremely high real marginal income tax on it.

A sensible UBI introduction would be to merge existing things together, sort out the tax rates so they're sensible, then call it UBI. Not introduce massive new benefits.

A bit like Osborne introducing a Living Wage, based upon the pre-existing Minimum Wage and not dramatically different.

UBI will not work until they sort out housing benefit, specifically in London and the south.

The current numbers require something like £1k a month for an adult, £500 for a child, and an income tax rate of 35% with no personal allowance. Then start making allowances for behavioural changes, all of which will be on the downside for the Chancellor.

Don't like it, don't get it - handouts for sitting at home make zero sense to me. I take the 'Judge Judy' approach to welfare!

The entire point of a UBI, as opposed to UC/JSA etc is that its not a handout for sitting at home.

What we have today is handouts encouraging people to stay at home.

I t further weakens the notion of self-help and nurse knows best. No thanks.

Pagan2 said:

Flatlander said:

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

Sighs you have no clue do you, a public key will be leaked. Look how well it worked for dvds when the data was encrypted....clue it lasted days. Keys will be leaked or a weakness found in almost nothing flat.

How does my browser accept an SSL certificate as legit? Not via Digicert or whoever signed it.

Your browser decrypts it with a key. Those keys get leaked too

https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/private-keys-for-23000-digital-certificates-leaked-a-10689#:~:text=The emailing of the private,this a serious security issue.

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Pagan2 said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

You would need to have a secure chain API with a bring your own device front end to scan the QR code and get a response from the server saying it's legit. Otherwise why bother?

No, you just need it to be encrypted using absolutely bog-standard techniques.

It's identical to your computer checking a certificate. All you need to store in the smartphone or other device checking the QR code is a small number of public keys.

Sighs you have no clue do you, a public key will be leaked. Look how well it worked for dvds when the data was encrypted....clue it lasted days. Keys will be leaked or a weakness found in almost nothing flat.

Well done, you've just demonstrated that the entire science of cryptography is bogus. Have you warned GCHQ?

Where did I claim that. What I claimed has nothing to do with cryptography. I work with cryptography. The simple fact is people. There will be multiple people with access to those keys. One of them will either find themselves in need of cash or they will be blackmailable. What has that to do with the science of cryptography? One or more keys will be available in the wild within a few days

Well, we use digital keys for all sorts of things, such as code signatures for Windows or Apple apps, where the downside of a breach of security is massively higher. Yes, I suppose there is always a tiny chance that a private key will be leaked, although almost noone (possibly precisely no-one) needs to have access to it. The risk is miniscule, but let's go with it. What's the worst that can happen? A tiny number of highly tech-savvy unvaxxed people get into a nightclub when they shouldn't have been able to. Not the end of the world, is it? It can't be a widespread fraud because if it is, then you just invalidate that key and ask people to revalidate.

I was merely pointing out there will be forgeries and I expect a lot of criminals to make a lot of money out of it just as they did selling sky tv decryption cards. It is only one plank of resistance not the full board

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

UBI already exists in this country, we just don't call it that and we have an extremely high real marginal income tax on it.

A sensible UBI introduction would be to merge existing things together, sort out the tax rates so they're sensible, then call it UBI. Not introduce massive new benefits.

A bit like Osborne introducing a Living Wage, based upon the pre-existing Minimum Wage and not dramatically different.

UBI will not work until they sort out housing benefit, specifically in London and the south.

The current numbers require something like £1k a month for an adult, £500 for a child, and an income tax rate of 35% with no personal allowance. Then start making allowances for behavioural changes, all of which will be on the downside for the Chancellor.

A properly-implemented UBI will make behaviour changes be on the upside for the Chancellor not the downside.

Currently people feel like its not worth working as they'll "lose their benefits" which is true, marginal tax rates of over 75% and effectively 90% exist. Getting rid of that will well and truly make work pay.

As a point of principle, I find it immoral for anyone to be facing a marginal tax rate of over 50%. That to me applies equally to those earning over £100k losing their tax-free allowance, and those on minimum wage losing their UC.

The only ways to get the UC withdrawal under 50%, are to either reduce the payments to those at the very bottom end, or to increase income tax for everyone.

I agree that the tax and benefits system is way too complex, with perverse incentives all over the place. While UC has straightened out a lot of the problems and silly 16-hour rules that existed previously, the next change is going to result in a lot of losers though, which makes it much more difficult politically.

It may be difficult, but if some are being taxed 75% and others are being taxed 40% then I don't care if the 40% see their taxes rise marginally if it pays to lower the tax rates for those on 75%,

Long-term making work pay and having flatter, lower tax rates leads to the pie being grown and more tax receipts/lower expenditure overall.

I don’t disagree with you, but good luck arguing for the 20% income tax rate rate to be changed to 25%.

JosiasJessop said:

Sandpit said:

At least today’s billionaires are interested in improving the state of technology. Awesome to watch.

The thing is Branson's technology is a dead-end. At least New Shepard is being built by a rocket company that is also building a humongous rocket (and New Glenn will be humongous; it's just that SH/SS resets the terms.)

BTW, I hate the name 'Starship'. Starship has a definition that has been used for well over 100 years: a vessel that can be used for interstellar travel. SS never will. It's another Muskian over-promise.

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

lololol - people are already going to nightclubs you apologist loon. They're going in confidence. A vax passport n 2 months is the ultimate stable door closed late.

It depends what horse in the stable you're trying to protect.

If its to prevent Covid cases spreading now, then you're right.

If its to prevent the NHS collapsing under the strain of Covid cases during winter flu season then a vax passport in 2 months time (plus the exit wave of the virus burning out in the summer) is timed to perfection.

Why would Covid cause a winter collapse? Haven't you and the other Unlock Now Forever advocates told us that its all over? Come on, you aren't backing a vax passport are you?

I'm not no, but the entire logic for months from the government and the scientists is that the point of biggest risk is in the winter when people are inside and there's the winter flu season in addition to Covid.

So if you're doing a vaxport, there's little point in doing it now and suppressing the summer spread. The entirely logical time to do it, is in time for Freshers in September.

So the avowed strategy now is to get as many people as possible sick with Covid now?

Philip_Thompson said:

felix said:

Philip_Thompson said:

felix said:

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

UBI already exists in this country, we just don't call it that and we have an extremely high real marginal income tax on it.

A sensible UBI introduction would be to merge existing things together, sort out the tax rates so they're sensible, then call it UBI. Not introduce massive new benefits.

A bit like Osborne introducing a Living Wage, based upon the pre-existing Minimum Wage and not dramatically different.

UBI will not work until they sort out housing benefit, specifically in London and the south.

The current numbers require something like £1k a month for an adult, £500 for a child, and an income tax rate of 35% with no personal allowance. Then start making allowances for behavioural changes, all of which will be on the downside for the Chancellor.

Don't like it, don't get it - handouts for sitting at home make zero sense to me. I take the 'Judge Judy' approach to welfare!

The entire point of a UBI, as opposed to UC/JSA etc is that its not a handout for sitting at home.

What we have today is handouts encouraging people to stay at home.

I t further weakens the notion of self-help and nurse knows best. No thanks.

Actually it does the complete opposite.

UC/JSA weakens the notion of self-help because it pays people to not be working. Work and "you lose your benefits". If you fail to work, you're paid for that.

UBI reinforces the notion of self-help as you get the UBI whether you work or not. Fail to work, you're not given any extra money than those who do work, so you're the one who suffers.

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

lololol - people are already going to nightclubs you apologist loon. They're going in confidence. A vax passport n 2 months is the ultimate stable door closed late.

It depends what horse in the stable you're trying to protect.

If its to prevent Covid cases spreading now, then you're right.

If its to prevent the NHS collapsing under the strain of Covid cases during winter flu season then a vax passport in 2 months time (plus the exit wave of the virus burning out in the summer) is timed to perfection.

Why would Covid cause a winter collapse? Haven't you and the other Unlock Now Forever advocates told us that its all over? Come on, you aren't backing a vax passport are you?

I'm not no, but the entire logic for months from the government and the scientists is that the point of biggest risk is in the winter when people are inside and there's the winter flu season in addition to Covid.

So if you're doing a vaxport, there's little point in doing it now and suppressing the summer spread. The entirely logical time to do it, is in time for Freshers in September.

So the avowed strategy now is to get as many people as possible sick with Covid now?

Have you not been paying attention?

Yes its literally the point that the exit wave should happen over the summer instead of the winter.

Have you only just figured out what that means?

Pagan2 said:

And then the new keys will be leaked. Revoking a key is not cost free either. You revoke a key suddenly all those vaxports using it no longer work and have to be redownloaded....the first time someone finds out is when they are trying to get in somewhere. People will soon get peeved

Pagan2 said:

Stark_Dawning said:

Pagan2 said:

The first rule of cryptography is that the moment more than one person has a key the key is potentially compromised

I think you're confused about the nature of public and private keys. Public keys can be given to multiple users and mean that that user can encrypt the file so that only someone with the private key can decrypt it. But they won't help with decryption whatsoever.

Not at all confused as I spent 5 years working with the system. The important key is the one on government servers. It encrypts the data sent out which creates the qr code , then when the qr code is scanned receives the data and decrypts it and checks it. The government keys will be on the darknet before you can say boo to a goose allowing people to create vaxports at will that will pass muster

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

lololol - people are already going to nightclubs you apologist loon. They're going in confidence. A vax passport n 2 months is the ultimate stable door closed late.

It depends what horse in the stable you're trying to protect.

If its to prevent Covid cases spreading now, then you're right.

If its to prevent the NHS collapsing under the strain of Covid cases during winter flu season then a vax passport in 2 months time (plus the exit wave of the virus burning out in the summer) is timed to perfection.

Why would Covid cause a winter collapse? Haven't you and the other Unlock Now Forever advocates told us that its all over? Come on, you aren't backing a vax passport are you?

I'm not no, but the entire logic for months from the government and the scientists is that the point of biggest risk is in the winter when people are inside and there's the winter flu season in addition to Covid.

So if you're doing a vaxport, there's little point in doing it now and suppressing the summer spread. The entirely logical time to do it, is in time for Freshers in September.

So the avowed strategy now is to get as many people as possible sick with Covid now?

Have you not been paying attention?

Yes its literally the point that the exit wave should happen over the summer instead of the winter.

Have you only just figured out what that means?

Its certainly one strategy. Of course the more people we get vaccinated the less of an "exit wave" we have. But we can't possibly have that, Clown needed to make his Churchill speech. I must have missed it - how did it go?

HYUFD said:

Philip_Thompson said:

HYUFD said:

Philip_Thompson said:

felix said:

Philip_Thompson said:

felix said:

Sandpit said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Pagan2 said:

mwadams said:

algarkirk said:

gealbhan said:

Cookie said:

kinabalu said:

Morning all. Sorry, only just read the @Cyclefree PT header on the stubborn Tory poll lead. It's a very good helicopter piece.

"If the choice is between the Tories and an empty space, the latter is unlikely to win."

The above line jumped out at me. You read it and reflexively nod and think "too right". It's one of those.

But then - if you're me - you dwell on it a while and wonder whether it is such a slam dunk. This government (and particularly this PM) are increasingly being viewed by anybody with eyes to see and ears to listen and noses to smell and mouths to - ok ok you get the picture - as an utter shambles. No principles. No competence. 'No' as in ZERO.

They've got away with it so far (pollwise) but for how long? Brexit is shedding its potency as iconic wedge issue. Slowly, to be sure, but it is. They can poke the fires of its culture war aspect but is this enough to stay at 40%? I doubt it. Tough times lie ahead with the economy and in Fiscal Corner. Leveling Up, for example, has to move from soundbite to hard policy choices and this will piss some people off. If it doesn't it's not real and remains a soundbite. Which would also start to piss some people off, just a different bunch, those Leavers who voted for this agenda, believing it to be genuine. Because these folk are not total blithering idiots - not in the main and not all the time. Whatever, poll damage is coming either way. Ditto with Social Care. There are no votes in that. Only negative ones if you get serious about it. Ask Andy Burnham or Theresa May. So the same choice there. A solid plan and loss of popularity or a cop out and loss of popularity.

Now we have this mismanaged exit from the pandemic. Plus (the header here) further damaging reveals from Cummings - who was right there in the middle of it - about the response and attitude throughout. The PM at key moments in thrall to bizarre right-wing 'contrarians' for heaven's sake, most of them no wiser than our PB one. His focus not on preventing Covid running amok in England and killing tens of thousands but on something far more important - impressing the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

I could go on. The challenge is to stop. But I can do that too. I'm going out maskless in a minute. Big moment. The point is, surely all of this shit is probably going to lead within a year to the Cons polling no better than mid 30s. And then come the GE, given things can only get worse, if the choice is indeed between more of the same or a nice cool empty space fronted by a non-scary, competent, decent sounding bloke who looks like he could run a whelk stall and could manage to tell the truth every now and again, well for me that's a toss up.

I take issue with 'poke the fires of its culture war aspect'. Blaming the right for the culture war is like blaming Poland for World War Two. The right isn't trying to move back to 1953, it just doesn't want to be dragged forward to year zero. All the movement on the culture war is from the left. The right isn't trying to rewrite history. The right is, occasionally, suggesting that perhaps the left might be going a bit too far.
Now you're astute, and you'll notice I'm saying 'the left' and not 'the Labour Party'. SKS is trying his hardest to avoid the loonier fringes of the culture war, though his party occasionally drag him into it. But to the electorate as a whole, that's not enough. Neil Kinnock was no culture warrior. But the culture warriors of the wider left - the ILEA, for example - lost him votes. How does SKS distance Labour from the likes of Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome?

EDIT - and have you read the Telegraph or the Spectator recently? If the PM has been trying to impress the Telegraph and the Spectator, he's going about it abysmally. What he's trying to do (and succeeding) is to impress the authoritarian lobby which want more laws on other people (like @gealbhan yesterday - although I wasn't sure how serious he was).

EDIT2: And good luck going maskless. Enjoy exchanging smiles with other demaskers!

As named, I’ll explain.

My point being the argument between authoritarian and libertarian is not a left right one, nor is it a case of one side being right, the other wrong. It’s a case of both should listen to the other and debate the other, to help get things right.

It shows up clearly in Covid politics, commentators in the Telegraph (Conservative in party politics, split between libertarian and authoritarian in Covid response) and the Daily Mail (Conservative till sixties, populist right since) also to a smaller degree split between authoritarian and libertarian, though tending toward libertarian in editorial.

In downing street yesterday, JVT Libertarian, open nite clubs, Vallance authoritarian, against doing it right now.

But with the success of vaccines, things have now moved on, old media and new media like this blog very slow to realise how things have moved. It’s never been, if not now then when, it was always going to be how, post vaccine.

It’s not about vaccines now, it’s about behaviours. The horse taken to water (jabbed) could say the easier equation than getting it to drink (behaviour) hence now proper debate required between authoritarian and libertarian to achieve those behaviours.

The government have already decided the road ahead and won’t u turn. My evidence? The main headline this lunchtime, government no intention to tackle pingdemic, they are determined to generate it, latest missive from Downing Street, if you are pinged then isolate.

So if you delete the app, ie show the wrong behaviour, the government won’t concede to you, they will coerce you into the behaviours in the end.

I don’t make this up, I’m just the messenger where for many the penny hasn’t dropped yet.

Marginally following this up, isn't one of Labour's problems that very few of the real choices we face are left v right. A number of left issues are over, and therefore discounted. The NHS, free education to 18, not being an imperial power, social housing, payments to those not in work, House of Lords reform, minimum wage, employment rights, high taxes on the rich, health and safety etc. The centre left has won all the battles, and the centre right occupies what would have been a centre/centre left position.

Covid, Brexit, China, Russia, Islamic extremism, free speech, debt and deficit, the state of the UK union - none of these have obvious left v right alternative solutions.

The game has changed. I think so far the Tories have been better at silently shifting. Labour members still seem to think that the very people who vote in Patel, Sunak, Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi are filthy racists because they don't think Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Zarah Sultana are outstanding politicians.

The next left/right debate is UBI (and the terms of that debate will, in part be set by the experience of furlough, and our economic path over the next 5 years or so).

I think the left is at *extreme* danger of being outflanked on this by the right, with a post-industrial market-economy argument being made (and won) for its introduction by a future Tory administration, while Labour sits it out, scared of frightening the middle-england horses.

There is no debate to be had, UBI which is enough to live on is unaffordable

UBI already exists in this country, we just don't call it that and we have an extremely high real marginal income tax on it.

A sensible UBI introduction would be to merge existing things together, sort out the tax rates so they're sensible, then call it UBI. Not introduce massive new benefits.

A bit like Osborne introducing a Living Wage, based upon the pre-existing Minimum Wage and not dramatically different.

UBI will not work until they sort out housing benefit, specifically in London and the south.

The current numbers require something like £1k a month for an adult, £500 for a child, and an income tax rate of 35% with no personal allowance. Then start making allowances for behavioural changes, all of which will be on the downside for the Chancellor.

Don't like it, don't get it - handouts for sitting at home make zero sense to me. I take the 'Judge Judy' approach to welfare!

The entire point of a UBI, as opposed to UC/JSA etc is that its not a handout for sitting at home.

What we have today is handouts encouraging people to stay at home.

I t further weakens the notion of self-help and nurse knows best. No thanks.

Actually it does the complete opposite.

UC/JSA weakens the notion of self-help because it pays people to not be working. Work and "you lose your benefits". If you fail to work, you're paid for that.

UBI reinforces the notion of self-help as you get the UBI whether you work or not. Fail to work, you're not given any extra money than those who do work, so you're the one who suffers.

You can only claim JSA now if able bodied if you have made enough NI contributions when in work, so JSA now encourages self-help.

UBI would be paid to anyone, whether a billionaire or multimillionaire in a mansion or someone out of work in a council house.

Are you sure you can't get any benefits without NI contributions? I don't think you're right.

That its paid to a millionaire or in a council house, is the entire point of universality. By paying it to everyone you get rid of the 'poverty trap' and ensure that its not worth anyone not working because if they don't work they only hurt themselves.

The millionaire getting the benefit should just see the benefit offset against the taxes they owe, no different to how the tax-free allowance always worked prior to it being written off for highest earners.

You can't get JSA now without NI contributions no, only UC.
https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/eligibility

I fail to see why the average taxpayer should fund a benefit to millionaires or why it should mean the millionaire then gets a tax cut instead.

Pagan2 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

lololol - people are already going to nightclubs you apologist loon. They're going in confidence. A vax passport n 2 months is the ultimate stable door closed late.

It depends what horse in the stable you're trying to protect.

If its to prevent Covid cases spreading now, then you're right.

If its to prevent the NHS collapsing under the strain of Covid cases during winter flu season then a vax passport in 2 months time (plus the exit wave of the virus burning out in the summer) is timed to perfection.

Why would Covid cause a winter collapse? Haven't you and the other Unlock Now Forever advocates told us that its all over? Come on, you aren't backing a vax passport are you?

I'm not no, but the entire logic for months from the government and the scientists is that the point of biggest risk is in the winter when people are inside and there's the winter flu season in addition to Covid.

So if you're doing a vaxport, there's little point in doing it now and suppressing the summer spread. The entirely logical time to do it, is in time for Freshers in September.

So the avowed strategy now is to get as many people as possible sick with Covid now?

Have you not been paying attention?

Yes its literally the point that the exit wave should happen over the summer instead of the winter.

Have you only just figured out what that means?

Its certainly one strategy. Of course the more people we get vaccinated the less of an "exit wave" we have. But we can't possibly have that, Clown needed to make his Churchill speech. I must have missed it - how did it go?

We've done vaccinations.

What more can we gain in futher vaccinations that we won't lose by pushing the exit wave away from the summer?

My point of view is we have to unlock the economy can't take much more

If vaccines work then we are all good and no need for vaccine passports
If vaccines dont work then we still need to unlock and therefore no need for vaccine passports

Pulpstar said:

Vaccine passport or -ve test is already being used at some clubs. One in Bristol, and err Slimes at electrowerkz....... (Which isn't really competing for the same market as other London nights )

Pagan2 said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Philip_Thompson said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

HYUFD said:

Pagan2 said:

rottenborough said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

I believe one of the debates happening in government is about the 'easy to fraud' problem.

They can debate all they want but like most things governments dont have the brightest people working for them, the brightest in it are outside and delight in a challenge of breaking things wide open and figuring out how to

Delighting in working out how to bring an increased risk of Covid infection into a nightclub because you are unjabbed, most people are sensible and will comply

I am not unjabbed I merely refuse to take part in your illiberal bollocks of vaxports the tories can fuck off

Being double vaccinated reduces your chance of transmitting Covid by up to 60%, it is simply common sense if we are to encourage confidence in going to nightclubs again
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-work#:~:text=It found immunisation with either,people who weren't vaccinated.

lololol - people are already going to nightclubs you apologist loon. They're going in confidence. A vax passport n 2 months is the ultimate stable door closed late.

It depends what horse in the stable you're trying to protect.

If its to prevent Covid cases spreading now, then you're right.

If its to prevent the NHS collapsing under the strain of Covid cases during winter flu season then a vax passport in 2 months time (plus the exit wave of the virus burning out in the summer) is timed to perfection.

Why would Covid cause a winter collapse? Haven't you and the other Unlock Now Forever advocates told us that its all over? Come on, you aren't backing a vax passport are you?

I'm not no, but the entire logic for months from the government and the scientists is that the point of biggest risk is in the winter when people are inside and there's the winter flu season in addition to Covid.

So if you're doing a vaxport, there's little point in doing it now and suppressing the summer spread. The entirely logical time to do it, is in time for Freshers in September.

So the avowed strategy now is to get as many people as possible sick with Covid now?

Have you not been paying attention?

Yes its literally the point that the exit wave should happen over the summer instead of the winter.

Have you only just figured out what that means?

Its certainly one strategy. Of course the more people we get vaccinated the less of an "exit wave" we have. But we can't possibly have that, Clown needed to make his Churchill speech. I must have missed it - how did it go?

We've done vaccinations.

What more can we gain in futher vaccinations that we won't lose by pushing the exit wave away from the summer?

My point of view is we have to unlock the economy can't take much more

If vaccines work then we are all good and no need for vaccine passports
If vaccines dont work then we still need to unlock and therefore no need for vaccine passports

Pagan2 said:

rcs1000 said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

If it is just on the users phones then its easily forgeable and therefore pointless. I just get a friend to take a screenshot of theirs. Same with a paper version

Come on @Pagan2, you're smarter than that. It's incredibly easy for everybody to have a "seed" and then for the barcode to change every 30 seconds.

But let's ignore that for a second.

The reality is that there are successful vaxport apps in New York, Israel and Denmark - and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. None of those systems seem to have any particular issues, as far as I can see.

That means that they are far impossible.

Now, a perfectly reasonably objection to this, is that it is the thin end of the wedge that leads to identity cards, tracking and the rest. And that's a perfectly reasonable objection.

But it's real world choices time here: is it less bad to allow those who *choose* vaccination to live a normal life again, and to allow the economy to fully reopen; or is it less bad to keep Covid as an ongoing issue to avoid the possibility that a future government uses them to introduce ID cards by the back door?

It is less bad to keep covid frankly, if I wanted governement tracking I would emigrate to China. My statements about crytography is debunking the "There cant be fakes" view of some. Will fakes be the majority hell no but they will be available

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-vaccine-passports-idUSL8N2M05AB

Northern_Al said:

moonshine said:

TOPPING said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Pulpstar said:

Pagan2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. kinabalu, it's pissing off a lot of people.

I hope you're right.

It will piss even more off if they try to implement it....imagine long queues building up outside pubs. restaurants, nightclubs,gigs ...."Sorry cant let you in because cant verify your status as the servers are down"

Very forseeable so the gov't will of course ensure the server capacity is increased prior to it being a condition

You can't increase the capacity that much, botnets are cheap to hire and IoT has provide many more millions of devices to run them on. Plus when did you last see a competent government it operation

The vaccine passport is on the users phone. No need for the nightclub to have computer access, just a doorman who knows what to look for. Same when you fly etc*. So no government IT to bring down.

*One of our nurses was in Spain a couple of weeks back. No one checked either way.

No way will Mr Bill Jones' screenshotted double vaccine confirmation ever be used. A million times.

I can advise that fake vaccine certification is already changing hands for £500 a pop.

There are some idiots around, aren't there? Get vaccinated, save yourself £500.

Pagan2 said:

My point of view is we have to unlock the economy can't take much more

If vaccines work then we are all good and no need for vaccine passports
If vaccines dont work then we still need to unlock and therefore no need for vaccine passports

felix said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Dear me, do people really think that checking a vaccine certificate requires communicating with government servers? I suppose such spectacular ignorance is because the government has stupidly not explained anything or laid the groundwork, but it's very hard to correct such nonsensical beliefs once they get around.

I got my EU Vaccine certificate downloaded from The Andalucian Health authority yesterday and dumped it on Google drive. I have it available both on and offline so clearly no further connection with anything other than me. I simply do not comprehend, although I acknowledge, the degree of antipathy to such useful documents we hear so much of on here. Same with general ID cards, passports, etc digital or paper.