That puts me in a somewhat isolated position among the left of centre who seem to have shifted tribally into favouring restrictions largely because it's the opposite of what the Tories are doing.
In my area lots of people have had or have currently Covid. I was at the pub last night (not a mask in sight) after my weekly football game and it was a bit of a joke. About half of us there had already had Covid fairly recently. The rest were worried they would get it now in case it ruins their half term plans. Everyone who had it has had it mildly. Loads of their kids have had it too. There was a general view that everyone has or will be exposed to it and so long as you've been jabbed we just need to get on with it.
The stats on Covid cases must be under-reported quite substantially also. Many people only detect it through LFTs and what about the millions who never bother taking them?
I keep thinking that Covid must run out of people to infect soon but it has yet to happen. Surely the schools at the very least must be nearing that given the stories I know of half of classes going off with it (presumably the other half must have had it already and be immune).
If the idea was to control Covid cases then the mistake was not jabbing the teenagers over the Summer.
Lilico reckons schools will hit the point where cases drop a lot in about two or three weeks iirc.
vs
Is of interest in that the 15-19 group started behaving like the other vaccinated, older groups around the end of August, which is when vaccination hit 50% or so in the 16-17 group, with 18-24 at 70% or so.....
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
I think they were only specced for the passive long term ventilation of sedated patients. So would need a lot of work to make them fully functioning hospitals for current treatment protocols.
In my area lots of people have had or have currently Covid. I was at the pub last night (not a mask in sight) after my weekly football game and it was a bit of a joke. About half of us there had already had Covid fairly recently. The rest were worried they would get it now in case it ruins their half term plans. Everyone who had it has had it mildly. Loads of their kids have had it too. There was a general view that everyone has or will be exposed to it and so long as you've been jabbed we just need to get on with it.
The stats on Covid cases must be under-reported quite substantially also. Many people only detect it through LFTs and what about the millions who never bother taking them?
I keep thinking that Covid must run out of people to infect soon but it has yet to happen. Surely the schools at the very least must be nearing that given the stories I know of half of classes going off with it (presumably the other half must have had it already and be immune).
If the idea was to control Covid cases then the mistake was not jabbing the teenagers over the Summer.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
I think they were only specced for the passive long term ventilation of sedated patients. So would need a lot of work to make them fully functioning hospitals for current treatment protocols.
Then they can rely upon their natural immunity to recover instead.
Keep the real hospitals fully staffed giving the best available care to everyone else as a first priority. If there's spare capacity in them, then you can stop using the Nightingales but only if you're not deprioritising anyone else's care.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
I think they were only specced for the passive long term ventilation of sedated patients. So would need a lot of work to make them fully functioning hospitals for current treatment protocols.
I'm relaxed about them providing late-19th century standards of healthcare to those who reject medical science.
That puts me in a somewhat isolated position among the left of centre who seem to have shifted tribally into favouring restrictions largely because it's the opposite of what the Tories are doing.
Not that isolated.
I feel unseen.
Yes, the more accurate description is probably "somewhat isolated on Twitter".
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Depends what learning to live with means. I'm not a PB Tory member and I think we need to learn to live, certainly in the sense of no more lockdowns, schools being closed, cafes shuttered and so on. If a bit more mask wearing in shops is going to help then I can live with that (to be honest most people seem to still wear them in my neighbourhood).
^this. We need to learn to live with this. Not learn to die with this. The government banging home the message to get jabbed, the recommended advice that you wear a mask and distance in crowded places will make a difference. Very few people are advocating full scale lockdowns and I'm certainly not. I just want a change of attitude from "its all over". It isn't.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Just as well all our cars won't be made by Apple, then. Morning, malcolm.
Morning Nigel
As previously mentioned - for some strange historical reason, many lampposts seem to have 20A or even 32A supply. Which is completely un-needed in the age of LEDs
Round where I live, there is a quiet program of replacing the lampposts with ones combined with a charging socket.
The local carparks and supermarkets are installing chargers as well.
However, the main place to charge your car in future will be very high capacity chargers (fill up in 20 min or less). A chap down the road, who lives in a flat has a Tesla and has been using their network to run his car, without using street charging.
That puts me in a somewhat isolated position among the left of centre who seem to have shifted tribally into favouring restrictions largely because it's the opposite of what the Tories are doing.
Not that isolated.
I feel unseen.
Yes, the more accurate description is probably "somewhat isolated on Twitter".
Left of centre collectivists wanting more restrictions seems to be the go-to median on Twitter and here. Excluding Lib Dems. Are there many on the left advocating for people taking responsibility for themselves?
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Yes and I'm saying you're wrong on here.
It seems to me that most current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing on here.
You may have jumped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems because of your disagreements with Labour, but you're still a collectivist at heart. Without wanting to do a No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think you're a real liberal, which is why you don't see the illiberalism you're proposing.
Apologies if I am getting anyone wrong but as far as I know Stocky, Selebian, KJH and others are all liberal Lib Dems who are in favour of "learning to live with" Covid not mandatory restrictions. Even though he's vulnerable, even OGH was doing thread headers calling on the Government to go faster in lifting restrictions when it came to travel etc, not slower.
I'm not seeing a majority of Lib Dems on here opposing "learn to live with it" as the strategy.
My only quibble with that is describing me as a Lib Dem - 'former Lib Dem', perhaps I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for the Lib Dems at the moment (nor for the other parties, to be fair).
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
I was previously dead against any kind of lockdowns being reintroduced. But reading Leon's and PT's heartless comments last night has made me much more sanguine about it.
It turns out that complaining about policy affecting your mental health, then dismissing those who die as "fat, old, or stupid" isn't that persuasive.
Especially as one might also expect the mentally ill to be vulnerable to covid for several reasons, depending on the syndrome.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Radical idea. I'm instinctively against vaxports because once the door to "your papers please" is open its hard to close again. But, once you are in the NHS system your records are everything. So how we get treated inside hospital is very different to how we get treated going into a restaurant.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
I think they were only specced for the passive long term ventilation of sedated patients. So would need a lot of work to make them fully functioning hospitals for current treatment protocols.
I'm relaxed about them providing late-19th century standards of healthcare to those who reject medical science.
Hmm, late C19 hospitals were in some respects a lot better ventilated than some modern NHS buildings!
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
I think that shows that the left/right split on economics doesn't match up with the authoritarian/liberal split.
It's all a matter of definitions, but I'd say that lockdowns are economically left-wing and authoritarian. Left wing, because they need huge extra government intervention in the economy, both to enact restrictions and save businesses, and authoritarian because they gave busybodies huge new rulebooks to enforce.
Which is of course why the left-wing authoritarians in the Guardian and on isage love them so much.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
I think they were only specced for the passive long term ventilation of sedated patients. So would need a lot of work to make them fully functioning hospitals for current treatment protocols.
Then they can rely upon their natural immunity to recover instead.
Keep the real hospitals fully staffed giving the best available care to everyone else as a first priority. If there's spare capacity in them, then you can stop using the Nightingales but only if you're not deprioritising anyone else's care.
They were all flim flam and have been dismantled quicker than they were put up. Yet another Tory scam.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
I think they were only specced for the passive long term ventilation of sedated patients. So would need a lot of work to make them fully functioning hospitals for current treatment protocols.
I'm relaxed about them providing late-19th century standards of healthcare to those who reject medical science.
While we can make comments like this in a somewhat glib way (I hope?) I don't medical professionals would ever go down this road. And it would be a slippery slope. Smoked all your life and get lung cancer - off to the sanatorium, and no cancer treatment for you. Gone skiing and broke a leg - get your mates to set it and see how you go.
I'm as frustrated as anyone else by people not getting the free, efficacious vaccines when offered, but punishing them with differential treatment should not be an option.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
I think they were only specced for the passive long term ventilation of sedated patients. So would need a lot of work to make them fully functioning hospitals for current treatment protocols.
Then they can rely upon their natural immunity to recover instead.
Keep the real hospitals fully staffed giving the best available care to everyone else as a first priority. If there's spare capacity in them, then you can stop using the Nightingales but only if you're not deprioritising anyone else's care.
They were all flim flam and have been dismantled quicker than they were put up. Yet another Tory scam.
Given that flim flam is what the antivaxxers are into then that sounds perfect.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You could not buy an iPhone 13 back in 2007. Therefore you have to compare the latest iPhone now with the latest iPhone back then. And whilst they are still a 'phone', the modern design has massively more capabilities. You are paying the same for much, much more - you are getting more bang per buck.
In terms of cars, it would be like an 07 VW Passat being able to carry 500 tonnes, go at 2,000 MPH, and be able to park on a nutshell.
Put simply: cars *cannot* evolve as much as phones have: they are limited by other factors, such as maximum speed, physical size, laws etc. Therefore technological improvements will *mostly* go into making them cheaper and more efficient as competitive forces strike.
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Yes and I'm saying you're wrong on here.
It seems to me that most current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing on here.
You may have jumped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems because of your disagreements with Labour, but you're still a collectivist at heart. Without wanting to do a No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think you're a real liberal, which is why you don't see the illiberalism you're proposing.
Apologies if I am getting anyone wrong but as far as I know Stocky, Selebian, KJH and others are all liberal Lib Dems who are in favour of "learning to live with" Covid not mandatory restrictions. Even though he's vulnerable, even OGH was doing thread headers calling on the Government to go faster in lifting restrictions when it came to travel etc, not slower.
I'm not seeing a majority of Lib Dems on here opposing "learn to live with it" as the strategy.
My only quibble with that is describing me as a Lib Dem - 'former Lib Dem', perhaps I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for the Lib Dems at the moment (nor for the other parties, to be fair).
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
That sounds "Liberal" to me in the proper sense of the word: not libertarian - the idea that we should just leave everyone to the laws of the jungle is not a liberal philosophy, but also not reflexively authoritarian. Policy should be evidence based. A lot of the noise on both extremes of Covid is not evidence based, or at best selectively evidence-based.
The thing that I really don't get with the Twitterati at the moment is that they seem way keener - including medics - to prescribe NPIs as the solution to an overstretched health service, than significant increases in investment and shot term funding which surely would be more in their interest. The reason we are straining at capacity is because we don't have enough capacity. It's a supply problem as much or more than a demand problem.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
Hilarious. The rudest, most obnoxious and inarticulate poster on PB; an unquestioning fanbois of the repulsive Alex Salmond, accuses a man who has this entry on Wiki of being "thick" :
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
I don't think that's what they're doing. If it shows that the MP hires this venue regularly, it might provide useful information to an attacker. If it shows they always get the 18.55 train from London on Fridays, ditto.
Although the surgeries one is a bit weak, considering they should be advertised so people know to turn up. However, I can easily see too much information being given.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Radical idea. I'm instinctively against vaxports because once the door to "your papers please" is open its hard to close again. But, once you are in the NHS system your records are everything. So how we get treated inside hospital is very different to how we get treated going into a restaurant.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
No, that's healthcare policy based on moral judgment. It opens the door to "no treatment for lung cancer if you're a smoker", "we'll leave you bleeding by the roadside if you drink and drive", and "no treatment for STIs if you didn't practice safe sex".
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You could not buy an iPhone 13 back in 2007. Therefore you have to compare the latest iPhone now with the latest iPhone back then. And whilst they are still a 'phone', the modern design has massively more capabilities. You are paying the same for much, much more - you are getting more bang per buck.
In terms of cars, it would be like an 07 VW Passat being able to carry 500 tonnes, go at 2,000 MPH, and be able to park on a nutshell.
Put simply: cars *cannot* evolve as much as phones have: they are limited by other factors, such as maximum speed, physical size, laws etc. Therefore technological improvements will *mostly* go into making them cheaper and more efficient as competitive forces strike.
In the case of battery EV, there are continuous improvements, year by year, in battery capacity & cost.
Each year batteries get a bit better and a bit cheaper. This compound effect has produced some startling reductions in cost.
And will to do so in the near future - because of the time to turn technical improvements into production, the next 5-8 years of battery improvement are already on the way
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
It's weak, though. The MPs clearly are trying to reduce the amount of transparency.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
It's weak, though. The MPs clearly are trying to reduce the amount of transparency.
I think there is absolutely no evidence of that at all.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Radical idea. I'm instinctively against vaxports because once the door to "your papers please" is open its hard to close again. But, once you are in the NHS system your records are everything. So how we get treated inside hospital is very different to how we get treated going into a restaurant.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
No, that's healthcare policy based on moral judgment. It opens the door to "no treatment for lung cancer if you're a smoker", "we'll leave you bleeding by the roadside if you drink and drive", and "no treatment for STIs if you didn't practice safe sex".
No its rationing our available capacity.
We already tell alcoholics they have hoops to go through to get treatment. Drink and you can't get a new liver. We already tell the obese they have hoops to go through to get treatment too. You can't just turn up at A&E and demand bariatric surgery.
I hope no restrictions ever become necessary again, but given that the unvaccinated are scientifically proven to be a bigger risk to others (as they are not only more likely to have Covid, but they excrete a higher dose of it too) there's medical justification for risk segregation too if the NHS capacity becomes reached.
If anyone doesn't want to take their chances, there's a simple solution.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
Hilarious. The rudest, most obnoxious and inarticulate poster on PB; an unquestioning fanbois of the repulsive Alex Salmond, accuses a man who has this entry on Wiki of being "thick" :
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
🤣🤣🤣
Very smart. I had great hopes for him. Seems to be an unimpressive minister though.
He’s also in the wrong job. There shouldn’t be a hardcore Thatcherite in BEIS.
Prob with NHS confederation calling for plan b, is it puts the focus on restricting peoples lives and away from things that’ll substantially make a difference. Ie booster program, wider use of lfts, and using sick pay to help infectious people stay at home.....
I repeat, restrictions should not become normalised in a post vaccine world. That was not part of the bargain....
Scotland have had admissions equivalent to c1000 a day or over for the past 6 weeks.
Maybe we should mandate masks in public areas there…O they did that already.
Yes, this was what I was saying last night. You can see the same trend on here: rather than hammer the government to soup-up the booster programme, rattle through the vax holdouts and get children jabbed, people luxuriate in proposing egregious restrictions on people that would have been seen as oppressive and outlandish just 20 months ago.
The focus is all wrong.
I say again: we need to make jabs a fact of life, not restrictions.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Radical idea. I'm instinctively against vaxports because once the door to "your papers please" is open its hard to close again. But, once you are in the NHS system your records are everything. So how we get treated inside hospital is very different to how we get treated going into a restaurant.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
No, that's healthcare policy based on moral judgment. It opens the door to "no treatment for lung cancer if you're a smoker", "we'll leave you bleeding by the roadside if you drink and drive", and "no treatment for STIs if you didn't practice safe sex".
Where did I say that they wouldn't get treated? If I understood Philip's proposal it was to have separate hospital facilities for the unvaccinated so that they weren't a risk to the vaccinated. A nightingale hospital is a hospital - there is a duty of care to treat everyone no matter how daft their actions may have been.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You can buy a brand new iPhone SE from Apple for £389 so it's not wrong to say they're more accessible than they were.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
It's weak, though. The MPs clearly are trying to reduce the amount of transparency.
If the key data is still there but times and/or locations is redacted then that seems a reasonable compromise.
Knowing that someone took a train for a certain price ought to be enough, why do you need to know which specific train it was?
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
Hilarious. The rudest, most obnoxious and inarticulate poster on PB; an unquestioning fanbois of the repulsive Alex Salmond, accuses a man who has this entry on Wiki of being "thick" :
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
🤣🤣🤣
Very smart. I had great hopes for him. Seems to be an unimpressive minister though.
He’s also in the wrong job. There shouldn’t be a hardcore Thatcherite in BEIS.
That as maybe. But Malcolm calling him "thick", which is one of his highly articulate favourite terms for anyone that does not fit into his narrow idea of how the world should be, is one of the best examples of psychological projection I have seen since Donald Trump accused someone of lying.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
It's weak, though. The MPs clearly are trying to reduce the amount of transparency.
If the key data is still there but times and/or locations is redacted then that seems a reasonable compromise.
Knowing that someone took a train for a certain price ought to be enough, why do you need to know which specific train it was?
Because it reduces the ability to assess whether we are getting value for money (not that I care particularly).
I just think that if someone wants to attack an MP, they'll find them.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You can buy a brand new iPhone SE from Apple for £389 so it's not wrong to say they're more accessible than they were.
Launch price was £381, I think
Inflation calculators put that at £580, in todays money.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
Hilarious. The rudest, most obnoxious and inarticulate poster on PB; an unquestioning fanbois of the repulsive Alex Salmond, accuses a man who has this entry on Wiki of being "thick" :
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
🤣🤣🤣
Very smart. I had great hopes for him. Seems to be an unimpressive minister though.
He’s also in the wrong job. There shouldn’t be a hardcore Thatcherite in BEIS.
That as maybe. But Malcolm calling him "thick", which is one of his highly articulate favourite terms for anyone that does not fit into his narrow idea of how the world should be, is one of the best examples of psychological projection I have seen since Donald Trump accused someone of lying.
I always assume Malcolm is a recovering lobotomy patient. If spouting off on here helps his convalescence, it’s all good.
I believe society is increasingly suffering from King Cnut syndrome in that it thinks every thing can be solved and made to be better and ok and cuddly just by government action and authority. A bit infantile really . Covid is an example - mandating facemasks again will not solve covid or even make any difference (see Scotland) its just a way of showing something is being done . TBH climate change action in the sense of most of the measures put out yesterday is another example given the UK carbon emissions is a rounding error. Covid is here to stay so is global warming .Enjoy and live life anyway
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
Aren't they published months after? Or is the suggestion that (for example) a Scottish MP always flies from Inverness to Gatwick so they'll attach him or her there?
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Yes and I'm saying you're wrong on here.
It seems to me that most current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing on here.
You may have jumped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems because of your disagreements with Labour, but you're still a collectivist at heart. Without wanting to do a No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think you're a real liberal, which is why you don't see the illiberalism you're proposing.
Apologies if I am getting anyone wrong but as far as I know Stocky, Selebian, KJH and others are all liberal Lib Dems who are in favour of "learning to live with" Covid not mandatory restrictions. Even though he's vulnerable, even OGH was doing thread headers calling on the Government to go faster in lifting restrictions when it came to travel etc, not slower.
I'm not seeing a majority of Lib Dems on here opposing "learn to live with it" as the strategy.
My only quibble with that is describing me as a Lib Dem - 'former Lib Dem', perhaps I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for the Lib Dems at the moment (nor for the other parties, to be fair).
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
That sounds "Liberal" to me in the proper sense of the word: not libertarian - the idea that we should just leave everyone to the laws of the jungle is not a liberal philosophy, but also not reflexively authoritarian. Policy should be evidence based. A lot of the noise on both extremes of Covid is not evidence based, or at best selectively evidence-based.
The thing that I really don't get with the Twitterati at the moment is that they seem way keener - including medics - to prescribe NPIs as the solution to an overstretched health service, than significant increases in investment and shot term funding which surely would be more in their interest. The reason we are straining at capacity is because we don't have enough capacity. It's a supply problem as much or more than a demand problem.
Yes, but demand forecasting has to be made based on normal, and very occasional slightly abnormal demand. If we had a health service that's supply was based upon every possible scenario, including, say, nuclear war, then there would be such excess capacity that the cost would be unsustainable.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Radical idea. I'm instinctively against vaxports because once the door to "your papers please" is open its hard to close again. But, once you are in the NHS system your records are everything. So how we get treated inside hospital is very different to how we get treated going into a restaurant.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
No, that's healthcare policy based on moral judgment. It opens the door to "no treatment for lung cancer if you're a smoker", "we'll leave you bleeding by the roadside if you drink and drive", and "no treatment for STIs if you didn't practice safe sex".
That last is a good model for covid - both categories of patient pass their bug to others. So on that basis, they should be treated ... the covid ones with vaccination.
Morning all, on the header bet it depends on the t&cs. I suppose it means "any" restrictions, in which case that must be more likely than not. I don't know about 90% though. If I were betting on this (which I'm not) I'd probably go for the other side, for No.
Regardless, I think people are getting overwrought. There's no harm in proclamations of loving liberty and hating government overreach - me too, I love and hate those respective things - but let's stay grounded in the actual situation we face rather than catastrophizing.
If the combo of flu + covid + backlog looks like overstressing the NHS there'll probably be some restrictions reapplied. Maybe a mask mandate comes back for indoor public spaces, maybe more WFH, maybe (although I really don't think so) having to show proof of vax to access one or two things eg nightclubs. That's about it.
What there's next to zero chance of is another stay-at-home order, schools and unis closing, shops and businesses closing, all of that stuff, of another "lockdown" in its meaningful sense. The politics say no. The health data says no. The economy and public finances say no. It's just not happening.
The only way the calculus changes is if there's a shocking new variant, in which case we have a new emergency and we ctl alt del. But otherwise, no. No lockdown. It's not worth fretting about imo since it's not a serious prospect.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You could not buy an iPhone 13 back in 2007. Therefore you have to compare the latest iPhone now with the latest iPhone back then. And whilst they are still a 'phone', the modern design has massively more capabilities. You are paying the same for much, much more - you are getting more bang per buck.
In terms of cars, it would be like an 07 VW Passat being able to carry 500 tonnes, go at 2,000 MPH, and be able to park on a nutshell.
Put simply: cars *cannot* evolve as much as phones have: they are limited by other factors, such as maximum speed, physical size, laws etc. Therefore technological improvements will *mostly* go into making them cheaper and more efficient as competitive forces strike.
Cars 'have evolved'; automotive technology, particularly when associated with the internal combustion engine, isn't at the same point as phones, as we understand them now.
In NZ, the Opposition Leader has proposed 1 December as a relaxation of lockdown.
By that stage, Auckland will have been under some kind of lockdown* for 15 weeks.
*Rules we’re recently relaxed a bit; you can pick up takeaways from outlets, and send you pre-schoolers to nursery. They have now suggested that teenagers will return to school soon too.
That puts me in a somewhat isolated position among the left of centre who seem to have shifted tribally into favouring restrictions largely because it's the opposite of what the Tories are doing.
Not that isolated.
I feel unseen.
Yes, the more accurate description is probably "somewhat isolated on Twitter".
Left of centre collectivists wanting more restrictions seems to be the go-to median on Twitter and here. Excluding Lib Dems. Are there many on the left advocating for people taking responsibility for themselves?
I'm on the [far/green] left and I advocate protecting the collective from the selfish actions of the minority who refuse vaccination.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
Hilarious. The rudest, most obnoxious and inarticulate poster on PB; an unquestioning fanbois of the repulsive Alex Salmond, accuses a man who has this entry on Wiki of being "thick" :
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
🤣🤣🤣
Very smart. I had great hopes for him. Seems to be an unimpressive minister though.
He’s also in the wrong job. There shouldn’t be a hardcore Thatcherite in BEIS.
That as maybe. But Malcolm calling him "thick", which is one of his highly articulate favourite terms for anyone that does not fit into his narrow idea of how the world should be, is one of the best examples of psychological projection I have seen since Donald Trump accused someone of lying.
I always assume Malcolm is a recovering lobotomy patient. If spouting off on here helps his convalescence, it’s all good.
I see him like the footy fan who rants and moans at his own side for 90 minutes every two weeks, but is perfectly pleasant and mild in real life.
I’m a liberal and lockdowns are the worst thing imaginable. However they were the right thing to do until vaccinations arrived.
The government appears to be failing on comms.
Are we ahead or behind on booster shots? Are we experiencing an “exit wave”? How much is the NHS actually under pressure? Why are our numbers worse than Western European neighbours?
I have no idea and I suspect neither does the government - not in any coordinated fashion, anyway.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You could not buy an iPhone 13 back in 2007. Therefore you have to compare the latest iPhone now with the latest iPhone back then. And whilst they are still a 'phone', the modern design has massively more capabilities. You are paying the same for much, much more - you are getting more bang per buck.
In terms of cars, it would be like an 07 VW Passat being able to carry 500 tonnes, go at 2,000 MPH, and be able to park on a nutshell.
Put simply: cars *cannot* evolve as much as phones have: they are limited by other factors, such as maximum speed, physical size, laws etc. Therefore technological improvements will *mostly* go into making them cheaper and more efficient as competitive forces strike.
Cars 'have evolved'; automotive technology, particularly when associated with the internal combustion engine, isn't at the same point as phones, as we understand them now.
Oh indeed. It's just that they've not evolved as fast as phones have, or with the vastly different range of capabilities that phones have. There are also hard limits to how far car technology can evolve. It would be possible for IC-engined cars to have fuel tanks that last for 3,000 miles - but we don't need them. Likewise, when EV batteries allow (say) a 600-mile range, greater than most IC cars, then there will be little point in extending that further - it is more than most people would use. After that, it would be speed of recharging that most needs tackling.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
Aren't they published months after? Or is the suggestion that (for example) a Scottish MP always flies from Inverness to Gatwick so they'll attach him or her there?
Many people have long running habits - get a lunch sandwich at a particular branch of Pret etc. Always travel home on the 19:15 on Friday from Victoria etc etc
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
It's weak, though. The MPs clearly are trying to reduce the amount of transparency.
If the key data is still there but times and/or locations is redacted then that seems a reasonable compromise.
Knowing that someone took a train for a certain price ought to be enough, why do you need to know which specific train it was?
From a security measure standpoint, it makes sense.
However, from a bigger picture standpoint, it is dismal but predictable to see the death of David Amess has been successfully corralled into the "it was do with hatred and mistrust generally" paddock.
Meanwhile, some disturbing research here on the Prevent programme. Somebody mentioned on here that the fact more Right-wing extremists were channelled into the Prevent programme than Islamic fundamentalists showed the former was the greater threat. Sadly, but again predictable, that looks to be more down to the successful efforts to portray Prevent as Islamophobic.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Radical idea. I'm instinctively against vaxports because once the door to "your papers please" is open its hard to close again. But, once you are in the NHS system your records are everything. So how we get treated inside hospital is very different to how we get treated going into a restaurant.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
No, that's healthcare policy based on moral judgment. It opens the door to "no treatment for lung cancer if you're a smoker", "we'll leave you bleeding by the roadside if you drink and drive", and "no treatment for STIs if you didn't practice safe sex".
That already happens. Operations have been refused for people that are reluctant to take action on other aspects of their health, such as smoking and obesity.
Fitting an ASHP may remove the need for an annual inspection (saves £75-100 per year), though there may be a contractually enforced one. That's one reason why LLs don't like gas (and because they can blow up).
But if you choose the wrong sort of water cylinder you can end up with *that* requiring an annual check. There are alternatives, and it is one to ask in case you have a plumber targeting repeat business.
Kwasi Kwarteng is of course absolutely right. While cases may be rising death rates are still far below where they were in January after most people have been double vaccinated.
There may be an argument for mandatory vaccine passports for clubs and large events and compulsory facemasks in crowded areas if cases continue to rise. There is no case at all for another lockdown
Kwarteng has been sent out like Ben Swain to parrot today's line. The problem is that its always absolutism - ruling it out until the point where they do it. They he - and you - tell us that was always the plan and how marvellous that we have a government who makes considered decisions.
There is a painful track record of ministers been sent out to make absolutist statements on the media only for the position to shift under them. You'd think the Number 10 media team would learn. Perhaps the new people being hired are more to sort out a shonky media operation and less because there will a General Election next year.
Still, could be worse. Could have Seamus Milne doing their media...
Ah yes, all those things we were warned would happen under Corbyn but which actually happened under Boris, well, they'd have been worse under Jezza.
That said, Seamus Milne should be first up against the wall. Tbh I'm not quite sure the man was not a Tory plant.
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Radical idea. I'm instinctively against vaxports because once the door to "your papers please" is open its hard to close again. But, once you are in the NHS system your records are everything. So how we get treated inside hospital is very different to how we get treated going into a restaurant.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
No, that's healthcare policy based on moral judgment. It opens the door to "no treatment for lung cancer if you're a smoker", "we'll leave you bleeding by the roadside if you drink and drive", and "no treatment for STIs if you didn't practice safe sex".
Where did I say that they wouldn't get treated? If I understood Philip's proposal it was to have separate hospital facilities for the unvaccinated so that they weren't a risk to the vaccinated. A nightingale hospital is a hospital - there is a duty of care to treat everyone no matter how daft their actions may have been.
It's a very visible moral judgment though, like a debtor's prison. It puts everyone who hasn't been vaccinated together and labels them as enemies of the NHS. I can imagine now the crowds outside jeering and people being admitted. I know from multiple conversations with people who were reluctant to get jabbed that there is spectrum running from those who are worried about side effects or even scared of needles, through people genuinely distrusting of government and regulators, to those who are just mad Laurence Fox style egotists. I managed to convince one of them - a young black man who was highly suspicious of anything initiated by the authorities and surrounded by family and friends who were convincing him this was some kind of eugenics programme, but it took time. I could see he was just mistaken, not wilfully evil.
There would be no public health basis to putting unvaxxed patients in a nightingale and vaxed patients in anormal hospital. The latter still have Covid and would still be infectious. Put all Covid patients in separate hospitals, maybe (though I expect the practicalities of this would be challenging).
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
Hilarious. The rudest, most obnoxious and inarticulate poster on PB; an unquestioning fanbois of the repulsive Alex Salmond, accuses a man who has this entry on Wiki of being "thick" :
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
🤣🤣🤣
Very smart. I had great hopes for him. Seems to be an unimpressive minister though.
He’s also in the wrong job. There shouldn’t be a hardcore Thatcherite in BEIS.
That as maybe. But Malcolm calling him "thick", which is one of his highly articulate favourite terms for anyone that does not fit into his narrow idea of how the world should be, is one of the best examples of psychological projection I have seen since Donald Trump accused someone of lying.
I always assume Malcolm is a recovering lobotomy patient. If spouting off on here helps his convalescence, it’s all good.
I see him like the footy fan who rants and moans at his own side for 90 minutes every two weeks, but is perfectly pleasant and mild in real life.
I think if you read his posts, the latter part is highly unlikely.
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Yes and I'm saying you're wrong on here.
It seems to me that most current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing on here.
You may have jumped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems because of your disagreements with Labour, but you're still a collectivist at heart. Without wanting to do a No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think you're a real liberal, which is why you don't see the illiberalism you're proposing.
Apologies if I am getting anyone wrong but as far as I know Stocky, Selebian, KJH and others are all liberal Lib Dems who are in favour of "learning to live with" Covid not mandatory restrictions. Even though he's vulnerable, even OGH was doing thread headers calling on the Government to go faster in lifting restrictions when it came to travel etc, not slower.
I'm not seeing a majority of Lib Dems on here opposing "learn to live with it" as the strategy.
My only quibble with that is describing me as a Lib Dem - 'former Lib Dem', perhaps I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for the Lib Dems at the moment (nor for the other parties, to be fair).
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
That sounds "Liberal" to me in the proper sense of the word: not libertarian - the idea that we should just leave everyone to the laws of the jungle is not a liberal philosophy, but also not reflexively authoritarian. Policy should be evidence based. A lot of the noise on both extremes of Covid is not evidence based, or at best selectively evidence-based.
The thing that I really don't get with the Twitterati at the moment is that they seem way keener - including medics - to prescribe NPIs as the solution to an overstretched health service, than significant increases in investment and shot term funding which surely would be more in their interest. The reason we are straining at capacity is because we don't have enough capacity. It's a supply problem as much or more than a demand problem.
Yes, but demand forecasting has to be made based on normal, and very occasional slightly abnormal demand. If we had a health service that's supply was based upon every possible scenario, including, say, nuclear war, then there would be such excess capacity that the cost would be unsustainable.
We have tighter capacity than just about every other developed country health service. We choose to run it on an efficiency-first, JiT basis but if the last few months teach us anything it's that just in time supply chains are liable to break under stress.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
Well, he went to Eton so the jury's out Though Wikipedia grants him a PhD and a series win on University Challenge so perhaps Kwasi just uses Android phones.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
Hilarious. The rudest, most obnoxious and inarticulate poster on PB; an unquestioning fanbois of the repulsive Alex Salmond, accuses a man who has this entry on Wiki of being "thick" :
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
🤣🤣🤣
Very smart. I had great hopes for him. Seems to be an unimpressive minister though.
He’s also in the wrong job. There shouldn’t be a hardcore Thatcherite in BEIS.
Very sound on certain issues.
"‘Up to Scottish people’ whether second independence referendum is held, Cabinet minister says"
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Yes, get the Nightingales open again if necessary - staffed by a couple of planes full of nurses from Manila or Nairobi, so as not to strain the existing healthcare system over the winter.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You could not buy an iPhone 13 back in 2007. Therefore you have to compare the latest iPhone now with the latest iPhone back then. And whilst they are still a 'phone', the modern design has massively more capabilities. You are paying the same for much, much more - you are getting more bang per buck.
In terms of cars, it would be like an 07 VW Passat being able to carry 500 tonnes, go at 2,000 MPH, and be able to park on a nutshell.
Put simply: cars *cannot* evolve as much as phones have: they are limited by other factors, such as maximum speed, physical size, laws etc. Therefore technological improvements will *mostly* go into making them cheaper and more efficient as competitive forces strike.
Cars 'have evolved'; automotive technology, particularly when associated with the internal combustion engine, isn't at the same point as phones, as we understand them now.
The most noticeable improvement for me with cars in 30 years of driving is my satnav with free live traffic.......which happens to be my Iphone!
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You could not buy an iPhone 13 back in 2007. Therefore you have to compare the latest iPhone now with the latest iPhone back then. And whilst they are still a 'phone', the modern design has massively more capabilities. You are paying the same for much, much more - you are getting more bang per buck.
In terms of cars, it would be like an 07 VW Passat being able to carry 500 tonnes, go at 2,000 MPH, and be able to park on a nutshell.
Put simply: cars *cannot* evolve as much as phones have: they are limited by other factors, such as maximum speed, physical size, laws etc. Therefore technological improvements will *mostly* go into making them cheaper and more efficient as competitive forces strike.
Cars 'have evolved'; automotive technology, particularly when associated with the internal combustion engine, isn't at the same point as phones, as we understand them now.
Oh indeed. It's just that they've not evolved as fast as phones have, or with the vastly different range of capabilities that phones have. There are also hard limits to how far car technology can evolve. It would be possible for IC-engined cars to have fuel tanks that last for 3,000 miles - but we don't need them. Likewise, when EV batteries allow (say) a 600-mile range, greater than most IC cars, then there will be little point in extending that further - it is more than most people would use. After that, it would be speed of recharging that most needs tackling.
I recall that shortly after the war it wasn't uncommon for people to not use their cars in the winter. ICE cars evolved considerably in the inter-war years and onwards until the late 50's but not so dramatically since.
Edit; it's the accessories...... satnavs and so on ...... which are the difference.
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Yes and I'm saying you're wrong on here.
It seems to me that most current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing on here.
You may have jumped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems because of your disagreements with Labour, but you're still a collectivist at heart. Without wanting to do a No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think you're a real liberal, which is why you don't see the illiberalism you're proposing.
Apologies if I am getting anyone wrong but as far as I know Stocky, Selebian, KJH and others are all liberal Lib Dems who are in favour of "learning to live with" Covid not mandatory restrictions. Even though he's vulnerable, even OGH was doing thread headers calling on the Government to go faster in lifting restrictions when it came to travel etc, not slower.
I'm not seeing a majority of Lib Dems on here opposing "learn to live with it" as the strategy.
My only quibble with that is describing me as a Lib Dem - 'former Lib Dem', perhaps I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for the Lib Dems at the moment (nor for the other parties, to be fair).
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
That sounds "Liberal" to me in the proper sense of the word: not libertarian - the idea that we should just leave everyone to the laws of the jungle is not a liberal philosophy, but also not reflexively authoritarian. Policy should be evidence based. A lot of the noise on both extremes of Covid is not evidence based, or at best selectively evidence-based.
The thing that I really don't get with the Twitterati at the moment is that they seem way keener - including medics - to prescribe NPIs as the solution to an overstretched health service, than significant increases in investment and shot term funding which surely would be more in their interest. The reason we are straining at capacity is because we don't have enough capacity. It's a supply problem as much or more than a demand problem.
Yes, but demand forecasting has to be made based on normal, and very occasional slightly abnormal demand. If we had a health service that's supply was based upon every possible scenario, including, say, nuclear war, then there would be such excess capacity that the cost would be unsustainable.
We have tighter capacity than just about every other developed country health service. We choose to run it on an efficiency-first, JiT basis but if the last few months teach us anything it's that just in time supply chains are liable to break under stress.
Perhaps, but the challenge is largely staffing and that is a major problem, particularly as the NHS is a holy cow that many people think should never be reformed. As was discussed on here a a few days ago, our primary care system is an unnecessary bloated mess, with GPs syphoning off huge resources in pay and conditions that are totally disproportionate to the "risk" that they put into their state guaranteed businesses (and yes they are businesses), and making them the most well paid doctors in Europe (except Switzerland). Meanwhile the BMA gets away with never being properly scrutinised or questioned by the media.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
Well, he went to Eton so the jury's out Though Wikipedia grants him a PhD and a series win on University Challenge so perhaps Kwasi just uses Android phones.
Ah, thanks for giving us an example of when left wing prejudice gets in the way of objective analysis!
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
Heh. I know Kwasi. Whatever he is, he's not thick.
He does a good job of pretending then or maybe just a bad liar.
Hilarious. The rudest, most obnoxious and inarticulate poster on PB; an unquestioning fanbois of the repulsive Alex Salmond, accuses a man who has this entry on Wiki of being "thick" :
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
🤣🤣🤣
Very smart. I had great hopes for him. Seems to be an unimpressive minister though.
He’s also in the wrong job. There shouldn’t be a hardcore Thatcherite in BEIS.
Very sound on certain issues.
"‘Up to Scottish people’ whether second independence referendum is held, Cabinet minister says"
Kwasi Kwarteng is of course absolutely right. While cases may be rising death rates are still far below where they were in January after most people have been double vaccinated.
There may be an argument for mandatory vaccine passports for clubs and large events and compulsory facemasks in crowded areas if cases continue to rise. There is no case at all for another lockdown
Kwarteng has been sent out like Ben Swain to parrot today's line. The problem is that its always absolutism - ruling it out until the point where they do it. They he - and you - tell us that was always the plan and how marvellous that we have a government who makes considered decisions.
There is a painful track record of ministers been sent out to make absolutist statements on the media only for the position to shift under them. You'd think the Number 10 media team would learn. Perhaps the new people being hired are more to sort out a shonky media operation and less because there will a General Election next year.
Still, could be worse. Could have Seamus Milne doing their media...
Ah yes, all those things we were warned would happen under Corbyn but which actually happened under Boris, well, they'd have been worse under Jezza.
That said, Seamus Milne should be first up against the wall. Tbh I'm not quite sure the man was not a Tory plant.
I've got this instinctive "punt it" approach to sticky issues. Labour had got stuck, I saw what Jezbollah could do with regards to engagement despite the obvious flaws and (wrongly) thought "screw it" and backed him in 2015.
I'd already realised it was a catastrophic error of (a lack of both due diligence and) judgement and had backed Owen "Who" Smith as a stalking horse in 2016./ But it really turned funny when the Jeremy and his team attempted a relaunch in January 2017 and had a day of contradiction and climb downs that today's cabinet clearly aspire to.
Milne may well have been a 5th columnist. But you can't take away just how useless the entire team was - both the senior members of the ShadCab and their senior advisers.
EDIT - I know its metaphorical but "first up against the wall" is unhelpful in a week where we have had an MP murdered.
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Yes and I'm saying you're wrong on here.
It seems to me that most current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing on here.
You may have jumped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems because of your disagreements with Labour, but you're still a collectivist at heart. Without wanting to do a No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think you're a real liberal, which is why you don't see the illiberalism you're proposing.
Apologies if I am getting anyone wrong but as far as I know Stocky, Selebian, KJH and others are all liberal Lib Dems who are in favour of "learning to live with" Covid not mandatory restrictions. Even though he's vulnerable, even OGH was doing thread headers calling on the Government to go faster in lifting restrictions when it came to travel etc, not slower.
I'm not seeing a majority of Lib Dems on here opposing "learn to live with it" as the strategy.
My only quibble with that is describing me as a Lib Dem - 'former Lib Dem', perhaps I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for the Lib Dems at the moment (nor for the other parties, to be fair).
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
That sounds "Liberal" to me in the proper sense of the word: not libertarian - the idea that we should just leave everyone to the laws of the jungle is not a liberal philosophy, but also not reflexively authoritarian. Policy should be evidence based. A lot of the noise on both extremes of Covid is not evidence based, or at best selectively evidence-based.
The thing that I really don't get with the Twitterati at the moment is that they seem way keener - including medics - to prescribe NPIs as the solution to an overstretched health service, than significant increases in investment and shot term funding which surely would be more in their interest. The reason we are straining at capacity is because we don't have enough capacity. It's a supply problem as much or more than a demand problem.
Yes, but demand forecasting has to be made based on normal, and very occasional slightly abnormal demand. If we had a health service that's supply was based upon every possible scenario, including, say, nuclear war, then there would be such excess capacity that the cost would be unsustainable.
We have tighter capacity than just about every other developed country health service. We choose to run it on an efficiency-first, JiT basis but if the last few months teach us anything it's that just in time supply chains are liable to break under stress.
Perhaps, but the challenge is largely staffing and that is a major problem, particularly as the NHS is a holy cow that many people think should never be reformed. As was discussed on here a a few days ago, our primary care system is an unnecessary bloated mess, with GPs syphoning off huge resources in pay and conditions that are totally disproportionate to the "risk" that they put into their state guaranteed businesses (and yes they are businesses), and making them the most well paid doctors in Europe (except Switzerland). Meanwhile the BMA gets away with never being properly scrutinised or questioned by the media.
The biggest outrage that should be reformed is the way that places in universities are restricted to something like 80% of projected demand, so we always have a shortfall, which satisfies groups like the BMA that want to keep their own demand and valuation high.
We should be having places offered that are ~125% of demand. That way if 10% of those who take places don't graduate, and 10% of those who do don't end up in the NHS, then we still have 100% able to join upon graduation.
Under normal circumstances if you're looking to hire ten people you don't look to get 8 applicants, you looks to get 100 and hire the best ten you can get.
Morning all, on the header bet it depends on the t&cs. I suppose it means "any" restrictions, in which case that must be more likely than not. I don't know about 90% though. If I were betting on this (which I'm not) I'd probably go for the other side, for No.
Regardless, I think people are getting overwrought. There's no harm in proclamations of loving liberty and hating government overreach - me too, I love and hate those respective things - but let's stay grounded in the actual situation we face rather than catastrophizing.
If the combo of flu + covid + backlog looks like overstressing the NHS there'll probably be some restrictions reapplied. Maybe a mask mandate comes back for indoor public spaces, maybe more WFH, maybe (although I really don't think so) having to show proof of vax to access one or two things eg nightclubs. That's about it.
What there's next to zero chance of is another stay-at-home order, schools and unis closing, shops and businesses closing, all of that stuff, of another "lockdown" in its meaningful sense. The politics say no. The health data says no. The economy and public finances say no. It's just not happening.
The only way the calculus changes is if there's a shocking new variant, in which case we have a new emergency and we ctl alt del. But otherwise, no. No lockdown. It's not worth fretting about imo since it's not a serious prospect.
I was with you until you wrote "maybe a mask mandate comes back for indoor public spaces" – that is a very serious infringement on the way we live our lives. Having been to a masked wedding over the summer, and been in continental Europe recently whereby the ludicrous wear a mask to the loo and then take it off to eat fiasco continues, I can tell you that having people masked in public is not something that we should take lightly.
Worth remembering that asking people to wear masks in pubs, bars and schools would have been considered outlandish and oppressive in the extreme just 20 months ago.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
Aren't they published months after? Or is the suggestion that (for example) a Scottish MP always flies from Inverness to Gatwick so they'll attach him or her there?
The suggestion is that the MPs are worried that their routine could be worked out from their expenses claims, which can certainly be argued given that one of their number was just murdered. Knowing that said Scottish MP always got the 08:45 BA2021 every Monday, followed by the Gatwick Express to Victoria, would certainly help someone who was looking to confront them personally.
Doesn’t mean the public need to stop holding them to account though, MP expenses were the biggest political scandal of this century. Perhaps supply an un-redacted version to registered journalists?
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 2h Tried my best to convince listeners there was nothing new to worry about in the Covid data on @NickFerrari@LBC this morning. Rattled through some figures - probably too fast & too many for everyone to follow every one, but I hope people got the general idea.
Plan B of mask wearing and ban on indoor gatherings must be enforced immediately, warns NHS leader NHS Confederation chief said Covid restrictions including a return to working from home need to return or UK at risk of 'winter crisis'
please insert "not" before "value" in my post above.
There may be a case for compulsory facemasks in crowded areas again and mandatory vaccine passports for nightclubs and cinemas and big indoor venues if cases continue to rise, there is no case at all for a complete ban on indoor gatherings
No. No. No.
No vax ports. Madness. And totally disproportionate. We don't have a flu vax port even in the bad flu years.
Scotland and Wales, most EU nations, the US states of California and Illinois, New York city, most Canadian provinces, New South Wales, Australia's biggest state and Israel now have mandatory vaccination passports to visit the largest hospitality venues, clubs and sporting events. I expect England will have to do the same in time.
That puts me in a somewhat isolated position among the left of centre who seem to have shifted tribally into favouring restrictions largely because it's the opposite of what the Tories are doing.
Not that isolated.
I feel unseen.
Yes, the more accurate description is probably "somewhat isolated on Twitter".
Left of centre collectivists wanting more restrictions seems to be the go-to median on Twitter and here. Excluding Lib Dems. Are there many on the left advocating for people taking responsibility for themselves?
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Yes and I'm saying you're wrong on here.
It seems to me that most current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing on here.
You may have jumped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems because of your disagreements with Labour, but you're still a collectivist at heart. Without wanting to do a No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think you're a real liberal, which is why you don't see the illiberalism you're proposing.
Apologies if I am getting anyone wrong but as far as I know Stocky, Selebian, KJH and others are all liberal Lib Dems who are in favour of "learning to live with" Covid not mandatory restrictions. Even though he's vulnerable, even OGH was doing thread headers calling on the Government to go faster in lifting restrictions when it came to travel etc, not slower.
I'm not seeing a majority of Lib Dems on here opposing "learn to live with it" as the strategy.
My only quibble with that is describing me as a Lib Dem - 'former Lib Dem', perhaps I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for the Lib Dems at the moment (nor for the other parties, to be fair).
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
That sounds "Liberal" to me in the proper sense of the word: not libertarian - the idea that we should just leave everyone to the laws of the jungle is not a liberal philosophy, but also not reflexively authoritarian. Policy should be evidence based. A lot of the noise on both extremes of Covid is not evidence based, or at best selectively evidence-based.
The thing that I really don't get with the Twitterati at the moment is that they seem way keener - including medics - to prescribe NPIs as the solution to an overstretched health service, than significant increases in investment and shot term funding which surely would be more in their interest. The reason we are straining at capacity is because we don't have enough capacity. It's a supply problem as much or more than a demand problem.
Yes, but demand forecasting has to be made based on normal, and very occasional slightly abnormal demand. If we had a health service that's supply was based upon every possible scenario, including, say, nuclear war, then there would be such excess capacity that the cost would be unsustainable.
We have tighter capacity than just about every other developed country health service. We choose to run it on an efficiency-first, JiT basis but if the last few months teach us anything it's that just in time supply chains are liable to break under stress.
Perhaps, but the challenge is largely staffing and that is a major problem, particularly as the NHS is a holy cow that many people think should never be reformed. As was discussed on here a a few days ago, our primary care system is an unnecessary bloated mess, with GPs syphoning off huge resources in pay and conditions that are totally disproportionate to the "risk" that they put into their state guaranteed businesses (and yes they are businesses), and making them the most well paid doctors in Europe (except Switzerland). Meanwhile the BMA gets away with never being properly scrutinised or questioned by the media.
The biggest outrage that should be reformed is the way that places in universities are restricted to something like 80% of projected demand, so we always have a shortfall, which satisfies groups like the BMA that want to keep their own demand and valuation high.
We should be having places offered that are ~125% of demand. That way if 10% of those who take places don't graduate, and 10% of those who do don't end up in the NHS, then we still have 100% able to join upon graduation.
Under normal circumstances if you're looking to hire ten people you don't look to get 8 applicants, you looks to get 100 and hire the best ten you can get.
Is that really the position of BMA? Doesn't seem logically as five minutes later they will be complaining GPs can't cope with the volume of patients and warning A&E is over running etc etc.
Value in no imv. If no 10 backed kwarteng over the treasury spat they are not going to hang him out to dry by putting him out to say things which ain't so a week later.
Subject to the unpredictability of the virus, natch.
Kwarteng is a dunderheid of the first order as well as a liar. Heard him on radio this morning , did not know anything on number of cars in UK, said iphones were significantly cheaper than when introduced so electric cars would be the same ( they are 3 x price of first iphones nowadays) and said it would be no problem as there would be chargers on the streets for people who lived in flats. Absolutely thick lying Tory drone.
First iphone $599 for 8 gb of storage and a 3.5 in screen, I've just paid less than that for a phone with 12 gb ram/ 256 storage so he has a point.
He did not say a phone , he specifically said iphones and prices had tumbled. At best you could say he is just stupid and unable to express views better than a 7 year old could.
You could not buy an iPhone 13 back in 2007. Therefore you have to compare the latest iPhone now with the latest iPhone back then. And whilst they are still a 'phone', the modern design has massively more capabilities. You are paying the same for much, much more - you are getting more bang per buck.
In terms of cars, it would be like an 07 VW Passat being able to carry 500 tonnes, go at 2,000 MPH, and be able to park on a nutshell.
Put simply: cars *cannot* evolve as much as phones have: they are limited by other factors, such as maximum speed, physical size, laws etc. Therefore technological improvements will *mostly* go into making them cheaper and more efficient as competitive forces strike.
Cars 'have evolved'; automotive technology, particularly when associated with the internal combustion engine, isn't at the same point as phones, as we understand them now.
Oh indeed. It's just that they've not evolved as fast as phones have, or with the vastly different range of capabilities that phones have. There are also hard limits to how far car technology can evolve. It would be possible for IC-engined cars to have fuel tanks that last for 3,000 miles - but we don't need them. Likewise, when EV batteries allow (say) a 600-mile range, greater than most IC cars, then there will be little point in extending that further - it is more than most people would use. After that, it would be speed of recharging that most needs tackling.
I recall that shortly after the war it wasn't uncommon for people to not use their cars in the winter. ICE cars evolved considerably in the inter-war years and onwards until the late 50's but not so dramatically since.
Edit; it's the accessories...... satnavs and so on ...... which are the difference.
Its less noticeable perhaps and less important but one thing that noticeably changed in vehicles about the turn of the century was the shape of cars.
Until then they were far more 'boxy'. The roof, bonnet, windscreen etc were in basically flat lines at angles to each other. Then pretty suddenly everything became much sleeker curves.
You don't often see old cars with 'letter' registration plates anymore but if you do pass one on the motorway for example you can instantly see the shape of the vehicle is very different to other vehicles on the road, even before you can see the reg plate etc
That puts me in a somewhat isolated position among the left of centre who seem to have shifted tribally into favouring restrictions largely because it's the opposite of what the Tories are doing.
Not that isolated.
I feel unseen.
Yes, the more accurate description is probably "somewhat isolated on Twitter".
Left of centre collectivists wanting more restrictions seems to be the go-to median on Twitter and here. Excluding Lib Dems. Are there many on the left advocating for people taking responsibility for themselves?
I see there's to be an interdenominational service to mark a century of Partition in N. Ireland. HM Queen and Johnson will be present, but not the Irish President. Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
Edit; just seen that the Queen isn't going 'on medical advice'.
Buckingham Palace: The Queen has cancelled a trip to Northern Ireland today and has “reluctantly accepted medical advice to rest for the next few days”
If there’s going to be one restriction introduced over the winter, it should be quarantining of unvaccinated arrivals from anywhere.
Good grief. Restricting international travel in any way? What madness is this Sandpit.
Far more likely that every arrival from a Covid hotspot will be mandate to french kiss at least 10 random members of the public upon arrival.
As someone living in the place that got invaded by the dregs of British society last winter, and sent a wave of infection around which is only now subsiding, I’m all in favour of vaccine passports for international travel.
Vaccinated > go home from the airport and continue life as normal; not vaccinated > go to an hotel for a week, at your own expense.
I'm confused as to why being anti-lockdown is seen as right-wing and pro-lockdown left-wing.
Lockdown is right-wing. It's separating everyone into their private homes, keeping the virus at bay beyond the fence. Left-wing politics is about the action of a collective - how can a collective act if it is atomized at home?
Similarly it is an individual's duty to society to have the vaccine. If an individual rejects the help of society and medical science by rejecting the vaccine, then society has the right to reject that individual and bar them from blocking other people's use of medical science.
All silly generalisations, but: Left wing are in favour of large government telling people what to do. This is *exactly* what lockdown has been. Right wing are in favour of smaller government, with people free to do what they want within certain bounds.
Left wing are in favour of higher government spending - lockdowns have involved much higher spending. Right wing want lesser government spending.
Indeed FPT in response to @RochdalePioneers claiming that those saying we need to learn to live with it are all former/current Tory members/voters (my reply went in after this thread was opened).
Plenty of current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing too.
I said current / former Tory members on here. Out there is the world there is a broader spread of opinions (happily for society) than we get on PB.
Yes and I'm saying you're wrong on here.
It seems to me that most current or former Lib Dem members/voters are saying the same thing on here.
You may have jumped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems because of your disagreements with Labour, but you're still a collectivist at heart. Without wanting to do a No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think you're a real liberal, which is why you don't see the illiberalism you're proposing.
Apologies if I am getting anyone wrong but as far as I know Stocky, Selebian, KJH and others are all liberal Lib Dems who are in favour of "learning to live with" Covid not mandatory restrictions. Even though he's vulnerable, even OGH was doing thread headers calling on the Government to go faster in lifting restrictions when it came to travel etc, not slower.
I'm not seeing a majority of Lib Dems on here opposing "learn to live with it" as the strategy.
My only quibble with that is describing me as a Lib Dem - 'former Lib Dem', perhaps I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for the Lib Dems at the moment (nor for the other parties, to be fair).
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
That sounds "Liberal" to me in the proper sense of the word: not libertarian - the idea that we should just leave everyone to the laws of the jungle is not a liberal philosophy, but also not reflexively authoritarian. Policy should be evidence based. A lot of the noise on both extremes of Covid is not evidence based, or at best selectively evidence-based.
The thing that I really don't get with the Twitterati at the moment is that they seem way keener - including medics - to prescribe NPIs as the solution to an overstretched health service, than significant increases in investment and shot term funding which surely would be more in their interest. The reason we are straining at capacity is because we don't have enough capacity. It's a supply problem as much or more than a demand problem.
Yes, but demand forecasting has to be made based on normal, and very occasional slightly abnormal demand. If we had a health service that's supply was based upon every possible scenario, including, say, nuclear war, then there would be such excess capacity that the cost would be unsustainable.
We have tighter capacity than just about every other developed country health service. We choose to run it on an efficiency-first, JiT basis but if the last few months teach us anything it's that just in time supply chains are liable to break under stress.
Perhaps, but the challenge is largely staffing and that is a major problem, particularly as the NHS is a holy cow that many people think should never be reformed. As was discussed on here a a few days ago, our primary care system is an unnecessary bloated mess, with GPs syphoning off huge resources in pay and conditions that are totally disproportionate to the "risk" that they put into their state guaranteed businesses (and yes they are businesses), and making them the most well paid doctors in Europe (except Switzerland). Meanwhile the BMA gets away with never being properly scrutinised or questioned by the media.
The biggest outrage that should be reformed is the way that places in universities are restricted to something like 80% of projected demand, so we always have a shortfall, which satisfies groups like the BMA that want to keep their own demand and valuation high.
We should be having places offered that are ~125% of demand. That way if 10% of those who take places don't graduate, and 10% of those who do don't end up in the NHS, then we still have 100% able to join upon graduation.
Under normal circumstances if you're looking to hire ten people you don't look to get 8 applicants, you looks to get 100 and hire the best ten you can get.
Is that really the position of BMA? Doesn't seem logically as five minutes later they will be complaining GPs can't cope with the volume of patients and warning A&E is over running etc etc.
Well yes that's their sweet spot. Complain that they can't cope, but do absolutely nothing that would make them less valued or have to compete against others.
Do you think the BMA would be happy with places being offered at ~125% of demand as should logically happen?
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
Aren't they published months after? Or is the suggestion that (for example) a Scottish MP always flies from Inverness to Gatwick so they'll attach him or her there?
The suggestion is that the MPs are worried that their routine could be worked out from their expenses claims, which can certainly be argued given that one of their number was just murdered. Knowing that said Scottish MP always got the 08:45 BA2021 every Monday, followed by the Gatwick Express to Victoria, would certainly help someone who was looking to confront them personally.
Doesn’t mean the public need to stop holding them to account though, MP expenses were the biggest political scandal of this century. Perhaps supply an un-redacted version to registered journalists?
I'd like to know how many MPs have been confronted in person and if any thought it was because someone had gone through their expenses to see where they might be at a given time.
David Amess had pinned the Tweet advertising his surgery to the top of his Twitter feed. Unless we want to give 650 MPs their own personal security detail and private vehicle, I think this is all an excuse to reduce accountability.
I see there's to be an interdenominational service to mark a century of Partition in N. Ireland. HM Queen and Johnson will be present, but not the Irish President. Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
It is a good idea. If Michael D Higgins wants to refuse his invitation to commemorate the 100 year centenary of NI (which also of course created the Irish Free State which became the Irish Republic he is now president of) to make a political point and have a sulk that is up to him
I'd instead favour not locking down - the consequence of not being vaccinated is that the rest of the country will no longer put life on hold to help you.
But the hospitals are filling up with Covid patients, so routine surgeries are being cancelled. Vaccinated people are suffering because of the unvaccinated.
Whilst that is undoubtedly a part of the response the problem is that the unvaccinated are clogging up our hospitals and preventing us from getting treatment for other things. What do we do about that consequence of their selfishness and stupidity?
If an alcoholic gets cirrhosis of the liver then they'll only get on the transplant list if they give up alcohol. The obese are made to jump through all sorts of hoops if they wish to get bariatric surgery or similar. And so on. Liberty means having the right to make your own choices, it doesn't mean those choices being consequence-free. If the unvaccinated have to face consequences for their choices then that's their own choice.
And others...
All good points. However, what do we want to achieve? Punish the unvaccinated or encourage take-up? The unvaccinated are either hardcore anti-vax or believe themselves to be a low risk. I don't think threatening to withdraw care would have much effect on those who consider themselves invincible - if they're not scared of Covid then it's not going to help. It's a bit like saying to teenagers they won't receive treatment if they take an illegal drug - it's not going to change behaviour because the personal risk is perceived to be (and is) small.
I think carrot and/or stick more useful - either use vaccine passports to make life a right pain for the unvaccinated (but this also inconveniences everyone else) or bribe people to get vaccinated (also apply retrospectively to those vaccinated). Costs would be manageable compared to NHS chaos or another vaccination.
I was never in the "it's no worse than flu" brigade, but I do think it might be instructive to have daily flu updates too, if we keep daily covid updates. Even the current figures are in line with a bad flu season, I would think? Of course, the current figures may get much worse before they get better, but comparison would help give some context.
How many does flu put in intensive care for weeks at a time, though ? That's why the NHS is a bit panicked for this winter.
Yep, good point. I think we'd be crazy to bring back restrictions to avert Covid deaths this winter, but there does come a point where restrictions could make sense to limit NHS load in the short term. However, we do need to have a long term view on that. This winter and that's it, well maybe that's doable- but how do we ensure that? More and better vaccinations? More infections providing natural protection? If what we're looking at is instead this problem every winter then instead we need to build the capacity to deal with it. Dust off the Nightingale facilities and have Covid cases outside of mainstream hospitals. Expensive and hard, but preferable to restrictions every winter.
We are just going to have to gear up hospitals to cope with transmissible diseases again. We haven't had to do that in probably 70 years, other than in the young, the elderly and those who visit developing countries. Yes we may need fever hospitals again.
If we are to have any restrictions introduced it should be vaccine passports for hospitals.
Send the unvaccinated to Nightingales.
Radical idea. I'm instinctively against vaxports because once the door to "your papers please" is open its hard to close again. But, once you are in the NHS system your records are everything. So how we get treated inside hospital is very different to how we get treated going into a restaurant.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
No, that's healthcare policy based on moral judgment. It opens the door to "no treatment for lung cancer if you're a smoker", "we'll leave you bleeding by the roadside if you drink and drive", and "no treatment for STIs if you didn't practice safe sex".
Where did I say that they wouldn't get treated? If I understood Philip's proposal it was to have separate hospital facilities for the unvaccinated so that they weren't a risk to the vaccinated. A nightingale hospital is a hospital - there is a duty of care to treat everyone no matter how daft their actions may have been.
It's a very visible moral judgment though, like a debtor's prison. It puts everyone who hasn't been vaccinated together and labels them as enemies of the NHS. I can imagine now the crowds outside jeering and people being admitted. I know from multiple conversations with people who were reluctant to get jabbed that there is spectrum running from those who are worried about side effects or even scared of needles, through people genuinely distrusting of government and regulators, to those who are just mad Laurence Fox style egotists. I managed to convince one of them - a young black man who was highly suspicious of anything initiated by the authorities and surrounded by family and friends who were convincing him this was some kind of eugenics programme, but it took time. I could see he was just mistaken, not wilfully evil.
There would be no public health basis to putting unvaxxed patients in a nightingale and vaxed patients in anormal hospital. The latter still have Covid and would still be infectious. Put all Covid patients in separate hospitals, maybe (though I expect the practicalities of this would be challenging).
Those people who have chosen to not be vaccinated and are eligible are enemies of the NHS. Their choices impact everyone who needs non-COVID care.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
Erm I think you misunderstand. It is not the fear that they will be attacked because of their expenses but that the expense claims give details of travel arrangements and locations which might be used to plan an attack.
Aren't they published months after? Or is the suggestion that (for example) a Scottish MP always flies from Inverness to Gatwick so they'll attach him or her there?
The suggestion is that the MPs are worried that their routine could be worked out from their expenses claims, which can certainly be argued given that one of their number was just murdered. Knowing that said Scottish MP always got the 08:45 BA2021 every Monday, followed by the Gatwick Express to Victoria, would certainly help someone who was looking to confront them personally.
Doesn’t mean the public need to stop holding them to account though, MP expenses were the biggest political scandal of this century. Perhaps supply an un-redacted version to registered journalists?
This is not going to be acceptable.
Last time round even when things were partially opened up, it was impossible - due to addresses etc being redacted - for some of the bigger expenses / tax fiddles to be detected eg Mortgage Flipping.
And they only got revealed when a brave individual stole the data.
And one of the problems was that the expenses regulators had gone native.
You bet that some are jumping on it to get secrecy back.
Some thoughts on vaxxing: - How many adults are actually refusing to get vaxxed? About 10%? I'd say that's a pretty good return, all told. And those 10% seem to heavily skew towards those who won't suffer greatly if they catch covid unvaxxed. - I'm enthusiastic about vaxxing, but not to an extent which outweighs any concerns about compulsion. I don't think we need to force people - most people will do it anyway. Encouragement is sufficient for the rest. And we're not going to get everyone. - That said, we are not crossing any particular rubicon here. I watched Dodgeball again at the weekend, which remains one of the finest films every made. The mark of a good comedy is that it has so many jokes it can waste some of them in the background where they hardly get noticed. One of them was about vaccinations - but the interesting thing is that requiring vaccination against certain things to participate in certain activities is not a new thing (in this case, you needed vaccination against certain conditions to participate in the dodgeball tournament. This was a background joke which I didn't catch and went nowhere.) - The spread is still massively amongst the unvaxxed - mainly school children. A sample of one, but I've had the letter this morning that all children at my daughter's school will be vaxxed on 5th November - so progress is being made. (Though I assume this doesn't include my daughter, who will not be 12 until Spring. Nor those whose parents don't sign the consent forms. Still, progress.) - I have no view on how successful we are being with boosters. When is the right time to give them, and to whom? I have no idea. If the eligibility criteria are set to optimise the country's medical outcomes (rather than to ration limited supply) AND there is unmet demand for logistical reasons, that's a problem. If boosters aren't being given because it's too early to give them, I have no view over whether or not that's the right approach. - There will be lower demand for boosters than there was for the initial vaccinations because people are simply less interested/frightened by covid than they were 6-9 months ago. There's only so much government can do to counter this. - @Jonathan says that the public are ahead of the government, noting increased masking on the tube - I think both public and government are in exactly the right place: government are giving advice, and public acting on it through filter of perception of risk. This is exactly as it should be. - My guess is that positive tests are approaching another mini-peak, which we will reach in the next week or so, followed by a decline for a couple of weeks. After that, who knows? Maybe it'll bump back up, maybe it'll continue down.
Comments
I feel unseen.
vs
Is of interest in that the 15-19 group started behaving like the other vaccinated, older groups around the end of August, which is when vaccination hit 50% or so in the 16-17 group, with 18-24 at 70% or so.....
Keep the real hospitals fully staffed giving the best available care to everyone else as a first priority. If there's spare capacity in them, then you can stop using the Nightingales but only if you're not deprioritising anyone else's care.
Round where I live, there is a quiet program of replacing the lampposts with ones combined with a charging socket.
The local carparks and supermarkets are installing chargers as well.
However, the main place to charge your car in future will be very high capacity chargers (fill up in 20 min or less). A chap down the road, who lives in a flat has a Tesla and has been using their network to run his car, without using street charging.
I was pro-lockdown before the vaccine rollout. I think they saved many lives. I do also appreciate they came with big costs and that there are legitimate differences in views on the costs versus benefits depending on how one values different things and that they varied from person to person. I was lucky that the immediate costs to me and my immediate family were low. Had they been higher, I would perhaps take a different view.
There seems to be a pretty simple and brutal truth to deaths vs jabs. If you get jabbed you are unlucky to die. If you don't you are in the lap of the gods. So yes, a separate system to divert the unvaxxed away from the healthy, I can see an argument there.
Not saying I agree with it yet. But I am saying that we need to have a government finding ways to hammer the get vaxxed message, and "no jab = you're on your own" is certainly one way to do that...
It's all a matter of definitions, but I'd say that lockdowns are economically left-wing and authoritarian. Left wing, because they need huge extra government intervention in the economy, both to enact restrictions and save businesses, and authoritarian because they gave busybodies huge new rulebooks to enforce.
Which is of course why the left-wing authoritarians in the Guardian and on isage love them so much.
I'm as frustrated as anyone else by people not getting the free, efficacious vaccines when offered, but punishing them with differential treatment should not be an option.
The UK’s parliamentary spending watchdog has begun redacting parts of MPs’ expenses to protect their safety since the killing of Sir David Amess.
After the veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery on Friday, some colleagues raised concerns with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over the amount of information released about their claims for travel and venues hired for surgeries under transparency requirements.
Yeah, I definitely think that someone might attack an MP for their expenses claims.
In terms of cars, it would be like an 07 VW Passat being able to carry 500 tonnes, go at 2,000 MPH, and be able to park on a nutshell.
Put simply: cars *cannot* evolve as much as phones have: they are limited by other factors, such as maximum speed, physical size, laws etc. Therefore technological improvements will *mostly* go into making them cheaper and more efficient as competitive forces strike.
The thing that I really don't get with the Twitterati at the moment is that they seem way keener - including medics - to prescribe NPIs as the solution to an overstretched health service, than significant increases in investment and shot term funding which surely would be more in their interest. The reason we are straining at capacity is because we don't have enough capacity. It's a supply problem as much or more than a demand problem.
He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a First in both subjects.[9] He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994).[5][10] He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000.[11]
🤣🤣🤣
Although the surgeries one is a bit weak, considering they should be advertised so people know to turn up. However, I can easily see too much information being given.
Each year batteries get a bit better and a bit cheaper. This compound effect has produced some startling reductions in cost.
And will to do so in the near future - because of the time to turn technical improvements into production, the next 5-8 years of battery improvement are already on the way
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/battery-prices-have-fallen-88-percent-over-the-last-decade/
We already tell alcoholics they have hoops to go through to get treatment. Drink and you can't get a new liver.
We already tell the obese they have hoops to go through to get treatment too. You can't just turn up at A&E and demand bariatric surgery.
I hope no restrictions ever become necessary again, but given that the unvaccinated are scientifically proven to be a bigger risk to others (as they are not only more likely to have Covid, but they excrete a higher dose of it too) there's medical justification for risk segregation too if the NHS capacity becomes reached.
If anyone doesn't want to take their chances, there's a simple solution.
Seems to be an unimpressive minister though.
He’s also in the wrong job. There shouldn’t be a hardcore Thatcherite in BEIS.
The focus is all wrong.
I say again: we need to make jabs a fact of life, not restrictions.
Knowing that someone took a train for a certain price ought to be enough, why do you need to know which specific train it was?
I just think that if someone wants to attack an MP, they'll find them.
Inflation calculators put that at £580, in todays money.
Regardless, I think people are getting overwrought. There's no harm in proclamations of loving liberty and hating government overreach - me too, I love and hate those respective things - but let's stay grounded in the actual situation we face rather than catastrophizing.
If the combo of flu + covid + backlog looks like overstressing the NHS there'll probably be some restrictions reapplied. Maybe a mask mandate comes back for indoor public spaces, maybe more WFH, maybe (although I really don't think so) having to show proof of vax to access one or two things eg nightclubs. That's about it.
What there's next to zero chance of is another stay-at-home order, schools and unis closing, shops and businesses closing, all of that stuff, of another "lockdown" in its meaningful sense. The politics say no. The health data says no. The economy and public finances say no. It's just not happening.
The only way the calculus changes is if there's a shocking new variant, in which case we have a new emergency and we ctl alt del. But otherwise, no. No lockdown. It's not worth fretting about imo since it's not a serious prospect.
By that stage, Auckland will have been under some kind of lockdown* for 15 weeks.
*Rules we’re recently relaxed a bit; you can pick up takeaways from outlets, and send you pre-schoolers to nursery. They have now suggested that teenagers will return to school soon too.
The government appears to be failing on comms.
Are we ahead or behind on booster shots?
Are we experiencing an “exit wave”?
How much is the NHS actually under pressure?
Why are our numbers worse than Western European neighbours?
I have no idea and I suspect neither does the government - not in any coordinated fashion, anyway.
@Gallowgate will be happy I guess.
Far more likely that every arrival from a Covid hotspot will be mandate to french kiss at least 10 random members of the public upon arrival.
However, from a bigger picture standpoint, it is dismal but predictable to see the death of David Amess has been successfully corralled into the "it was do with hatred and mistrust generally" paddock.
Meanwhile, some disturbing research here on the Prevent programme. Somebody mentioned on here that the fact more Right-wing extremists were channelled into the Prevent programme than Islamic fundamentalists showed the former was the greater threat. Sadly, but again predictable, that looks to be more down to the successful efforts to portray Prevent as Islamophobic.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10109645/Fundamental-mismatch-Islamic-terror-threat-attention-Prevent-gives-report-says.html
A quick heat pump note.
Fitting an ASHP may remove the need for an annual inspection (saves £75-100 per year), though there may be a contractually enforced one. That's one reason why LLs don't like gas (and because they can blow up).
But if you choose the wrong sort of water cylinder you can end up with *that* requiring an annual check. There are alternatives, and it is one to ask in case you have a plumber targeting repeat business.
That said, Seamus Milne should be first up against the wall. Tbh I'm not quite sure the man was not a Tory plant.
There would be no public health basis to putting unvaxxed patients in a nightingale and vaxed patients in anormal hospital. The latter still have Covid and would still be infectious. Put all Covid patients in separate hospitals, maybe (though I expect the practicalities of this would be challenging).
"‘Up to Scottish people’ whether second independence referendum is held, Cabinet minister says"
https://tinyurl.com/2krd55b4
Edit; it's the accessories...... satnavs and so on ...... which are the difference.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-independence-poll-suggests-public-dont-back-nicola-sturgeons-timetable-for-indyref2-3376057
I'd already realised it was a catastrophic error of (a lack of both due diligence and) judgement and had backed Owen "Who" Smith as a stalking horse in 2016./ But it really turned funny when the Jeremy and his team attempted a relaunch in January 2017 and had a day of contradiction and climb downs that today's cabinet clearly aspire to.
Milne may well have been a 5th columnist. But you can't take away just how useless the entire team was - both the senior members of the ShadCab and their senior advisers.
EDIT - I know its metaphorical but "first up against the wall" is unhelpful in a week where we have had an MP murdered.
We should be having places offered that are ~125% of demand. That way if 10% of those who take places don't graduate, and 10% of those who do don't end up in the NHS, then we still have 100% able to join upon graduation.
Under normal circumstances if you're looking to hire ten people you don't look to get 8 applicants, you looks to get 100 and hire the best ten you can get.
Worth remembering that asking people to wear masks in pubs, bars and schools would have been considered outlandish and oppressive in the extreme just 20 months ago.
Doesn’t mean the public need to stop holding them to account though, MP expenses were the biggest political scandal of this century. Perhaps supply an un-redacted version to registered journalists?
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
2h
Tried my best to convince listeners there was nothing new to worry about in the Covid data on
@NickFerrari @LBC this morning. Rattled through some figures - probably too fast & too many for everyone to follow every one, but I hope people got the general idea.
If those three can’t be arsed, what can be agreed on a global basis, or do we just all agree to strangle the West so we rely even more on imports?
Until then they were far more 'boxy'. The roof, bonnet, windscreen etc were in basically flat lines at angles to each other. Then pretty suddenly everything became much sleeker curves.
You don't often see old cars with 'letter' registration plates anymore but if you do pass one on the motorway for example you can instantly see the shape of the vehicle is very different to other vehicles on the road, even before you can see the reg plate etc
Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
Edit; just seen that the Queen isn't going 'on medical advice'.
https://twitter.com/AllieHBNews/status/1450765935967670278?s=20
So she'll miss the service President Higgins is boycotting because he was mis-titled*:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-58612070
*He hadn't.
Vaccinated > go home from the airport and continue life as normal; not vaccinated > go to an hotel for a week, at your own expense.
Do you think the BMA would be happy with places being offered at ~125% of demand as should logically happen?
David Amess had pinned the Tweet advertising his surgery to the top of his Twitter feed. Unless we want to give 650 MPs their own personal security detail and private vehicle, I think this is all an excuse to reduce accountability.
Last time round even when things were partially opened up, it was impossible - due to addresses etc being redacted - for some of the bigger expenses / tax fiddles to be detected eg Mortgage Flipping.
And they only got revealed when a brave individual stole the data.
And one of the problems was that the expenses regulators had gone native.
You bet that some are jumping on it to get secrecy back.
- How many adults are actually refusing to get vaxxed? About 10%? I'd say that's a pretty good return, all told. And those 10% seem to heavily skew towards those who won't suffer greatly if they catch covid unvaxxed.
- I'm enthusiastic about vaxxing, but not to an extent which outweighs any concerns about compulsion. I don't think we need to force people - most people will do it anyway. Encouragement is sufficient for the rest. And we're not going to get everyone.
- That said, we are not crossing any particular rubicon here. I watched Dodgeball again at the weekend, which remains one of the finest films every made. The mark of a good comedy is that it has so many jokes it can waste some of them in the background where they hardly get noticed. One of them was about vaccinations - but the interesting thing is that requiring vaccination against certain things to participate in certain activities is not a new thing (in this case, you needed vaccination against certain conditions to participate in the dodgeball tournament. This was a background joke which I didn't catch and went nowhere.)
- The spread is still massively amongst the unvaxxed - mainly school children. A sample of one, but I've had the letter this morning that all children at my daughter's school will be vaxxed on 5th November - so progress is being made. (Though I assume this doesn't include my daughter, who will not be 12 until Spring. Nor those whose parents don't sign the consent forms. Still, progress.)
- I have no view on how successful we are being with boosters. When is the right time to give them, and to whom? I have no idea. If the eligibility criteria are set to optimise the country's medical outcomes (rather than to ration limited supply) AND there is unmet demand for logistical reasons, that's a problem. If boosters aren't being given because it's too early to give them, I have no view over whether or not that's the right approach.
- There will be lower demand for boosters than there was for the initial vaccinations because people are simply less interested/frightened by covid than they were 6-9 months ago. There's only so much government can do to counter this.
- @Jonathan says that the public are ahead of the government, noting increased masking on the tube - I think both public and government are in exactly the right place: government are giving advice, and public acting on it through filter of perception of risk. This is exactly as it should be.
- My guess is that positive tests are approaching another mini-peak, which we will reach in the next week or so, followed by a decline for a couple of weeks. After that, who knows? Maybe it'll bump back up, maybe it'll continue down.