London’s streets deserted: restaurants and pubs empty. The gulf between the people, mindful of the danger of Omicron, and our real governors - Graham Brady and the 1922 committee garnering letters for the next Tory regicide - could not be wider or deeper. https://twitter.com/williamnhutton/status/1473079464045297668
London isn't deserted because people are scared of the personal risk of omicron. London is deserted because they are scared they know that omicron is extremely infectious and they are scared that it might cause them to miss Xmas.
Who knows - maybe just a few of them are concerned about the effect on other people rather than just self, self, self?
But I must confess every time I read the comments here, I veer back towards thinking people are concerned only about self, self, self.
I can't recall ever reading a comment on here that made me think anyone is only concerned about themselves. I don't know where you get that from.
The Cabinet's gamble in a nutshell. @JeremyFarrar tells @BBCr4today "It is reasonable to pause" for 24, 36 hours to see London hospitalisation data, but if it's bad they "will have to act...in a more draconian way than might have been possible had they acted a few days ago" https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1473211648332685317
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
He did say 'pandemic'. Wallpaper manufacturers and consuimers [edit] and the like know **** all about viruses. Their input comes later, when we know what options the virus has left us with.
‘The latest from Denmark and #omicron. It appears omicron is associated with less hospitalizations compared to #delta Currently there’s less than 5 pts admitted to ICU. Population of 6 million. 3.5 weeks in.’
Same pattern as Ontario and SA. Many more cases, far fewer deaths and hospitalisations
We should know more for the UK later today.
The same pattern can now be seen in SA, NYC, Denmark, Ontario, and Alberta. Much less lethality
And the UK?
‘Some clever - and sophisticated - analyses indicating that the Omicron wave may be significantly milder than all previous ones, also in the UK (i.e. London). For the first time during the pandemic, there is a clear 'decorrelation' between case numbers and hospital admissions.’
I’m not popping the Bollinger, but it’s worth a cautious Christmas beer. Same pattern everywhere, so far…
Edit: I realize I am citing an anti-vaxxer here, but the data is legit, I think
That illustration is a bit misleading or rather bit of an optical illusion. Your eyes are draw to compare the massive spikes and where the deaths level at that stage. But big O is obviously massively more transmissible, so the ramp up of cases is much faster in days.
If you compare number of days from the start of the wave, it certainly not as large, but not as significant a difference as you might think that you see on first glance.
Sure, but look at Denmark, and New York, and London, and Canada. It’s the same pattern. It is surely milder. And a lot of the hospital admissions are incidental. Robert Smithson Jr was right
Question is: can it still crush health systems by sheer number of cases? Because it is also much more infectious
If it cruses heath systems, it will be because of the large number of medical staff who have it themselves and are off sick, at one point a week or so back I believe 20%
counter intuitive as this may sound the best approach might be to stop/reduce the amount of testing, and only be absent form work if you are showing symptoms, alternatively and slightly less radical, test every day you are off and return to work as soon as you have a negative test.
Do you have a source for that 20% figure?
1.3m FTE staff in the NHS give or take. More than half a million Nurses and Doctors, plus health care assistants and other medical staff.
The figures that I have seen are around 15% staff absences in Inner London.
So far it hasn't impacted here in Leicester in a big way. Patient numbers 115 yesterday with a dozen on ICU, much the same as the last 3 months.
The harbinger of doom perhaps was that 2 of our three in a key admin role in bookings are off isolating, leaving someone with 2 months experience the last woman standing. She is pretty good though going to be a bit stretched, particularly as the phone never stops with people cancelling and rebooting.
Thank-you, that's helpful.
So 15% in hotspots. Whilst the BMA number perhaps relates to an overall figure.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
See my other answer to noneoftheabove
Economists etc are not worth listening to on what is going to happen with the pandemic, b which I mean what is going to happen with cases, hospitalisations and deaths over the next x days (and there are economists out there fitting exponential curves to two data points). They are absolutely worth listening to on what the impacts of the pandemic and any NPIs will be on people.
If you thought the arrogance, incompetence, selfishness, laziness and entitlement of the Prime Minister was only a Westminster Bubble story, then here is the definitive proof that you are 100% wrong. You don’t get better cut-through than this nowadays:
Daily Mail (yes, Daily Mail) headline:
- “He's lost the room! Darts fans sing 'Stand up if you hate Boris' in unison at the World Championships while football fans chant expletives about him as the fallout from the No10 Christmas party rows continues”
His only way out now retaining a modicum of dignity is the Long Covid explanation. Up with your hands Boris and admit the decades of overeating, over drinking and promiscuity had left you woefully ill-prepared for a nasty viral infection. You are not well and you need to focus on your many, many children, and your own health. About 25% of the population will feel sorry for you and wish you well. The other 75% will shout Fuck Off and Good Riddance. The Conservative parliamentary group is in the latter category.
It’s fun to laugh at everyone singing songs about the prime minister - but under almost any other PM, and certainly under a PM from any other party, there wouldn’t be a crowd of 3,000 people at the darts.
1) I’m not laughing.
2) It’s not fun.
3) “3,000 people at the darts” actually gets to the very heart of the problem(s)
At what point Sandpit have you had enough? You’re a good Tory. You are within Johnson’s “constituency” (as in his support base rather than geographically). You share his ideology. You are one of his “season ticket holders”, as @dixiedean put it upthread. So, at what point do you simply have to call it a day for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka Binky the Clown?
I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson, but he was a necessary part of getting something that looked like Brexit through.
Happy to see him replaced in the new year - unless he can quickly steady the ship with a new Cummings, there will be a rout in the local elections which will likely be the trigger.
I do laugh at all the people shouting about the PM at an event, unaware of the irony that if the other lot were in charge it would be being held behind closed doors.
How is it irony? So many of them will have voted for Boris. The other lot aren't in government. They're expressing their displeasure at this lot - what does the other lot have to do with it.
Also worth noting. This government wants to ban protest. Soon chanting at the football / darts will be all we can do that is safe before Priti Vacant comes along with her Tory thought police to have you arrested.
Spot on.
The problem for Sandpit and his ilk is that the Conservative Party has been in government for over 11 years. Pointing at the Opposition and trying to claim that it is all their fault just doesn’t wash it.
Governments govern. Oppositions oppose.
So why has the Opposition been voting for all the restrictions?
Because, like John Major before him, Boris Johnson has lost command of his own parliamentary party. John only had 10 backbench shits. Boris has 100.
The 100 aren't shits, they're brave for standing up for our civil liberties and freedom. They're scrutinising and doing their job as Parliamentarians and we should be grateful for them.
What a shame others aren't so interested in doing their job.
I don't necessarily disagree with some Tory backbenchers on the current restrictions situation, but they'd be a hell of a lot braver, in that case, if they started at properly scrutinising the government's Policing Bill, or also the inherent dangers to anyone of diverse parentage, or even older ancestry. in the Immigration Bill. I hear not very much, or nothing whatsoever so far, on these, and on the epochal threats to our freedoms contained within..
The Cabinet's gamble in a nutshell. @JeremyFarrar tells @BBCr4today "It is reasonable to pause" for 24, 36 hours to see London hospitalisation data, but if it's bad they "will have to act...in a more draconian way than might have been possible had they acted a few days ago" https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1473211648332685317
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
He did say 'pandemic'. Wallpaper manufacturers and consuimers [edit] and the like know **** all about viruses. Their input comes later, when we know what options the virus has left us with.
They may not know about viruses but they do know about the impact of restrictions. As do parents, education and many more. All for a virus that even without vaccines the CFR was only about 1%, so we have all options. The Swedish model was an option even pre-vaccines, let alone post-boosters.
You need to consider all the evidence in the round, not just one side of it. That is why Fraser Nelson's article on SAGE's failure to do proper modelling and only the doomcasting was so important.
As I said yesterday, Fraser Nelson deserves an OBE for that reporting, it was possibly the most important scrutiny of the scientists we've seen through the entire pandemic and it came from an entirely unexpected source.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
Not much about the economy or ordinary peoples lives in there.....
True. I meant a narrow view of the pandemic - what is going to happen next with Covid. A list of who lay members of the public should listen to to find out what is happening/going to happen.
A list for the government would included economists, wider public health experts (negative impacts of lockdown etc). But my government list would be CMO etc + SAGE and make sure the right people are on SAGE, including economists and mental health/public health in general/NHS experts
Edit: and rename SAGE as 'AGE' (or make the S stand for 'Specialist') as economics ain't a science, but it's important here
How people respond has a huge impact on "what is going to happen next with Covid", there is not a laboratory neat and clear answer, but an uncertain unknown which depends and varies on things like the economy and social interactions as well as the biology.
Also we should not only be worried about what is happening next but also what is happening longer term, even if we only wanted to look at a narrow health view.
Why do newspapers publish articles like this, knowing they’ll end straight up in Private Eye?
My terrible time, having our extended family’s Maldives holiday extended by a fortnight, for free, because of a failed Covid test, but with no-one actually unwell.
Sounds like the terrible time when the Icelandic volcano forced me ton spend another week on the South coast of france in the massive house we had rented.
That did actually have some stress though as none of us had smart phones then so trying to book transport out of there was hard.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
He did say 'pandemic'. Wallpaper manufacturers and consuimers [edit] and the like know **** all about viruses. Their input comes later, when we know what options the virus has left us with.
Yep, that was my intention. But I should have been clearer about what I meant by 'the pandemic'.
Specifically, what is going to happen in terms of cases. hospitalisations and deaths in the short-medium term. Analysis on the direct costs of Covid.
Analysis on the costs of actions to fight Covid is also essential to making decisions on whether or not to take those actions.
Truss doing a “John Major at the dentist?” It’s clear she’s on manoeuvres if that’s true. Don’t be anywhere near any policy decisions coming out of Number 10 right now.
Why do newspapers publish articles like this, knowing they’ll end straight up in Private Eye?
My terrible time, having our extended family’s Maldives holiday extended by a fortnight, for free, because of a failed Covid test, but with no-one actually unwell.
Sounds like the terrible time when the Icelandic volcano forced me ton spend another week on the South coast of france in the massive house we had rented.
That did actually have some stress though as none of us had smart phones then so trying to book transport out of there was hard.
I managed to get the last taxi out of Stockholm!
Drove from Rome to St Malo overnight to get a ferry. Four of use in a Fiesta, plus luggage, that we'd been totally ripped off hiring. I'd have happily stayed in Rome for the duration, but two senior members (Profs) of the group (we'd been at a conference) were desperate to get back.
My understanding is that warrant or no warrant debt enforcers have no power to break into a house through a locked over an unpaid energy bill, especially not in the absence of the owner, and if they do they are committing the crime of breaking and entering.
So how come these people have not been named and prosecuted? £500 goodwill gesture doesn't begin to address the gravity of what they've done.
And how come the CEO and the payments division are not also in the dock for conspiring to gain unlawful entry and pervert the course of justice?
Because that's what it will take to stop this nonsense.
Edit - I'm sure I've asked this question before, but I've forgotten the answer. At the same time, the mere fact it's still ongoing is pretty outrageous.
Is it because the only ‘violence’ that Police Scotland cares about, is something written on Twitter?
"If you don’t come to an agreement with your supplier to pay off your debt, they can apply to a court for a warrant to enter your home to disconnect your supply. Your supplier must send a notice telling you they’re applying to the court."
I'm not a legal bod either but surely a crime involves a measure of intent? So - assuming they have the powers/warrant to force entry at all - then trashing the wrong door isn't a crime.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
He did say 'pandemic'. Wallpaper manufacturers and consuimers [edit] and the like know **** all about viruses. Their input comes later, when we know what options the virus has left us with.
Yep, that was my intention. But I should have been clearer about what I meant by 'the pandemic'.
Specifically, what is going to happen in terms of cases. hospitalisations and deaths in the short-medium term. Analysis on the direct costs of Covid.
Analysis on the costs of actions to fight Covid is also essential to making decisions on whether or not to take those actions.
The direct costs of Covid aren't just health-related.
Why do newspapers publish articles like this, knowing they’ll end straight up in Private Eye?
My terrible time, having our extended family’s Maldives holiday extended by a fortnight, for free, because of a failed Covid test, but with no-one actually unwell.
My understanding is that warrant or no warrant debt enforcers have no power to break into a house through a locked over an unpaid energy bill, especially not in the absence of the owner, and if they do they are committing the crime of breaking and entering.
So how come these people have not been named and prosecuted? £500 goodwill gesture doesn't begin to address the gravity of what they've done.
And how come the CEO and the payments division are not also in the dock for conspiring to gain unlawful entry and pervert the course of justice?
Because that's what it will take to stop this nonsense.
Edit - I'm sure I've asked this question before, but I've forgotten the answer. At the same time, the mere fact it's still ongoing is pretty outrageous.
Normal people don't have enough access to the law to enforce their rights. In this case the poor woman was being harassed by this company over a debt she didn't owe, and she should have been able to use the courts to force them to desist when contacting them directly failed to have the desired effect.
We need to dramatically widen access to the courts, so that the law can protect ordinary people from abuses of power by large companies and the government.
Re: new restrictions. It's getting to the stage where the Government will come under enormous pressure to introduce new restrictions, not necessarily because of Covid, but to protect the long term credibility of the medical establishment advising them. The advisers left themselves no wriggle room in the modelling. They asked the modellers for worst case scenarios because they thought that they would have enough to encourage the Government to bring restrictions in. If restrictions aren't introduced and outcomes are significantly more benign than projected scenarios then they have a real problem. They won't be able to come back after the event and say that it was all because of altered public behaviours because they were calling for new legal restrictions (and anyway that won't suffice as an explanation for omicron being less severe). What can be done through public behaviour changes doesn't require legal restrictions, it requires guidance and strong public messaging at most.
There's been a lot of discussion about the models in recent days and whether the models are being designed to fit the policy prescriptions. This is almost certainly the case. The modellers say that they are only modelling what they have been asked to model and that is "normal". And there is no point modelling for benign scenarios that require no action.
But it seems to be that what has been going on is mixing up modelling for risk management/disaster planning and modelling to inform policy decisions. The former requires no particular work around probability of outcomes (and by definition only focusses on bad scenarios), the latter absolutely does (with the basic calculation being whether the cost of action outweighs the cost of inaction - the latter obviously being probability adjusted). Usually in disaster planning I guess you look at extreme (but unlikely) scenarios, and see if there are any very low cost interventions that can help against them, whilst planning for what you would do if the worst happens. But you don't take highly costly action in advance on the basis of the worst happening.
(cont)Ministers are being asked to make highly costly interventions in advance based on the possibility that the bad outcomes occur. With little or no assessment of the likelihood of them occurring (any attempt to nail this down is brushed off as 'uncertainty' or 'lack of data'). Foxy describing planning for 50% staff absences makes sense (even if it is perhaps a little extreme) as a "disaster planning" measure. What would we do if/how would we cope? If they are seriously worried about this there may be other things that could be done in advance (eg. relax rules over isolation requirements, cut back on some non urgent elective surgeries etc). But the possibility of 50% staff absence almost certainly does not justify consideration of new costly legal restrictions to avert it as one possible mitigation, unless we have reached the stage where it is not merely a possibility but nailed on.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
He did say 'pandemic'. Wallpaper manufacturers and consuimers [edit] and the like know **** all about viruses. Their input comes later, when we know what options the virus has left us with.
They may not know about viruses but they do know about the impact of restrictions. As do parents, education and many more. All for a virus that even without vaccines the CFR was only about 1%, so we have all options. The Swedish model was an option even pre-vaccines, let alone post-boosters.
You need to consider all the evidence in the round, not just one side of it. That is why Fraser Nelson's article on SAGE's failure to do proper modelling and only the doomcasting was so important.
As I said yesterday, Fraser Nelson deserves an OBE for that reporting, it was possibly the most important scrutiny of the scientists we've seen through the entire pandemic and it came from an entirely unexpected source.
No point in whining about restrictions till you know what the virus will do.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
Not much about the economy or ordinary peoples lives in there.....
True. I meant a narrow view of the pandemic - what is going to happen next with Covid. A list of who lay members of the public should listen to to find out what is happening/going to happen.
A list for the government would included economists, wider public health experts (negative impacts of lockdown etc). But my government list would be CMO etc + SAGE and make sure the right people are on SAGE, including economists and mental health/public health in general/NHS experts
Edit: and rename SAGE as 'AGE' (or make the S stand for 'Specialist') as economics ain't a science, but it's important here
How people respond has a huge impact on "what is going to happen next with Covid", there is not a laboratory neat and clear answer, but an uncertain unknown which depends and varies on things like the economy and social interactions as well as the biology.
Also we should not only be worried about what is happening next but also what is happening longer term, even if we only wanted to look at a narrow health view.
For example, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it will be a big plus for the economy if a lot of old people die over the next month.
Inheritance tax into the Exchequer. Inheritances boosting spending. Much lower requirements for public spending on the NHS and care for the elderly.
Let's take a balanced view, and kill a granny over Christmas.
London’s streets deserted: restaurants and pubs empty. The gulf between the people, mindful of the danger of Omicron, and our real governors - Graham Brady and the 1922 committee garnering letters for the next Tory regicide - could not be wider or deeper. https://twitter.com/williamnhutton/status/1473079464045297668
London isn't deserted because people are scared of the personal risk of omicron. London is deserted because they are scared they know that omicron is extremely infectious and they are scared that it might cause them to miss Xmas.
Who knows - maybe just a few of them are concerned about the effect on other people rather than just self, self, self?
But I must confess every time I read the comments here, I veer back towards thinking people are concerned only about self, self, self.
Funny that. Every time the rest of us read one of your comments, @Chris , we veer back towards thinking you’re only interested in showing your intellectual and moral superiority over every other individual here.
On topic, FWIW somebody who has worked with Boris over several years and has known him for more than a decade told me a few weeks ago he doesn't think that Boris will go voluntarily - like most senior politicians he is too egotistical. A Gordon Brown-style exit with fingernail marks on the door jamb is far more likely.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
He did say 'pandemic'. Wallpaper manufacturers and consuimers [edit] and the like know **** all about viruses. Their input comes later, when we know what options the virus has left us with.
They may not know about viruses but they do know about the impact of restrictions. As do parents, education and many more. All for a virus that even without vaccines the CFR was only about 1%, so we have all options. The Swedish model was an option even pre-vaccines, let alone post-boosters.
You need to consider all the evidence in the round, not just one side of it. That is why Fraser Nelson's article on SAGE's failure to do proper modelling and only the doomcasting was so important.
As I said yesterday, Fraser Nelson deserves an OBE for that reporting, it was possibly the most important scrutiny of the scientists we've seen through the entire pandemic and it came from an entirely unexpected source.
Ok, let me rephrase.
Categories of people I would listen to if I want to have an idea of what is going to happen to Covid cases, admissions and deaths in the next month or so...
Better?
That's what we spend a lot of time talking about on here. Then, once we've set out a view on what we think is going to happen, we then argue for having/not having various NPIs (last doesn't apply to you Philip as you always argue for no NPIs and that's fine, but most people on here seem to have an 'if it really is going to get that bad then I would accept short term NPIs' attitude)
Edit: and drop the aerosol physicists example as their time has been and gone, but keep others with out of field expertise - if you can build a model, have good data and can engage brain then it's possible to have something to say.
WTF! The Prime Minister has missed the last *three* COBRA meetings.
What the hell does that fat, lazy oaf do all day? Is he shagging more burds behind his wife’s back?
COBRA meeting happen all the time for various reasons and with different ministers chairing them. The idea that every one is a meeting which requires PM attendance is something which has been blown up in the press such that now we get given the impression that every COBRA meeting = imminent action on one thing or another. Which isn't their point. It is basically a way of getting lots of people round the table from different areas of Government to combine on various issues.
London’s streets deserted: restaurants and pubs empty. The gulf between the people, mindful of the danger of Omicron, and our real governors - Graham Brady and the 1922 committee garnering letters for the next Tory regicide - could not be wider or deeper. https://twitter.com/williamnhutton/status/1473079464045297668
London isn't deserted because people are scared of the personal risk of omicron. London is deserted because they are scared they know that omicron is extremely infectious and they are scared that it might cause them to miss Xmas.
Who knows - maybe just a few of them are concerned about the effect on other people rather than just self, self, self?
But I must confess every time I read the comments here, I veer back towards thinking people are concerned only about self, self, self.
Funny that. Every time the rest of us read one of your comments, @Chris , we veer back towards thinking you’re only interested in showing your intellectual and moral superiority over every other individual here.
Funny that, every time I read a bit of personal abuse in response to one of my posts, it reinforces my impression is that the person concerned is too stupid to think of a counter-argument.
The Cabinet's gamble in a nutshell. @JeremyFarrar tells @BBCr4today "It is reasonable to pause" for 24, 36 hours to see London hospitalisation data, but if it's bad they "will have to act...in a more draconian way than might have been possible had they acted a few days ago" https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1473211648332685317
If they've already decided to do nowt until after Christmas, then announcing measures for the 27th yesterday, today or tomorrow makes little difference.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
Not much about the economy or ordinary peoples lives in there.....
True. I meant a narrow view of the pandemic - what is going to happen next with Covid. A list of who lay members of the public should listen to to find out what is happening/going to happen.
A list for the government would included economists, wider public health experts (negative impacts of lockdown etc). But my government list would be CMO etc + SAGE and make sure the right people are on SAGE, including economists and mental health/public health in general/NHS experts
Edit: and rename SAGE as 'AGE' (or make the S stand for 'Specialist') as economics ain't a science, but it's important here
How people respond has a huge impact on "what is going to happen next with Covid", there is not a laboratory neat and clear answer, but an uncertain unknown which depends and varies on things like the economy and social interactions as well as the biology.
Also we should not only be worried about what is happening next but also what is happening longer term, even if we only wanted to look at a narrow health view.
For example, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it will be a big plus for the economy if a lot of old people die over the next month.
Inheritance tax into the Exchequer. Inheritances boosting spending. Much lower requirements for public spending on the NHS and care for the elderly.
Let's take a balanced view, and kill a granny over Christmas.
London’s streets deserted: restaurants and pubs empty. The gulf between the people, mindful of the danger of Omicron, and our real governors - Graham Brady and the 1922 committee garnering letters for the next Tory regicide - could not be wider or deeper. https://twitter.com/williamnhutton/status/1473079464045297668
London isn't deserted because people are scared of the personal risk of omicron. London is deserted because they are scared they know that omicron is extremely infectious and they are scared that it might cause them to miss Xmas.
Who knows - maybe just a few of them are concerned about the effect on other people rather than just self, self, self?
But I must confess every time I read the comments here, I veer back towards thinking people are concerned only about self, self, self.
Funny that. Every time the rest of us read one of your comments, @Chris , we veer back towards thinking you’re only interested in showing your intellectual and moral superiority over every other individual here.
Funny that, every time I read a bit of personal abuse in response to one of my posts, it reinforces my impression is that the person concerned is too stupid to think of a counter-argument.
WTF! The Prime Minister has missed the last *three* COBRA meetings.
What the hell does that fat, lazy oaf do all day? Is he shagging more burds behind his wife’s back?
How many cobra meetings are there each year? More than you might think.
And the Pm doesn’t need to attend them all
The ones dealing with the pandemic might be good ones to take part in, you'd have thought. Perhaps they need to provide wine and cheese to get the fat piss head to show up.
If you thought the arrogance, incompetence, selfishness, laziness and entitlement of the Prime Minister was only a Westminster Bubble story, then here is the definitive proof that you are 100% wrong. You don’t get better cut-through than this nowadays:
Daily Mail (yes, Daily Mail) headline:
- “He's lost the room! Darts fans sing 'Stand up if you hate Boris' in unison at the World Championships while football fans chant expletives about him as the fallout from the No10 Christmas party rows continues”
His only way out now retaining a modicum of dignity is the Long Covid explanation. Up with your hands Boris and admit the decades of overeating, over drinking and promiscuity had left you woefully ill-prepared for a nasty viral infection. You are not well and you need to focus on your many, many children, and your own health. About 25% of the population will feel sorry for you and wish you well. The other 75% will shout Fuck Off and Good Riddance. The Conservative parliamentary group is in the latter category.
It’s fun to laugh at everyone singing songs about the prime minister - but under almost any other PM, and certainly under a PM from any other party, there wouldn’t be a crowd of 3,000 people at the darts.
1) I’m not laughing.
2) It’s not fun.
3) “3,000 people at the darts” actually gets to the very heart of the problem(s)
At what point Sandpit have you had enough? You’re a good Tory. You are within Johnson’s “constituency” (as in his support base rather than geographically). You share his ideology. You are one of his “season ticket holders”, as @dixiedean put it upthread. So, at what point do you simply have to call it a day for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka Binky the Clown?
I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson, but he was a necessary part of getting something that looked like Brexit through.
Happy to see him replaced in the new year - unless he can quickly steady the ship with a new Cummings, there will be a rout in the local elections which will likely be the trigger.
I do laugh at all the people shouting about the PM at an event, unaware of the irony that if the other lot were in charge it would be being held behind closed doors.
Cummings never steadied any ship. All his qualities were essentially destructive.
The issue is, that Cummings’ departure has left a massive hole where there needs to be someone actually running the show in No.10.
The problem, as discussed a couple of days ago, is that no-one who’s going to be any good wants the job - because of the wife. How do you solve a problem like Carrie?
The wife, the chief of staff, the press spokesperson and the mayoral candidate. Only one person to blame as the others are all overrated in importance. He rode a wave of populism with a wholly unsustainable coalition on a cause he never really believed in. The damage he will have done to the Tories in ridding it of its one nation wing will take at least a decade to unravel by which time a more sophisticated metropolitan and fairly angry electorate will have facilitated some changes to stop that happening again.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR as a liberal I could easily work with centre right Tories and Social Democrats, but what I hadn't thought of is my liberal views (reduced state interference, disestablishment of the church, universal basic income, etc, etc) would make me an extremist within that group. Never thought of myself as an extremist.
Slightly seriously, the Carrie problem for Johnson is that people have heard of her.
No one outside the pages of Private Eye had really heard of Marina Wheeler. Boris breaks up with her? Big deal. Boris abandons an unspecified number of kids? Well, heh, “that’s just Boris”.
If/when he welches on Carrie, that’s front page news in the tabloids. For days. And there’s a “PM abandons little Wilfrid and Romy” angle. He might want to go and sow his wild oats as he has done countless times before, but it would finish him politically when it was found out.
So whatever buyer’s remorse he may have, he’s tethered to Carrie as long as he remains PM.
(Incidentally, call me slow, but I hadn’t realised Carrie is the daughter of Matthew Symonds, co-founder of the Independent.)
The Cabinet's gamble in a nutshell. @JeremyFarrar tells @BBCr4today "It is reasonable to pause" for 24, 36 hours to see London hospitalisation data, but if it's bad they "will have to act...in a more draconian way than might have been possible had they acted a few days ago" https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1473211648332685317
Why not just reintroduce mandatory vaxports for London, not just for clubs and large events but theatres, cinemas, restaurants, pubs and bars, gyms etc too? A third of Londoners still refuse to even get one vaccination, let alone their boosters and that is their choice. However they should not expect the rest of London and tourists to the capital to have to suffer another lockdown too because of it.
My understanding is that warrant or no warrant debt enforcers have no power to break into a house through a locked over an unpaid energy bill, especially not in the absence of the owner, and if they do they are committing the crime of breaking and entering.
So how come these people have not been named and prosecuted? £500 goodwill gesture doesn't begin to address the gravity of what they've done.
And how come the CEO and the payments division are not also in the dock for conspiring to gain unlawful entry and pervert the course of justice?
Because that's what it will take to stop this nonsense.
Edit - I'm sure I've asked this question before, but I've forgotten the answer. At the same time, the mere fact it's still ongoing is pretty outrageous.
NPower tried to browbeat my foundation into paying them £50,000 for electricity because they failed in their service obligations.
They threatened us with court action believing that we would fold.
We offered them £10k to make them go away.
They refused and sued us.
It took less than 1 hour for the judge to throw their case out for being self-evidently flawed.
It is easier to remove a Tory leader if they get a majority of Tory MPs to do so, while Labour needs a majority of members for an alternative too. However it is less easy to remove a Tory leader than it used to be. Thatcher for example would have survived in 1990 probably for at least another year as just over 50% of Tory MPs backed her, even if she would have lost a second round to Heseltine most likely under the old rules had she not pulled out
Technically 50% +1 of those casting ballots in a confidence motion have to vote against a Tory leader to remove them, but they'd probably decide not to carry on if, well, maybe around 40% voted against. Theresa May had 37% voting against her in December 2018 and decided to carry on of course but didn't last 12 months until the next potential confidence motion.
Slightly seriously, the Carrie problem for Johnson is that people have heard of her.
No one outside the pages of Private Eye had really heard of Marina Wheeler. Boris breaks up with her? Big deal. Boris abandons an unspecified number of kids? Well, heh, “that’s just Boris”.
If/when he welches on Carrie, that’s front page news in the tabloids. For days. And there’s a “PM abandons little Wilfrid and Romy” angle. He might want to go and sow his wild oats as he has done countless times before, but it would finish him politically when it was found out.
So whatever buyer’s remorse he may have, he’s tethered to Carrie as long as he remains PM.
(Incidentally, call me slow, but I hadn’t realised Carrie is the daughter of Matthew Symonds, co-founder of the Independent.)
Of course she is. Part of the born to rule metropolitan elite, same as her husband.
London’s streets deserted: restaurants and pubs empty. The gulf between the people, mindful of the danger of Omicron, and our real governors - Graham Brady and the 1922 committee garnering letters for the next Tory regicide - could not be wider or deeper. https://twitter.com/williamnhutton/status/1473079464045297668
London isn't deserted because people are scared of the personal risk of omicron. London is deserted because they are scared they know that omicron is extremely infectious and they are scared that it might cause them to miss Xmas.
Who knows - maybe just a few of them are concerned about the effect on other people rather than just self, self, self?
But I must confess every time I read the comments here, I veer back towards thinking people are concerned only about self, self, self.
Indeed they maybe. And a hell of a large number almost certainly aren't. Also a large number deserting London extremely reluctantly because they know the devastation it will have on businesses and hospitality and desperately want to support it.
We are even having "people being selfish" being put forward as the reason why London figures seem to be peaking and set to drop rapidly in coming days (theory that people aren't taking tests and/or aren't reporting them so they don't have to isolate).
If you thought the arrogance, incompetence, selfishness, laziness and entitlement of the Prime Minister was only a Westminster Bubble story, then here is the definitive proof that you are 100% wrong. You don’t get better cut-through than this nowadays:
Daily Mail (yes, Daily Mail) headline:
- “He's lost the room! Darts fans sing 'Stand up if you hate Boris' in unison at the World Championships while football fans chant expletives about him as the fallout from the No10 Christmas party rows continues”
His only way out now retaining a modicum of dignity is the Long Covid explanation. Up with your hands Boris and admit the decades of overeating, over drinking and promiscuity had left you woefully ill-prepared for a nasty viral infection. You are not well and you need to focus on your many, many children, and your own health. About 25% of the population will feel sorry for you and wish you well. The other 75% will shout Fuck Off and Good Riddance. The Conservative parliamentary group is in the latter category.
It’s fun to laugh at everyone singing songs about the prime minister - but under almost any other PM, and certainly under a PM from any other party, there wouldn’t be a crowd of 3,000 people at the darts.
1) I’m not laughing.
2) It’s not fun.
3) “3,000 people at the darts” actually gets to the very heart of the problem(s)
At what point Sandpit have you had enough? You’re a good Tory. You are within Johnson’s “constituency” (as in his support base rather than geographically). You share his ideology. You are one of his “season ticket holders”, as @dixiedean put it upthread. So, at what point do you simply have to call it a day for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka Binky the Clown?
I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson, but he was a necessary part of getting something that looked like Brexit through.
Happy to see him replaced in the new year - unless he can quickly steady the ship with a new Cummings, there will be a rout in the local elections which will likely be the trigger.
I do laugh at all the people shouting about the PM at an event, unaware of the irony that if the other lot were in charge it would be being held behind closed doors.
Cummings never steadied any ship. All his qualities were essentially destructive.
The issue is, that Cummings’ departure has left a massive hole where there needs to be someone actually running the show in No.10.
The problem, as discussed a couple of days ago, is that no-one who’s going to be any good wants the job - because of the wife. How do you solve a problem like Carrie?
The wife, the chief of staff, the press spokesperson and the mayoral candidate. Only one person to blame as the others are all overrated in importance. He rode a wave of populism with a wholly unsustainable coalition on a cause he never really believed in. The damage he will have done to the Tories in ridding it of its one nation wing will take at least a decade to unravel by which time a more sophisticated metropolitan and fairly angry electorate will have facilitated some changes to stop that happening again.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR as a liberal I could easily work with centre right Tories and Social Democrats, but what I hadn't thought of is my liberal views (reduced state interference, disestablishment of the church, universal basic income, etc, etc) would make me an extremist within that group. Never thought of myself as an extremist.
Disestablishment? That makes you a raving subversive and treasonous enemy of the state, by the standards of some folk on here. Yet the Scots achieved that a century ago. Different polities, indeed.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
He did say 'pandemic'. Wallpaper manufacturers and consuimers [edit] and the like know **** all about viruses. Their input comes later, when we know what options the virus has left us with.
They may not know about viruses but they do know about the impact of restrictions. As do parents, education and many more. All for a virus that even without vaccines the CFR was only about 1%, so we have all options. The Swedish model was an option even pre-vaccines, let alone post-boosters.
You need to consider all the evidence in the round, not just one side of it. That is why Fraser Nelson's article on SAGE's failure to do proper modelling and only the doomcasting was so important.
As I said yesterday, Fraser Nelson deserves an OBE for that reporting, it was possibly the most important scrutiny of the scientists we've seen through the entire pandemic and it came from an entirely unexpected source.
No point in whining about restrictions till you know what the virus will do.
Of course there is.
If somebody was saying to you the Great God Ra has said that we must slaughter the firstborn of every family in order to halt the virus would you weigh up what the virus will do, or dismiss that out of hand?
Plus of course if you're in a fast moving environment you may be able to better think in advance what the impact of restrictions will be, while having far less clarity on what the virus will do (as its evolving) so it might be worth thinking about the cons of restrictions first and thinking about the virus afterwards. That way you can make speedy and informed thoughts.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
With that list you are going to end up with really poor outcomes.
They all come from the medical side with no one considering the broader implications on society
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
Not much about the economy or ordinary peoples lives in there.....
True. I meant a narrow view of the pandemic - what is going to happen next with Covid. A list of who lay members of the public should listen to to find out what is happening/going to happen.
A list for the government would included economists, wider public health experts (negative impacts of lockdown etc). But my government list would be CMO etc + SAGE and make sure the right people are on SAGE, including economists and mental health/public health in general/NHS experts
Edit: and rename SAGE as 'AGE' (or make the S stand for 'Specialist') as economics ain't a science, but it's important here
How people respond has a huge impact on "what is going to happen next with Covid", there is not a laboratory neat and clear answer, but an uncertain unknown which depends and varies on things like the economy and social interactions as well as the biology.
Also we should not only be worried about what is happening next but also what is happening longer term, even if we only wanted to look at a narrow health view.
For example, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it will be a big plus for the economy if a lot of old people die over the next month.
Inheritance tax into the Exchequer. Inheritances boosting spending. Much lower requirements for public spending on the NHS and care for the elderly.
Let's take a balanced view, and kill a granny over Christmas.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
With that list you are going to end up with really poor outcomes.
They all come from the medical side with no one considering the broader implications on society
Shoot me now
As per other posts, I meant (and was stupid not to spell it out) "Categories of people I would listen to if I want to have an idea of what is going to happen to Covid cases, admissions and deaths in the next month or so..."
It's not a shoppng list for who the government should listen to.
Why do newspapers publish articles like this, knowing they’ll end straight up in Private Eye?
My terrible time, having our extended family’s Maldives holiday extended by a fortnight, for free, because of a failed Covid test, but with no-one actually unwell.
The Cabinet's gamble in a nutshell. @JeremyFarrar tells @BBCr4today "It is reasonable to pause" for 24, 36 hours to see London hospitalisation data, but if it's bad they "will have to act...in a more draconian way than might have been possible had they acted a few days ago" https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1473211648332685317
The use of “gamble” there is pretty loaded. I know people here are very analytical about betting but that’s not how most people interpret the term
Why do newspapers publish articles like this, knowing they’ll end straight up in Private Eye?
My terrible time, having our extended family’s Maldives holiday extended by a fortnight, for free, because of a failed Covid test, but with no-one actually unwell.
Sounds like the terrible time when the Icelandic volcano forced me ton spend another week on the South coast of france in the massive house we had rented.
That did actually have some stress though as none of us had smart phones then so trying to book transport out of there was hard.
I managed to get the last taxi out of Stockholm!
Drove from Rome to St Malo overnight to get a ferry. Four of use in a Fiesta, plus luggage, that we'd been totally ripped off hiring. I'd have happily stayed in Rome for the duration, but two senior members (Profs) of the group (we'd been at a conference) were desperate to get back.
My son was on a school trip in Morocco. Their flight cancelled they got on a bus to the coast, took a ferry to Spain. Hitched a lift on a Belgium school coach and his school sent a coach to Belgium to pick them up. It was a great adventure for him.
If you thought the arrogance, incompetence, selfishness, laziness and entitlement of the Prime Minister was only a Westminster Bubble story, then here is the definitive proof that you are 100% wrong. You don’t get better cut-through than this nowadays:
Daily Mail (yes, Daily Mail) headline:
- “He's lost the room! Darts fans sing 'Stand up if you hate Boris' in unison at the World Championships while football fans chant expletives about him as the fallout from the No10 Christmas party rows continues”
His only way out now retaining a modicum of dignity is the Long Covid explanation. Up with your hands Boris and admit the decades of overeating, over drinking and promiscuity had left you woefully ill-prepared for a nasty viral infection. You are not well and you need to focus on your many, many children, and your own health. About 25% of the population will feel sorry for you and wish you well. The other 75% will shout Fuck Off and Good Riddance. The Conservative parliamentary group is in the latter category.
It’s fun to laugh at everyone singing songs about the prime minister - but under almost any other PM, and certainly under a PM from any other party, there wouldn’t be a crowd of 3,000 people at the darts.
1) I’m not laughing.
2) It’s not fun.
3) “3,000 people at the darts” actually gets to the very heart of the problem(s)
At what point Sandpit have you had enough? You’re a good Tory. You are within Johnson’s “constituency” (as in his support base rather than geographically). You share his ideology. You are one of his “season ticket holders”, as @dixiedean put it upthread. So, at what point do you simply have to call it a day for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka Binky the Clown?
I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson, but he was a necessary part of getting something that looked like Brexit through.
Happy to see him replaced in the new year - unless he can quickly steady the ship with a new Cummings, there will be a rout in the local elections which will likely be the trigger.
I do laugh at all the people shouting about the PM at an event, unaware of the irony that if the other lot were in charge it would be being held behind closed doors.
Cummings never steadied any ship. All his qualities were essentially destructive.
The issue is, that Cummings’ departure has left a massive hole where there needs to be someone actually running the show in No.10.
The problem, as discussed a couple of days ago, is that no-one who’s going to be any good wants the job - because of the wife. How do you solve a problem like Carrie?
The wife, the chief of staff, the press spokesperson and the mayoral candidate. Only one person to blame as the others are all overrated in importance. He rode a wave of populism with a wholly unsustainable coalition on a cause he never really believed in. The damage he will have done to the Tories in ridding it of its one nation wing will take at least a decade to unravel by which time a more sophisticated metropolitan and fairly angry electorate will have facilitated some changes to stop that happening again.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR Labour would also split, with Corbynites starting a new far left party and maybe a new Blairite party too. A few Tories might join RefUK, I doubt a new far right party would be formed however although it is possible the likes of For Britain or Britain First could win a seat or two under PR
Why do newspapers publish articles like this, knowing they’ll end straight up in Private Eye?
My terrible time, having our extended family’s Maldives holiday extended by a fortnight, for free, because of a failed Covid test, but with no-one actually unwell.
Sounds like the terrible time when the Icelandic volcano forced me ton spend another week on the South coast of france in the massive house we had rented.
That did actually have some stress though as none of us had smart phones then so trying to book transport out of there was hard.
I managed to get the last taxi out of Stockholm!
Drove from Rome to St Malo overnight to get a ferry. Four of use in a Fiesta, plus luggage, that we'd been totally ripped off hiring. I'd have happily stayed in Rome for the duration, but two senior members (Profs) of the group (we'd been at a conference) were desperate to get back.
I did Stockholm to Brussels overnight then Thalys to Paris to catch the Eurostar
The Cabinet's gamble in a nutshell. @JeremyFarrar tells @BBCr4today "It is reasonable to pause" for 24, 36 hours to see London hospitalisation data, but if it's bad they "will have to act...in a more draconian way than might have been possible had they acted a few days ago" https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1473211648332685317
The use of “gamble” there is pretty loaded. I know people here are very analytical about betting but that’s not how most people interpret the term
There was no "safe" decision so whilst it is definitely a gamble, so was locking down or any other decision.
I can understand Sunak not wanting to be seen to lead the room and let others speak first. Truss leaving for a phone call?? What could possibly have been more important. She should be fired for that, not promoted. I might have to join the Tories just in case she makes the top two.
WTF! The Prime Minister has missed the last *three* COBRA meetings.
What the hell does that fat, lazy oaf do all day? Is he shagging more burds behind his wife’s back?
COBRA meeting happen all the time for various reasons and with different ministers chairing them. The idea that every one is a meeting which requires PM attendance is something which has been blown up in the press such that now we get given the impression that every COBRA meeting = imminent action on one thing or another. Which isn't their point. It is basically a way of getting lots of people round the table from different areas of Government to combine on various issues.
Absolutely - I think people (especially the media) have watched too many films and envision Cobra as some kind of underground bunker in the White House with big screens and generals sitting around looking serious waiting for Steven Segal to patch in and save the day…..
Maybe if it was called “KOALA” rather than the fierce and serious sounding COBRA then people would see it differently.
The Cabinet's gamble in a nutshell. @JeremyFarrar tells @BBCr4today "It is reasonable to pause" for 24, 36 hours to see London hospitalisation data, but if it's bad they "will have to act...in a more draconian way than might have been possible had they acted a few days ago" https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1473211648332685317
It is perfectly plausible looking at yesterday's official figures, that in a few days we will have the combination in London of plummeting reported case numbers and an apparent surge in hospitalisations (although i hope they would look beyond the headlines on the latter). In effect indicating that whatever pressure is coming to hospitals is already baked in, and any new restrictions will make no difference whatsoever.
It is easier to remove a Tory leader if they get a majority of Tory MPs to do so, while Labour needs a majority of members for an alternative too. However it is less easy to remove a Tory leader than it used to be. Thatcher for example would have survived in 1990 probably for at least another year as just over 50% of Tory MPs backed her, even if she would have lost a second round to Heseltine most likely under the old rules had she not pulled out
Technically 50% +1 of those casting ballots in a confidence motion have to vote against a Tory leader to remove them, but they'd probably decide not to carry on if, well, maybe around 40% voted against. Theresa May had 37% voting against her in December 2018 and decided to carry on of course but didn't last 12 months until the next potential confidence motion.
Some might but Boris is stubborn and arrogant and thick skinned enough he would probably carry on even if he only won a confidence vote 51% to 49%.
My understanding is that warrant or no warrant debt enforcers have no power to break into a house through a locked over an unpaid energy bill, especially not in the absence of the owner, and if they do they are committing the crime of breaking and entering.
So how come these people have not been named and prosecuted? £500 goodwill gesture doesn't begin to address the gravity of what they've done.
And how come the CEO and the payments division are not also in the dock for conspiring to gain unlawful entry and pervert the course of justice?
Because that's what it will take to stop this nonsense.
Edit - I'm sure I've asked this question before, but I've forgotten the answer. At the same time, the mere fact it's still ongoing is pretty outrageous.
Is it because the only ‘violence’ that Police Scotland cares about, is something written on Twitter?
"If you don’t come to an agreement with your supplier to pay off your debt, they can apply to a court for a warrant to enter your home to disconnect your supply. Your supplier must send a notice telling you they’re applying to the court."
I'm not a legal bod either but surely a crime involves a measure of intent? So - assuming they have the powers/warrant to force entry at all - then trashing the wrong door isn't a crime.
I think “assuming” will be the issue.
The intent is to break and enter. The warrant is a safe harbour. If they don’t have the warrant then the crime is committed
Incidentally, I was surprised by the news today that Omicron is not only already dominant in the USA, but is estimated to account for 73% of SARS-CoV-s infections there.
The infection rate is stated to be about one third of the UK's, but seen in the context of the doubling time, that represents only a lag of about three or four days.
Omicron is hitting the USA much sooner than expected.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
With that list you are going to end up with really poor outcomes.
They all come from the medical side with no one considering the broader implications on society
Shoot me now
As per other posts, I meant (and was stupid not to spell it out) "Categories of people I would listen to if I want to have an idea of what is going to happen to Covid cases, admissions and deaths in the next month or so..."
It's not a shoppng list for who the government should listen to.
But even then its not a good list as almost everyone on that list has a vested interest to emphasise the pandemic to the exclusion of all else.
If we only listened to your list and not to journalists, then it wouldn't have come to light that the SAGE documents were deeply flawed because they were only sharing the scenarios with catastrophic outcomes and they weren't sharing the other scenarios. It took Fraser Nelson to bring that to light, when really you would have hoped that someone else on your list would have said it first so that he never needed to dig that out.
Truss doing a “John Major at the dentist?” It’s clear she’s on manoeuvres if that’s true. Don’t be anywhere near any policy decisions coming out of Number 10 right now.
TBF, she's just been handed an extra brief by the PM, so the excuse borders on the semi-credible.
I can understand Sunak not wanting to be seen to lead the room and let others speak first. Truss leaving for a phone call?? What could possibly have been more important. She should be fired for that, not promoted. I might have to join the Tories just in case she makes the top two.
Maybe something involving another country? She is Foreign Secretary afterall.
Incidentally, I was surprised by the news today that Omicron is not only already dominant in the USA, but is estimated to account for 73% of SARS-CoV-s infections there.
The infection rate is stated to be about one third of the UK's, but seen in the context of the doubling time, that represents only a lag of about three or four days.
Omicron is hitting the USA much sooner than expected.
Just think a month ago Omicron hadn't even been mentioned.
WTF! The Prime Minister has missed the last *three* COBRA meetings.
What the hell does that fat, lazy oaf do all day? Is he shagging more burds behind his wife’s back?
How many cobra meetings are there each year? More than you might think.
And the Pm doesn’t need to attend them all
The ones dealing with the pandemic might be good ones to take part in, you'd have thought. Perhaps they need to provide wine and cheese to get the fat piss head to show up.
May be. Depends on the agenda.
And it depends on what he was doing instead. He might have been playing the violin. Or he might have been talking to President Biden about the Ukraine.
We don’t know. And in the absence of that information it’s futile to make a judgement on the PM’s diary management
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
I didn't say it did make him a medical doctor. My cousin has recently qualified as a medical doctor but I'm pretty sure she doesn't know as much about these subjects as John Campbell does.
That doesn't make John Campbell an expert in the subject.
This is the only video I've seen from him, which a pro-hydroxychloroquine friend sent me last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro claims in the first minute that hydroxychloroquine "is an effective treatment" and "seems to lower the death rate by 30%"
He then goes on in the second minute to say that the Recovery trial showed no effect because they gave the wrong dose which is "bemusing at best" and says something strange is going on. Hmmm. Maybe someone with some expertise can confirm, but my understanding is that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. And hinting that something "very strange" is going on to make other studies use the wrong dose seems irresponsible. I mean I assume the Recovery trial had a reason for using the dose they did, and Campbell keeps repeating that he can't understand why they used that dosage but he doesn't seem to have made any attempt whatsoever to find out their reasons - instead he just keeps repeating that something strange is going on.
The thing I hate about this country is that’s it’s run in exactly the same way as the Oxford Union. Forget Eton, or even Oxford University as a whole, abolish the Oxford Union and the improvement would be marked.
If you thought the arrogance, incompetence, selfishness, laziness and entitlement of the Prime Minister was only a Westminster Bubble story, then here is the definitive proof that you are 100% wrong. You don’t get better cut-through than this nowadays:
Daily Mail (yes, Daily Mail) headline:
- “He's lost the room! Darts fans sing 'Stand up if you hate Boris' in unison at the World Championships while football fans chant expletives about him as the fallout from the No10 Christmas party rows continues”
His only way out now retaining a modicum of dignity is the Long Covid explanation. Up with your hands Boris and admit the decades of overeating, over drinking and promiscuity had left you woefully ill-prepared for a nasty viral infection. You are not well and you need to focus on your many, many children, and your own health. About 25% of the population will feel sorry for you and wish you well. The other 75% will shout Fuck Off and Good Riddance. The Conservative parliamentary group is in the latter category.
It’s fun to laugh at everyone singing songs about the prime minister - but under almost any other PM, and certainly under a PM from any other party, there wouldn’t be a crowd of 3,000 people at the darts.
1) I’m not laughing.
2) It’s not fun.
3) “3,000 people at the darts” actually gets to the very heart of the problem(s)
At what point Sandpit have you had enough? You’re a good Tory. You are within Johnson’s “constituency” (as in his support base rather than geographically). You share his ideology. You are one of his “season ticket holders”, as @dixiedean put it upthread. So, at what point do you simply have to call it a day for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka Binky the Clown?
I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson, but he was a necessary part of getting something that looked like Brexit through.
Happy to see him replaced in the new year - unless he can quickly steady the ship with a new Cummings, there will be a rout in the local elections which will likely be the trigger.
I do laugh at all the people shouting about the PM at an event, unaware of the irony that if the other lot were in charge it would be being held behind closed doors.
Cummings never steadied any ship. All his qualities were essentially destructive.
The issue is, that Cummings’ departure has left a massive hole where there needs to be someone actually running the show in No.10.
The problem, as discussed a couple of days ago, is that no-one who’s going to be any good wants the job - because of the wife. How do you solve a problem like Carrie?
The wife, the chief of staff, the press spokesperson and the mayoral candidate. Only one person to blame as the others are all overrated in importance. He rode a wave of populism with a wholly unsustainable coalition on a cause he never really believed in. The damage he will have done to the Tories in ridding it of its one nation wing will take at least a decade to unravel by which time a more sophisticated metropolitan and fairly angry electorate will have facilitated some changes to stop that happening again.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR Labour would also split, with Corbynites starting a new far left party and maybe a new Blairite party too. A few Tories might join RefUK, I doubt a new far right party would be formed however although it is possible the likes of For Britain or Britain First could win a seat or two under PR
PR would almost certainly mean a much, err, more diverse set of views represented in Parliament. Expect Nigel Farage and Carl Benjamin on one side, and the likes of Laura Murray and Ash Sarkar on the other.
Whether or not that’s good or bad for democracy, is an exercise left to the reader.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
With that list you are going to end up with really poor outcomes.
They all come from the medical side with no one considering the broader implications on society
Shoot me now
As per other posts, I meant (and was stupid not to spell it out) "Categories of people I would listen to if I want to have an idea of what is going to happen to Covid cases, admissions and deaths in the next month or so..."
It's not a shoppng list for who the government should listen to.
But even then its not a good list as almost everyone on that list has a vested interest to emphasise the pandemic to the exclusion of all else.
If we only listened to your list and not to journalists, then it wouldn't have come to light that the SAGE documents were deeply flawed because they were only sharing the scenarios with catastrophic outcomes and they weren't sharing the other scenarios. It took Fraser Nelson to bring that to light, when really you would have hoped that someone else on your list would have said it first so that he never needed to dig that out.
You do understand that 'most' != 'all'?
On the modelling, there have also been models at every stage that have shown more positive outcomes (e.g. the one posted here a few days back showing that Omicron looks manageable without restricitons). They tend not to have been highlighted for a combination of (according to personal preference) the press preferring to highlight doom scenarios/members of the cabinet/SAGE/iSAGE preferring to highlight doom scenarios.
On my list, 2, 7, (6, in the July reopening) and some in 8, at least (e.g. Tim Spector, although he's also in 9, arguable 4 for recent work, Heneghan etc), have been pushing more positive view on whether we can cope with Omicron without NPIs
Edit: God, I'm arguing with Philip. I promised myself I'd never do that again. Life is too short. So, you're right Philip, Ok? I concede
Mr. Sandpit, just so. Fragmenting political parties so they no longer need to appeal to a broad swathe of the electorate to enter high office is not a step in the right direction, particularly when the move is made simply to sate those who believe in participation awards.
And that's before we get to the government being determined by politicians after the electorate have cast their votes and without the need to consult the pesky public any further.
Some clever - and sophisticated - analyses indicating that the Omicron wave may be significantly milder than all previous ones, also in the UK (i.e. London). For the first time during the pandemic, there is a clear 'decorrelation' between case numbers and hospital admissions."
I can understand Sunak not wanting to be seen to lead the room and let others speak first. Truss leaving for a phone call?? What could possibly have been more important. She should be fired for that, not promoted. I might have to join the Tories just in case she makes the top two.
Maybe something involving another country? She is Foreign Secretary afterall.
Incidentally, I was surprised by the news today that Omicron is not only already dominant in the USA, but is estimated to account for 73% of SARS-CoV-s infections there.
The infection rate is stated to be about one third of the UK's, but seen in the context of the doubling time, that represents only a lag of about three or four days.
Omicron is hitting the USA much sooner than expected.
In a country where only 61% of the population have had two doses of the vaccine, and close to 100m people are completely unvaccinated.
Sir Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust and formerly Sage has said this morning on radio it is reasonable for HMG to wait 24 to 48 hours to look at the data, particularly that from London and not doing something was a decision
London seems to be the principal concern and that is hardly surprising with a third of its population unvaccinated
This does raise the question as to why the country is to be subjected to more restrictions because many Londoner's are not willing to do the right thing and get vaccinated and should there be targeted regional restrictions
It is also good to hear a prominent scientist backing the HMG
Sir Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust and formerly Sage has said this morning on radio it is reasonable for HMG to wait 24 to 48 hours to look at the data, particularly that from London and not doing something was a decision
London seems to be the principal concern and that is hardly surprising with a third of its population unvaccinated
This does raise the question as to why the country is to be subjected to more restrictions because many Londoner's are not willing to do the right thing and get vaccinated and should there be targeted regional restrictions
It is also good to hear a prominent scientist backing the HMG
I think this “third unvaccinated” number is wrong. The denominator in the calculation is incorrect.
Why do newspapers publish articles like this, knowing they’ll end straight up in Private Eye?
My terrible time, having our extended family’s Maldives holiday extended by a fortnight, for free, because of a failed Covid test, but with no-one actually unwell.
Sounds like the terrible time when the Icelandic volcano forced me ton spend another week on the South coast of france in the massive house we had rented.
That did actually have some stress though as none of us had smart phones then so trying to book transport out of there was hard.
Did you have to pay for the house for another week.
Some clever - and sophisticated - analyses indicating that the Omicron wave may be significantly milder than all previous ones, also in the UK (i.e. London). For the first time during the pandemic, there is a clear 'decorrelation' between case numbers and hospital admissions."
Selebian's category 8 of people to listen to (which, to be fair, should, for Balloux etc, be much higher up; trouble is it also includes a lot of people who are far less informed)
I can understand Sunak not wanting to be seen to lead the room and let others speak first. Truss leaving for a phone call?? What could possibly have been more important. She should be fired for that, not promoted. I might have to join the Tories just in case she makes the top two.
Maybe something involving another country? She is Foreign Secretary afterall.
She had a team that can rearrange her diary
Might have been something that required her immediate authorisation. In any case, I find it highly unbelievable she was unavailable for the full three hours.
Sir Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust and formerly Sage has said this morning on radio it is reasonable for HMG to wait 24 to 48 hours to look at the data, particularly that from London and not doing something was a decision
London seems to be the principal concern and that is hardly surprising with a third of its population unvaccinated
This does raise the question as to why the country is to be subjected to more restrictions because many Londoner's are not willing to do the right thing and get vaccinated and should there be targeted regional restrictions
It is also good to hear a prominent scientist backing the HMG
I think this “third unvaccinated” number is wrong. The denominator in the calculation is incorrect.
Maybe I should amend that to 'reported' but either way London has a large unvaccinated group of people
He was one of the more impressive foreign secretaries of recent times (admittedly a low bar) and is an acclaimed historical biographer.
Even if he didn’t succeed (and I would distinguish that from failing) as Tory leader because he came to the role too early and was up against Blair in his probe, I’m willing to bet that he’s achieved more in his life than you have
I'd rewrite the last couple of clauses to something like ' I’m willing to bet that he’s achieved more in his life than many people'. And then Like it. Hague was the right man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Slightly seriously, the Carrie problem for Johnson is that people have heard of her.
No one outside the pages of Private Eye had really heard of Marina Wheeler. Boris breaks up with her? Big deal. Boris abandons an unspecified number of kids? Well, heh, “that’s just Boris”.
If/when he welches on Carrie, that’s front page news in the tabloids. For days. And there’s a “PM abandons little Wilfrid and Romy” angle. He might want to go and sow his wild oats as he has done countless times before, but it would finish him politically when it was found out.
So whatever buyer’s remorse he may have, he’s tethered to Carrie as long as he remains PM.
(Incidentally, call me slow, but I hadn’t realised Carrie is the daughter of Matthew Symonds, co-founder of the Independent.)
Of course she is. Part of the born to rule metropolitan elite, same as her husband.
Seems her breeding is rather well suited to joining the Johnson clan.
Her father was married to a different woman than her mother when she was conceived. His father, former Guardian editor and Labour MEP Baron Ardwick, was married to a different woman than his mother when he was conceived.
Incidentally, I was surprised by the news today that Omicron is not only already dominant in the USA, but is estimated to account for 73% of SARS-CoV-s infections there.
The infection rate is stated to be about one third of the UK's, but seen in the context of the doubling time, that represents only a lag of about three or four days.
Omicron is hitting the USA much sooner than expected.
In a country where only 61% of the population have had two doses of the vaccine, and close to 100m people are completely unvaccinated.
The USA also has far fewer older people vaccinated.
Double vaccinating 5 year olds doesn't make up for that.
I watched Boris Johnson interviewed on Sky News last evening and he was incoherent. Rambling answers to simple questions - it's easy to sound cheery and positive in normal times but these aren't normal times and it could have been the making of Boris Johnson the politician. The reputation for being the upbeat clown enhanced by a measured proportionate response to one of the gravest national crises of recent times.
However, all that has happened is his limitations have been cruelly exposed - he's a Prime Minister for a sunny summer's day not a cold wet winter afternoon (Theresa May the exact opposite). His normal joviality and bonhomie works when things are going well and appeals particularly to those for whom politics is a peripheral interest.
This is a crisis for which gravitas rather than levitas is the appropriate response and Johnson just doesn't do gravitas and with more people taking a keener interest in what is happening his limitations have been widely exposed to a larger number of people more quickly.
Johnson may yet reflect on the capricious nature of fate which on the one hand allowed him to reach the job he had always coveted and yet handed him the most poisoned of chalices on arrival.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
Categories of people I would listen to on the pandemic, in some kind of order, but certainly interchangeable at each rank 1. CMO etc (largely best info as they are taking advice from all the below) 2. Virologists 3. Anyone from the ONS and equivalents 4. Infectious disease epidemiologists 5. Infectious disease modellers (with the obvious caveats about inputs) 6. NHS chiefs, e.g. at Trust level as they have a better overview than individual clinicians of the wider hospital situation 7. Clinicians (doctors and nurses) but only for reports of situation on the ground, observed severity etc; most are not public health experts 8. Aerosol physicists and others with out-of-medical-field expertise, including others with modelling expertise 9. Epidemiologists in non-infectious disease, who can call out some of the nonsense and explain how some processes/models work, but are not any better placed to predict than e.g. clinicians (this category includes me) ..... 10^9. Most journalists 10^100. The cabinet/PM
Variations, of course. Some modellers are not worth listening to, some clinicians with greater public health experience would go further up etc. A few journalists should be much higher. Aerosol physicists had vital information early on that was ignored for too long.
I've left out SAGE and iSAGE as I'd rather consider individuals' expertise. SAGE behavioural experts have an important role to play, but they're not experts on the pandemic, just on behaviour. Many in iSAGE are in the lower groups due to being out of field for Covid, despite being eminent in their own fields.
That's a completely one-sided list. So all you're interested in are those with a vested interest in 'protecting the NHS' above all other concerns and with nobody else at all related.
So businesses affected or the people they're speaking through and so on are not worth listening to?
He did say 'pandemic'. Wallpaper manufacturers and consuimers [edit] and the like know **** all about viruses. Their input comes later, when we know what options the virus has left us with.
They may not know about viruses but they do know about the impact of restrictions. As do parents, education and many more. All for a virus that even without vaccines the CFR was only about 1%, so we have all options. The Swedish model was an option even pre-vaccines, let alone post-boosters.
You need to consider all the evidence in the round, not just one side of it. That is why Fraser Nelson's article on SAGE's failure to do proper modelling and only the doomcasting was so important.
As I said yesterday, Fraser Nelson deserves an OBE for that reporting, it was possibly the most important scrutiny of the scientists we've seen through the entire pandemic and it came from an entirely unexpected source.
Like your post through gritted teeth, Philip, because Fraser Nelson.
Sir Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust and formerly Sage has said this morning on radio it is reasonable for HMG to wait 24 to 48 hours to look at the data, particularly that from London and not doing something was a decision
London seems to be the principal concern and that is hardly surprising with a third of its population unvaccinated
This does raise the question as to why the country is to be subjected to more restrictions because many Londoner's are not willing to do the right thing and get vaccinated and should there be targeted regional restrictions
It is also good to hear a prominent scientist backing the HMG
I think this “third unvaccinated” number is wrong. The denominator in the calculation is incorrect.
Yep, trouble is both* available denominators are incorrect. NIMS because people don't always have GP etc where they are (particularly students) and ONS mid-year estimates because they're often not that great, we're ten years out from the last census and a lot has happened since then (Brexit, Covid). Probably somewhere between the two though. Census data out in the spring will give a much better idea, but it will hopefully be less important by then.
*there are other estimates available, like Ethpop etc. But I don't know whether they show a very different picture
Some clever - and sophisticated - analyses indicating that the Omicron wave may be significantly milder than all previous ones, also in the UK (i.e. London). For the first time during the pandemic, there is a clear 'decorrelation' between case numbers and hospital admissions."
Some clever - and sophisticated - analyses indicating that the Omicron wave may be significantly milder than all previous ones, also in the UK (i.e. London). For the first time during the pandemic, there is a clear 'decorrelation' between case numbers and hospital admissions."
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
I didn't say it did make him a medical doctor. My cousin has recently qualified as a medical doctor but I'm pretty sure she doesn't know as much about these subjects as John Campbell does.
That doesn't make John Campbell an expert in the subject.
This is the only video I've seen from him, which a pro-hydroxychloroquine friend sent me last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro claims in the first minute that hydroxychloroquine "is an effective treatment" and "seems to lower the death rate by 30%"
He then goes on in the second minute to say that the Recovery trial showed no effect because they gave the wrong dose which is "bemusing at best" and says something strange is going on. Hmmm. Maybe someone with some expertise can confirm, but my understanding is that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. And hinting that something "very strange" is going on to make other studies use the wrong dose seems irresponsible. I mean I assume the Recovery trial had a reason for using the dose they did, and Campbell keeps repeating that he can't understand why they used that dosage but he doesn't seem to have made any attempt whatsoever to find out their reasons - instead he just keeps repeating that something strange is going on.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR as a liberal I could easily work with centre right Tories and Social Democrats, but what I hadn't thought of is my liberal views (reduced state interference, disestablishment of the church, universal basic income, etc, etc) would make me an extremist within that group. Never thought of myself as an extremist.
Very few people are extremists in their own minds - it's mostly a classic "eye of the beholder" thing, though there are some types of behaviour (e.g. violence and abuse) which most of us would immediately call extremist even if they were committed by a centrist. Because, as someone else said, one century's extremism is another's obvious truth, one shouldn't be afraid of it per se. Most of us are extreme about something, aren't we, even if it's pineapple on pizza?
I think to be useful one has to distinguish between opinions and personality. Richard Tyndall has sharply-defined views, some of which I agree with, but nobody would regard him as other than sensible and moderate in the way he puts them forward. Leon has variable views, immoderately expressed - I quite like him but he's temperamentally an extremist. I'm interested in reading the opinions of anyone who puts their case rationally; anyone else is mostly best heard for amusement.
HYUFD is certainly right that PR would lead to a spread of parties - in most PR countries, you get about 5 (far left, social democrat, liberal, conservative, nationalist), though with a low threshold to enter Parliament you get more. Denmark's threshold is 2%, so they have 10 parties, and you can choose fine distinctions of flavour - for instance, there's a party which favours liberal economics but is quite keen on social justice and pacifism. It works pretty well, and everyone more or less gets on and accepts the broad coalitions that necessarily result.
If you thought the arrogance, incompetence, selfishness, laziness and entitlement of the Prime Minister was only a Westminster Bubble story, then here is the definitive proof that you are 100% wrong. You don’t get better cut-through than this nowadays:
Daily Mail (yes, Daily Mail) headline:
- “He's lost the room! Darts fans sing 'Stand up if you hate Boris' in unison at the World Championships while football fans chant expletives about him as the fallout from the No10 Christmas party rows continues”
His only way out now retaining a modicum of dignity is the Long Covid explanation. Up with your hands Boris and admit the decades of overeating, over drinking and promiscuity had left you woefully ill-prepared for a nasty viral infection. You are not well and you need to focus on your many, many children, and your own health. About 25% of the population will feel sorry for you and wish you well. The other 75% will shout Fuck Off and Good Riddance. The Conservative parliamentary group is in the latter category.
It’s fun to laugh at everyone singing songs about the prime minister - but under almost any other PM, and certainly under a PM from any other party, there wouldn’t be a crowd of 3,000 people at the darts.
1) I’m not laughing.
2) It’s not fun.
3) “3,000 people at the darts” actually gets to the very heart of the problem(s)
At what point Sandpit have you had enough? You’re a good Tory. You are within Johnson’s “constituency” (as in his support base rather than geographically). You share his ideology. You are one of his “season ticket holders”, as @dixiedean put it upthread. So, at what point do you simply have to call it a day for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka Binky the Clown?
I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson, but he was a necessary part of getting something that looked like Brexit through.
Happy to see him replaced in the new year - unless he can quickly steady the ship with a new Cummings, there will be a rout in the local elections which will likely be the trigger.
I do laugh at all the people shouting about the PM at an event, unaware of the irony that if the other lot were in charge it would be being held behind closed doors.
Cummings never steadied any ship. All his qualities were essentially destructive.
The issue is, that Cummings’ departure has left a massive hole where there needs to be someone actually running the show in No.10.
The problem, as discussed a couple of days ago, is that no-one who’s going to be any good wants the job - because of the wife. How do you solve a problem like Carrie?
The wife, the chief of staff, the press spokesperson and the mayoral candidate. Only one person to blame as the others are all overrated in importance. He rode a wave of populism with a wholly unsustainable coalition on a cause he never really believed in. The damage he will have done to the Tories in ridding it of its one nation wing will take at least a decade to unravel by which time a more sophisticated metropolitan and fairly angry electorate will have facilitated some changes to stop that happening again.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR as a liberal I could easily work with centre right Tories and Social Democrats, but what I hadn't thought of is my liberal views (reduced state interference, disestablishment of the church, universal basic income, etc, etc) would make me an extremist within that group. Never thought of myself as an extremist.
Disestablishment? That makes you a raving subversive and treasonous enemy of the state, by the standards of some folk on here. Yet the Scots achieved that a century ago. Different polities, indeed.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
I didn't say it did make him a medical doctor. My cousin has recently qualified as a medical doctor but I'm pretty sure she doesn't know as much about these subjects as John Campbell does.
That doesn't make John Campbell an expert in the subject.
This is the only video I've seen from him, which a pro-hydroxychloroquine friend sent me last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro claims in the first minute that hydroxychloroquine "is an effective treatment" and "seems to lower the death rate by 30%"
He then goes on in the second minute to say that the Recovery trial showed no effect because they gave the wrong dose which is "bemusing at best" and says something strange is going on. Hmmm. Maybe someone with some expertise can confirm, but my understanding is that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. And hinting that something "very strange" is going on to make other studies use the wrong dose seems irresponsible. I mean I assume the Recovery trial had a reason for using the dose they did, and Campbell keeps repeating that he can't understand why they used that dosage but he doesn't seem to have made any attempt whatsoever to find out their reasons - instead he just keeps repeating that something strange is going on.
Given the hours of output he produces each week, I'd be surprised if he didn't fall down rabbit holes occasionally. But I still think that his channel is one of the best out there for Covid stuff.
My personal favourite was his obsession with covid dogs: sniffer dogs that could smell covid. Whilst probably real, the chances of finding and training large quantities of dogs in a time to have a real effect seemed rather optimistic...
(On that, I'd rather scientists look at *how* dogs could smell out Covid, and look if it is possible to create a machine that could do the same. Machine olfaction is a growing area of interest.)
It may well be that the Cabinet has made the right decision, since what many scientists have suggested that the structure of coronovirus makes it likely that if it is more transmissable then it may be less virulent. Certainly the Astra Zeneca team were saying it was a good working hypothesis even before the Omicron varient was identified. However when looking at thousands of lives, the scientists are paid to be cautious and in the real world nobody can be sure.
The problem is that it is now not what Johnson does that people object to, it is what he IS, So, although delay and hesitation may indeed be the rational response, he will get no credit. This because hesitation is not a decision and nobody wants to listen to him if he does crack down anyway.
The government is now discredited and wont get the reward, eben if they take the right decision, Johnson will linger until the likely massacre of the local elections and then the Tories will go into yet another introspective leadership blood bath.
FWIW Tobias Ellwood is making a lot of running and I am surprised he is not in the betting. I think he is a figure that could pull together the May faction and also some of the ERG, while also being attractive to some grandees.
If you thought the arrogance, incompetence, selfishness, laziness and entitlement of the Prime Minister was only a Westminster Bubble story, then here is the definitive proof that you are 100% wrong. You don’t get better cut-through than this nowadays:
Daily Mail (yes, Daily Mail) headline:
- “He's lost the room! Darts fans sing 'Stand up if you hate Boris' in unison at the World Championships while football fans chant expletives about him as the fallout from the No10 Christmas party rows continues”
His only way out now retaining a modicum of dignity is the Long Covid explanation. Up with your hands Boris and admit the decades of overeating, over drinking and promiscuity had left you woefully ill-prepared for a nasty viral infection. You are not well and you need to focus on your many, many children, and your own health. About 25% of the population will feel sorry for you and wish you well. The other 75% will shout Fuck Off and Good Riddance. The Conservative parliamentary group is in the latter category.
It’s fun to laugh at everyone singing songs about the prime minister - but under almost any other PM, and certainly under a PM from any other party, there wouldn’t be a crowd of 3,000 people at the darts.
1) I’m not laughing.
2) It’s not fun.
3) “3,000 people at the darts” actually gets to the very heart of the problem(s)
At what point Sandpit have you had enough? You’re a good Tory. You are within Johnson’s “constituency” (as in his support base rather than geographically). You share his ideology. You are one of his “season ticket holders”, as @dixiedean put it upthread. So, at what point do you simply have to call it a day for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka Binky the Clown?
I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson, but he was a necessary part of getting something that looked like Brexit through.
Happy to see him replaced in the new year - unless he can quickly steady the ship with a new Cummings, there will be a rout in the local elections which will likely be the trigger.
I do laugh at all the people shouting about the PM at an event, unaware of the irony that if the other lot were in charge it would be being held behind closed doors.
Cummings never steadied any ship. All his qualities were essentially destructive.
The issue is, that Cummings’ departure has left a massive hole where there needs to be someone actually running the show in No.10.
The problem, as discussed a couple of days ago, is that no-one who’s going to be any good wants the job - because of the wife. How do you solve a problem like Carrie?
The wife, the chief of staff, the press spokesperson and the mayoral candidate. Only one person to blame as the others are all overrated in importance. He rode a wave of populism with a wholly unsustainable coalition on a cause he never really believed in. The damage he will have done to the Tories in ridding it of its one nation wing will take at least a decade to unravel by which time a more sophisticated metropolitan and fairly angry electorate will have facilitated some changes to stop that happening again.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR Labour would also split, with Corbynites starting a new far left party and maybe a new Blairite party too. A few Tories might join RefUK, I doubt a new far right party would be formed however although it is possible the likes of For Britain or Britain First could win a seat or two under PR
PR would almost certainly mean a much, err, more diverse set of views represented in Parliament. Expect Nigel Farage and Carl Benjamin on one side, and the likes of Laura Murray and Ash Sarkar on the other.
Whether or not that’s good or bad for democracy, is an exercise left to the reader.
This depends on a couple of different factors, including the type of PR voting system used and the choices of the electorate.
You can find examples where PR leads to a dramatic splintering of parties and there are others where it doesn't so much.
For example, there would be a big difference between an STV system that treated Edinburgh (& East Lothian) as one large six-member constituency, or one where they were split into two constituencies of three MPs each.
Why do newspapers publish articles like this, knowing they’ll end straight up in Private Eye?
My terrible time, having our extended family’s Maldives holiday extended by a fortnight, for free, because of a failed Covid test, but with no-one actually unwell.
Sounds like the terrible time when the Icelandic volcano forced me ton spend another week on the South coast of france in the massive house we had rented.
That did actually have some stress though as none of us had smart phones then so trying to book transport out of there was hard.
Did you have to pay for the house for another week.
IIRC reduced rate because the next renters due in were unable to travel because of the volcano.
The MIPTV Media Market (I think) event had just finished the day of the Volcano so the whole area completely emptied of hire cars within seconds. There was also a nationwide rail strike that was coming to an end but the regional union in the south was having a bonus extra strike.
In the end we eventually managed to snag some regional then TGV tickets up to Lille then Eurostar out of the country.
It was hell travelling first class on the TGV (tickets were cheaper for some reason), let me tell you.
Does that make him a medical doctor? I would have thought no. And is that a particularly relevant PhD for the things he is talking about? Just find it a bit misleading for him to use "Dr" in the circumstances.
He was promoting hydroxychloroquine in at least one video I saw last year, and apparently ivermectin more recently, so I find him generally a bit suspect.
I didn't say it did make him a medical doctor. My cousin has recently qualified as a medical doctor but I'm pretty sure she doesn't know as much about these subjects as John Campbell does.
That doesn't make John Campbell an expert in the subject.
This is the only video I've seen from him, which a pro-hydroxychloroquine friend sent me last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro claims in the first minute that hydroxychloroquine "is an effective treatment" and "seems to lower the death rate by 30%"
He then goes on in the second minute to say that the Recovery trial showed no effect because they gave the wrong dose which is "bemusing at best" and says something strange is going on. Hmmm. Maybe someone with some expertise can confirm, but my understanding is that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. And hinting that something "very strange" is going on to make other studies use the wrong dose seems irresponsible. I mean I assume the Recovery trial had a reason for using the dose they did, and Campbell keeps repeating that he can't understand why they used that dosage but he doesn't seem to have made any attempt whatsoever to find out their reasons - instead he just keeps repeating that something strange is going on.
Ivermectin manufacturer Merck did not directly comment on the supply issues affecting PRINCIPLE. However, as part of a longer statement on the drug provided to MedPage Today via email, the company said that it has "concluded that the probability of ivermectin providing a potentially safe and efficacious treatment option for SARS-CoV-2 infection is low and have prioritized internal efforts towards the development of alternate candidates that provide a higher probability of success for the treatment of COVID-19."
The thing I hate about this country is that’s it’s run in exactly the same way as the Oxford Union. Forget Eton, or even Oxford University as a whole, abolish the Oxford Union and the improvement would be marked.
Boris is actually only the first Oxford Union president to be PM since Ted Heath. Blair and Cameron were not even members of the Oxford Union when at Oxford. Hague managed to achieve the double of a first at Oxford and president of the Union but that did not help him win in 2001, Blair trounced him, so not sure that is true.
In any case the Oxford Union is not just politics, it attracts speakers from a broad range of fields including scientists, historians, actors, musicians, generals, religious leaders, journalists, entrepreneurs and business leaders etc
My understanding is that warrant or no warrant debt enforcers have no power to break into a house through a locked over an unpaid energy bill, especially not in the absence of the owner, and if they do they are committing the crime of breaking and entering.
So how come these people have not been named and prosecuted? £500 goodwill gesture doesn't begin to address the gravity of what they've done.
And how come the CEO and the payments division are not also in the dock for conspiring to gain unlawful entry and pervert the course of justice?
Because that's what it will take to stop this nonsense.
Edit - I'm sure I've asked this question before, but I've forgotten the answer. At the same time, the mere fact it's still ongoing is pretty outrageous.
Normal people don't have enough access to the law to enforce their rights. In this case the poor woman was being harassed by this company over a debt she didn't owe, and she should have been able to use the courts to force them to desist when contacting them directly failed to have the desired effect.
We need to dramatically widen access to the courts, so that the law can protect ordinary people from abuses of power by large companies and the government.
I had a constituent whose door was broken down without warning by a team of helmeted police with batons. They were trying to arrest a major drug dealer but got the streets mixed up. After 2 MONTHS she came to me to say that she'd not yet had more than a brief apology and a promise to pay for the repairs at some future point. I contacted them and they coughed up within two weeks and gave a proper fulsome apology, but it shouldn't need an MP's intervention.
She wasn't even especially traumatised - she reckoned that "the police sometimes behave like that, what can one do?" It wasn't an especially rough area, just a largely WWC village.
If you thought the arrogance, incompetence, selfishness, laziness and entitlement of the Prime Minister was only a Westminster Bubble story, then here is the definitive proof that you are 100% wrong. You don’t get better cut-through than this nowadays:
Daily Mail (yes, Daily Mail) headline:
- “He's lost the room! Darts fans sing 'Stand up if you hate Boris' in unison at the World Championships while football fans chant expletives about him as the fallout from the No10 Christmas party rows continues”
His only way out now retaining a modicum of dignity is the Long Covid explanation. Up with your hands Boris and admit the decades of overeating, over drinking and promiscuity had left you woefully ill-prepared for a nasty viral infection. You are not well and you need to focus on your many, many children, and your own health. About 25% of the population will feel sorry for you and wish you well. The other 75% will shout Fuck Off and Good Riddance. The Conservative parliamentary group is in the latter category.
It’s fun to laugh at everyone singing songs about the prime minister - but under almost any other PM, and certainly under a PM from any other party, there wouldn’t be a crowd of 3,000 people at the darts.
1) I’m not laughing.
2) It’s not fun.
3) “3,000 people at the darts” actually gets to the very heart of the problem(s)
At what point Sandpit have you had enough? You’re a good Tory. You are within Johnson’s “constituency” (as in his support base rather than geographically). You share his ideology. You are one of his “season ticket holders”, as @dixiedean put it upthread. So, at what point do you simply have to call it a day for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka Binky the Clown?
I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson, but he was a necessary part of getting something that looked like Brexit through.
Happy to see him replaced in the new year - unless he can quickly steady the ship with a new Cummings, there will be a rout in the local elections which will likely be the trigger.
I do laugh at all the people shouting about the PM at an event, unaware of the irony that if the other lot were in charge it would be being held behind closed doors.
Cummings never steadied any ship. All his qualities were essentially destructive.
The issue is, that Cummings’ departure has left a massive hole where there needs to be someone actually running the show in No.10.
The problem, as discussed a couple of days ago, is that no-one who’s going to be any good wants the job - because of the wife. How do you solve a problem like Carrie?
The wife, the chief of staff, the press spokesperson and the mayoral candidate. Only one person to blame as the others are all overrated in importance. He rode a wave of populism with a wholly unsustainable coalition on a cause he never really believed in. The damage he will have done to the Tories in ridding it of its one nation wing will take at least a decade to unravel by which time a more sophisticated metropolitan and fairly angry electorate will have facilitated some changes to stop that happening again.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR Labour would also split, with Corbynites starting a new far left party and maybe a new Blairite party too. A few Tories might join RefUK, I doubt a new far right party would be formed however although it is possible the likes of For Britain or Britain First could win a seat or two under PR
I expect we would see a new centerist bloc of the right of labour, the left of the Tories and the Lib dems.
The One Nation boys and girls aren’t coming back. Once PR is introduced there will be two centre-right parties and a far-right party split from what was once the Tory Party:
a) the sane ones b) the mad ones c) the frothing mad ones
Feel free to allocate prominent members of the PB herd to the appropriate sect. I’ll start with Richard Nabavi in Sect A. (Nice article yesterday Richard!)
If we had PR as a liberal I could easily work with centre right Tories and Social Democrats, but what I hadn't thought of is my liberal views (reduced state interference, disestablishment of the church, universal basic income, etc, etc) would make me an extremist within that group. Never thought of myself as an extremist.
Very few people are extremists in their own minds - it's mostly a classic "eye of the beholder" thing, though there are some types of behaviour (e.g. violence and abuse) which most of us would immediately call extremist even if they were committed by a centrist. Because, as someone else said, one century's extremism is another's obvious truth, one shouldn't be afraid of it per se. Most of us are extreme about something, aren't we, even if it's pineapple on pizza?
I think to be useful one has to distinguish between opinions and personality. Richard Tyndall has sharply-defined views, some of which I agree with, but nobody would regard him as other than sensible and moderate in the way he puts them forward. Leon has variable views, immoderately expressed - I quite like him but he's temperamentally an extremist. I'm interested in reading the opinions of anyone who puts their case rationally; anyone else is mostly best heard for amusement.
HYUFD is certainly right that PR would lead to a spread of parties - in most PR countries, you get about 5 (far left, social democrat, liberal, conservative, nationalist), though with a low threshold to enter Parliament you get more. Denmark's threshold is 2%, so they have 10 parties, and you can choose fine distinctions of flavour - for instance, there's a party which favours liberal economics but is quite keen on social justice and pacifism. It works pretty well, and everyone more or less gets on and accepts the broad coalitions that necessarily result.
I think your last sentence ought to be “It works pretty well if Everyone more or less gets on and accepts the broad coalitions that necessarily result”.
When you have significantly sized parties that other groups refuse to work with that will cause a few problems.
Former President Donald J. Trump, who for years falsely claimed vaccines were dangerous and pointedly declined to be seen getting vaccinated against Covid-19 while in office, was booed at an event in Houston after saying publicly for the first time that he had received a booster shot.
Mr. Trump was in Texas on Sunday as part of a speaking tour with Bill O’Reilly, the author and former Fox News host
Comments
"It is reasonable to pause" for 24, 36 hours to see London hospitalisation data, but if it's bad they "will have to act...in a more draconian way than might have been possible had they acted a few days ago"
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1473211648332685317
So 15% in hotspots. Whilst the BMA number perhaps relates to an overall figure.
Glad I had my polyp op a few weeks ago.
Economists etc are not worth listening to on what is going to happen with the pandemic, b which I mean what is going to happen with cases, hospitalisations and deaths over the next x days (and there are economists out there fitting exponential curves to two data points). They are absolutely worth listening to on what the impacts of the pandemic and any NPIs will be on people.
You need to consider all the evidence in the round, not just one side of it. That is why Fraser Nelson's article on SAGE's failure to do proper modelling and only the doomcasting was so important.
As I said yesterday, Fraser Nelson deserves an OBE for that reporting, it was possibly the most important scrutiny of the scientists we've seen through the entire pandemic and it came from an entirely unexpected source.
Also we should not only be worried about what is happening next but also what is happening longer term, even if we only wanted to look at a narrow health view.
Specifically, what is going to happen in terms of cases. hospitalisations and deaths in the short-medium term. Analysis on the direct costs of Covid.
Analysis on the costs of actions to fight Covid is also essential to making decisions on whether or not to take those actions.
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/problems-with-your-energy-supply/if-youve-been-told-your-energy-supply-will-be-disconnected/
I'm not a legal bod either but surely a crime involves a measure of intent? So - assuming they have the powers/warrant to force entry at all - then trashing the wrong door isn't a crime.
We need to dramatically widen access to the courts, so that the law can protect ordinary people from abuses of power by large companies and the government.
There's been a lot of discussion about the models in recent days and whether the models are being designed to fit the policy prescriptions. This is almost certainly the case. The modellers say that they are only modelling what they have been asked to model and that is "normal". And there is no point modelling for benign scenarios that require no action.
But it seems to be that what has been going on is mixing up modelling for risk management/disaster planning and modelling to inform policy decisions. The former requires no particular work around probability of outcomes (and by definition only focusses on bad scenarios), the latter absolutely does (with the basic calculation being whether the cost of action outweighs the cost of inaction - the latter obviously being probability adjusted). Usually in disaster planning I guess you look at extreme (but unlikely) scenarios, and see if there are any very low cost interventions that can help against them, whilst planning for what you would do if the worst happens. But you don't take highly costly action in advance on the basis of the worst happening.
Inheritance tax into the Exchequer. Inheritances boosting spending. Much lower requirements for public spending on the NHS and care for the elderly.
Let's take a balanced view, and kill a granny over Christmas.
And the Pm doesn’t need to attend them all
Categories of people I would listen to if I want to have an idea of what is going to happen to Covid cases, admissions and deaths in the next month or so...
Better?
That's what we spend a lot of time talking about on here. Then, once we've set out a view on what we think is going to happen, we then argue for having/not having various NPIs (last doesn't apply to you Philip as you always argue for no NPIs and that's fine, but most people on here seem to have an 'if it really is going to get that bad then I would accept short term NPIs' attitude)
Edit: and drop the aerosol physicists example as their time has been and gone, but keep others with out of field expertise - if you can build a model, have good data and can engage brain then it's possible to have something to say.
No one outside the pages of Private Eye had really heard of Marina Wheeler. Boris breaks up with her? Big deal. Boris abandons an unspecified number of kids? Well, heh, “that’s just Boris”.
If/when he welches on Carrie, that’s front page news in the tabloids. For days. And there’s a “PM abandons little Wilfrid and Romy” angle. He might want to go and sow his wild oats as he has done countless times before, but it would finish him politically when it was found out.
So whatever buyer’s remorse he may have, he’s tethered to Carrie as long as he remains PM.
(Incidentally, call me slow, but I hadn’t realised Carrie is the daughter of Matthew Symonds, co-founder of the Independent.)
David Gauke has a good article on vaxports
https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2021/12/david-gauke-we-need-real-vaccine-passports-now-the-unvaccinated-must-meet-the-cost-of-their-anti-social-behaviour.html
They threatened us with court action believing that we would fold.
We offered them £10k to make them go away.
They refused and sued us.
It took less than 1 hour for the judge to throw their case out for being self-evidently flawed.
We are even having "people being selfish" being put forward as the reason why London figures seem to be peaking and set to drop rapidly in coming days (theory that people aren't taking tests and/or aren't reporting them so they don't have to isolate).
If somebody was saying to you the Great God Ra has said that we must slaughter the firstborn of every family in order to halt the virus would you weigh up what the virus will do, or dismiss that out of hand?
Plus of course if you're in a fast moving environment you may be able to better think in advance what the impact of restrictions will be, while having far less clarity on what the virus will do (as its evolving) so it might be worth thinking about the cons of restrictions first and thinking about the virus afterwards. That way you can make speedy and informed thoughts.
They all come from the medical side with no one considering the broader implications on society
The increase in Q2 2021 over Q2 2020 was 500m only.
https://www.ftadviser.com/your-industry/2021/08/20/iht-receipts-up-0-5bn-on-last-year/
Not really a "big plus".
As per other posts, I meant (and was stupid not to spell it out)
"Categories of people I would listen to if I want to have an idea of what is going to happen to Covid cases, admissions and deaths in the next month or so..."
It's not a shoppng list for who the government should listen to.
Parents interned separately and separate from each other not allowed to eat together.
Ugh.
Maybe if it was called “KOALA” rather than the fierce and serious sounding COBRA then people would see it differently.
The intent is to break and enter. The warrant is a safe harbour. If they don’t have the warrant then the crime is committed
The infection rate is stated to be about one third of the UK's, but seen in the context of the doubling time, that represents only a lag of about three or four days.
Omicron is hitting the USA much sooner than expected.
If we only listened to your list and not to journalists, then it wouldn't have come to light that the SAGE documents were deeply flawed because they were only sharing the scenarios with catastrophic outcomes and they weren't sharing the other scenarios. It took Fraser Nelson to bring that to light, when really you would have hoped that someone else on your list would have said it first so that he never needed to dig that out.
And it depends on what he was doing instead. He might have been playing the violin. Or he might have been talking to President Biden about the Ukraine.
We don’t know. And in the absence of that information it’s futile to make a judgement on the PM’s diary management
Jon Ronson's programme about conspiracy theories is on Radio 4 atm.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012qxd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro
claims in the first minute that hydroxychloroquine "is an effective treatment" and "seems to lower the death rate by 30%"
He then goes on in the second minute to say that the Recovery trial showed no effect because they gave the wrong dose which is "bemusing at best" and says something strange is going on. Hmmm. Maybe someone with some expertise can confirm, but my understanding is that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. And hinting that something "very strange" is going on to make other studies use the wrong dose seems irresponsible. I mean I assume the Recovery trial had a reason for using the dose they did, and Campbell keeps repeating that he can't understand why they used that dosage but he doesn't seem to have made any attempt whatsoever to find out their reasons - instead he just keeps repeating that something strange is going on.
Just read the comments...
By the way, does anyone know why the Principle ivermectin trial has been "paused"?
https://www.principletrial.org/
Whether or not that’s good or bad for democracy, is an exercise left to the reader.
On the modelling, there have also been models at every stage that have shown more positive outcomes (e.g. the one posted here a few days back showing that Omicron looks manageable without restricitons). They tend not to have been highlighted for a combination of (according to personal preference) the press preferring to highlight doom scenarios/members of the cabinet/SAGE/iSAGE preferring to highlight doom scenarios.
On my list, 2, 7, (6, in the July reopening) and some in 8, at least (e.g. Tim Spector, although he's also in 9, arguable 4 for recent work, Heneghan etc), have been pushing more positive view on whether we can cope with Omicron without NPIs
Edit: God, I'm arguing with Philip. I promised myself I'd never do that again. Life is too short. So, you're right Philip, Ok? I concede
And that's before we get to the government being determined by politicians after the electorate have cast their votes and without the need to consult the pesky public any further.
@BallouxFrancois
Some clever - and sophisticated - analyses indicating that the Omicron wave may be significantly milder than all previous ones, also in the UK (i.e. London). For the first time during the pandemic, there is a clear 'decorrelation' between case numbers and hospital admissions."
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1473084995145240578
Sir Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust and formerly Sage has said this morning on radio it is reasonable for HMG to wait 24 to 48 hours to look at the data, particularly that from London and not doing something was a decision
London seems to be the principal concern and that is hardly surprising with a third of its population unvaccinated
This does raise the question as to why the country is to be subjected to more restrictions because many Londoner's are not willing to do the right thing and get vaccinated and should there be targeted regional restrictions
It is also good to hear a prominent scientist backing the HMG
And then Like it. Hague was the right man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Her father was married to a different woman than her mother when she was conceived. His father, former Guardian editor and Labour MEP Baron Ardwick, was married to a different woman than his mother when he was conceived.
Double vaccinating 5 year olds doesn't make up for that.
I watched Boris Johnson interviewed on Sky News last evening and he was incoherent. Rambling answers to simple questions - it's easy to sound cheery and positive in normal times but these aren't normal times and it could have been the making of Boris Johnson the politician. The reputation for being the upbeat clown enhanced by a measured proportionate response to one of the gravest national crises of recent times.
However, all that has happened is his limitations have been cruelly exposed - he's a Prime Minister for a sunny summer's day not a cold wet winter afternoon (Theresa May the exact opposite). His normal joviality and bonhomie works when things are going well and appeals particularly to those for whom politics is a peripheral interest.
This is a crisis for which gravitas rather than levitas is the appropriate response and Johnson just doesn't do gravitas and with more people taking a keener interest in what is happening his limitations have been widely exposed to a larger number of people more quickly.
Johnson may yet reflect on the capricious nature of fate which on the one hand allowed him to reach the job he had always coveted and yet handed him the most poisoned of chalices on arrival.
*there are other estimates available, like Ethpop etc. But I don't know whether they show a very different picture
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/omicron-symptoms-far-milder-s-africa-hospital-group-ceo-says
Amazing really as it is the same virus and we are all human
I think to be useful one has to distinguish between opinions and personality. Richard Tyndall has sharply-defined views, some of which I agree with, but nobody would regard him as other than sensible and moderate in the way he puts them forward. Leon has variable views, immoderately expressed - I quite like him but he's temperamentally an extremist. I'm interested in reading the opinions of anyone who puts their case rationally; anyone else is mostly best heard for amusement.
HYUFD is certainly right that PR would lead to a spread of parties - in most PR countries, you get about 5 (far left, social democrat, liberal, conservative, nationalist), though with a low threshold to enter Parliament you get more. Denmark's threshold is 2%, so they have 10 parties, and you can choose fine distinctions of flavour - for instance, there's a party which favours liberal economics but is quite keen on social justice and pacifism. It works pretty well, and everyone more or less gets on and accepts the broad coalitions that necessarily result.
My personal favourite was his obsession with covid dogs: sniffer dogs that could smell covid. Whilst probably real, the chances of finding and training large quantities of dogs in a time to have a real effect seemed rather optimistic...
(On that, I'd rather scientists look at *how* dogs could smell out Covid, and look if it is possible to create a machine that could do the same. Machine olfaction is a growing area of interest.)
The problem is that it is now not what Johnson does that people object to, it is what he IS, So, although delay and hesitation may indeed be the rational response, he will get no credit. This because hesitation is not a decision and nobody wants to listen to him if he does crack down anyway.
The government is now discredited and wont get the reward, eben if they take the right decision, Johnson will linger until the likely massacre of the local elections and then the Tories will go into yet another introspective leadership blood bath.
FWIW Tobias Ellwood is making a lot of running and I am surprised he is not in the betting. I think he is a figure that could pull together the May faction and also some of the ERG, while also being attractive to some grandees.
You can find examples where PR leads to a dramatic splintering of parties and there are others where it doesn't so much.
For example, there would be a big difference between an STV system that treated Edinburgh (& East Lothian) as one large six-member constituency, or one where they were split into two constituencies of three MPs each.
The MIPTV Media Market (I think) event had just finished the day of the Volcano so the whole area completely emptied of hire cars within seconds. There was also a nationwide rail strike that was coming to an end but the regional union in the south was having a bonus extra strike.
In the end we eventually managed to snag some regional then TGV tickets up to Lille then Eurostar out of the country.
It was hell travelling first class on the TGV (tickets were cheaper for some reason), let me tell you.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/96194
Ivermectin manufacturer Merck did not directly comment on the supply issues affecting PRINCIPLE. However, as part of a longer statement on the drug provided to MedPage Today via email, the company said that it has "concluded that the probability of ivermectin providing a potentially safe and efficacious treatment option for SARS-CoV-2 infection is low and have prioritized internal efforts towards the development of alternate candidates that provide a higher probability of success for the treatment of COVID-19."
In any case the Oxford Union is not just politics, it attracts speakers from a broad range of fields including scientists, historians, actors, musicians, generals, religious leaders, journalists, entrepreneurs and business leaders etc
She wasn't even especially traumatised - she reckoned that "the police sometimes behave like that, what can one do?" It wasn't an especially rough area, just a largely WWC village.
Wouldn't be terrible.
When you have significantly sized parties that other groups refuse to work with that will cause a few problems.
I'd like to think even Boris would turn up to one of those.
Mr. Trump was in Texas on Sunday as part of a speaking tour with Bill O’Reilly, the author and former Fox News host
NY Times