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North Shropshire: Betting with a clean slate – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited December 2021 in General
imageNorth Shropshire: Betting with a clean slate – politicalbetting.com

A few weeks ago I tipped the Tories to hold North Shropshire at 2/5. Since then, everything which could go wrong has gone wrong for them and 7/4 is available from two bookies (at time of writing on Friday night). Suffice to say I wouldn’t place my 2/5 bets now. But I am about to advise you to back the Tories at current odds.

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Comments

  • I agree with Pip.
  • Oh, was that a first?
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Tory hold
  • Lib dem as nailed on now as a new lockdown.....
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    edited December 2021
    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.
  • Malan out, that's time to go to bed now.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,702
    No chance of Labour holding on to 2nd
  • And the collapse begins in the cricket
  • Malan Out. :( 🏏
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Tory hold

    It's a huge majority to overturn so that feels like the most likely outcome but these are strange and febrile times...

    I spend a bit of time on a UK motorbike FB group and I've almost never seen politics mentioned in the years I've been on it. However this week I've seen...

    "I liked Boris at first and gave him the benefit of the doubt but now I think he's a ****."
    "Boris is a ****."
    "He's an absolute ****."

    etc. That is 'cut through'.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,702
    England will do well to take this to a 5th day. I think they might just.
  • LD will win. It's a by election. There are a lot of people fed up with the government and with things in general. They can vote LD to kick the government. They also know that if they do, the government will still have a 78 majority and they are not letting Starmer in.
  • Juat before the new ball, worst time to lose a wicket
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,261
    It's really hard to say. I think I agree with Pip that the market has moved too far, so 7/4 on the Tories may be value, but I still think a LD win is more probable. We are short not only of polling data but reliable reports on the ground - the journalists who go and interview 5 people are a waste of space.

    It's particularly hard to call the Labour vote. Nationally, Starmer has been The Alternative every day for the last two weeks, and I don't recall seeing Davey once - that's why Labour is up about 6 points on two weeks ago, while the LibDems have barely moved. If people voted according to preference, the LibDems wouldn't be close to winning. But the mood is definitely to send the Tories a message, and I think the LibDems will have nailed most of the tactical vote by now.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Dura_Ace said:

    Tory hold

    It's a huge majority to overturn so that feels like the most likely outcome but these are strange and febrile times...

    I spend a bit of time on a UK motorbike FB group and I've almost never seen politics mentioned in the years I've been on it. However this week I've seen...

    "I liked Boris at first and gave him the benefit of the doubt but now I think he's a ****."
    "Boris is a ****."
    "He's an absolute ****."

    etc. That is 'cut through'.
    Boris had the jab. You didn't. Yet you presume to lecture him, us, anyone, on the rights and wrongs and morals of politics, even as you personally endanger everyone else in the country and the world because you are a narcissistic sociopathic fuck worried about "drugs tested on rabbits" and you may feel sad if you are injected and thereby protect your fellow humans

    Tell you what, drive down the motorway on your stupid imaginary BXfo92227777 Asterix the HarleyTriumph Motortrike with its tungsten SAS micro-testicles and do it at 190mph the wrong way, but do it at night, alone, drunk, when you can't hurt anyone else, because that would literally be less selfish than what you do with the vax
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279

    England will do well to take this to a 5th day. I think they might just.

    Australia were expecting to win this match easily. If England can get 200 ahead, it'll be interesting.
  • What I've heard from Tory activists in North Shrops is that it's not great, but the reason it's not great is because Tory voters aren't enthusiastic rather than Tories defecting to the Lib Dems; their guess is the Lib Dems coming second as they hoover up the anti-Tory vote, but it will still be a clear (2k+) Tory majority.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited December 2021
    And Root does a Root...

    It will be all over by end of play today.
  • Its the hope that gets you.

    Stupid, soft dismissal for Root. What a shame!
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087
    edited December 2021

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling ever closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of you, or perhaps someone in that situation facing a more serious condition, having to put up with repeated cancelled operations was death or disability, I doubt that the patient or their surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Best of luck with that.
  • What does the England Cricket Team have in common with Protestantism?

    No Pope.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835
    White smoke rising from England's innings.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    England will do well to take this to a 5th day. I think they might just.

    Starmer must go
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Juat before the new ball, worst time to lose a wicket

    Rory Burns first innings might disagree.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    Yes, exactly

    I confess my patience has ENTIRELY snapped with vax refuseniks like Dura, however entertaining he might be, on occasion. It especially snaps when he starts opining on bloody politics. To continue your analogy, it is like some conscientious objector in 1944 complaining about the awful tactics during D Day and demanding resignations. Jeez no. Do one. Fuck. Right. Off. Never speak again

    But my anger - which is genuine - is running away with me, and I will rein it in, for the sake of the site. And the mods. FWIW I have the same anger to refuseniks in my personal life, I now find it very hard not to slap them. This is not "personal"

    Goodnight
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    edited December 2021
    I agree, Pip.

    Decent bet at 2/1. I’ve nibbled.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    Yes, exactly

    I confess my patience has ENTIRELY snapped with vax refuseniks like Dura, however entertaining he might be, on occasion. It especially snaps when he starts opining on bloody politics. To continue your analogy, it is like some conscientious objector in 1944 complaining about the awful tactics during D Day and demanding resignations. Jeez no. Do one. Fuck. Right. Off. Never speak again

    But my anger - which is genuine - is running away with me, and I will rein it in, for the sake of the site. And the mods. FWIW I have the same anger to refuseniks in my personal life, I now find it very hard not to slap them. This is not "personal"

    Goodnight
    Good night Gilderoy.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Pulpstar said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
    Its not simple or easy for @Dura_Ace though is it Its not simple or easy for people who have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories. The answer is education not authoritarianism.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    Vox pops are a good indicator or programs with a TV audience. HIGNFY has an audience that's there for a laugh. Tonight's seemed worked up in a way I can't remember seeing before.. A change has taken place.

    It wasn't a year old Christmas Party. It was a repulsion against privilege and entitlement. Why it happened this week I can't say. But that's the way zeitgeist works. Several things at the same time that you can't put your finger on.

    For me it was Johnson 's grin Allegra's smirk and the policeman's costume but it could just be the weather.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the Tories lose.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited December 2021

    Its the hope that gets you.

    Stupid, soft dismissal for Root. What a shame!

    All so predictable. And now back to hoping Stokes can do something amazing.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
    Oh god. Oh my fucking good god
  • QuincelQuincel Posts: 3,949

    It's really hard to say. I think I agree with Pip that the market has moved too far, so 7/4 on the Tories may be value, but I still think a LD win is more probable. We are short not only of polling data but reliable reports on the ground - the journalists who go and interview 5 people are a waste of space.

    It's particularly hard to call the Labour vote. Nationally, Starmer has been The Alternative every day for the last two weeks, and I don't recall seeing Davey once - that's why Labour is up about 6 points on two weeks ago, while the LibDems have barely moved. If people voted according to preference, the LibDems wouldn't be close to winning. But the mood is definitely to send the Tories a message, and I think the LibDems will have nailed most of the tactical vote by now.

    Yes, I think this is an unusually hard to call situation - which is one reason I think 7/4 on either side is value. And the Labour vote is a big unknown. If it flows smoothly to the LDs then the real swing needed is only 15%, but given Labour's strength nationally and starting 2nd I do wonder if the squeeze really will be as strong as normal.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
    Oh god. Oh my fucking good god
    Go to bed man
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    edited December 2021

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    People are scared. Some of the virus. Others of another lockdown. Yet others of societal disorder if there is another lockdown. Of the effect on their mental health. On their physical health. On their personal finances. On their kids' education and future.
    The common factor is fear as a result of the uncertainty and lack of control. After two years of it. And six months when many have thought it over, it is too much to process.
    Hence panic. And the febrile atmosphere on here and elsewhere.
    Doesn't help that it has sunk in with most that our leader isn't up to it.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
    Oh god. Oh my fucking good god
    Go to bed man
    I always guessed you didn't have much of a brain. i never guessed you actually don't possess a BRAIN-STEM
  • Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
    Well said.

    Its time to stop giving a monkeys whether the virus spreads or not. This virus is going to spread, all we can do is ensure that when its our time to get it that we're primed and able to defeat it.
  • Its the hope that gets you.

    Stupid, soft dismissal for Root. What a shame!

    This is why Root is a good but not a great player. Yes he scores lots of runs but time after time gets out just before the new ball exposing a new player. So predictable.

    I am glad I am not watching the cricket.

    GN all enjoy the game 😈
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pulpstar said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
    Its not simple or easy for @Dura_Ace though is it Its not simple or easy for people who have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories. The answer is education not authoritarianism.
    No it is easy for Dura_Ace because he is a total hypocrite....he hides behind tested on animals so no, but will quite happily repaint his cars when needed I am sure despite car paint being tested on animals
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    Quincel said:

    It's really hard to say. I think I agree with Pip that the market has moved too far, so 7/4 on the Tories may be value, but I still think a LD win is more probable. We are short not only of polling data but reliable reports on the ground - the journalists who go and interview 5 people are a waste of space.

    It's particularly hard to call the Labour vote. Nationally, Starmer has been The Alternative every day for the last two weeks, and I don't recall seeing Davey once - that's why Labour is up about 6 points on two weeks ago, while the LibDems have barely moved. If people voted according to preference, the LibDems wouldn't be close to winning. But the mood is definitely to send the Tories a message, and I think the LibDems will have nailed most of the tactical vote by now.

    Yes, I think this is an unusually hard to call situation - which is one reason I think 7/4 on either side is value. And the Labour vote is a big unknown. If it flows smoothly to the LDs then the real swing needed is only 15%, but given Labour's strength nationally and starting 2nd I do wonder if the squeeze really will be as strong as normal.
    A good indicator might be if Johnson shows up to campaign. If he thinks the job is fucked he will want to be nowhere in sight. If it's heading for a tory win then he'll want the credit (cf Hartlepool).
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    dixiedean said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    People are scared. Some of the virus. Others of another lockdown. Yet others of societal disorder if there is another lockdown. Of the effect on their mental health. On their physical health. On their personal finances. On their kids' education and future.
    The common factor is fear as a result of the uncertainty and lack of control. After two years of it. And six months when many have thought it over, it is too much to process.
    Hence panic. And the febrile atmosphere on here and elsewhere.
    Doesn't help that it has sunk in with most that our leader isn't up to it.
    I've got to say, I'm feeling pretty level right now. But perhaps it's because I was never fooled into thinking it was over.
    I do understand the concerns, though. Just not feeling scared like I was in March 2020.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
    Its not simple or easy for @Dura_Ace though is it Its not simple or easy for people who have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories. The answer is education not authoritarianism.
    No it is easy for Dura_Ace because he is a total hypocrite....he hides behind tested on animals so no, but will quite happily repaint his cars when needed I am sure despite car paint being tested on animals
    Regardless the answer is always education not authoritarianism.
  • QuincelQuincel Posts: 3,949
    Dura_Ace said:

    Quincel said:

    It's really hard to say. I think I agree with Pip that the market has moved too far, so 7/4 on the Tories may be value, but I still think a LD win is more probable. We are short not only of polling data but reliable reports on the ground - the journalists who go and interview 5 people are a waste of space.

    It's particularly hard to call the Labour vote. Nationally, Starmer has been The Alternative every day for the last two weeks, and I don't recall seeing Davey once - that's why Labour is up about 6 points on two weeks ago, while the LibDems have barely moved. If people voted according to preference, the LibDems wouldn't be close to winning. But the mood is definitely to send the Tories a message, and I think the LibDems will have nailed most of the tactical vote by now.

    Yes, I think this is an unusually hard to call situation - which is one reason I think 7/4 on either side is value. And the Labour vote is a big unknown. If it flows smoothly to the LDs then the real swing needed is only 15%, but given Labour's strength nationally and starting 2nd I do wonder if the squeeze really will be as strong as normal.
    A good indicator might be if Johnson shows up to campaign. If he thinks the job is fucked he will want to be nowhere in sight. If it's heading for a tory win then he'll want the credit (cf Hartlepool).
    I agree, though with a big note of caution that I reckon even the parties don't really know what will happen until the votes are counted. So it will tell us what the Tories are seeing behind the scenes, but they might be way out too. Even in a single seat with vast canvassing the data is messy as fuck.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    It's not "the odd person." If there were only a few hundred of them left then I agree, it would make no difference to anything. Likewise, if this disease could be adequately contained, so that we could get on with a normal life, simply by vaccinating the majority who are willing then I'd be far more relaxed about letting the refusers take their chances.

    The entire problem is that there are five or six million refusers, and their gasping, disease-wracked carcasses are clogging up a lot of vital hospital care capacity which they would not be doing if they had simply had the blessed jab.

    Bluntly, if alarm bells ring loudly enough about that care capacity becoming overwhelmed then we end up under house arrest again. This wretched cycle of variants *might* be enough to cause that on its own, simply by creating such an enormous wave of infections in those already vaccinated that enough of them get sick at once to screw everything up. That is what a lot of us are afraid will happen, but of course we can't know that unless or until it does.

    What we already do know, however, is that the unvaccinated already claim a share of finite medical resources that is greatly in excess of their numbers as a percentage of the total population. Consequently, if they just took the damn vaccines, the pressure would ease and the likelihood of our tumbling all the way back into disastrous, Draconian measures yet again would be that much lower.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Unaccountably, I'm reminded of the hysterical woman in Airplane:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNkpIDBtC2c&t=20s
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
    Its not simple or easy for @Dura_Ace though is it Its not simple or easy for people who have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories. The answer is education not authoritarianism.
    No it is easy for Dura_Ace because he is a total hypocrite....he hides behind tested on animals so no, but will quite happily repaint his cars when needed I am sure despite car paint being tested on animals
    Regardless the answer is always education not authoritarianism.
    1. How many years are we expected to suffer whilst the efforts to talk these people down continue?
    2. What if they don't work?
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    pigeon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
    Its not simple or easy for @Dura_Ace though is it Its not simple or easy for people who have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories. The answer is education not authoritarianism.
    No it is easy for Dura_Ace because he is a total hypocrite....he hides behind tested on animals so no, but will quite happily repaint his cars when needed I am sure despite car paint being tested on animals
    Regardless the answer is always education not authoritarianism.
    1. How many years are we expected to suffer whilst the efforts to talk these people down continue?
    2. What if they don't work?
    What if what don’t work?

    At the end of the day we’re going to have to deal with covid forever now. Its time to accept that and get on with it.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835
    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,777
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
    Oh god. Oh my fucking good god
    Go to bed man
    I always guessed you didn't have much of a brain. i never guessed you actually don't possess a BRAIN-STEM
    I think you're both wrong. The new variant is so transmissable the vaccines won't stop the spread (AIUI), even if the DAs of the world get it. So the traditional, herd immunity argument is out - this is like the common cold now.

    However, if the DAs start filling up the hospitals then operations like the one GG is getting (and me too, next week) will be cancelled as the NHS collapses under the pressure.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    pigeon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
    Its not simple or easy for @Dura_Ace though is it Its not simple or easy for people who have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories. The answer is education not authoritarianism.
    No it is easy for Dura_Ace because he is a total hypocrite....he hides behind tested on animals so no, but will quite happily repaint his cars when needed I am sure despite car paint being tested on animals
    Regardless the answer is always education not authoritarianism.
    1. How many years are we expected to suffer whilst the efforts to talk these people down continue?
    2. What if they don't work?
    What if what don’t work?

    At the end of the day we’re going to have to deal with covid forever now. Its time to accept that and get on with it.
    Pin these stinking human rats to the ground and jab them in their mad antivaxxy eyes

    Job done
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    Comres finds voters oppose another lockdown. 49% oppose shutting pubs and restaurants, just 31% in favour. 47% oppose a ban on meeting other households indoors, just 30% in favour.

    However 54% of voters back a ban on international travel post Omicron and 56% back extending the coronavirus vaccine rollout to children aged 5 to 11

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10297923/Women-deserting-Boris-Johnson-Poll-shows-two-thirds-voters-dont-trust-PM.html
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,777
    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
    Oh god. Oh my fucking good god
    Go to bed man
    I always guessed you didn't have much of a brain. i never guessed you actually don't possess a BRAIN-STEM
    I think you're both wrong. The new variant is so transmissable the vaccines won't stop the spread (AIUI), even if the DAs of the world get it. So the traditional, herd immunity argument is out - this is like the common cold now.

    However, if the DAs start filling up the hospitals then operations like the one GG is getting (and me too, next week) will be cancelled as the NHS collapses under the pressure.
    Basically, anti-vaxxers should get a choice: Vaxx or private healthcare. No restrictions on your life, as long as you don't restrict my access to the NHS.

    (Appreciate it's not quite as simple as that, capacity wise).
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited December 2021
    The cameras have completely failed in the Test, which means that BT are using a single shaky camera and means no DRS too. 😲

    EDIT: Generator that powers the cameras has failed and they've not got a backup. 🤦‍♂️
  • Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    A health service with a country attached.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    pigeon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
    Its not simple or easy for @Dura_Ace though is it Its not simple or easy for people who have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories. The answer is education not authoritarianism.
    No it is easy for Dura_Ace because he is a total hypocrite....he hides behind tested on animals so no, but will quite happily repaint his cars when needed I am sure despite car paint being tested on animals
    Regardless the answer is always education not authoritarianism.
    1. How many years are we expected to suffer whilst the efforts to talk these people down continue?
    2. What if they don't work?
    What if what don’t work?

    At the end of the day we’re going to have to deal with covid forever now. Its time to accept that and get on with it.
    Oh for God's sake, the second question refers to the first.

    No matter. Yes, we are going to have to deal with Covid forever, but no, the Government isn't going to do that by following the anarcho-libertarian path of letting everybody get it at once and letting the sick perish so that the survivors can then get on with life as it was before. At least, not unless it's forced to because the population is in open revolt or the country is bankrupt, and we're still some way from those scenarios.

    If the hospitals are in a bad enough way, or if they think there's enough evidence to suggest that things are heading in that direction, then ministers will keep piling on the restrictions to avert disaster. The best weapon in our arsenal in the battle to avoid those restrictions is the vaccines. The more people refuse the vaccines, the more Covid patients there are, and the more likely it becomes that the restrictions keep getting worse and worse.

    After nearly two years of this unending disaster these ought not to be difficult concepts to grasp.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    pigeon said:

    pigeon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Unlike obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination is very very simple and easy. Might be worth holding off till the polyvalent vaccines come out before mandating anything if you're going down that route though.
    And you don't have to mandate it. Having a bank account isn't mandated but life can be inconvenient without one.
    Its not simple or easy for @Dura_Ace though is it Its not simple or easy for people who have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories. The answer is education not authoritarianism.
    No it is easy for Dura_Ace because he is a total hypocrite....he hides behind tested on animals so no, but will quite happily repaint his cars when needed I am sure despite car paint being tested on animals
    Regardless the answer is always education not authoritarianism.
    1. How many years are we expected to suffer whilst the efforts to talk these people down continue?
    2. What if they don't work?
    What if what don’t work?

    At the end of the day we’re going to have to deal with covid forever now. Its time to accept that and get on with it.
    Oh for God's sake, the second question refers to the first.

    No matter. Yes, we are going to have to deal with Covid forever, but no, the Government isn't going to do that by following the anarcho-libertarian path of letting everybody get it at once and letting the sick perish so that the survivors can then get on with life as it was before. At least, not unless it's forced to because the population is in open revolt or the country is bankrupt, and we're still some way from those scenarios.

    If the hospitals are in a bad enough way, or if they think there's enough evidence to suggest that things are heading in that direction, then ministers will keep piling on the restrictions to avert disaster. The best weapon in our arsenal in the battle to avoid those restrictions is the vaccines. The more people refuse the vaccines, the more Covid patients there are, and the more likely it becomes that the restrictions keep getting worse and worse.

    After nearly two years of this unending disaster these ought not to be difficult concepts to grasp.
    Lol. Its now anarcho-libertarian to believe vaccines shouldn't be forced? Christ.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    We have mandatory seatbelts, speed limits & MOTs for cars though.
  • Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
    Oh god. Oh my fucking good god
    Go to bed man
    I always guessed you didn't have much of a brain. i never guessed you actually don't possess a BRAIN-STEM
    I think you're both wrong. The new variant is so transmissable the vaccines won't stop the spread (AIUI), even if the DAs of the world get it. So the traditional, herd immunity argument is out - this is like the common cold now.

    However, if the DAs start filling up the hospitals then operations like the one GG is getting (and me too, next week) will be cancelled as the NHS collapses under the pressure.
    Basically, anti-vaxxers should get a choice: Vaxx or private healthcare. No restrictions on your life, as long as you don't restrict my access to the NHS.

    (Appreciate it's not quite as simple as that, capacity wise).
    NHS has always got to be available to all, so the way to do that is a tax that vaccinated people get a tax credit against so they're not paying it. Essentially then the unvaccinated are paying a surcharge for insurance that goes to the NHS.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Pulpstar said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    We have mandatory seatbelts, speed limits & MOTs for cars though.
    Nobody forces you to drive
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Pulpstar said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    We have mandatory seatbelts, speed limits & MOTs for cars though.
    All entirely different things to injecting product into your body
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    edited December 2021

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Obesity....often you dont get operation until you lose weight
    Alcohol and drugs again nhs help is often restricted till you give up
    smoking...smokers have to pay extra to fund their care via tax
    Seems making anti vaxxers pay is in the same vein.

    However if you dont want that here is an idea

    Perhaps we should use the home office bill everyone hates before it gets repealed and deprive anti vaxxers of their british citizenship and deport them.....problem solved
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,777

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    And we tax smokers on that basis. We can't really tax food effectively, so a £100 tax rebate for BMI <30?

    Alcohol is harder still. Scotland tried it.
  • Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Money is raised by taxation on many of them.

    And now Austria is raising money by taxing anti-vaxxers.

    Other countries will follow.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Pagan2 said:


    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Obesity....often you dont get operation until you lose weight
    Alcohol and drugs again nhs help is often restricted till you give up
    smoking...smokers have to pay extra to fund their care via tax
    Seems making anti vaxxers pay is in the same vein.

    However if you dont want that here is an idea

    Perhaps we should use the home office bill everyone hates before it gets repealed and deprive anti vaxxers of their british citizenship and deport them.....problem solved
    Care is not restricted in an emergency. That is the point.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835

    Pulpstar said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    We have mandatory seatbelts, speed limits & MOTs for cars though.
    All entirely different things to injecting product into your body
    Hmm.. I don't think mandatory vaccination is possible, but life can and should be made as difficult for refuseniks as possible. Tax system, restaurant entry and so on and so forth.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    In the long run the health service needs more capacity, and that obviously includes more staff - to deal with the reality of an old, fat, knackered population, not just Covid.

    But that sort of additional capacity takes years to build. Even if the Government could magically double the health budget and spend all the extra money on pay hikes to attract new recruits, you can't also magically transform school leavers into fully qualified nurses overnight.

    You cannot simply wish the anti-vaxxer problem away, and pulling policy levers to make their lives so hard that they give in and have it is still not nearly as nasty as the alternative, which is to curtail or withdraw their right to medical care.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Money is raised by taxation on many of them.

    And now Austria is raising money by taxing anti-vaxxers.

    Other countries will follow.
    So you make compliance mandatory for the poor and optional for the rich.

    It’s disgusting.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pagan2 said:


    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Obesity....often you dont get operation until you lose weight
    Alcohol and drugs again nhs help is often restricted till you give up
    smoking...smokers have to pay extra to fund their care via tax
    Seems making anti vaxxers pay is in the same vein.

    However if you dont want that here is an idea

    Perhaps we should use the home office bill everyone hates before it gets repealed and deprive anti vaxxers of their british citizenship and deport them.....problem solved
    Care is not restricted in an emergency. That is the point.
    Yes it absolutely is....get liver failure as an alcoholic...good luck getting the transplant needed
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:


    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Obesity....often you dont get operation until you lose weight
    Alcohol and drugs again nhs help is often restricted till you give up
    smoking...smokers have to pay extra to fund their care via tax
    Seems making anti vaxxers pay is in the same vein.

    However if you dont want that here is an idea

    Perhaps we should use the home office bill everyone hates before it gets repealed and deprive anti vaxxers of their british citizenship and deport them.....problem solved
    Care is not restricted in an emergency. That is the point.
    Yes it absolutely is....get liver failure as an alcoholic...good luck getting the transplant needed
    You’ll get care just not a cure
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,777
    @Gallowgate I agree with your protestations, in general. Choosing between two evils here.
  • There's a contrast between the tolerance of anti-vaxxers among some leftists in the UK compared to the support for compulsory vaccination among Democrats in the USA.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Farooq said:

    dixiedean said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    People are scared. Some of the virus. Others of another lockdown. Yet others of societal disorder if there is another lockdown. Of the effect on their mental health. On their physical health. On their personal finances. On their kids' education and future.
    The common factor is fear as a result of the uncertainty and lack of control. After two years of it. And six months when many have thought it over, it is too much to process.
    Hence panic. And the febrile atmosphere on here and elsewhere.
    Doesn't help that it has sunk in with most that our leader isn't up to it.
    I've got to say, I'm feeling pretty level right now. But perhaps it's because I was never fooled into thinking it was over.
    I do understand the concerns, though. Just not feeling scared like I was in March 2020.
    Yes.
    Although a pre-disposition to viewing the world as essentially chaotic anyway will help.
    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    And we tax smokers on that basis. We can't really tax food effectively, so a £100 tax rebate for BMI <30?

    Alcohol is harder still. Scotland tried it.</p>
    As a five feet 10 guy who is under 10 stone I second this message. With a violently steep taper rate added.
  • Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    And we tax smokers on that basis. We can't really tax food effectively, so a £100 tax rebate for BMI less than 30?

    Alcohol is harder still. Scotland tried it.
    Its a myth that we don't tax food.

    There's no tax on fresh food that you cook and prepare at home.

    Takeaways, deliveries, restaurant food etc is almost always taxed at 20% VAT as are most treats like chocolate.

    Something tells me that in general fatties are paying a lot more VAT on their food because of this.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    There's a contrast between the tolerance of anti-vaxxers among some leftists in the UK compared to the support for compulsory vaccination among Democrats in the USA.

    Strange, strange post.
  • Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Money is raised by taxation on many of them.

    And now Austria is raising money by taxing anti-vaxxers.

    Other countries will follow.
    So you make compliance mandatory for the poor and optional for the rich.

    It’s disgusting.
    How's that different from making non-smoking mandatory for the poor and optional for the rich?
  • HYUFD said:

    Comres finds voters oppose another lockdown. 49% oppose shutting pubs and restaurants, just 31% in favour. 47% oppose a ban on meeting other households indoors, just 30% in favour.

    However 54% of voters back a ban on international travel post Omicron and 56% back extending the coronavirus vaccine rollout to children aged 5 to 11

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10297923/Women-deserting-Boris-Johnson-Poll-shows-two-thirds-voters-dont-trust-PM.html

    The fascinating thing is what they don't ask - what action to take against anti-vaxxers.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    And we tax smokers on that basis. We can't really tax food effectively, so a £100 tax rebate for BMI less than 30?

    Alcohol is harder still. Scotland tried it.
    Its a myth that we don't tax food.

    There's no tax on fresh food that you cook and prepare at home.

    Takeaways, deliveries, restaurant food etc is almost always taxed at 20% VAT as are most treats like chocolate.

    Something tells me that in general fatties are paying a lot more VAT on their food because of this.
    You forgot sugar tax
  • The cameras have completely failed in the Test, which means that BT are using a single shaky camera and means no DRS too. 😲

    EDIT: Generator that powers the cameras has failed and they've not got a backup. 🤦‍♂️

    Is it Hawkeye doing the DRS or that New Zealand company that only gets contracts in NZ and Aus?
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    edited December 2021

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Money is raised by taxation on many of them.

    And now Austria is raising money by taxing anti-vaxxers.

    Other countries will follow.
    So you make compliance mandatory for the poor and optional for the rich.

    It’s disgusting.
    How's that different from making non-smoking mandatory for the poor and optional for the rich?
    Because smoking is a positive act. Not taking a vaccine, a negative act, is something entirely different both physically and morally.

    It’s like taxing someone who refuses to eat iodine fortified bread.

    I just hate the precedent.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    edited December 2021
    Only 18 more runs for England to get.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited December 2021

    Its the hope that gets you.

    Stupid, soft dismissal for Root. What a shame!

    This is why Root is a good but not a great player. Yes he scores lots of runs but time after time gets out just before the new ball exposing a new player. So predictable.

    I am glad I am not watching the cricket.

    GN all enjoy the game 😈
    His conversion rate from 50 to 100 and then to massive scores is below the elite players in history. The best of the best of the best, once they get in, they don't often give away their wicket and go on to score just incredible amounts.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Andy_JS said:

    Only 18 more runs for England to get.

    Reckon we'll bowl 'em all out for zero?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Money is raised by taxation on many of them.

    And now Austria is raising money by taxing anti-vaxxers.

    Other countries will follow.
    So you make compliance mandatory for the poor and optional for the rich.

    It’s disgusting.
    How's that different from making non-smoking mandatory for the poor and optional for the rich?
    Because smoking is a positive act. Not taking a vaccine, a negative act, is something entirely different both physically and morally.

    It’s like taxing someone who refuses to eat iodine fortified bread.

    I just hate the precedent.
    I dont like it either however if the alternative is the 90% of the country that have been responsible and got jabbed have to pay for the decisions of fuckwits then those said idiots have to be kicked hard. Personally I would tell them your choice but you will be under house arrest from now on and tagged. Leaving the house at any time will put you on a charge of endangering public health, sure there is some law that will cover that
  • Farooq said:

    There's a contrast between the tolerance of anti-vaxxers among some leftists in the UK compared to the support for compulsory vaccination among Democrats in the USA.

    Strange, strange post.
    I see you cannot make a proper reply.

    Perhaps the difference I pointed out upsets you ?

    Here's another difference between the UK and USA on vaccination:

    In the UK the non-vaccinated are predominantly on the left, in the USA the non-vaccinated are predominantly on the right.

    Which I'll suggest highlights the difference between the UK and USA voters of the right.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    Pagan2 said:

    Pulpstar said:

    We know the unvaxxed basically take up a huge proportion of critical care facilities. They also stay longer, next to age - and noone can change their age it's the single biggest factor in healthcare clogging. I think we're moving to a point where the choices are basically

    i) Healthcare system collapses.
    ii) Mandatory vaccination.
    iii) More lockdowns for all.

    4) more nhs staff
    1,3,and 4 means everyone else having to pay for their decisions how about no
    We have to pay for lots of decisions. Obesity, alcohol, drugs, sports, bosses stressing out their workers. This line of thinking is a ridiculous slippery slope.
    Money is raised by taxation on many of them.

    And now Austria is raising money by taxing anti-vaxxers.

    Other countries will follow.
    So you make compliance mandatory for the poor and optional for the rich.

    It’s disgusting.
    And also useless. The well-off pay and carry on as before, the poor plead poverty and also carry on as before.

    Vaxports to access theatres or pubs are going to do very little to combat the disease. Certification of vaccination (or medical exemption) to access paid employment or social security benefits, on the other hand, would quickly compel almost all of the refusers to do as told.

    We don't need income from fines to help pay for care when there's no more care capacity available to be bought with the extra money, at least not within any short timescale that would help to get us out of this awful mess. To have a better chance of escaping, we need people to be vaccinated. That's what counts.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    pigeon said:

    FPT it’s a very slippery slope when you start judging people for needing the NHS. When does it end?

    @Leon guzzles booze like nobody’s business. That’s a positive act that is likely to be an NHS resource drain in the future. Driving a car at 120mph is also a positive act. Refusing a vaccine is an omission.

    It feels profoundly wrong to force people to put something into their own body.

    I say this as someone who has had an operation cancelled 3 times already due to NHS pressures. 4th attempt is currently scheduled for Monday.

    Except you're talking about compulsion in a situation of dire national emergency as if it were a totally novel and unprecedented moral outrage. It isn't.

    Not so very long ago, millions of our forebears were conscripted to fight in wars. When society was faced with an existential threat, it demanded, amongst other things, that young people fight in battles and get blown up, shot through the head or drown in icy cold seas. And if you were called up then, unless you had a very good excuse (e.g. a reserved occupation or being medically unfit) then you bloody well went. The small minority of hardcore pacifists who refused to do service of any kind were complete social pariahs who ended up imprisoned.

    Fast forward a few decades and now it's considered unforgivable to ask people to have a scratch on the arm every three or six months so as to try and avoid the entire bloody country ending up under house arrest for months on end, with the education of the nation's children wrecked, otherwise viable businesses driven to the wall en masse, and the state hurtling every closer to the cliff edge of bankruptcy into the bargain.

    And if the cost of your repeated cancelled operations was that you ended up dead, I doubt your surviving relatives would feel so sanguine about this problem.
    I still profoundly disagree. I think people are panicking and trying to find someone, anyone, to ‘blame’ and in doing so are retreating to a level of authoritarianism to impose this panic on others.

    The country does not need to be under house arrest. We’re very highly vaccinated. Thats good. The odd person who isn’t isnt going to make a difference.

    But of course keep blaming others
    You're just too fucking stupid to understand how vaccination works. It only works if a certain high percentage agree to do it. That's it. Otherwise everyone suffers and the disease wins.

    Your miserable IQ is too low to grasp this central fact
    Rubbish. I’m vaccinated therefore my immune system is better placed to fight off covid. I couldn’t give two hoots if other people are or not. Not my problem not my business.
    Oh god. Oh my fucking good god
    Go to bed man
    I always guessed you didn't have much of a brain. i never guessed you actually don't possess a BRAIN-STEM
    I think you're both wrong. The new variant is so transmissable the vaccines won't stop the spread (AIUI), even if the DAs of the world get it. So the traditional, herd immunity argument is out - this is like the common cold now.

    However, if the DAs start filling up the hospitals then operations like the one GG is getting (and me too, next week) will be cancelled as the NHS collapses under the pressure.
    I don't think that's true at all.

    Pfizer showed that the triple vaxxed had exactly the same immune response to Omicron that the double vaxxed had to Alpha. Now, this was a small scale antibody test, but it's highly suggestive of the fact that those who have had all three jabs are going to be fine.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Farooq said:

    There's a contrast between the tolerance of anti-vaxxers among some leftists in the UK compared to the support for compulsory vaccination among Democrats in the USA.

    Strange, strange post.
    I see you cannot make a proper reply.

    Perhaps the difference I pointed out upsets you ?

    Here's another difference between the UK and USA on vaccination:

    In the UK the non-vaccinated are predominantly on the left, in the USA the non-vaccinated are predominantly on the right.

    Which I'll suggest highlights the difference between the UK and USA voters of the right.
    "In the UK the non-vaccinated are predominantly on the left."
    Are you entirely sure of that?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only 18 more runs for England to get.

    Reckon we'll bowl 'em all out for zero?
    I think the Aussies were expecting to win this match by an innings. I was as well.
  • Stokes gone.

    This Test is going to be over before I go to sleep, let alone when I wake up. 😢
  • Andy_JS said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Only 18 more runs for England to get.

    Reckon we'll bowl 'em all out for zero?
    I think the Aussies were expecting to win this match by an innings. I was as well.
    They still might.
  • England just embarrassing.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    edited December 2021
    On topic. A political betting post, from what is PBs current best Nursery Rhyme originator. 🙂

    a really good political betting header to me from Pippa Moss, things like this teaching me about caution if can’t see how it’s going, spot value and bet with head not heart. The header is right, if you bet today with a clean slate the value bet is Conservatives for a small amount.

    I have never taken that approach on horses. Nor my political bets. Both of them.

    i pu bullseye on libdems to win Shropshire North at 4-1 weeks ago, my first political bet. I haven’t got into spreading or laying bets in my life. I’ve never used cash out in my life, I look at it as bed wetting button. I tried to assess the politics of it for likely winner, and came to the conclusion Boris is getting unpopular. The gamble was will media narrative Boris is shit get on the roll. it has, but it was still a gamble that it would, even today there’s still chance Tories will not lose.

    But that’s the point isn’t it. The Tories will have this seat at General election sure as Osborne with big majority follows Hamilton eventually. The Tory loss this week isn’t a Tory loss, it’s not fans abandoning their club, it’s merely fans booing the manager after bad performance. A lot of the red wall might well turn out the same if Mike Smithson is right it was Corbyn what lost it not Boris what won it.

    My second political bet was Javid for next Tory leader, bullseye at 14-1 several weeks ago. This was easy once I realised Sunak cannot now become Tory leader this time because he has signed too many dodgy cheques for the disastrous Boris regime - and his own side know opponents will have a field day with that if they make him leader. I can see pb posters now thinking the same. What I second guessed is the media narrative once the campaign begins. Patel as well as divide’s, poor record in the job. Raab, Gove, Truss did not originate on planet Earth - Javid lived in flat above shop in run down British High Street. It’s a no brainier to me he is the one to be anointed by the media, comes storming through to take the crown as he is the next both able and human cabinet minister in the queue.

    Which brings me to my point. are my bets proper political betting?long shot punts in political betting just seem more fun and money making to me. From two bets I can be a grand up. And to kick off the debate, I would say no. My bets may look like second guessing what will happen in politics, but a healthy chunk of it is second guessing what will happen in media narrative.

    Rather than simply political betting dot com. Analytically going through demographics, breakdown of past votes and allegiances, extrapolating uns anecdotal from canvassers - we also need to ask each other as a hive mind how do you see the media narrative going from here, it could actually prove more influential than all those other analysing combined.

    I don’t know if my thoughts help at all.
This discussion has been closed.