The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
I'm quite proud to say I never did that idiotic Maoist clapping for the NHS either. Really scary how that took hold.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Nationalisation in this situation as Gordon Brown pushed for is so stupid, the crisis coming here is finding and getting money to those most in need, nationalisation will be using that money where it’s not needed, buying stuff we don’t need.
Richard Tyndall is right, squeeze to find where the lean point is, leave any fat in the system (like news reports of number profits, dividends, pay and bonuses) whilst people freeze and starve lose business and homes is both politically toxic and a bit immoral.
I am inclined towards what TSE was saying downthread, that there is a serious risk of general strike and civil disorder next year if the government do not get a handle on this. I'm not sure "trimming the fat in the system" is going to cover it.
My natural instincts are libertarian ones, however I believe the government has a duty to defends its citizens in times of war. Not just with the army, however.
Russia has weaponised energy against us in a proxy war. It is their intention to turn the screws as much as possible, to weaken our resolve against their invasion of Ukraine, and create precisely the kind of civil unrest that has been warned about downthread.
As far as I'm concerned, that means greater government intervention is morally justifiable in this particular circumstance.
It needs to be about more than just preventing pensioners from freezing to death and giving a few handouts here and there. We need to ensure an energy supply that is affordable for all this winter - and that may mean looking at radical solutions such as nationalisation to control prices, furloughing energy intensive industries, and scheduling rolling blackouts to control demand.
The alternative is bankrupting hundreds of thousands of businesses, mass unemployment, strikes and civil unrest.
I think the penny is dropping right across the board isn’t it - this is just not the moment to find the money for tax cuts. Hence the mood you describe, Tax cuts the solution promised by government, so they drop like stone in the polls, as 97.7% of electorate know it’s not the right moment for those policies. There is a right time for such policies and determination. But this is not that moment.
Supply is down by 15% or so due to Russia. That means demand needs to drop by a similar amount.
Proposals like taking out a loan to freeze prices now, and paying that astronomical sum back over the next 20 years or so, don't fully solve the problem. There is simply only so much energy to go around. We can't keep bidding it up and up in a bidding war and putting it on the never never.
We need to start looking seriously at how to reduce demand this winter while keeping the economy alive - it's going to require substantial government intervention.
Keeping prices artificially low will only stimulate demand. Demand reduction is going to need to be part of the equation. It won't be popular, but ultimately difficult decisions need to be made during wartime, that's what a government is there for. And I would rather the government allocates available supply on a harm reduction basis (to both lives and the economy) than allow the free market to allocate energy to the highest bidder.
There will be a natural reduction in usage as people avoid where possible unnecessary energy use. I have small portable a/c unit I use on warm days to help keep my small upstairs study cool. It is a bit warm today and in other times I would have used it but I'm choosing not to. Similar decisions will be made up and down the land. I think TSE mentioned also that his company will be going back to WFH to save on energy costs. That will also feed into overal reduced energy consumption.
Having said that we do need to look into all avenues for reducing our energy consumption, particularly around gas usage.
An electric fleece blanket retails for about £40-50.
Government could sell them for £10 (giving them away for free just encourages people to hoard items they don't use), along with a public service ad campaign encouraging people to turn their thermostats down this winter.
"When you turn the thermostat up, you put money in Putin's pocket".
A message which would go down like a bucket of cold sick and deservedly so. It's our Government and the green maniacs it has been in thrall to that have put money in Putin's pocket, by shutting down domestic energy supplies (and storage), and relying on imports instead. Why should people accept the halfwits who created this situation telling them it's all their fault for daring to have their heating on in Winter? Tone deaf doesn’t come close.
If we'd listened to the "green maniacs" and built more renewable provision and insulated more homes, we'd be in less of a pickle than we are now.
I don't disagree that there could have been far better and more imaginative use of renewables in the mix. But whilst hydrocarbons were still necessary it was (and is) hugely important that their continued supply is secure. Green extremists have repeatedly influenced policy on the side of foreign coal, oil and gas against UK coal, oil and gas.
As I recollect, the main switch from domestic to foreign coal was implemented by a certain Mrs T, whom most wouldn't have considered to be a green extremist.
Wilson/Callaghan shut more coal mining down than Thatcher. But that is hardly the point, when she left power over 30 years ago.
There are many aspects to the death of coal. But those who put the death of the industry down to Thatcher are ignoring the long descent it had had for fifty years before.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
Living on the edge of a small Wiltshire town I thought the clapping was wierd and a bit pointless. I suspect for people in cities, densely populated, furloughed and cooped up it might have been a nice release. As it was by wife and I were working full time from home and taking advantage of the countryside on our doorstep to relax. There is no question that givernment(s) used fear as part of the messaging. Whether the U.K. government did so over masks I have doubts, and masks probably do help a bit to reduce spread, but they are not the magic weapon that some people have them as.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
The freedom-loving chill-out libertine Italians are totally fascist about mask wearing on trains. FFP2 all the time or you’re kicked off
They need Georgia Meloni to sort them out
If she appoints a deputy called Prosciutto the pair of them would be Prosciutto e Meloni.
I'd enjoy that if it happens - fascism or no fascism.
If she appoints an Irish deputy called Moloney, they'll be Meloni and Moloney.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Showing you're doing something.
The fairly well attested fact that masks prevented the wearer from spreading the virus apart, who’s to say there isn’t value in people feeling they’re doing something in a time of crisis? Wasn’t the collection of the nation’s aluminium pots & pans during WWII a propaganda exercise in solidarity rather than any contribution to building Spitfires?
That’s not what it was about. It was a carefully calibrated psychological trigger to keep people afraid so they didn’t forget there was a pandemic on. The Belgians admitted as much. The UK’s mask mandate as carried out, would likely have had a negligible impact on R, other than the behavioural effect.
What annoyed me most was even in late 2021, those chimps used to stand up on stage and say “we need to do X” but without ever opening up their data to scrutiny on what the anticipated impact on R would be from each given measure. It was mostly about, “say something scary on telly so they all shit themselves!”. The omicron measures in particular were childish in their implementation, and missed some obvious measures that would likely had had a far more positive impact.
Are you’re saying masks didn’t stop the wearer from spreading COVID?
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
I'm quite proud to say I never did that idiotic Maoist clapping for the NHS either. Really scary how that took hold.
You found that "Maoist" and SCARY?
Gosh. That's one sensitive radar you have there.
We were but a short step from Morty & Leon being paraded through the streets with signs saying 'Class Enemy' tied round their necks.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
I'm quite proud to say I never did that idiotic Maoist clapping for the NHS either. Really scary how that took hold.
I did it once. Ludicrous Marxist emotional manipulation
I didn’t do it at all. Does that mean I’m less susceptible to ludicrous Marxist emotional manipulation?
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
But this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
But this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Ever heard of the anthropogenic forcing of the climate? Or does that not matter?
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
It's the bedwetting conformist vs free thinking ubermensch paradigm I find hilarious. BR and Misty/Whiny/Driver/whoever make like they spent lockdown thundering round the country on chopped hogs, dropping acid and pulling chicks. When actually they spent it on PB. Just like non-lockdown.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
The freedom-loving chill-out libertine Italians are totally fascist about mask wearing on trains. FFP2 all the time or you’re kicked off
They need Georgia Meloni to sort them out
If she appoints a deputy called Prosciutto the pair of them would be Prosciutto e Meloni.
I'd enjoy that if it happens - fascism or no fascism.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
Well desperate problems - such as a chap's purist libertarian credentials gone for a burton - call for desperate remedies.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
But this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Ever heard of the anthropogenic forcing of the climate? Or does that not matter?
After 2 months without rain, parts of Dallas got more than a foot yesterday.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
But this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Ever heard of the anthropogenic forcing of the climate? Or does that not matter?
Which is ameliorated how by importing Russian coal and gas and Saudi Arabian oil rather than producing it in the UK?
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
I'm quite proud to say I never did that idiotic Maoist clapping for the NHS either. Really scary how that took hold.
I did it once. Ludicrous Marxist emotional manipulation
I didn’t do it at all. Does that mean I’m less susceptible to ludicrous Marxist emotional manipulation?
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
It's the bedwetting conformist vs free thinking ubermensch paradigm I find hilarious. BR and Misty/Whiny/Driver/whoever make like they spent lockdown thundering round the country on chopped hogs, dropping acid and pulling chicks. When actually they spent it on PB. Just like non-lockdown.
I did more exercise walks than I was allowed so SCREW YOU WHITTY.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
I'm quite proud to say I never did that idiotic Maoist clapping for the NHS either. Really scary how that took hold.
You found that "Maoist" and SCARY?
Gosh. That's one sensitive radar you have there.
We were but a short step from Morty & Leon being paraded through the streets with signs saying 'Class Enemy' tied round their necks.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Rather than pointlessly point scoring over what should have been done differently in the past this is what appears to be killing people needlessly currently:
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
It's the bedwetting conformist vs free thinking ubermensch paradigm I find hilarious. BR and Misty/Whiny/Driver/whoever make like they spent lockdown thundering round the country on chopped hogs, dropping acid and pulling chicks. When actually they spent it on PB. Just like non-lockdown.
I did more exercise walks than I was allowed so SCREW YOU WHITTY.
Except you didn’t, of course, as there was no limit in law it how many walks you could take. As @Cyclefree has been at pains to point out.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
Your model has missing school for a weeks is like dying?
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
It's the bedwetting conformist vs free thinking ubermensch paradigm I find hilarious. BR and Misty/Whiny/Driver/whoever make like they spent lockdown thundering round the country on chopped hogs, dropping acid and pulling chicks. When actually they spent it on PB. Just like non-lockdown.
I did more exercise walks than I was allowed so SCREW YOU WHITTY.
Except you didn’t, of course, as there was no limit in law it how many walks you could take. As @Cyclefree has been at pains to point out.
First, I think LG was joking. Secondly, the police are a fine and fair minded body of men. If they thought there was a legal limit on the number of walks one can take, that's pretty good evidence to all right thinking englishmen that that was the case. Woke commies may disagree.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
But this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Ever heard of the anthropogenic forcing of the climate? Or does that not matter?
After 2 months without rain, parts of Dallas got more than a foot yesterday.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
It's the bedwetting conformist vs free thinking ubermensch paradigm I find hilarious. BR and Misty/Whiny/Driver/whoever make like they spent lockdown thundering round the country on chopped hogs, dropping acid and pulling chicks. When actually they spent it on PB. Just like non-lockdown.
I did more exercise walks than I was allowed so SCREW YOU WHITTY.
Except you didn’t, of course, as there was no limit in law it how many walks you could take. As @Cyclefree has been at pains to point out.
First, I think LG was joking. Secondly, the police are a fine and fair minded body of men. If they thought there was a legal limit on the number of walks one can take, that's pretty good evidence to all right thinking englishmen that that was the case. Woke commies may disagree.
I know LG was joking, as was I really. But can you direct me to the police action for anyone for a second daily walk?
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
It's the bedwetting conformist vs free thinking ubermensch paradigm I find hilarious. BR and Misty/Whiny/Driver/whoever make like they spent lockdown thundering round the country on chopped hogs, dropping acid and pulling chicks. When actually they spent it on PB. Just like non-lockdown.
I did more exercise walks than I was allowed so SCREW YOU WHITTY.
Except you didn’t, of course, as there was no limit in law it how many walks you could take. As @Cyclefree has been at pains to point out.
First, I think LG was joking. Secondly, the police are a fine and fair minded body of men. If they thought there was a legal limit on the number of walks one can take, that's pretty good evidence to all right thinking englishmen that that was the case. Woke commies may disagree.
I know LG was joking, as was I really. But can you direct me to the police action for anyone for a second daily walk?
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
But this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Ever heard of the anthropogenic forcing of the climate? Or does that not matter?
After 2 months without rain, parts of Dallas got more than a foot yesterday.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
They just don't have the oil. It's like robbing banks, you do it because that's where the money is.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
I'm quite proud to say I never did that idiotic Maoist clapping for the NHS either. Really scary how that took hold.
I did it once. Ludicrous Marxist emotional manipulation
I disagree. It wasn't a clap for the NHS it was 'clap for carers' - i.e the people on the front line exposing themselves to the virus when we didn't even know how deadly it was. Of course it wasn't just carers who were doing that, you had the supermarket staff, bus drivers etc but does not clapping everybody mean you should clap nobody?
What's interesting was how over time it morphed into being about the NHS.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
I'm quite proud to say I never did that idiotic Maoist clapping for the NHS either. Really scary how that took hold.
You found that "Maoist" and SCARY?
Gosh. That's one sensitive radar you have there.
We were but a short step from Morty & Leon being paraded through the streets with signs saying 'Class Enemy' tied round their necks.
🙂 - Mortimer, I feel mercy come upon me, but the other one ... well it could be the only way. I've tried everything else.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
True. The Boris Government rehearsed all the reasons it can be a bad idea… before doing it.
You get the part of the equation why the Boris government then went and did it? Of course you do, because you used the word “might” in your sentence. As in talking about Windfall taxes in general, and then in each and every particular situation, and then windfall taxes themselves not being a black and white construct, numerous ways of swinging the cat, and then the dialogue and partnership already taking place between government and business to transform the energy sector with investment and planning, the tax chat comes up in.
Your sentence was true, but all these others to complete the paragraph have merit as well?
Florida Primary - polls close 7pm EDT = 12pm Midnight UK
Oklahoma Primary - polls close 7pm CDT = 1am UK
New York Primary - polls close 9pm EDT = 2am UK
Are there any bellwether races to look out for?
Hell yes!
In Florida, Dem primary for Governor, whether US Rep & former (GOP) Gov Charlie Crist, or state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried will oppose Republican incumbent & 2024 POTUS prospect Gov Ron DeSantis. (My guess based on recent published polling is Crist.)
In New York, only thing on ballot is US House primaries, due to hash that Dems made of redistricting in the Empire State. Another result: number of high-profile Democratic races in NYC and burbs, including established incumbents running against each other, or against progressive challengers, or run out of old district altogether onto brand-new & hotly-contested turf. Plus one GOP race in western NY State featuring state party chair for state Republican establishment versus mega-MAGA-maniac.
Have to check out OK. Ok?
Addendum - OK Special US Senate Republican Runoff, between > US Representative Markwayne Mullin (in June primary 43.6%) > former OK state house Speaker T.W. Shannon (in June primary 17.5%)
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
More virtue signalling on the other side imo.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
By saying WE SHOULD HAVE LET EVERYONE DIE. PEOPLE DIE, SO WHAT
It's the bedwetting conformist vs free thinking ubermensch paradigm I find hilarious. BR and Misty/Whiny/Driver/whoever make like they spent lockdown thundering round the country on chopped hogs, dropping acid and pulling chicks. When actually they spent it on PB. Just like non-lockdown.
I did more exercise walks than I was allowed so SCREW YOU WHITTY.
Except you didn’t, of course, as there was no limit in law it how many walks you could take. As @Cyclefree has been at pains to point out.
First, I think LG was joking. Secondly, the police are a fine and fair minded body of men. If they thought there was a legal limit on the number of walks one can take, that's pretty good evidence to all right thinking englishmen that that was the case. Woke commies may disagree.
I know LG was joking, as was I really. But can you direct me to the police action for anyone for a second daily walk?
So was I
It's jokes all round then! All in the exchange joking. We need only - like at the Fringe - decide which one is best.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
They just don't have the oil. It's like robbing banks, you do it because that's where the money is.
They have lots of oil. Hence the reason the Oil companies go there.
Norway is a far more popular location for oil and gas investment than the UK, even though historically the tax regime has been higher. The reason is it doesn't change. Companies can invest in a decades long development knowing they can account for factors such as tax take and regulatory environment and there is a very high chance it won't change. In the UK it changes almost with every budget. And regulation is a complete mess. Both the rules and the people making hem change every few years.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
True. The Boris Government rehearsed all the reasons it can be a bad idea… before doing it.
You get the part of the equation why the Boris government then went and did it? Of course you do, because you used the word “might” in your sentence. As in talking about Windfall taxes in general, and then in each and every particular situation, and then windfall taxes themselves not being a black and white construct, numerous ways of swinging the cat, and then the dialogue and partnership already taking place between government and business to transform the energy sector with investment and planning, the tax chat comes up in.
Your sentence was true, but all these others to complete the paragraph have merit as well?
Yep they did it and we are already starting to suffer the consequences.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
Forced choice would I sacrifice a week of education, unscheduled so unplanned, for ten million or have 30k die from natural causes?
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
Sure. But no situation is irreversible.
Oh for sure it is reversible. But that doesn't help us for the next few years when we should be going all out to increase gas production. There is lots of the stuff out there, we are just not going to drill for it.
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
You are back on with your old inheritance mumbo- jumbo again.
Anyone who goes into a care home for any length of time, really has nothing much to leave. I can show you the bills and a total lack of interest from Herefordshire Council if you like.
Only 25% of over 65s at most will ever need to go into a care home, the rest will either die first or require only at home care. Plus the government has now capped care costs at £86k anyway
Not yet it hasn't, if you know differently let me know.
October 2023 is not much f...ing use for my 94 year old Mother in law. Between now and then is going to cost her another £84,000.
As expensive as it is, you can't take it with you. The state should not be in the business of paying for people's inheritances. The cap should never come into place.
To an extent I agree with you. I was just arguing with HYUFD'S old bollocks.
The residential home my mother in law was in was run by the Shaw Trust on behalf of Herefordshire Council. As a council funded resident which was pretty much everyone except my mother in law everything was buckshee and they got to blow their entire state pension on booze fags bingo and toy boys if they so wished. As a private resident we were charged more than the council. In order to pay we rented her house, her shop and used her state pension and we were taxed on the rental income and all of it went on the residential home she was living in, no bingo ot toyboys for her.
So by doing the right thing she was doubly punished. It's an inequitable system
To a lesser extent I also have some sympathy for HY's inheritance dilemma. If I have worked hard, paid my taxes, lived a frugal life and invested well to help my children out after I have gone, why am I paying for my care while someone who has sponged on the dole for 40 years and blown all their money on booze and hookers gets it all for free.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
We do need to quantify what impact there was on children's educations, though.
Some places locked down for a year or more (hello Los Angeles!), others didn't lock down at all (Sweden), while others like the UK were in between.
We also need to recognise that children are clearly very good at catching up. Formal education - of reading and writing - doesn't start until seven in Germany. And yet by the age of 13 or 14, German kids are scoring at least well as British ones on the PISA tests.
On the other hand, the impact on those approaching A Levels or GCSEs will probably have been quite severe.
There's a real opportunity to study both the short-term and long-term impacts of lockdowns on education. And until that has been done, it seems premature to either declare that they either had little effect, nor that they have disadvantaged millions.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
They just don't have the oil. It's like robbing banks, you do it because that's where the money is.
Not just that, they have to have hydrocarbons that are cheap and easy to get.
What banjaxed the remains of British coal, and caused British shale gas to be stillborn, was that geology made them difficult and expensive to extract.
Just because they're there doesn't mean it's in our interests to extract them.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
True. The Boris Government rehearsed all the reasons it can be a bad idea… before doing it.
You get the part of the equation why the Boris government then went and did it? Of course you do, because you used the word “might” in your sentence. As in talking about Windfall taxes in general, and then in each and every particular situation, and then windfall taxes themselves not being a black and white construct, numerous ways of swinging the cat, and then the dialogue and partnership already taking place between government and business to transform the energy sector with investment and planning, the tax chat comes up in.
Your sentence was true, but all these others to complete the paragraph have merit as well?
Yep they did it and we are already starting to suffer the consequences.
You were talking about cutting off all the fat in this situation for the sake of the starving families earlier?
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
Forced choice would I sacrifice a week of education, unscheduled so unplanned, for ten million or have 30k die from natural causes?
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
Avoidable deaths = natural causes… When I was a kid, we used to have a games day on the last day of school term, and I understand this was pretty much universal.
Little did we know that this was the equivalent of 6,000 avoidable deaths.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
I know that
I'm just trying to - gently - point out that decisions on things like "windfall taxes" have long term consequences.
Rather than pointlessly point scoring over what should have been done differently in the past this is what appears to be killing people needlessly currently:
The figure of 800 seems a bit questionable, but this looks quite a potent cheap weapon.
800 Taiwanese 'flying mortar' drones reportedly shipped to Ukrainian army Polish media reports 800 Revolver 860 Armed VTOL UAVs have been 'donated' to Ukraine's military https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4634185
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
I know that
I'm just trying to - gently - point out that decisions on things like "windfall taxes" have long term consequences.
Well it’s a Lib Dem policy, so I argue for it. Being a Lib Dem voter.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
They just don't have the oil. It's like robbing banks, you do it because that's where the money is.
Not just that, they have to have hydrocarbons that are cheap and easy to get.
What banjaxed the remains of British coal, and caused British shale gas to be stillborn, was that geology made them difficult and expensive to extract.
Just because they're there doesn't mean it's in our interests to extract them.
I trust Richard Tyndall more when he says otherwise.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
To be fair, there was a pretty big lag between identifying reserves in the North Sea / Alaska, and bringing them on stream too.
This is the nature of energy crises: prices spike, new projects are greenlit, money is spent...
...prices fall due to reduced demand and because the initial reason behind the drop in supply is taken away...
And then (many years later) the new projects come on stream.
This happened in the 70s/80s, where OPEC cut production to punish the West for supporting Israel, with the result that oil demand fell, and new sources of production came on stream. OPEC totally fucked themselves over.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
I know that
I'm just trying to - gently - point out that decisions on things like "windfall taxes" have long term consequences.
I see that even the current crisis has failed to get comedy UKOG shares back above the 1p mark. Thoughts and prayers for investors at 115p.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
They just don't have the oil. It's like robbing banks, you do it because that's where the money is.
They have lots of oil. Hence the reason the Oil companies go there.
Norway is a far more popular location for oil and gas investment than the UK, even though historically the tax regime has been higher. The reason is it doesn't change. Companies can invest in a decades long development knowing they can account for factors such as tax take and regulatory environment and there is a very high chance it won't change. In the UK it changes almost with every budget. And regulation is a complete mess. Both the rules and the people making hem change every few years.
I don't know anything about oil and gas investment, but what you describe seems a pretty good metaphor for the short-sightedness of the UK economy and its concomitant lack of productivity improvements. It's not so much the level of tax or regulation (within reason), but more their long-term predictability that promotes investment and growth. The chopping and changing in the UK environment just causes unpredictability and a lack of stability for business.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
Forced choice would I sacrifice a week of education, unscheduled so unplanned, for ten million or have 30k die from natural causes?
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
Avoidable deaths = natural causes… When I was a kid, we used to have a games day on the last day of school term, and I understand this was pretty much universal.
Little did we know that this was the equivalent of 6,000 avoidable deaths.
A games day is part of the school term, a valuable part of it in fact.
It was something that ten million children sacrificed, twice, in order to prevent some of the natural causes deaths that were prevented.
Yes many natural causes deaths can be avoided, if we sacrifice the rest of society including education to avoid just that one type of death.
You didn't answer my Faustian question. Without dividing it between ten million people in order to minimise the supposed impact on education, from one child to you how much at a 1:1 ratio would you take from your child's education in order to prolong the end of your life by that same amount of time?
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
Forced choice would I sacrifice a week of education, unscheduled so unplanned, for ten million or have 30k die from natural causes?
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
More realistically, say the swap is 1 week off their education for an extra year of life for me.
I'd go with 10. They miss a term, I get an extra decade.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
Sure. But no situation is irreversible.
Oh for sure it is reversible. But that doesn't help us for the next few years when we should be going all out to increase gas production. There is lots of the stuff out there, we are just not going to drill for it.
I respect your knowledge but I don't accord with your gloomy prognosis. This crisis is a huge opportunity that could set us on the right course for the next three decades.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
Forced choice would I sacrifice a week of education, unscheduled so unplanned, for ten million or have 30k die from natural causes?
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
Avoidable deaths = natural causes… When I was a kid, we used to have a games day on the last day of school term, and I understand this was pretty much universal.
Little did we know that this was the equivalent of 6,000 avoidable deaths.
P.S. - just for clarity: You were the one who set up the equation of 9 weeks school = 250,000 lives, if you recall. It’s rather disingenuous to accuse someone else of being misleading by literally using your own numbers. All I did was divide to get a weekly number (admittedly, it should have been 28,000 lives per week, but I figured 1 s.f. was a pretty close approximation. And the number wasn’t what you were complaining about; simply the use of the equivalence between lives and education weeks across the country.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
We do need to quantify what impact there was on children's educations, though.
Some places locked down for a year or more (hello Los Angeles!), others didn't lock down at all (Sweden), while others like the UK were in between.
We also need to recognise that children are clearly very good at catching up. Formal education - of reading and writing - doesn't start until seven in Germany. And yet by the age of 13 or 14, German kids are scoring at least well as British ones on the PISA tests.
On the other hand, the impact on those approaching A Levels or GCSEs will probably have been quite severe.
There's a real opportunity to study both the short-term and long-term impacts of lockdowns on education. And until that has been done, it seems premature to either declare that they either had little effect, nor that they have disadvantaged millions.
Arguably many benefited, by being awarded higher grades than otherwise, thereby getting into Universities that were out of reach before.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
Forced choice would I sacrifice a week of education, unscheduled so unplanned, for ten million or have 30k die from natural causes?
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
Avoidable deaths = natural causes… When I was a kid, we used to have a games day on the last day of school term, and I understand this was pretty much universal.
Little did we know that this was the equivalent of 6,000 avoidable deaths.
A games day is part of the school term, a valuable part of it in fact.
It was something that ten million children sacrificed, twice, in order to prevent some of the natural causes deaths that were prevented.
Yes many natural causes deaths can be avoided, if we sacrifice the rest of society including education to avoid just that one type of death.
You didn't answer my Faustian question. Without dividing it between ten million people in order to minimise the supposed impact on education, from one child to you how much at a 1:1 ratio would you take from your child's education in order to prolong the end of your life by that same amount of time?
Because it’s a stupid bloody contrived attempt to handwave over the issue. No-one was losing one-to-one, it literally was divided by ten million people. AS YOUR OWN DERIVATION HAD IT. Before you accused me of being misleading by using your derivation.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
Forced choice would I sacrifice a week of education, unscheduled so unplanned, for ten million or have 30k die from natural causes?
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
Avoidable deaths = natural causes… When I was a kid, we used to have a games day on the last day of school term, and I understand this was pretty much universal.
Little did we know that this was the equivalent of 6,000 avoidable deaths.
A games day is part of the school term, a valuable part of it in fact.
It was something that ten million children sacrificed, twice, in order to prevent some of the natural causes deaths that were prevented.
Yes many natural causes deaths can be avoided, if we sacrifice the rest of society including education to avoid just that one type of death.
You didn't answer my Faustian question. Without dividing it between ten million people in order to minimise the supposed impact on education, from one child to you how much at a 1:1 ratio would you take from your child's education in order to prolong the end of your life by that same amount of time?
Because it’s a stupid bloody contrived attempt to handwave over the issue. No-one was losing one-to-one, it literally was divided by ten million people. AS YOUR OWN DERIVATION HAD IT. Before you accused me of being misleading by using your derivation.
Except I made the point from the original comment onwards that this was ten million children being affected, that was the whole point. You say 9 weeks it doesn't sound much, but it was 9 weeks multiplied by ten million children so yes it was a hell of a long time being lost, it wasn't 9 weeks for one child, it was 9 weeks for ten million children.
But you dropped the part of ten million children from the comment.
It wasn't 9 weeks of education being lost, my comment multiplied it out and said that was 2.5 million years of education being lost. You dropped the multiplication out though and dropped it down to "one week" without caveat.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
They just don't have the oil. It's like robbing banks, you do it because that's where the money is.
Not just that, they have to have hydrocarbons that are cheap and easy to get.
What banjaxed the remains of British coal, and caused British shale gas to be stillborn, was that geology made them difficult and expensive to extract.
Just because they're there doesn't mean it's in our interests to extract them.
I trust Richard Tyndall more when he says otherwise.
Richard is very knowledgeable on the oil and gas industry, as he's worked in it for many years. I am also pretty knowledgeable, having managed a billion dollar energy fund for many years (and which, I would note, performed extremely well). I have also written cover articles for Platts and S&P regarding various parts of the energy industry, and produced a nice YouTube video explaining unconvential oil production which is well worth watching: https://youtu.be/xHo82501394
But that doesn't mean that - right now - UK unconventional resources are economic. Because they're not.
All the well data from the hydraulically fracked onshore tight gas formations in the UK has been very disappointing. Even before the ban on fracking, the shares of iGas and others had fallen 90%.
Now, it doesn't mean there isn't a way forward. But the problem is that right now costs are probably around $100/mmcf, with a path (if things go well) to get it down to $20.
Costs, by contrast, for new projects are $6-7 on the North West Shelf of Australia, sub $4 for Qatar, and well under $10 for Israel and LNG. And these are fully loaded figures, including the cost of LNG liquification plants.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
I know that
I'm just trying to - gently - point out that decisions on things like "windfall taxes" have long term consequences.
Well it’s a Lib Dem policy, so I argue for it. Being a Lib Dem voter.
If the Lib Dems had a policy of wearing sandals, publishing dodgy bar charts, and yellow diamond placards with 'Winning Here!' on them, would you argue for those too?
Having spent most of the last six years re-hashing the EU Referendum ad nauseam and ad infinitum we now have the pandemic getting a thorough dose of hindsight debate and of course with hindsight everyone is right and everyone else is wrong.
I suppose in the current climate it's much easier to talk about the past - trying to talk about the present let alone the future seems not to be to anyone's taste given the uncertainty and what some will call negativity and others will call realism.
I'll try to go about three weeks forward with the latest poll on the Swedish election.
The SKOP poll (changes from 2018):
Social Democrats: 27.8% (-0.5) Sweden Democrats: 19.3% (+1.8) Moderates: 17.5% (-2.3) Centre Party 8.6% (nc) Left Party: 8.5% (+0.5) Liberals: 6.3% (+0.8) Greens: 5.9% (+1.5) Christian Democrats: 4.9% (-1.4)
The centre-right bloc (Sweden Democrats, Moderates, Liberals and Christian Democrats) have 48% and the centre-left bloc 50.8% but whether that translates into another Social Democrat Government I'm not certain.
This poll runs counter to some others showing the Social Democrats over 30% so could be an outlier and it's a better poll for the Sweden Democrats than some I've seen.
As a comparison, the regular SIFO poll has the following:
Social Democrats: 30.2% Sweden Democrats: 19% Moderates: 17.4% Left Party: 7.2% Christian Democrats: 6.7% Centre: 6.1% Green: 5.5% Liberal: 5.4%
That puts the centre-right on 48.5% with the centre-left on 49% so perhaps not so different but still different.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
Bit this is now going to change, so YAY for the energy crisis.
Nope. It is getting worse. Bear in mind there is probably 7 or 8 years between identifying a possible new development and actually getting the hydrocarbons out of he ground. The uncertainty over the UK regulatory and tax regime is getting worse not better so companies with a finite Exploration and Appraisal budget will chose countries with a history of stable regulation and tax even if the tax rates are a bit higher. and this is hitting development drilling as well where there is already a deferment of drilling into the middle of the decade when they hope they will have a better idea if what the long term tax regime will be.
It may be 'getting' worse, but I have faith it's going to be sorted. First the low hanging fruit, then the hard stuff.
Fool us once we'll remember it but accept it as a one off issue Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
Sure. But no situation is irreversible.
Oh for sure it is reversible. But that doesn't help us for the next few years when we should be going all out to increase gas production. There is lots of the stuff out there, we are just not going to drill for it.
I respect your knowledge but I don't accord with your gloomy prognosis. This crisis is a huge opportunity that could set us on the right course for the next three decades.
I agree: in the long term there are great opportunities. In the short term there might well be intense pain.
The worst may also happen: intense short-term pain followed by further long-term pain.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
I never assumed the NPIs were cost free. However there was a train about to run us over and it had to be slowed down. The idea of somebody configuring and running a super-complex, multi-level cost/benefit model and trying to incorporate and quantify things like impact on mental health before we did anything is for the birds. We were too late acting as it is and found it hard enough just to model the spread of the virus and hospitalisations and deaths.
You're absolutely right that there wasn't a time to analyse it in advance, but there is time to do so in hindsight and in hindsight lockdown was a mistake.
It was certainly not "too late".
In hindsight paying my home insurance last year was a mistake. My house didn't burn down after all. What a waste of money!
(That's only one argument, of course. It is not at all clear, even in hindsight, that not locking down would have had lower social and economic costs than locking down did.)
If your home insurance only cost a few quid then it was probably worthwhile to have. If your home insurance cost more than your home and required your children to be out of school for months etc then it probably wasn't.
The risk at the time of the first lockdown was that the hospitals would be overwhelmed and that tens of thousands of people would die unnecessarily. Giving the kids a couple on months off school and paying an economic cost was indeed the equivalent of a few quid when compared to the horrifying possible alternative.
The case for the later lockdowns is not quite so clear, but in general locking down more quickly would have meant locking down for a shorter time.
Tens of thousands dying doesn't justify millions losing their education.
Would you sacrifice 100 people's education to prolong a single person's life? If not, why sacrifice millions for tens of thousands?
The only way to justify millions losing education, is if millions were going to die.
Telling outright lies - particularly when they are so easily refuted - doesn't help your argument at all.
There were not 'millions losing their education' There was a small scale disruption for a few months.
Your hyperbole does you no credit.
There was large scale disruption for months on end for millions of people. That is millions losing their education, that time was valuable and won't be returned to them.
Yes some will cope with it, but that doesn't make it OK. The law treats education as so serious that you can be fined for taking kids out of school for a few days for a vacation during term time, but you consider shutting down schools for months on end to be no biggy because you sold your soul to Covid death league tables being the only metric that matters to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
What about 9 weeks disruption to save half a million lives? Including many parents?
EDIT: tried to fix a blockquote issue
If only we had 9 weeks disruption instead of two years of it. And Sweden etc didn't have proportionately half a million more deaths than us, or their neighbours.
But doing the maths, 9 weeks (we had more) disruption is approximately quarter of a year's disruption. Which is approximately 2.5 million years worth of education lost nationwide. Which valuing education at only 1:1 with an adults lifespan and using the fallacious claim of ten years per death would be equivalent to 250k deaths.
Since I consider a year of a child's education as more valuable than a year of life for an adult, your figures would be approaching a break even point if only education were affected and if your figures were accurate.
But your figures aren't accurate and there was more than just education at stake, so no is my answer. Not worthwhile.
Schools were not closed in Lockdown two. They were closed in Lockdown three for nine weeks.
Have you forgotten lockdown one?
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
You literally said ages ago that we didn’t know what was happening at Lockdown one, but never mind.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
Yes I've said that we had no idea of knowing at the time what was happening at lockdown one, but I also said that lockdown one was a mistake "in hindsight".
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
So, for clarity, you’d sacrifice 30,000 lives to avoid school ending one week early?
Forced choice would I sacrifice a week of education, unscheduled so unplanned, for ten million or have 30k die from natural causes?
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
Avoidable deaths = natural causes… When I was a kid, we used to have a games day on the last day of school term, and I understand this was pretty much universal.
Little did we know that this was the equivalent of 6,000 avoidable deaths.
A games day is part of the school term, a valuable part of it in fact.
It was something that ten million children sacrificed, twice, in order to prevent some of the natural causes deaths that were prevented.
Yes many natural causes deaths can be avoided, if we sacrifice the rest of society including education to avoid just that one type of death.
You didn't answer my Faustian question. Without dividing it between ten million people in order to minimise the supposed impact on education, from one child to you how much at a 1:1 ratio would you take from your child's education in order to prolong the end of your life by that same amount of time?
Because it’s a stupid bloody contrived attempt to handwave over the issue. No-one was losing one-to-one, it literally was divided by ten million people. AS YOUR OWN DERIVATION HAD IT. Before you accused me of being misleading by using your derivation.
Except I made the point from the original comment onwards that this was ten million children being affected, that was the whole point. You say 9 weeks it doesn't sound much, but it was 9 weeks multiplied by ten million children so yes it was a hell of a long time being lost, it wasn't 9 weeks for one child, it was 9 weeks for ten million children.
But you dropped the part of ten million children from the comment.
It wasn't 9 weeks of education being lost, my comment multiplied it out and said that was 2.5 million years of education being lost. You dropped the multiplication out though and dropped it down to "one week" without caveat.
I rather thought that we’d established it was for everyone. Unless you thought I was adding a silent “Oh, for only one pupil” on to the end of “…school ending one week early?”
Okay, for clarity, I was talking about school across the country, as we’d been discussing, not for just one specific pupil.
And, for clarity, lockdown was also for everyone, not just one person, in case that’s also been lost along the way.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Depends on what you mean by “better”?
If you mean minimising the long term damage to society and the economy, then yes, Sweden did better. A lot better.
Sweden was playing the long game. Most of the rest of the world was running about like a headless chicken.
One shudders to think what’s going to happen when a *real* killer pandemic shows up.
Everyone in Sweden will die. Because you will continue to believe that what you did last time was the right way to go.
You see, this is where you have *totally* misunderstood Swedish society, stamina and respect for independent governmental agencies.
Covid = take care
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = lockdown max = unpleasant, but hey we survived
Swedes will manage both. No probs.
Whereas I suspect that for most countries:
Covid = headless chicken lockdown
Real killer pandemic (2035?) = headless chicken disrespect for government = all fall down
Quite possibly right.
Once bitten, twice shy. I for one won't be prepared to show respect to a future government wanting to strip us of our liberties again. I'm sure others feel the same.
Maybe they will. Much as I despise this government I think they probably made okay calls on lockdown and I will continue to follow public health advice in pursuit of our common national interest in the future.
The most mask-keen mates of mine now laugh at the way they sheepishly followed the herd.
I haven't worn one since Freedom day 2021. Not a single day lost to illness in that time.
It it quite remarkable that you still haven't grasped the reason for wearing masks.
Cloth masks that are being reused all the time?
The reason is virtue signalling bullshit to pretend you're taking the pandemic seriously.
I'm quite proud to say I never did that idiotic Maoist clapping for the NHS either. Really scary how that took hold.
I did it once. Ludicrous Marxist emotional manipulation
I disagree. It wasn't a clap for the NHS it was 'clap for carers' - i.e the people on the front line exposing themselves to the virus when we didn't even know how deadly it was. Of course it wasn't just carers who were doing that, you had the supermarket staff, bus drivers etc but does not clapping everybody mean you should clap nobody?
What's interesting was how over time it morphed into being about the NHS.
And it also became clap for Boris. At least in the mind of one newspaper, but that failed (presumably: how would one know?).
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Barty loves Lizzy still
Barty doesn’t do the politics very well. You could never hire him to spin. In the round this proposal is the most expensive of all the options so far though, as longer paybacks tend to be? And You can imagine opponents exploiting this angle, not just immediately but for a long time to come
“Is it not clear Mr Speaker, they have mortgaged our futures to afford their tax cuts today”
“Don’t the tax payers of this country know it well, Mr Speaker, When they were last in power, rather than windfall tax the excessive profits of the energy barons, instead they saddled future generations with debt, and then gave tax hand outs to the rich whilst everyone else starved! Is it no surprise the country has not voted Tory since?”
Shame on ex chancellor Rishi Sunak for not being more open and honest what he would do.
Here's the thing: if you windfall tax the energy companies, they might choose to invest in production somewhere else.
They are already doing so. The UK is not an attractive place for Oil and Gas exploration because of its ever changing tax and regulatory regime. All the more so now with the prospect of an expansion of the windfall tax.
I know that
I'm just trying to - gently - point out that decisions on things like "windfall taxes" have long term consequences.
Well it’s a Lib Dem policy, so I argue for it. Being a Lib Dem voter.
If the Lib Dems had a policy of wearing sandals, publishing dodgy bar charts, and yellow diamond placards with 'Winning Here!' on them, would you argue for those too?
You are being silly now. Those are long established policies.
Comments
Gosh. That's one sensitive radar you have there.
https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal
It also leads to the sort of insanity that leads people to proclaim green energy whilst calling for the return to coal.
There is no question that givernment(s) used fear as part of the messaging. Whether the U.K. government did so over masks I have doubts, and masks probably do help a bit to reduce spread, but they are not the magic weapon that some people have them as.
I’m amazed that the brave English who resisted project fear and stuck it to the EU man (©the loonier end of PB Brexitdom) were turned into quivering jellies by COVID propaganda, disseminated incidentally by the freedum luvvin guberment for which they had just voted for so enthusiastically.
Railing against each and every restriction in order to show a stronger finer braver appreciation of Liberty than the Sheeple.
Exactly as you are doing now. Fearing your libertarian credentials tainted by your reasoned support for lockdown at the time, you now seek to repurify yourself.
So lockdown 3 was the equivalent of 250k extra deaths valuing education as only 1:1 with an adults lifespan (I'd value education more) only from lockdown three. But you forgot lockdown 1, which was from memory another 8 weeks.
So there's half a million death equivalents right there. Just from education lost at just a 1:1 ratio. Without considering a single other factor at all.
So no, not worthwhile.
And your claim that fifty children losing a week of school equates to one adult dying a year earlier is your own equation.
And if we HAD hurried everyone through covid, we’d certainly have seen well in excess of half a million more deaths plus a totally collapsed health service (seeing yet more deaths).
And those deaths would have trended younger than they did, of course, by loss of healthcare.
Tell me, if you asked a child whether they’d trade several weeks of education for their dead parent back, what would they say, do you think?
How much in the way of weeks of disruption are 50,000-100,000 or more parents of schoolchildren worth? Or even more than that (given, you know, no chance of saving the more saveable age groups by hospital treatment)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhwUMDX4K8o
https://twitter.com/rawsalerts/status/1561760974536708096?t=KRqImA9TgeECavv13QqaEA&s=19
Oklahoma Primary - polls close 7pm CDT = 1am UK
New York Primary - polls close 9pm EDT = 2am UK
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1562004612172873728
Talk about valuing education!
Fool us twice and we'll go elsewhere never to return..
And that's what has happened here - there are easier more consistent countries to invest in so the investment goes there....
A minimum of 26.8C. Just incredible...
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2022/new-record-from-july-heat
A ridiculous lawsuit. I hope she loses, though Kyrgios might settle to avoid the hassle
https://twitter.com/ScottDuncanWX/status/1561040349535113217?t=BblLHivjB-eV_N_t9OrB1Q&s=19
Lockdown three was a mistake at the time, not just in hindsight. Lockdown one was a mistake in hindsight.
Yes saying 50 people losing a week's education is equivalent to one person losing a years life is my own equation but that's as I said at a 1:1 ratio. As I've said I'd value education that children need for the next 60-70 years plus of their lives as MORE valuable than a week's life at the end of an adults lifespan, but I used 1:1 for simplicity. You can say yourself what you value education to be worth if you'd prefer then we could look using your own numbers. What ratio would you give it if not 1:1, how highly do you value education?
Would you sacrifice a year of a child's education for an extra years life expectancy? Where do you draw the line?
If we say 100k extra deaths = 1 million aggregate life years lost, then considering I'd value a child's education as possibly say 2:1 over an adults span at the end of their life then that would be 0.5 million school years lost across the country. Which divided by ten million school age pupils, is 5% of a school year per pupil. So 2 weeks, if education were the only factor.
What's interesting was how over time it morphed into being about the NHS.
You get the part of the equation why the Boris government then went and did it? Of course you do, because you used the word “might” in your sentence. As in talking about Windfall taxes in general, and then in each and every particular situation, and then windfall taxes themselves not being a black and white construct, numerous ways of swinging the cat, and then the dialogue and partnership already taking place between government and business to transform the energy sector with investment and planning, the tax chat comes up in.
Your sentence was true, but all these others to complete the paragraph have merit as well?
In Florida, Dem primary for Governor, whether US Rep & former (GOP) Gov Charlie Crist, or state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried will oppose Republican incumbent & 2024 POTUS prospect Gov Ron DeSantis. (My guess based on recent published polling is Crist.)
In New York, only thing on ballot is US House primaries, due to hash that Dems made of redistricting in the Empire State. Another result: number of high-profile Democratic races in NYC and burbs, including established incumbents running against each other, or against progressive challengers, or run out of old district altogether onto brand-new & hotly-contested turf. Plus one GOP race in western NY State featuring state party chair for state Republican establishment versus mega-MAGA-maniac.
Have to check out OK. Ok?
Addendum - OK Special US Senate Republican Runoff, between
> US Representative Markwayne Mullin (in June primary 43.6%)
> former OK state house Speaker T.W. Shannon (in June primary 17.5%)
Norway is a far more popular location for oil and gas investment than the UK, even though historically the tax regime has been higher. The reason is it doesn't change. Companies can invest in a decades long development knowing they can account for factors such as tax take and regulatory environment and there is a very high chance it won't change. In the UK it changes almost with every budget. And regulation is a complete mess. Both the rules and the people making hem change every few years.
Yes I'd side with the children. You're doing the usual damned lies statistics trick of trying to minimise one number by dividing it by many, while trying to make another sound impressive by not doing so. It's not one week, it's one week for ten million people.
Let's turn the question around and see how you ratio it: Devil comes to you with a Faustian pact, you can sacrifice any amount of your children's education that you choose, from a month to all of it. For every month of their education you take from them you will get a month longer at the end of your life.
How much of their education would you take off them? A few months, or years worth? Or all of it or none?
The residential home my mother in law was in was run by the Shaw Trust on behalf of Herefordshire Council. As a council funded resident which was pretty much everyone except my mother in law everything was buckshee and they got to blow their entire state pension on booze fags bingo and toy boys if they so wished. As a private resident we were charged more than the council. In order to pay we rented her house, her shop and used her state pension and we were taxed on the rental income and all of it went on the residential home she was living in, no bingo ot toyboys for her.
So by doing the right thing she was doubly punished. It's an inequitable system
To a lesser extent I also have some sympathy for HY's inheritance dilemma. If I have worked hard, paid my taxes, lived a frugal life and invested well to help my children out after I have gone, why am I paying for my care while someone who has sponged on the dole for 40 years and blown all their money on booze and hookers gets it all for free.
Some places locked down for a year or more (hello Los Angeles!), others didn't lock down at all (Sweden), while others like the UK were in between.
We also need to recognise that children are clearly very good at catching up. Formal education - of reading and writing - doesn't start until seven in Germany. And yet by the age of 13 or 14, German kids are scoring at least well as British ones on the PISA tests.
On the other hand, the impact on those approaching A Levels or GCSEs will probably have been quite severe.
There's a real opportunity to study both the short-term and long-term impacts of lockdowns on education. And until that has been done, it seems premature to either declare that they either had little effect, nor that they have disadvantaged millions.
What banjaxed the remains of British coal, and caused British shale gas to be stillborn, was that geology made them difficult and expensive to extract.
Just because they're there doesn't mean it's in our interests to extract them.
When I was a kid, we used to have a games day on the last day of school term, and I understand this was pretty much universal.
Little did we know that this was the equivalent of 6,000 avoidable deaths.
I'm just trying to - gently - point out that decisions on things like "windfall taxes" have long term consequences.
800 Taiwanese 'flying mortar' drones reportedly shipped to Ukrainian army
Polish media reports 800 Revolver 860 Armed VTOL UAVs have been 'donated' to Ukraine's military
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4634185
This is the nature of energy crises: prices spike, new projects are greenlit, money is spent...
...prices fall due to reduced demand and because the initial reason behind the drop in supply is taken away...
And then (many years later) the new projects come on stream.
This happened in the 70s/80s, where OPEC cut production to punish the West for supporting Israel, with the result that oil demand fell, and new sources of production came on stream. OPEC totally fucked themselves over.
And the same is going to happen with Russia here.
It was something that ten million children sacrificed, twice, in order to prevent some of the natural causes deaths that were prevented.
Yes many natural causes deaths can be avoided, if we sacrifice the rest of society including education to avoid just that one type of death.
You didn't answer my Faustian question. Without dividing it between ten million people in order to minimise the supposed impact on education, from one child to you how much at a 1:1 ratio would you take from your child's education in order to prolong the end of your life by that same amount of time?
I'd go with 10. They miss a term, I get an extra decade.
In which I'd learn to play the flute.
DHERAT (3,6)
It’s rather disingenuous to accuse someone else of being misleading by literally using your own numbers.
All I did was divide to get a weekly number (admittedly, it should have been 28,000 lives per week, but I figured 1 s.f. was a pretty close approximation. And the number wasn’t what you were complaining about; simply the use of the equivalence between lives and education weeks across the country.
Which, once again, was your derivation.
AS YOUR OWN DERIVATION HAD IT.
Before you accused me of being misleading by using your derivation.
But you dropped the part of ten million children from the comment.
It wasn't 9 weeks of education being lost, my comment multiplied it out and said that was 2.5 million years of education being lost. You dropped the multiplication out though and dropped it down to "one week" without caveat.
But that doesn't mean that - right now - UK unconventional resources are economic. Because they're not.
All the well data from the hydraulically fracked onshore tight gas formations in the UK has been very disappointing. Even before the ban on fracking, the shares of iGas and others had fallen 90%.
Now, it doesn't mean there isn't a way forward. But the problem is that right now costs are probably around $100/mmcf, with a path (if things go well) to get it down to $20.
Costs, by contrast, for new projects are $6-7 on the North West Shelf of Australia, sub $4 for Qatar, and well under $10 for Israel and LNG. And these are fully loaded figures, including the cost of LNG liquification plants.
Having spent most of the last six years re-hashing the EU Referendum ad nauseam and ad infinitum we now have the pandemic getting a thorough dose of hindsight debate and of course with hindsight everyone is right and everyone else is wrong.
I suppose in the current climate it's much easier to talk about the past - trying to talk about the present let alone the future seems not to be to anyone's taste given the uncertainty and what some will call negativity and others will call realism.
I'll try to go about three weeks forward with the latest poll on the Swedish election.
The SKOP poll (changes from 2018):
Social Democrats: 27.8% (-0.5)
Sweden Democrats: 19.3% (+1.8)
Moderates: 17.5% (-2.3)
Centre Party 8.6% (nc)
Left Party: 8.5% (+0.5)
Liberals: 6.3% (+0.8)
Greens: 5.9% (+1.5)
Christian Democrats: 4.9% (-1.4)
The centre-right bloc (Sweden Democrats, Moderates, Liberals and Christian Democrats) have 48% and the centre-left bloc 50.8% but whether that translates into another Social Democrat Government I'm not certain.
This poll runs counter to some others showing the Social Democrats over 30% so could be an outlier and it's a better poll for the Sweden Democrats than some I've seen.
As a comparison, the regular SIFO poll has the following:
Social Democrats: 30.2%
Sweden Democrats: 19%
Moderates: 17.4%
Left Party: 7.2%
Christian Democrats: 6.7%
Centre: 6.1%
Green: 5.5%
Liberal: 5.4%
That puts the centre-right on 48.5% with the centre-left on 49% so perhaps not so different but still different.
Polling day is September 11th.
The worst may also happen: intense short-term pain followed by further long-term pain.
Unless you thought I was adding a silent “Oh, for only one pupil” on to the end of “…school ending one week early?”
Okay, for clarity, I was talking about school across the country, as we’d been discussing, not for just one specific pupil.
And, for clarity, lockdown was also for everyone, not just one person, in case that’s also been lost along the way.