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The voters think 2022 will be Boris Johnson’s annus horribilis – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited January 2022 in General
The voters think 2022 will be Boris Johnson’s annus horribilis – politicalbetting.com

That includes over half of 2019 Conservative voters, while only 4 in 10 2019 Labour voters think that Keir Starmer won’t be Leader of the Labour Party by the end of 2022 pic.twitter.com/RUJjZmMVh5

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • TomsToms Posts: 2,478
    Why don't we go back to using Latin as the universal international language?
    "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres"
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Wouldn’t be Boxing Day without England getting skittled in Melbourne.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    :smiley:
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,008
    edited December 2021
    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    To top it all, you don't even know what day it is!

    ;-)
  • Good morning, everyone.

    Snow underfoot, falling rain, and an icy wind. Not delightful outside.
  • MikeLMikeL Posts: 7,281
    edited December 2021
    Note this from the MORI article:

    "hopes are higher for Joe Biden in his position as President of the United States Half (51%) think it is unlikely that he will lose his job before the year is done"

    All this (together with expectations of a GE) shows is that the public have no knowledge whatsoever of the minutiae of politics.

    People aren't interested. Which is why people just vote on overall big picture general impression. None of the detail matters.

    It's also why I don't think what happens with the pandemic or lockdowns will have any impact on voting intention. Most people simply don't think it's a political issue.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Good morning, everyone.

    Snow underfoot, falling rain, and an icy wind. Not delightful outside.

    Bah. I've got to do a 10K run at first light, and it's going to be a wet one.

    Actually, the location might be of interest: I'm staying near the medieval Swarkestone Causeway, which I've always wanted to walk over. But it is narrow, and there is no pavement. I'm hoping that traffic will be light early on a Boxing Day Sunday.

    Incidentally, the bridge was as far south as Bonny Prince Charlie's men got, before they high-tailed it back north.

    So I'm going to run the mile over the bridge and causeway, head towards Melbourne, then head back along the old Midland Railway Melbourne branch - which includes another beautiful bridge over the river, this time cast iron.

    Or I may chicken out and do a different run...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarkestone_Bridge
    https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101280933-railway-bridge-over-the-river-trent-melbourne
  • Mr. Jessop, thou art mad. I hope you survive.
  • One year on, most voters say Brexit has gone badly

    Adam Drummond, of Opinium, said the most striking finding was that Leavers were now more hesitant about the virtues of Brexit than previously.

    “For most of the Brexit process any time you’d ask a question that could be boiled down to ‘is Brexit good or bad?’ you’d have all of the Remainers saying ‘bad’ and all of the Leavers saying ‘good’ and these would cancel each other out,” he said.

    “Now what we’re seeing is a significant minority of Leavers saying that things are going badly or at least worse than they expected. While 59% of Remain voters said, ‘I expected it to go badly and think it has’, only 17% of Leave voters said, ‘I expected it to go well and think it has’.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/25/one-year-on-most-voters-say-brexit-has-gone-badly
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
  • Toms said:

    Why don't we go back to using Latin as the universal international language?
    "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres"

    “Universal”? Huh?

    Latin wasn’t very big in Han China, the Kushan empire, Caledonia, Hibernia, Scandinavia, Magna Germania or most of the planet for that matter.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Desmond Tutu has died aged 90: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59793726
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
  • Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
  • rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    Their [“the continent” (sic)] problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid".
    Oh, come on Robert. That’s just a whopping great porkie.

    An addiction to zero Covid? In mainland Europe? What on earth are you talking about?

    These stinking great falsehoods really need to be called out.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,725
    In the cricket, this is even more embarrassing than the last two tests.

    Root may survive for want of alternatives, although bluntly for his own sake I hope he quits.

    Bur with Thorpe, Collingwood, Jon Lewis and Richard Dawson all available as coaches surely Silverwood is toast?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,725
    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.

    (img)

    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    It’s going to be interesting to see the different approaches taken by governments in the coming weeks, as this seemingly more infectious variant becomes dominant.

    IMHO it’s pretty much impossible to stop it with NPIs, unless you go down the Chinese route, so the priority needs to be vaccinations and treatment - both of which we thankfully now have in abundance. The vulnerable can isolate if they wish, as for example my parents are doing, but we are pretty much all going to get it eventually.

    It was good to see the pushback from the Cabinet last week, as the costs of restrictions - both actual costs and reduced revenues - start to outweigh the benefits of re-introducing them.
  • Johnson has become a widely decried joke. The Duchess from the Genesis song. Someone where the act (look, my hair is a mess and I'm saying things in a stupid way) has gone from everyone roaring for more, to just roaring.

    I don't see how this abruptly gets reversed, even if England avoids more restrictions and Omicron recedes and the booster programme is a success and and and. People think he's a lying cheating scumbag ("stand up if you hate Boris") and they aren't likely to forget that opinion even if the next 6 months are perfect.

    That of course is itself unlikely in the extreme. Things won't be perfect. There will be more self-inflicted disasters because that's all he is capable of. So 2022 will be his final year in office. The only question is when he goes and who succeeds him.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,725

    Toms said:

    Why don't we go back to using Latin as the universal international language?
    "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres"

    “Universal”? Huh?

    Latin wasn’t very big in Han China, the Kushan empire, Caledonia, Hibernia, Scandinavia, Magna Germania or most of the planet for that matter.
    You forgot Arabia, Byzantium and Russia, although you were wrong to include Hibernia where it was a key language in scholarship from about the turn of the 7th century onwards.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    Their [“the continent” (sic)] problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid".
    Oh, come on Robert. That’s just a whopping great porkie.

    An addiction to zero Covid? In mainland Europe? What on earth are you talking about?

    These stinking great falsehoods really need to be called out.
    I think Germany, France and the like are much less comfortable running 50k/day cases.

    Don't you?
  • darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    I think you’re right.

    We are replacing both our remaining cars this coming year. (For many years we ran three cars, but can thankfully wave goodbye to that pattern.)

    The secondary car coming in March (an EV) is a lease deal. I am comfortable with that.

    I had been planning on purchasing a new primary car (probably also EV) in the summer, but have been horrified by the prices. It needs to be large, have excellent range, and preferably a luxury feel, and those babies ain’t cheap. Still weighing my options, but leasing is definitely on the table for that one too.

    Buying big chunks of metal, plastic and electronics you largely don’t understand just seems like a mug’s game to me.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    edited December 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.

    I believe it is largely about acquiring large volumes of new cars at massive discounts. That Nissan Micra deal I mentioned allows you to use the car for the first 3 years of its life for £5400. The car costs £15k new. The leasing company must be buying the car at a massive discount, which would make sense as it is a dated model, there is probably a surplus that the manufacturer needs to get rid of. So the price would be set by three factors: the cost of acquiring the car, the likely resale value (presumably at auction to a used car dealer), and the demand for it on the lease market.

    https://www.hotcarleasing.co.uk/car-leasing/nissan/micra/visia-hatchback-petrol-manual

    So it follows that - unless the lease has punitive provisions, as a consumer you are much better off leasing a Nissan Micra than buying it new.


  • Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    You said no restrictions. Simply nonsense.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    I think you’re right.

    We are replacing both our remaining cars this coming year. (For many years we ran three cars, but can thankfully wave goodbye to that pattern.)

    The secondary car coming in March (an EV) is a lease deal. I am comfortable with that.

    I had been planning on purchasing a new primary car (probably also EV) in the summer, but have been horrified by the prices. It needs to be large, have excellent range, and preferably a luxury feel, and those babies ain’t cheap. Still weighing my options, but leasing is definitely on the table for that one too.

    Buying big chunks of metal, plastic and electronics you largely don’t understand just seems like a mug’s game to me.
    BMW just did an SUV EV - £115k, and it got hit hard by the ugly stick!
    https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1966066

  • rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    Their [“the continent” (sic)] problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid".
    Oh, come on Robert. That’s just a whopping great porkie.

    An addiction to zero Covid? In mainland Europe? What on earth are you talking about?

    These stinking great falsehoods really need to be called out.
    I think Germany, France and the like are much less comfortable running 50k/day cases.

    Don't you?
    You said they’re addicted to zero Covid. Simply nonsense.
  • Sandpit said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    I think you’re right.

    We are replacing both our remaining cars this coming year. (For many years we ran three cars, but can thankfully wave goodbye to that pattern.)

    The secondary car coming in March (an EV) is a lease deal. I am comfortable with that.

    I had been planning on purchasing a new primary car (probably also EV) in the summer, but have been horrified by the prices. It needs to be large, have excellent range, and preferably a luxury feel, and those babies ain’t cheap. Still weighing my options, but leasing is definitely on the table for that one too.

    Buying big chunks of metal, plastic and electronics you largely don’t understand just seems like a mug’s game to me.
    BMW just did an SUV EV - £115k, and it got hit hard by the ugly stick!
    https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1966066

    Yeah, we looked at that. Has no-one at BMW heard of aerodynamics?

    Right now all the BMW EVs are “odd”. I’m waiting for them to launch a sane one, at a sane price.
  • theProletheProle Posts: 948
    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    The Fraser Nelson intervention was a paradigm shift.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111

    Good morning, everyone.

    Snow underfoot, falling rain, and an icy wind. Not delightful outside.

    Bah. I've got to do a 10K run at first light, and it's going to be a wet one.

    Actually, the location might be of interest: I'm staying near the medieval Swarkestone Causeway, which I've always wanted to walk over. But it is narrow, and there is no pavement. I'm hoping that traffic will be light early on a Boxing Day Sunday.

    Incidentally, the bridge was as far south as Bonny Prince Charlie's men got, before they high-tailed it back north.

    So I'm going to run the mile over the bridge and causeway, head towards Melbourne, then head back along the old Midland Railway Melbourne branch - which includes another beautiful bridge over the river, this time cast iron.

    Or I may chicken out and do a different run...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarkestone_Bridge
    https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101280933-railway-bridge-over-the-river-trent-melbourne
    Rather nice bridge. That entry says it's a CI bridge tout court - but surely those riveted lattice girders are wrought iron like the Meldon Viaduct?
  • darkage said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    The Fraser Nelson intervention was a paradigm shift.
    Indeed, although by some accounts, Fraser Nelson simply did not understand what the boffins were modelling.
  • Sandpit said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    I think you’re right.

    We are replacing both our remaining cars this coming year. (For many years we ran three cars, but can thankfully wave goodbye to that pattern.)

    The secondary car coming in March (an EV) is a lease deal. I am comfortable with that.

    I had been planning on purchasing a new primary car (probably also EV) in the summer, but have been horrified by the prices. It needs to be large, have excellent range, and preferably a luxury feel, and those babies ain’t cheap. Still weighing my options, but leasing is definitely on the table for that one too.

    Buying big chunks of metal, plastic and electronics you largely don’t understand just seems like a mug’s game to me.
    BMW just did an SUV EV - £115k, and it got hit hard by the ugly stick!
    https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1966066

    Yeah, we looked at that. Has no-one at BMW heard of aerodynamics?

    Right now all the BMW EVs are “odd”. I’m waiting for them to launch a sane one, at a sane price.
    Fwiw, my mate runs a 5-series hybrid and seems happy with it.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880


    Yeah, we looked at that. Has no-one at BMW heard of aerodynamics?



    It has a Cd of 0.25 making it the most aerodynamically efficient SUV ever built. What more do you want? Engineers don't design cars by just standing around looking at them...

    Everyone hated the 'big grill' G80 M3/M4 when it first came out but they look really good in the metal/plastic and now the 'small grill' F80 M3/M4 looks dated.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    theProle said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
    Some people don't like dealing with strange rattling sounds and warning lights coming on and off. A £2k used car is a bet that can go badly, sometimes it works out ok though.

    If you are trying to strike a balance between having a decent car and economics, then the best option is to buy one at year 3, preferably a reliable Japanese make, and sell it privately at year 7/8. Works out about £75 per month.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,725
    edited December 2021
    theProle said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
    Hmmm.

    One other consideration is that if the life of a car is cut in half that isn't going to do its environmental credentials any good at all.

    What's surely needed is a car which can have new batteries put in easily so they can last considerably longer.

    Edit - incidentally I agree with you, I bought second hand last year when my old faithful gave up after 12 years, because the economics of a new car didn't stack up by comparison. However, (1) that was me as a cash buyer - bring financing in and the equation changes and (2) where would we get second hand cars from if people didn't buy new?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,725
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    Although we may still get lockdown de facto if vast numbers of people have to isolate.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    darkage said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.

    I believe it is largely about acquiring large volumes of new cars at massive discounts. That Nissan Micra deal I mentioned allows you to use the car for the first 3 years of its life for £5400. The car costs £15k new. The leasing company must be buying the car at a massive discount, which would make sense as it is a dated model, there is probably a surplus that the manufacturer needs to get rid of. So the price would be set by three factors: the cost of acquiring the car, the likely resale value (presumably at auction to a used car dealer), and the demand for it on the lease market.

    https://www.hotcarleasing.co.uk/car-leasing/nissan/micra/visia-hatchback-petrol-manual

    So it follows that - unless the lease has punitive provisions, as a consumer you are much better off leasing a Nissan Micra than buying it new.
    Right now the used car market is in rude health, as the new car market is suffering from supply constraints. Lease companies will be doing very well, with today’s off-lease cars being worth more than was predicted three years ago.

    Pricing leases today though, that’s a more difficult exercise. The supply constraints will mean fewer discounts, and the rapidly-changing nature of both car technology and legislation, makes for a more difficult job setting prices for these cars three years down the line. Interest rates are also a factor, rising cost of credit will make used cars cheaper.

    At the bangernomics end of the spectrum, I predict that today’s cars are going to be difficult to run as future bangers, as the sort of things that break at 10 or 15 years become more expensive to replace, and more parts are linked to computers that require main dealer service.
  • Dura_Ace said:


    Yeah, we looked at that. Has no-one at BMW heard of aerodynamics?

    It has a Cd of 0.25 making it the most aerodynamically efficient SUV ever built. What more do you want? Engineers don't design cars by just standing around looking at them...

    Everyone hated the 'big grill' G80 M3/M4 when it first came out but they look really good in the metal/plastic and now the 'small grill' F80 M3/M4 looks dated.

    I dont think it looks ugly, but the price ffs! I had a BMW X5 hybrid until recently which was £65k 5 years ago. I thought that expensive, but £115k ! Ouch!
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,879
    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,006
    edited December 2021
    Dura_Ace said:


    Yeah, we looked at that. Has no-one at BMW heard of aerodynamics?


    It has a Cd of 0.25 making it the most aerodynamically efficient SUV ever built. What more do you want? Engineers don't design cars by just standing around looking at them...

    Everyone hated the 'big grill' G80 M3/M4 when it first came out but they look really good in the metal/plastic and now the 'small grill' F80 M3/M4 looks dated.


    I hate almost everything about this iX. BMW's vast nostrils design language is bad enough when they are a huuge grill for letting air in. When its a blanked-off grill its even worse. Plus the stupid holes where the door handles used to be, a steering wheel thats been beaten into an odd shape etc etc etc.

    EDIT - Vanilla doing weird shit to the quotes this morning
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    Good morning all. A carpet of snow covering the fields and gardens of Airedale. Slushy gunk on hard surfaces. Now raining.

  • rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,879
    Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.

    And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.

    And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
    Oh indeed, it’s the Cabinet running the show now, rather than the PM.

    The next couple of months might be good news for him on the virus front, but after that, the news is going to be energy price rises and local election defeats.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,879

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    This is my suspicion too but interested to see if I'm missing something.

    Since Omi *seems* to be less severe, you'd imagine that 'skipping' delta will lead to lower deaths.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    rkrkrk said:

    Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?

    Find out at what typical total mileage the batteries start running into problems.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    rkrkrk said:

    Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?

    Why? Lease a new one. From £225 per month. Under warranty so no risk of catastrophic failure. There are specialist EV leasing companies.

    If I was to buy a used one for a low price I would stick to a Nissan Leaf as it is proven technology.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746

    darkage said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    The Fraser Nelson intervention was a paradigm shift.
    Indeed, although by some accounts, Fraser Nelson simply did not understand what the boffins were modelling.
    Possibly more a case that civil servants were catastrophising on the basis of the modelling.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,049
    ydoethur said:

    theProle said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
    Hmmm.

    One other consideration is that if the life of a car is cut in half that isn't going to do its environmental credentials any good at all.

    What's surely needed is a car which can have new batteries put in easily so they can last considerably longer.

    Edit - incidentally I agree with you, I bought second hand last year when my old faithful gave up after 12 years, because the economics of a new car didn't stack up by comparison. However, (1) that was me as a cash buyer - bring financing in and the equation changes and (2) where would we get second hand cars from if people didn't buy new?
    Why do you think modern cars won't last? They are more reliable and don't rust. Far from depreciation, used car prices have been highly buoyant.

    I drive a Fiat 500 that I have had from new, and currently 13 years and 102 000 miles. Starts first time, doesn't burn oil, no rust at all. Apart from minor drinks in the bodywork it looks and drives like new.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    rkrkrk said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    This is my suspicion too but interested to see if I'm missing something.

    Since Omi *seems* to be less severe, you'd imagine that 'skipping' delta will lead to lower deaths.
    One hopes so, but the total number of deaths is (crudely) prevalence-cum-infectiousness x severity over the time period chosen. The UKG Cabinet assumption, insofar as it has anything so coherent in its collective mind, is AIUI that the wave will be so short as to ooutweigh the prevalence or infectiousness in combination with the apparent severity reduction. Mind, they didn't do a great job of eliminiating the drip of sustained 30-40K cases/day in the last exit wave (which looks fasr more like a steady state of badly leaking virus).
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835
    3 cases in my running club on christmas day. Looks like swerving the pub run was a good idea
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,049
    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes, that may well be so, and the thousand deaths per week for the last couple of months is not "mostly harmless".
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,725
    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    theProle said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
    Hmmm.

    One other consideration is that if the life of a car is cut in half that isn't going to do its environmental credentials any good at all.

    What's surely needed is a car which can have new batteries put in easily so they can last considerably longer.

    Edit - incidentally I agree with you, I bought second hand last year when my old faithful gave up after 12 years, because the economics of a new car didn't stack up by comparison. However, (1) that was me as a cash buyer - bring financing in and the equation changes and (2) where would we get second hand cars from if people didn't buy new?
    Why do you think modern cars won't last? They are more reliable and don't rust. Far from depreciation, used car prices have been highly buoyant.

    I drive a Fiat 500 that I have had from new, and currently 13 years and 102 000 miles. Starts first time, doesn't burn oil, no rust at all. Apart from minor drinks in the bodywork it looks and drives like new.
    The discussion was about how the electronics on electric cars will go in 7-10 years rather than 15-18 years.
  • RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835
    rkrkrk said:

    Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?

    Wait till 2035 ?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,049
    darkage said:

    darkage said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    The Fraser Nelson intervention was a paradigm shift.
    Indeed, although by some accounts, Fraser Nelson simply did not understand what the boffins were modelling.
    Possibly more a case that civil servants were catastrophising on the basis of the modelling.
    Well, the models covered a range of predictions. It was the media that hyped the worst case scenarios.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    Not really true. That some who have had delta can be reinfected with omicron does not mean that they are Covid naive at that point. Reinfection is far less likely to lead to serious illness than a first encounter with a virus. So omicron does ‘care’ about double vaccination and previous infection in the sense that protection persists for serious disease.
    This is the problem with too much reporting and discussion of the science of the pandemic. The immune system is a lot more complex than jus5 neutralising antibodies. Of course these decline after recovery from infection, or vaccination. You wouldn’t want the body endlessly churning out antibodies for everything it encounters - there would be a cost. Rather the immune system retains a memory of infection, and when needed can jump into action to produce the required cells to tackle the threat.
    I know you mock the idea of an exit wave. But the wave is about the rise in cases that inevitably occur when restrictions are removed. They are the yin to the yang of infections falling when restrictions are applied. Yes, our wave of cases did not subside, but in terms of serious disease and death, the nation is vastly better off. In addition the extra infections, often to anti-Vaxers will be having an effect, certainly in serious outcomes,
    @RochdalePioneers, I respect your knowledge of supply chains, and you speak eloquently about the issues we face in those fields. I fear you let yourself down a bit in your comments on the pandemic.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,879
    darkage said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?

    Why? Lease a new one. From £225 per month. Under warranty so no risk of catastrophic failure. There are specialist EV leasing companies.

    If I was to buy a used one for a low price I would stick to a Nissan Leaf as it is proven technology.
    Isn't leasing a new one more expensive than buying 2nd hand? I have no attachment to having a new car.

    Basically I want a car, I would ideally never set foot in a garage, would prefer electric, will probably drive it a couple of times a week max.
  • Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    theProle said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
    Hmmm.

    One other consideration is that if the life of a car is cut in half that isn't going to do its environmental credentials any good at all.

    What's surely needed is a car which can have new batteries put in easily so they can last considerably longer.

    Edit - incidentally I agree with you, I bought second hand last year when my old faithful gave up after 12 years, because the economics of a new car didn't stack up by comparison. However, (1) that was me as a cash buyer - bring financing in and the equation changes and (2) where would we get second hand cars from if people didn't buy new?
    Why do you think modern cars won't last? They are more reliable and don't rust. Far from depreciation, used car prices have been highly buoyant.

    I drive a Fiat 500 that I have had from new, and currently 13 years and 102 000 miles. Starts first time, doesn't burn oil, no rust at all. Apart from minor drinks in the bodywork it looks and drives like new.
    A 13 year old Fiat 500 isn't a modern car. You can fix engine issues at any garage, hopefully fairly cheaply. Its all of the inbuilt proprietary electronics that is likely to be the problem - "bodywork is fine, engine is fine but unfortunately the computer that makes it all work has gone on the fritz and the replacement cost is quadruple the value of the car" scenarios.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    theProle said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
    Hmmm.

    One other consideration is that if the life of a car is cut in half that isn't going to do its environmental credentials any good at all.

    What's surely needed is a car which can have new batteries put in easily so they can last considerably longer.

    Edit - incidentally I agree with you, I bought second hand last year when my old faithful gave up after 12 years, because the economics of a new car didn't stack up by comparison. However, (1) that was me as a cash buyer - bring financing in and the equation changes and (2) where would we get second hand cars from if people didn't buy new?
    Why do you think modern cars won't last? They are more reliable and don't rust. Far from depreciation, used car prices have been highly buoyant.

    I drive a Fiat 500 that I have had from new, and currently 13 years and 102 000 miles. Starts first time, doesn't burn oil, no rust at all. Apart from minor drinks in the bodywork it looks and drives like new.
    Electrics and computers.

    The price of old cars is nonetheless rising, because the price of new cars is also rising exponentially.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    edited December 2021
    rkrkrk said:

    Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?

    Teslas are easy because of the scanmytesla app. With that and an OBD2 dongle you can get stacks of information including battery health, which is the main thing you care about.

    You can also get an idea of battery condition by charging to 100% and see what range it predicts compared the the WLTP rating.

  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.

    And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
    I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    rkrkrk said:

    Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?

    EVs are less complicated than petrol or diesel cars, and need less in the way of routine maintainance.

    The big unknowns are the batteries, which deteriorate over time as well as with recharge cycles and mileage. Make sure the battery warranty covers your expected ownership of the car. Compare the range from fully-charged on the dashboard, with what it was when new. Dealers should be able to run a battery condition report, which you should always get from the seller even if private.

    Early Teslas suffered horrendous build quality issues, and getting spare parts for them is expensive and can take time.
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873
    rkrkrk said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    This is my suspicion too but interested to see if I'm missing something.

    Since Omi *seems* to be less severe, you'd imagine that 'skipping' delta will lead to lower deaths.
    One of the reasons for omicron appearing less severe may be previous exposure to delta. See SA, which many have been saying had a huge delta wave as a reason why omicron may not be intrinsically less severe. Soneithe delta does help reduce severity of omicron, or omicron is much milder, or both.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,879

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.

    And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
    I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
    Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
    Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    Perhaps specify that you refer only to infection then? There is a huge spectrum between asymptomatic and death, and prior infection with delta and double vaccination, no booster, will still have a large effect.
  • rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    Not really true. That some who have had delta can be reinfected with omicron does not mean that they are Covid naive at that point. Reinfection is far less likely to lead to serious illness than a first encounter with a virus. So omicron does ‘care’ about double vaccination and previous infection in the sense that protection persists for serious disease.
    This is the problem with too much reporting and discussion of the science of the pandemic. The immune system is a lot more complex than jus5 neutralising antibodies. Of course these decline after recovery from infection, or vaccination. You wouldn’t want the body endlessly churning out antibodies for everything it encounters - there would be a cost. Rather the immune system retains a memory of infection, and when needed can jump into action to produce the required cells to tackle the threat.
    I know you mock the idea of an exit wave. But the wave is about the rise in cases that inevitably occur when restrictions are removed. They are the yin to the yang of infections falling when restrictions are applied. Yes, our wave of cases did not subside, but in terms of serious disease and death, the nation is vastly better off. In addition the extra infections, often to anti-Vaxers will be having an effect, certainly in serious outcomes,
    @RochdalePioneers, I respect your knowledge of supply chains, and you speak eloquently about the issues we face in those fields. I fear you let yourself down a bit in your comments on the pandemic.
    I know nothing about viruses - have I not said so repeatedly? But then again, most of the people making black and white posts about Covid also know nothing about them. "Here's what I read on the internet" is not knowing about it to any expert level.

    You mention that I mock the idea of an exit wave then agree that it was not a wave or an exit. Again, if Omicron is significantly milder than Delta, and having Delta means that you can still catch Omicron, what was the point in exposing people to Delta? So that their experience of the milder strain is milder than the nastier strain they have just had?

    I'm not making any case about the virus, but about your logic. I am qualified as a layperson to say "that makes no sense".
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,879

    rkrkrk said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    This is my suspicion too but interested to see if I'm missing something.

    Since Omi *seems* to be less severe, you'd imagine that 'skipping' delta will lead to lower deaths.
    One of the reasons for omicron appearing less severe may be previous exposure to delta. See SA, which many have been saying had a huge delta wave as a reason why omicron may not be intrinsically less severe. Soneithe delta does help reduce severity of omicron, or omicron is much milder, or both.
    However you cut it, getting infected with a deadly disease to reduce the risk from infection of a less deadly disease is not a good strategy.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    theProle said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
    Hmmm.

    One other consideration is that if the life of a car is cut in half that isn't going to do its environmental credentials any good at all.

    What's surely needed is a car which can have new batteries put in easily so they can last considerably longer.

    Edit - incidentally I agree with you, I bought second hand last year when my old faithful gave up after 12 years, because the economics of a new car didn't stack up by comparison. However, (1) that was me as a cash buyer - bring financing in and the equation changes and (2) where would we get second hand cars from if people didn't buy new?
    Why do you think modern cars won't last? They are more reliable and don't rust. Far from depreciation, used car prices have been highly buoyant.

    I drive a Fiat 500 that I have had from new, and currently 13 years and 102 000 miles. Starts first time, doesn't burn oil, no rust at all. Apart from minor drinks in the bodywork it looks and drives like new.
    A 13 year old Fiat 500 isn't a modern car. You can fix engine issues at any garage, hopefully fairly cheaply. Its all of the inbuilt proprietary electronics that is likely to be the problem - "bodywork is fine, engine is fine but unfortunately the computer that makes it all work has gone on the fritz and the replacement cost is quadruple the value of the car" scenarios.
    And pulling any electronic part from a scrappy won’t work, because it’s programmed to the car and only the main dealer has the right computer to make it work.

    In recent years, the number of computers on a small city car is now what was on an S-Class of a decade ago. They’ve deliberately make the computers a pain in the arse to program, and the dealer’s computers are really expensive to reduce the supply of them at independent garages.
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
    Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
    Doesn't care much in that you can be double vaccinated and still be at significant risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program. Doesn't care much in that you can have had a previous variant and yet still be at risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873
    rkrkrk said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?

    Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/contents
    The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
    It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.

    And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
    I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
    Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
    Maybe, and maybe I’m influenced too much by memories of Jim Hacker, but I have civil sevants operate in this way before. They do not respect politicians as they do not have the expertise to ‘understand’ and thus can be steered. Hence three scenarios, one outrageously awful (to be discounted), one likely too optimistic, and one in the middle they want chosen.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
    Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
    Doesn't care much in that you can be double vaccinated and still be at significant risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program. Doesn't care much in that you can have had a previous variant and yet still be at risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program.
    Everyone is going to catch it, the question is what happens when you do catch it. Omicron certainly cares about whether you've had a vaccination or a prior infection at that point.
  • RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    Perhaps specify that you refer only to infection then? There is a huge spectrum between asymptomatic and death, and prior infection with delta and double vaccination, no booster, will still have a large effect.
    Yes I'm referring to infection. And the difference between asymptomatic and death is indeed huge - but your "I've got no symptoms" can be someone else's death if you pass it on. Which is why most people don't act like a total Phil and go round trying to infect people.

    As Whitty et al keep pointing out, the risk is basic maths. A smaller percentage - those who will get very sick or die from Omicron- of a very large number is still a large enough number to be a major concern. And we are getting those very large numbers off the same exponential curve that various posters pointed at in places like Germany and said "thats what happens when you don't successfully have an exit wave as we did". And yet here we are. In the same place. With the same curve.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Expectations are clearly very low for Johnson and the government. He has a low bar to exceed to be seen to have done [relatively] well, but this may also be a sign that the public mood is set against Johnson now, and the public might not be in a mood to give him a fair hearing. Any minor slip up could be seen as confirmation of negative opinion, and he might not receive any credit for things not being awful.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    theProle said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    darkage said:

    FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.

    From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.

    The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.

    The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
    So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
    The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.

    How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.

    Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.

    I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
    I spent £20k on a nearly new car 17 years ago and it is still running fine
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,778

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
    I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.

    I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
  • RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
    Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
    Doesn't care much in that you can be double vaccinated and still be at significant risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program. Doesn't care much in that you can have had a previous variant and yet still be at risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program.
    Everyone is going to catch it, the question is what happens when you do catch it. Omicron certainly cares about whether you've had a vaccination or a prior infection at that point.
    It does? Then why the national emergency crash booster program? If being double vaccinated and / or past infected gave the same protections as they did for Delta et al then we wouldn't be trying to do a million jabs a day. The scientists are clear that Omicron renders the previous vaccines less effective. You seem to be saying they are wrong.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891

    One year on, most voters say Brexit has gone badly

    Adam Drummond, of Opinium, said the most striking finding was that Leavers were now more hesitant about the virtues of Brexit than previously.

    “For most of the Brexit process any time you’d ask a question that could be boiled down to ‘is Brexit good or bad?’ you’d have all of the Remainers saying ‘bad’ and all of the Leavers saying ‘good’ and these would cancel each other out,” he said.

    “Now what we’re seeing is a significant minority of Leavers saying that things are going badly or at least worse than they expected. While 59% of Remain voters said, ‘I expected it to go badly and think it has’, only 17% of Leave voters said, ‘I expected it to go well and think it has’.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/25/one-year-on-most-voters-say-brexit-has-gone-badly

    Wait till people start to travel to the popular countries in Europe in the numbers they did pre epidemic. Those numbers will increase massively. Even now you can begin to feel the discomfort of trundling through slow moving queues with 'Other Passports' while our ex chums breeze through
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    Not really true. That some who have had delta can be reinfected with omicron does not mean that they are Covid naive at that point. Reinfection is far less likely to lead to serious illness than a first encounter with a virus. So omicron does ‘care’ about double vaccination and previous infection in the sense that protection persists for serious disease.
    This is the problem with too much reporting and discussion of the science of the pandemic. The immune system is a lot more complex than jus5 neutralising antibodies. Of course these decline after recovery from infection, or vaccination. You wouldn’t want the body endlessly churning out antibodies for everything it encounters - there would be a cost. Rather the immune system retains a memory of infection, and when needed can jump into action to produce the required cells to tackle the threat.
    I know you mock the idea of an exit wave. But the wave is about the rise in cases that inevitably occur when restrictions are removed. They are the yin to the yang of infections falling when restrictions are applied. Yes, our wave of cases did not subside, but in terms of serious disease and death, the nation is vastly better off. In addition the extra infections, often to anti-Vaxers will be having an effect, certainly in serious outcomes,
    @RochdalePioneers, I respect your knowledge of supply chains, and you speak eloquently about the issues we face in those fields. I fear you let yourself down a bit in your comments on the pandemic.
    I know nothing about viruses - have I not said so repeatedly? But then again, most of the people making black and white posts about Covid also know nothing about them. "Here's what I read on the internet" is not knowing about it to any expert level.

    You mention that I mock the idea of an exit wave then agree that it was not a wave or an exit. Again, if Omicron is significantly milder than Delta, and having Delta means that you can still catch Omicron, what was the point in exposing people to Delta? So that their experience of the milder strain is milder than the nastier strain they have just had?

    I'm not making any case about the virus, but about your logic. I am qualified as a layperson to say "that makes no sense".
    Because what you say is overly simplified. There is a benefit to catching delta, recovering and gaining some protection against omicron. Disease is capricious. It’s possible that someone who would survive delta, might succumb to omicron, albeit omicron is likely intrinsically milder. There is also a population benefit to getting unvaccinated folk vaccinated via infection, if they won’t volunteer their arms.
    You seem stuck in cases as the most important measure. In reality many of most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service. For some, they will feel like shit, and say ‘this is not mild’. But they will have some poor days and get better.
    We have never tested and reported daily flu infections. And you know, some people who take the flu jab get flu, but we don’t say it’s pointless.
    I think you think you are making strong logical arguments, but it comes over more as Barack room lawyer.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
    Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
    Doesn't care much in that you can be double vaccinated and still be at significant risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program. Doesn't care much in that you can have had a previous variant and yet still be at risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program.
    Everyone is going to catch it, the question is what happens when you do catch it. Omicron certainly cares about whether you've had a vaccination or a prior infection at that point.
    It does? Then why the national emergency crash booster program? If being double vaccinated and / or past infected gave the same protections as they did for Delta et al then we wouldn't be trying to do a million jabs a day. The scientists are clear that Omicron renders the previous vaccines less effective. You seem to be saying they are wrong.
    It doesn't make you totally immune, I am not suggesting that. Having either a vaccination or a prior infection does certainly significantly reduce the risk. You are making it sound like Omicron totally ignores either vaccination or prior infection.
  • Eabhal said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
    I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.

    I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
    I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873
    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    rkrkrk said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Heathener said:

    Sandpit said:

    On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.

    Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.

    I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.

    But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
    Merry Christmas to you too!
    The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.

    Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.

    It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.



    Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.

    All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
    Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
    Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
    "As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"

    Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
    As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.

    Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
    You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
    Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.

    "Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
    Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
    Doesn't care much in that you can be double vaccinated and still be at significant risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program. Doesn't care much in that you can have had a previous variant and yet still be at risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program.
    Everyone is going to catch it, the question is what happens when you do catch it. Omicron certainly cares about whether you've had a vaccination or a prior infection at that point.
    I’d actually change this to ‘everyone is going to be exposed to omicron’.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    When Joe Biden was elected US president in November 2020, the CNN pundit Van Jones broke down on live TV in a clip that went viral. “Character matters,” he said. “The truth matters. Being a good person matters . . . The character of the country matters.”

    To rebuild a country ravished by a pandemic, you need a leader with backbone, integrity, authenticity and a close relationship with the truth. Because these things matter. They have always mattered, but they matter in a fundamental way in a time of loss and sorrow.

    Because the character of the nation matters, we need a person of character to rebuild the nation and to identify and embody the values and the truths laid bare by two years of loss and suffering.

    That person is not Boris Johnson. We all know it. He knows it. Those propping up his ailing government with the plucky optimism of the deck chair attendant on the Titanic know it. This Hogmanay, the party really is over.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-cant-wallpaper-over-the-cracks-at-no-10-9n5277dtj
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    rkrkrk said:

    Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?

    They might charge you
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    ...
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