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With Truss about to start LAB becomes the “most seats” favourite – politicalbetting.com

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  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Quite a lot of people are less than thrilled with the liberties taken with the lore of Tolkien by the Amazon series (which is not canon).

    Not least the implication that given there are black elves, dwarves, and humans in it but not in the Third Age the elves, dwarves, and humans may have launched a little bit of a racial genocide in between...

    Sounds like rewriting a lot, some modern political bullshit, racial recasting, and missed opportunities. A show set in Harad (south of Mordor, human but not white, and not fond of Numenor/Gondor) and either telling of an individual Nazgul's origin sympathetically or about the blue wizards, or both, would've both been consistent with Tolkien lore and allowed them to tick their diversity boxes.


  • Which is precisely why lockdown was an utter disaster.

    2 years of restrictions, to evade 1 year of risk, is an awful trade off.

    Like paying £1000 insurance to evade a £500 bill.

    No, it's like counting to 1000 to evade a £500 bill, in my view - but that's because I was fine with lockdown, and saw it as just a minor inconvenience. Your parallel is apples and pears - it depends entirely on the relative value that you place on % risks to life vs lockdown.
    Every single person who dies during lockdown is a casualty of lockdown. They had their final days taken from them, no different to a premature death, but won't get that time back after lockdown as they're dead.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,613

    moonshine said:

    https://www.ft.com/content/5ce3801f-51a9-45e8-858a-d56ef129894c

    25 min podcast with Phillips O’Brien, “Who is winning the Ukraine War”.

    Spoiler: Russia are stuffed unless Putin orders full mobilisation.

    Full mobilisation and he'll be stuffed and mounted on the wall of the Kremlin.

    Well, his arse will be.
    I was idly watching the beginning of Valkyrie last night.

    The scene where Staffenberg (Cruise) invents a reason for a General to order an “advance away from the enemy”….
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,237
    Jimmy on a hat trick!
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    Texas judge makes it legally unequivocal that Texas law requires that pregnant women's health be put at risk by its abortion ban:
    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/08/biden-federal-abortion-rights-texas-judge.html

    I have had a punt on the Democrats holding the House in November. With this drip-drip of horror stories now the can of worms has been opened re the Roe v Wade repeal, I think there’s got to be a chance.
    I think it's going to make the big one (2024) look very different too. I've invested in Biden for both the pres and nom, I think his price heads in somewhat after the fact of a Dem senate and a close to even House of reps sinks in.
    If democrats outperform in November then there is also less of a chance of a Trump run in 2024, though I’m not quite sure that benefits Democrats in the Presidential. Ideally for them, DeSantis will also lose (though that looks unlikely).
    I think Trump is running regardless tbh.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    It is a genuinely good thing that at least one of the Tory leadership candidates is questioning the entire Lockdown Narrative

    Why?
    What does it achieve?
    Seriously. How does it practically effect anything at all?
    If it were a genuine questioning, as opposed to playing to the gallery, potentially quite a lot.

    We've massively improved the capacity for disease surveillance, rapid testing and rapid vaccine development in the last couple of years.
    It ought to be possible to detect and characterise future potential pandemic disease outbreaks weeks earlier than was the case for Covid.

    Redefining thresholds for drastic interventions like lockdowns ought to be possible. Or at least ranges of lethality/infectivity where a lockdown was either a no brainer or absurd, and an area of uncertainty in between the two.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571

    Telegraph has run a "scientific" contest to find England's best county.

    Devon ran away with it. By a country mile.

    Cumbria was second.

    Peak Telegraph.
    Wouldn't that have been Derbyshire ?
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    edited August 2022
    GCSE results day 2022: Private schools see biggest drop in top grades
    Proportion of GCSEs marked grade 7 or above at private schools fall 8.2 per cent, far higher than the 2.7 per cent drop at comprehensives

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/25/gcse-results-day-2022-private-schools-see-biggest-drop-top-grades/ (£££)

    Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,393

    Taz said:

    dixiedean said:

    Indeed it is.
    But. We urgently need to be expanding domestic energy generation.
    Hydrocarbons, Nuclear and renewables. It is too late to do anything this winter but they need to crack on ASAP.

    This should be greenlit, irrespective of what the NIMBYs say.

    https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-east/solar-farm-proposed-for-county-durham-site

    The NIMBYs here should have been told to swivel by Durham Council, who seem to be no better than the labour regime they replaced.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-62086628
    I would imagine there are quite a few emergency measures we could operate this winter - refit of gas-powered stations to burn other things etc. The quickest new power generation to bring on stream I would say would be increasing the level of incineration of non-recyclable rubbish.
    The EPC phase for an EfW plant takes several years to deliver. Cory's Riverside 2 in London is expected to take FID this year, but will not be in commercial operation until 2026.

    And if you were starting from a blank sheet of paper, you can add a few years for pre-FEED, FEED and of course all of the planning and consenting stuff prior to FID.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762
    Unpopular said:

    darkage said:

    https://www.cityam.com/raab-vows-to-break-barristers-near-monopoly-over-crown-court-trials/

    Unsuprisingly, the resolution to the criminal barristers strike is to try and get rid of them.
    However, I don't think that having a solicitor represent you in court instead of a barrister would be a good situation.

    Solicitors with a right of audience…. I think that is the term? Look up the interesting history of that.
    I went down a hole on this once, and it's pretty fascinating (imo). I had wondered whether the strike might precipitate a fusion of the professions. The Criminal Bar is obviously in a lot of trouble, especially as DavidL says at the legal aid end of things. The Civil Bar is doing better, but I believe also has problems with recruitment. I suspect the chambers model is less lucrative than the Firm and so less able to throw money around to sustain careers at an early level, especially since Barristers are traditionally independent contractors and have to sing for their supper (this has changed slightly and Barristers can enter into some types of partnership and some do work salaried for firms but this is the exception rather than the rule).

    Of course legal training would have to change massively if either the professions fused formally or if solicitors gained automatic rights of audience. At the moment, Solicitors are not trained for it as a matter of course. My understanding is that even Solicitor advocates are used for more simple matters in the lower courts but won't generally touch more complex litigation.
    A very big difference between the professions is overhead and this makes criminal legal aid unattractive for solicitors. Very broadly when I was a solicitor about 70% of my income went on overheads, staff etc, leaving 30% profit. As Counsel the profit element is more like 70% and my costs, principally insurance, travel, accomodation etc are 30%. So if the fee for a piece of LA work is £100 the solicitor makes £30 but the barrister £70. The result is very few solicitors appearing in court for anything that can justify a barrister because they can make more money elsewhere. Unless Raab changes this he is just wittering.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Eabhal said:



    I hate this binary thing. You're both right, to an extent.

    The park run ban was very much in the former category.

    Here's an interesting argument for PB - some Edinburgh folk want to ban RAF flypasts over the castle, and even the one o'clock gun, to avoid traumatising Ukrainian refugees. I feel very sorry for someone who sees a jet going overhead and panics. I'm awfully privileged to look up and say "cool!"

    But ban the RAF from low passes? Ban the tattoo?

    As someone on the direct flight path of the fly pasts I'm all for this.

    Must be said though it has given my child the sleep super powers. The annual August training of non stop fighter jets and 3 times a night fireworks means once they are asleep no sound can wake them.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,613

    Taz said:

    dixiedean said:

    Indeed it is.
    But. We urgently need to be expanding domestic energy generation.
    Hydrocarbons, Nuclear and renewables. It is too late to do anything this winter but they need to crack on ASAP.

    This should be greenlit, irrespective of what the NIMBYs say.

    https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-east/solar-farm-proposed-for-county-durham-site

    The NIMBYs here should have been told to swivel by Durham Council, who seem to be no better than the labour regime they replaced.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-62086628
    I would imagine there are quite a few emergency measures we could operate this winter - refit of gas-powered stations to burn other things etc. The quickest new power generation to bring on stream I would say would be increasing the level of incineration of non-recyclable rubbish.
    The EPC phase for an EfW plant takes several years to deliver. Cory's Riverside 2 in London is expected to take FID this year, but will not be in commercial operation until 2026.

    And if you were starting from a blank sheet of paper, you can add a few years for pre-FEED, FEED and of course all of the planning and consenting stuff prior to FID.
    You’d be doing well to get containerised diesel generators setup and running.

    IIRC someone proposed, essentially, a big farm of them near an exiting power station, so they could hook into the grid.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    edited August 2022
    Nigelb said:

    Telegraph has run a "scientific" contest to find England's best county.

    Devon ran away with it. By a country mile.

    Cumbria was second.

    Peak Telegraph.
    Wouldn't that have been Derbyshire ?
    Derbyshire is very nice, but it obviously lacks any coast. I think to be the winner you need coast AND a decent high point as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England_by_highest_point
    Castles tips the balance northwards toward Cumbria and Northumbria but rainfall and sunshine back down toward Devon/Cornwall.
    Devon's got a good mix of hills, coast, climate if slightly lacking in castles/stately homes. It's main downfall is probably that every other sod is there in the height of summer. But that's just a function of it's popularity.
    Much as I enjoy living in my bit of Nottinghamshire I couldn't put it in there, being far too flat and having no coast. There's loads of counties that can be ruled out with those criteria.
    I think Derbyshire is the best non coastal county in England for sure.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Trouble is that all that preventing bad things by good public health stuff is boring. (And yes- air filtering looks like a fairly obvious intervention given how much sickness and time off work is caused by airborne viruses.) And it requires collective action and defering to boffins to work.

    If you can get the same effect by just saying "I don't want to do bad things", that's so much cheaper, easier and more fun.

    If that works.
    Has anyone looked at the cost of (gradually?) adding HEPA filters/UV to building air conditioning standards? Once in the standards for new and replacement systems, within a surprisingly small number of years a big percentage of places would be covered…. Make the future bug proof?
    Here's a piece from Schools Week, suggesting about £500 - £1000 to put a suitable air filter into a classroom;

    https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-buy-air-purifier-covid-cleaning-unit-dyson-camfil/

    You don't need to stop that much sickness for that to be a sensible spend.
    Alas due to health authorities absolute dogged insistence of the completely false droplet-vs-aerosol spread hypothesis when it comes to Covid we've spent fuck all time or effort looking at this.

    AS you say, it wouldn't just stop Covid infections, it would reduce all airborne infections. The cost-benefit is an absolute no brainer but there is hee-haw political will to look at it.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762

    GCSE results day 2022: Private schools see biggest drop in top grades
    Proportion of GCSEs marked grade 7 or above at private schools fall 8.2 per cent, far higher than the 2.7 per cent drop at comprehensives

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/25/gcse-results-day-2022-private-schools-see-biggest-drop-top-grades/ (£££)

    Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.

    That's curious because we saw the exact opposite in Scotland where it was the schools in poorer areas whose results had been inflated the most by teacher assessment and who fell the most this year with the return of at least some objective assessment. This increased the attainment gap and it is pretty much nailed on to increase again next year because the results this year were transitional. The ambition of the Scottish government to eliminate the attainment gap sadly lies in ruins.
  • GCSE results day 2022: Private schools see biggest drop in top grades
    Proportion of GCSEs marked grade 7 or above at private schools fall 8.2 per cent, far higher than the 2.7 per cent drop at comprehensives

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/25/gcse-results-day-2022-private-schools-see-biggest-drop-top-grades/ (£££)

    Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.

    The GCSE data do not include iGCSEs as they are not officially recognised by OFQUAL. Consequently, as iGCSEs are popular with independent schools, the data for GCSEs at private schools may not be representative.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    Nigelb said:

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    It is a genuinely good thing that at least one of the Tory leadership candidates is questioning the entire Lockdown Narrative

    Why?
    What does it achieve?
    Seriously. How does it practically effect anything at all?
    If it were a genuine questioning, as opposed to playing to the gallery, potentially quite a lot.

    We've massively improved the capacity for disease surveillance, rapid testing and rapid vaccine development in the last couple of years.
    It ought to be possible to detect and characterise future potential pandemic disease outbreaks weeks earlier than was the case for Covid.

    Redefining thresholds for drastic interventions like lockdowns ought to be possible. Or at least ranges of lethality/infectivity where a lockdown was either a no brainer or absurd, and an area of uncertainty in between the two.
    Note that with now current technology, we might not have needed to lock down for Covid at all.
    A national system of rapid testing with an incentive of £1000 per week to isolate if infected would have kept the spread under control more effectively and far more cheaply until vaccines were ready.

    With new rapid genetic testing it ought to be possible to put the capacity to have that in to place.
    What took us many months to do last time round could be done in weeks.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,156
    edited August 2022
    My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.

    Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.

    Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

    Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.

    What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    Telegraph has run a "scientific" contest to find England's best county.

    Devon ran away with it. By a country mile.

    Cumbria was second.

    Peak Telegraph.
    Wouldn't that have been Derbyshire ?
    Derbyshire is very nice, but it obviously lacks any coast. I think to be the winner you need coast AND a decent high point as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England_by_highest_point
    Castles tips the balance northwards toward Cumbria and Northumbria but rainfall and sunshine back down toward Devon/Cornwall.
    Devon's got a good mix of hills, coast, climate if slightly lacking in castles/stately homes. It's main downfall is probably that every other sod is there in the height of summer. But that's just a function of it's popularity.
    Peak. Joke.

    The Telegraph publishes about 3 articles a day all called A Hidden Part Of Devon Nobody Knows About So Pile In Lads. So this latest one is just what's needed. Twats.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762
    Leon said:

    Jimmy on a hat trick!

    100 up for SA now. England really need to roll this tail.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    edited August 2022
    Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    Telegraph has run a "scientific" contest to find England's best county.

    Devon ran away with it. By a country mile.

    Cumbria was second.

    Peak Telegraph.
    Wouldn't that have been Derbyshire ?
    Derbyshire is very nice, but it obviously lacks any coast. I think to be the winner you need coast AND a decent high point as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England_by_highest_point
    Castles tips the balance northwards toward Cumbria and Northumbria but rainfall and sunshine back down toward Devon/Cornwall.
    Devon's got a good mix of hills, coast, climate if slightly lacking in castles/stately homes. It's main downfall is probably that every other sod is there in the height of summer. But that's just a function of it's popularity.
    Much as I enjoy living in my bit of Nottinghamshire I couldn't put it in there, being far too flat and having no coast. There's loads of counties that can be ruled out with those criteria.
    I think Derbyshire is the best non coastal county in England for sure.
    In case anyone missed it, we did this in some detail on July 29th - I link to my own comment only as one point in the whole discussion.
    https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4051496#Comment_4051496
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Yes I agree. No one can argue entirely with Lockdown 1. There was a new deadly virus stalking the globe. The only reaction is to shelter in place

    There are big debates about schools and lesser debates about dates, masks, etc, but most governments were utterly floored in the first months of covid

    It’s lockdown 2 and onwards where the debate is fundamental. Were they truly necessary? In that form? My doubts grow
    By the 1st Feb 2021 thirty percent of the people who died of Covid in the UK died in the month of January 2021.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    Nigelb said:

    darkage said:

    https://www.cityam.com/raab-vows-to-break-barristers-near-monopoly-over-crown-court-trials/

    Unsuprisingly, the resolution to the criminal barristers strike is to try and get rid of them.
    However, I don't think that having a solicitor represent you in court instead of a barrister would be a good situation.

    Solicitors with a right of audience…. I think that is the term? Look up the interesting history of that.
    Will they be any more keen to appear for current legal aid rates ?
    No they won't. That's the issue.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,043

    Taz said:

    dixiedean said:

    Indeed it is.
    But. We urgently need to be expanding domestic energy generation.
    Hydrocarbons, Nuclear and renewables. It is too late to do anything this winter but they need to crack on ASAP.

    This should be greenlit, irrespective of what the NIMBYs say.

    https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-east/solar-farm-proposed-for-county-durham-site

    The NIMBYs here should have been told to swivel by Durham Council, who seem to be no better than the labour regime they replaced.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-62086628
    I would imagine there are quite a few emergency measures we could operate this winter - refit of gas-powered stations to burn other things etc. The quickest new power generation to bring on stream I would say would be increasing the level of incineration of non-recyclable rubbish.
    The EPC phase for an EfW plant takes several years to deliver. Cory's Riverside 2 in London is expected to take FID this year, but will not be in commercial operation until 2026.

    And if you were starting from a blank sheet of paper, you can add a few years for pre-FEED, FEED and of course all of the planning and consenting stuff prior to FID.
    Well, quite, but these are the things we need to streamline. We can't afford to be this shit any more. That's what's exciting about this era.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    edited August 2022

    GCSE results day 2022: Private schools see biggest drop in top grades
    Proportion of GCSEs marked grade 7 or above at private schools fall 8.2 per cent, far higher than the 2.7 per cent drop at comprehensives

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/25/gcse-results-day-2022-private-schools-see-biggest-drop-top-grades/ (£££)

    Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.

    Well I think I see your point, but daughter failing her 11+ would make us more likely to consider going private!
    Three-and-a-half weeks to go...

    EDIT: My expectation is that the big fall is caused by an unwind of private schools massive outperformance of state school during covid.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Leon said:

    Jimmy on a hat trick!

    My Dad and I have tickets for Sunday. I could really do with England taking their feet off the gas a bit here.
  • Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Yes I agree. No one can argue entirely with Lockdown 1. There was a new deadly virus stalking the globe. The only reaction is to shelter in place

    There are big debates about schools and lesser debates about dates, masks, etc, but most governments were utterly floored in the first months of covid

    It’s lockdown 2 and onwards where the debate is fundamental. Were they truly necessary? In that form? My doubts grow
    By the 1st Feb 2021 thirty percent of the people who died of Covid in the UK died in the month of January 2021.
    Which was not enough people to justify lockdown.

    People die in January. Between March and January close to 400k people died from non COVID deaths. Their liberty wasn't returned post lifting lockdown. Their deaths happening while locked down are on the hands of lockdown advocates.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,152
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Jimmy on a hat trick!

    100 up for SA now. England really need to roll this tail.
    Failure to wrap up the tail has long been an issue for England...
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,787
    The former Austrian foreign minister has tweeted this. The Russian caption says, "Putin receives the EU delegation at Sochi in February 2023"

    image
  • Cookie said:

    GCSE results day 2022: Private schools see biggest drop in top grades
    Proportion of GCSEs marked grade 7 or above at private schools fall 8.2 per cent, far higher than the 2.7 per cent drop at comprehensives

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/25/gcse-results-day-2022-private-schools-see-biggest-drop-top-grades/ (£££)

    Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.

    Well I think I see your point, but daughter failing her 11+ would make us more likely to consider going private!
    Three-and-a-half weeks to go...

    EDIT: My expectation is that the big fall is caused by an unwind of private schools massive outperformance of state school during covid.
    My local private school appears to have done better overall in their GCSEs/iGCSEs in 2022 compared with 2021.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Yes I agree. No one can argue entirely with Lockdown 1. There was a new deadly virus stalking the globe. The only reaction is to shelter in place

    There are big debates about schools and lesser debates about dates, masks, etc, but most governments were utterly floored in the first months of covid

    It’s lockdown 2 and onwards where the debate is fundamental. Were they truly necessary? In that form? My doubts grow
    By the 1st Feb 2021 thirty percent of the people who died of Covid in the UK died in the month of January 2021.
    Lockdown isn't a simple binary though. Even Sweden had some restrictions, I think. The argument is that lockdown was far too harsh.
    I have some sympathy with Lockdown 1 in that we were staring into the unknown. Easy to take a fundamentalist position on the internet, harder when your decisions will affect lives. But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    Telegraph has run a "scientific" contest to find England's best county.

    Devon ran away with it. By a country mile.

    Cumbria was second.

    Peak Telegraph.
    Wouldn't that have been Derbyshire ?
    Derbyshire is very nice, but it obviously lacks any coast. I think to be the winner you need coast AND a decent high point as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England_by_highest_point
    Castles tips the balance northwards toward Cumbria and Northumbria but rainfall and sunshine back down toward Devon/Cornwall.
    Devon's got a good mix of hills, coast, climate if slightly lacking in castles/stately homes. It's main downfall is probably that every other sod is there in the height of summer. But that's just a function of it's popularity.
    Much as I enjoy living in my bit of Nottinghamshire I couldn't put it in there, being far too flat and having no coast. There's loads of counties that can be ruled out with those criteria.
    I think Derbyshire is the best non coastal county in England for sure.
    The lowest county top (including 'old' counties) is Huntingdonshire's. It is called Boring Field. I have been there several times, and yes, it is boring.

    https://www.themountainguide.co.uk/england/boring-field.htm

    England's best county is a effing ridiculous thing to try to evaluate, as 'best' is not a metric. I'm obviously biased towards Derbyshire, but might argue in favour of Northumberland or Dorset.

    As for unredeemable counties: Lincolnshite is fairly bad (Lincoln being the exception), Cumbria is too darned wet and filled with blooming grockles, whilst Bedfordshire is utterly unremarkable. The Cardington Hangers are about the only interesting thing there... ;)
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,911
    Cookie said:

    GCSE results day 2022: Private schools see biggest drop in top grades
    Proportion of GCSEs marked grade 7 or above at private schools fall 8.2 per cent, far higher than the 2.7 per cent drop at comprehensives

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/25/gcse-results-day-2022-private-schools-see-biggest-drop-top-grades/ (£££)

    Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.

    Well I think I see your point, but daughter failing her 11+ would make us more likely to consider going private!
    Three-and-a-half weeks to go...

    EDIT: My expectation is that the big fall is caused by an unwind of private schools massive outperformance of state school during covid.
    Private schools used the Covid situation to massively take the piss in terms of predicted grades. That has now been unwound.
  • The former Austrian foreign minister has tweeted this. The Russian caption says, "Putin receives the EU delegation at Sochi in February 2023"

    image

    Thank goodness we'd quit the EU before all this began.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Jimmy on a hat trick!

    100 up for SA now. England really need to roll this tail.
    Failure to wrap up the tail has long been an issue for England...
    What on earth are England going to do when Broad and Anderson finally call it a day? 6 of the 8 wickets today. Again. It is just incredible how much those 2 have kept England even vaguely competitive over the last 15 years.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,152
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Jimmy on a hat trick!

    100 up for SA now. England really need to roll this tail.
    Failure to wrap up the tail has long been an issue for England...
    What on earth are England going to do when Broad and Anderson finally call it a day? 6 of the 8 wickets today. Again. It is just incredible how much those 2 have kept England even vaguely competitive over the last 15 years.
    Absolutely. I can't see where the future talent is coming from, either batting or bowling!
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    Westminster Voting Intention:

    LAB: 40% (+3)
    CON: 33% (=)
    LDM: 14% (+1)
    GRN: 6% (-1)
    SNP: 4% (=)
    RFM: 2% (-2)

    Via @Kantar_UKI, 18-22 Aug.
    Changes w/ 15-17 Jul.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,043
    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Trouble is that all that preventing bad things by good public health stuff is boring. (And yes- air filtering looks like a fairly obvious intervention given how much sickness and time off work is caused by airborne viruses.) And it requires collective action and defering to boffins to work.

    If you can get the same effect by just saying "I don't want to do bad things", that's so much cheaper, easier and more fun.

    If that works.
    Has anyone looked at the cost of (gradually?) adding HEPA filters/UV to building air conditioning standards? Once in the standards for new and replacement systems, within a surprisingly small number of years a big percentage of places would be covered…. Make the future bug proof?
    Here's a piece from Schools Week, suggesting about £500 - £1000 to put a suitable air filter into a classroom;

    https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-buy-air-purifier-covid-cleaning-unit-dyson-camfil/

    You don't need to stop that much sickness for that to be a sensible spend.
    Alas due to health authorities absolute dogged insistence of the completely false droplet-vs-aerosol spread hypothesis when it comes to Covid we've spent fuck all time or effort looking at this.

    AS you say, it wouldn't just stop Covid infections, it would reduce all airborne infections. The cost-benefit is an absolute no brainer but there is hee-haw political will to look at it.
    Playing devil's advocate, wouldn't open windows work nearly as well?
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,152
    Scott_xP said:

    Westminster Voting Intention:

    LAB: 40% (+3)
    CON: 33% (=)
    LDM: 14% (+1)
    GRN: 6% (-1)
    SNP: 4% (=)
    RFM: 2% (-2)

    Via @Kantar_UKI, 18-22 Aug.
    Changes w/ 15-17 Jul.

    It's astonishing that LAB are only 7% ahead. It shows that Keir hasn't yet sealed the deal.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Jimmy on a hat trick!

    100 up for SA now. England really need to roll this tail.
    Failure to wrap up the tail has long been an issue for England...
    What on earth are England going to do when Broad and Anderson finally call it a day? 6 of the 8 wickets today. Again. It is just incredible how much those 2 have kept England even vaguely competitive over the last 15 years.
    He's younger, but Stokes is also on limited time with his injuries I think.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Scott_xP said:

    Westminster Voting Intention:

    LAB: 40% (+3)
    CON: 33% (=)
    LDM: 14% (+1)
    GRN: 6% (-1)
    SNP: 4% (=)
    RFM: 2% (-2)

    Via @Kantar_UKI, 18-22 Aug.
    Changes w/ 15-17 Jul.

    It's astonishing that LAB are only 7% ahead. It shows that Keir hasn't yet sealed the deal.
    Don't worry, the big leads for Labour will arrive in the winter/2023 when the entire economy shuts down with 6 grand bills.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    Cookie said:

    GCSE results day 2022: Private schools see biggest drop in top grades
    Proportion of GCSEs marked grade 7 or above at private schools fall 8.2 per cent, far higher than the 2.7 per cent drop at comprehensives

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/25/gcse-results-day-2022-private-schools-see-biggest-drop-top-grades/ (£££)

    Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.

    Well I think I see your point, but daughter failing her 11+ would make us more likely to consider going private!
    Three-and-a-half weeks to go...

    EDIT: My expectation is that the big fall is caused by an unwind of private schools massive outperformance of state school during covid.
    Private schools used the Covid situation to massively take the piss in terms of predicted grades. That has now been unwound.
    Well, yes, also they provided considerably more education. Both factors were important.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Germany will spend 8% of GDP on gas this winter according to Economist. Used to < 1



  • My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.

    Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.

    Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

    Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.

    What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.

    And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?

    Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    edited August 2022

    Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    Telegraph has run a "scientific" contest to find England's best county.

    Devon ran away with it. By a country mile.

    Cumbria was second.

    Peak Telegraph.
    Wouldn't that have been Derbyshire ?
    Derbyshire is very nice, but it obviously lacks any coast. I think to be the winner you need coast AND a decent high point as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England_by_highest_point
    Castles tips the balance northwards toward Cumbria and Northumbria but rainfall and sunshine back down toward Devon/Cornwall.
    Devon's got a good mix of hills, coast, climate if slightly lacking in castles/stately homes. It's main downfall is probably that every other sod is there in the height of summer. But that's just a function of it's popularity.
    Much as I enjoy living in my bit of Nottinghamshire I couldn't put it in there, being far too flat and having no coast. There's loads of counties that can be ruled out with those criteria.
    I think Derbyshire is the best non coastal county in England for sure.
    The lowest county top (including 'old' counties) is Huntingdonshire's. It is called Boring Field. I have been there several times, and yes, it is boring.

    https://www.themountainguide.co.uk/england/boring-field.htm

    England's best county is a effing ridiculous thing to try to evaluate, as 'best' is not a metric. I'm obviously biased towards Derbyshire, but might argue in favour of Northumberland or Dorset.

    As for unredeemable counties: Lincolnshite is fairly bad (Lincoln being the exception), Cumbria is too darned wet and filled with blooming grockles, whilst Bedfordshire is utterly unremarkable. The Cardington Hangers are about the only interesting thing there... ;)
    I came across this list of county tops (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_of_England_and_Wales_in_1964_by_highest_point) a few years back and thought it would make a nice project. Six years on and I have made only a little progress on it, though I've done over half of the top half of the list. The likes of Boring Field are ones to call in on if you're passing.
  • Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Trouble is that all that preventing bad things by good public health stuff is boring. (And yes- air filtering looks like a fairly obvious intervention given how much sickness and time off work is caused by airborne viruses.) And it requires collective action and defering to boffins to work.

    If you can get the same effect by just saying "I don't want to do bad things", that's so much cheaper, easier and more fun.

    If that works.
    Has anyone looked at the cost of (gradually?) adding HEPA filters/UV to building air conditioning standards? Once in the standards for new and replacement systems, within a surprisingly small number of years a big percentage of places would be covered…. Make the future bug proof?
    Here's a piece from Schools Week, suggesting about £500 - £1000 to put a suitable air filter into a classroom;

    https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-buy-air-purifier-covid-cleaning-unit-dyson-camfil/

    You don't need to stop that much sickness for that to be a sensible spend.
    Alas due to health authorities absolute dogged insistence of the completely false droplet-vs-aerosol spread hypothesis when it comes to Covid we've spent fuck all time or effort looking at this.

    AS you say, it wouldn't just stop Covid infections, it would reduce all airborne infections. The cost-benefit is an absolute no brainer but there is hee-haw political will to look at it.
    Playing devil's advocate, wouldn't open windows work nearly as well?
    In theory, maybe. A bit. Though there is the whole wanting to keep the warmth in in winter thing. Most schools have beeing doing their best with window opening, but a lot of modern buildings didn't come with enough openable windows. It's been a bit scary having carbon dioxide monitors in classrooms and watching the levels go up lesson by lesson. No wonder the kids get grumpy and lethargic as the day goes on.

    Often there were good reasons for the window thing. The last classroom I had as a fulltime teacher looked out over a main road, so you really didn't want to open the windows.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    edited August 2022

    Germany will spend 8% of GDP on gas this winter according to Economist. Used to < 1

    This is a very expensive war for Ukraine, Russia, europe and the UK (In that order). But not for the USA. That creates a dynamic that for US domestic politics it can go on for the next 20 years and noone there will particularly care. As the USA is (still) the world's pre-eminent military and can indefinitely supply arms to Ukraine it might roll on for a while yet.
  • I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
  • UnpopularUnpopular Posts: 775
    DavidL said:

    Unpopular said:

    darkage said:

    https://www.cityam.com/raab-vows-to-break-barristers-near-monopoly-over-crown-court-trials/

    Unsuprisingly, the resolution to the criminal barristers strike is to try and get rid of them.
    However, I don't think that having a solicitor represent you in court instead of a barrister would be a good situation.

    Solicitors with a right of audience…. I think that is the term? Look up the interesting history of that.
    I went down a hole on this once, and it's pretty fascinating (imo). I had wondered whether the strike might precipitate a fusion of the professions. The Criminal Bar is obviously in a lot of trouble, especially as DavidL says at the legal aid end of things. The Civil Bar is doing better, but I believe also has problems with recruitment. I suspect the chambers model is less lucrative than the Firm and so less able to throw money around to sustain careers at an early level, especially since Barristers are traditionally independent contractors and have to sing for their supper (this has changed slightly and Barristers can enter into some types of partnership and some do work salaried for firms but this is the exception rather than the rule).

    Of course legal training would have to change massively if either the professions fused formally or if solicitors gained automatic rights of audience. At the moment, Solicitors are not trained for it as a matter of course. My understanding is that even Solicitor advocates are used for more simple matters in the lower courts but won't generally touch more complex litigation.
    A very big difference between the professions is overhead and this makes criminal legal aid unattractive for solicitors. Very broadly when I was a solicitor about 70% of my income went on overheads, staff etc, leaving 30% profit. As Counsel the profit element is more like 70% and my costs, principally insurance, travel, accomodation etc are 30%. So if the fee for a piece of LA work is £100 the solicitor makes £30 but the barrister £70. The result is very few solicitors appearing in court for anything that can justify a barrister because they can make more money elsewhere. Unless Raab changes this he is just wittering.
    I recall reading some time back, possibly around the end of the coalition years, that legal aid work was a loss-leader for firms and it was done (where it was done at all) by other parts of a firm subsidising it.

    Very interesting to read about differences in profit though and how that structural difference favours the Bar. As you say, regardless talk about rights of audience, if legal aid work can't pay, firms won't take it on.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765

    The former Austrian foreign minister has tweeted this. The Russian caption says, "Putin receives the EU delegation at Sochi in February 2023"

    image

    Thank goodness we'd quit the EU before all this began.
    The FPO seem to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Russia. I see she was on the board of Rosneft.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,054

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    At least one negative inflation figure in the next two years is a bet I would take at evens. In the next year? Would want much longer odds.

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138

    Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    Telegraph has run a "scientific" contest to find England's best county.

    Devon ran away with it. By a country mile.

    Cumbria was second.

    Peak Telegraph.
    Wouldn't that have been Derbyshire ?
    Derbyshire is very nice, but it obviously lacks any coast. I think to be the winner you need coast AND a decent high point as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England_by_highest_point
    Castles tips the balance northwards toward Cumbria and Northumbria but rainfall and sunshine back down toward Devon/Cornwall.
    Devon's got a good mix of hills, coast, climate if slightly lacking in castles/stately homes. It's main downfall is probably that every other sod is there in the height of summer. But that's just a function of it's popularity.
    Much as I enjoy living in my bit of Nottinghamshire I couldn't put it in there, being far too flat and having no coast. There's loads of counties that can be ruled out with those criteria.
    I think Derbyshire is the best non coastal county in England for sure.
    The lowest county top (including 'old' counties) is Huntingdonshire's. It is called Boring Field. I have been there several times, and yes, it is boring.

    https://www.themountainguide.co.uk/england/boring-field.htm

    England's best county is a effing ridiculous thing to try to evaluate, as 'best' is not a metric. I'm obviously biased towards Derbyshire, but might argue in favour of Northumberland or Dorset.

    As for unredeemable counties: Lincolnshite is fairly bad (Lincoln being the exception), Cumbria is too darned wet and filled with blooming grockles, whilst Bedfordshire is utterly unremarkable. The Cardington Hangers are about the only interesting thing there... ;)
    Shuttleworth Trust on one of their flying/steaming days ...
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Trouble is that all that preventing bad things by good public health stuff is boring. (And yes- air filtering looks like a fairly obvious intervention given how much sickness and time off work is caused by airborne viruses.) And it requires collective action and defering to boffins to work.

    If you can get the same effect by just saying "I don't want to do bad things", that's so much cheaper, easier and more fun.

    If that works.
    Has anyone looked at the cost of (gradually?) adding HEPA filters/UV to building air conditioning standards? Once in the standards for new and replacement systems, within a surprisingly small number of years a big percentage of places would be covered…. Make the future bug proof?
    Here's a piece from Schools Week, suggesting about £500 - £1000 to put a suitable air filter into a classroom;

    https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-buy-air-purifier-covid-cleaning-unit-dyson-camfil/

    You don't need to stop that much sickness for that to be a sensible spend.
    Alas due to health authorities absolute dogged insistence of the completely false droplet-vs-aerosol spread hypothesis when it comes to Covid we've spent fuck all time or effort looking at this.

    AS you say, it wouldn't just stop Covid infections, it would reduce all airborne infections. The cost-benefit is an absolute no brainer but there is hee-haw political will to look at it.
    Playing devil's advocate, wouldn't open windows work nearly as well?
    Schools have been doing that but thay doesn't always guarantee good airflow and in winter it doesn't work so well as the hypothermia outweighs the airflow benefit.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Unpopular said:

    DavidL said:

    Unpopular said:

    darkage said:

    https://www.cityam.com/raab-vows-to-break-barristers-near-monopoly-over-crown-court-trials/

    Unsuprisingly, the resolution to the criminal barristers strike is to try and get rid of them.
    However, I don't think that having a solicitor represent you in court instead of a barrister would be a good situation.

    Solicitors with a right of audience…. I think that is the term? Look up the interesting history of that.
    I went down a hole on this once, and it's pretty fascinating (imo). I had wondered whether the strike might precipitate a fusion of the professions. The Criminal Bar is obviously in a lot of trouble, especially as DavidL says at the legal aid end of things. The Civil Bar is doing better, but I believe also has problems with recruitment. I suspect the chambers model is less lucrative than the Firm and so less able to throw money around to sustain careers at an early level, especially since Barristers are traditionally independent contractors and have to sing for their supper (this has changed slightly and Barristers can enter into some types of partnership and some do work salaried for firms but this is the exception rather than the rule).

    Of course legal training would have to change massively if either the professions fused formally or if solicitors gained automatic rights of audience. At the moment, Solicitors are not trained for it as a matter of course. My understanding is that even Solicitor advocates are used for more simple matters in the lower courts but won't generally touch more complex litigation.
    A very big difference between the professions is overhead and this makes criminal legal aid unattractive for solicitors. Very broadly when I was a solicitor about 70% of my income went on overheads, staff etc, leaving 30% profit. As Counsel the profit element is more like 70% and my costs, principally insurance, travel, accomodation etc are 30%. So if the fee for a piece of LA work is £100 the solicitor makes £30 but the barrister £70. The result is very few solicitors appearing in court for anything that can justify a barrister because they can make more money elsewhere. Unless Raab changes this he is just wittering.
    I recall reading some time back, possibly around the end of the coalition years, that legal aid work was a loss-leader for firms and it was done (where it was done at all) by other parts of a firm subsidising it.

    Very interesting to read about differences in profit though and how that structural difference favours the Bar. As you say, regardless talk about rights of audience, if legal aid work can't pay, firms won't take it on.
    I am told that before the hated Thatch reforms, domestic conveyancing paid for absolutely everything; if firms litigated at all, it was a hobby and a side hustle.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Trouble is that all that preventing bad things by good public health stuff is boring. (And yes- air filtering looks like a fairly obvious intervention given how much sickness and time off work is caused by airborne viruses.) And it requires collective action and defering to boffins to work.

    If you can get the same effect by just saying "I don't want to do bad things", that's so much cheaper, easier and more fun.

    If that works.
    Has anyone looked at the cost of (gradually?) adding HEPA filters/UV to building air conditioning standards? Once in the standards for new and replacement systems, within a surprisingly small number of years a big percentage of places would be covered…. Make the future bug proof?
    Here's a piece from Schools Week, suggesting about £500 - £1000 to put a suitable air filter into a classroom;

    https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-buy-air-purifier-covid-cleaning-unit-dyson-camfil/

    You don't need to stop that much sickness for that to be a sensible spend.
    Alas due to health authorities absolute dogged insistence of the completely false droplet-vs-aerosol spread hypothesis when it comes to Covid we've spent fuck all time or effort looking at this.

    AS you say, it wouldn't just stop Covid infections, it would reduce all airborne infections. The cost-benefit is an absolute no brainer but there is hee-haw political will to look at it.
    Have you noticed that pretty much all the COVID precautions that also minimised respiratory and ingested infections have all but gone? Maskage is at almost nil, and just try finding an antiseptic hand gel in a public place that isn't empty. No hands Infront of one's mouth as they cough all over your pub lunch and dirty bastards not washing their hands after using public conveniences seems to be par for the course too.

    Still, I've learned on here that precautions such as isolation to protect against infections didn't work at peak COVID, so I guess none of the other stuff matters either.
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,396
    I've just finished Deborah Birx's "Silent Invasion" and would recommend it to anyone who wants to understand how the US failed -- and succeeded -- in our response to COVID. The title is, I think, appropriate -- and not just because she served in the US Army for 20 years, retiring with the rank of colonel. She describes, in considerable detail, her efforts to learn how large the COVID enemy was, where they were located, and where they were likely to be next.

    It's a more personal account than I, and, probably, Andy_Cooke, would like -- but that will enable it to reach a larger audience. (She is an epidemiologist, so I was hoping for graphs -- there are none -- and lots of numbers -- there are some, but not as many as I would like.)

    On the other hand, I learned something about the special problems of a woman operating in a political/bureaucratic environment not always welcoming. (One amusing detail: As she traveled about the United States learning about the problems and solutions, she and her companion, Irum Zaidi, wore comfortable clothes while driving -- and then had to change into business clothes for meetings. Sometimes they did so shielded only by opened car doors.)

    One thing she does little of is compare the different responses of the 50 states (and DC and Puerto Rico). The death rates vary so widely among the 52 that we should be able to learn much about what worked, and what didn't. I don't blame her for that, since it is a very large problem, with many statistical traps, but I do hope some experts tackle it, soon.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583

    Scott_xP said:

    Westminster Voting Intention:

    LAB: 40% (+3)
    CON: 33% (=)
    LDM: 14% (+1)
    GRN: 6% (-1)
    SNP: 4% (=)
    RFM: 2% (-2)

    Via @Kantar_UKI, 18-22 Aug.
    Changes w/ 15-17 Jul.

    It's astonishing that LAB are only 7% ahead. It shows that Keir hasn't yet sealed the deal.
    Looking good for the Tories then.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Cookie said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    Telegraph has run a "scientific" contest to find England's best county.

    Devon ran away with it. By a country mile.

    Cumbria was second.

    Peak Telegraph.
    Wouldn't that have been Derbyshire ?
    Derbyshire is very nice, but it obviously lacks any coast. I think to be the winner you need coast AND a decent high point as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England_by_highest_point
    Castles tips the balance northwards toward Cumbria and Northumbria but rainfall and sunshine back down toward Devon/Cornwall.
    Devon's got a good mix of hills, coast, climate if slightly lacking in castles/stately homes. It's main downfall is probably that every other sod is there in the height of summer. But that's just a function of it's popularity.
    Much as I enjoy living in my bit of Nottinghamshire I couldn't put it in there, being far too flat and having no coast. There's loads of counties that can be ruled out with those criteria.
    I think Derbyshire is the best non coastal county in England for sure.
    The lowest county top (including 'old' counties) is Huntingdonshire's. It is called Boring Field. I have been there several times, and yes, it is boring.

    https://www.themountainguide.co.uk/england/boring-field.htm

    England's best county is a effing ridiculous thing to try to evaluate, as 'best' is not a metric. I'm obviously biased towards Derbyshire, but might argue in favour of Northumberland or Dorset.

    As for unredeemable counties: Lincolnshite is fairly bad (Lincoln being the exception), Cumbria is too darned wet and filled with blooming grockles, whilst Bedfordshire is utterly unremarkable. The Cardington Hangers are about the only interesting thing there... ;)
    I came across this list of county tops (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_of_England_and_Wales_in_1964_by_highest_point) a few years back and thought it would make a nice project. Six years on and I have made only a little progress on it, though I've done over half of the top half of the list. The likes of Boring Field are ones to call in on if you're passing.
    I started doing them nearly 25 years ago, but haven't done any for yonks. Although my aim is to actually connect them up, so every top can be reached in a walk I have done from another top...

    https://britishwalks.org/walks/Counties/CountyTops.php

    I'd love to finish the list, but it might be a few years before I get back to it...
  • Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    Unleaded is an energy bill and it's down 20% and still falling off the peak.

    The world detoxing itself from Russian gas has caused a price shock but the world is adopting fast. People are urgently finding ways to reduce gas demand and/or find alternative supplies.

    The Russians have shot their bolt. This winter should be the worst of it, but once the winter is over where are price hikes coming from? Next spring and summer could see Gas start rapidly falling in price, just as Brent Crude already has.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    Bart is an anecdotal amateur economist he knows these things. If the only items in the basket of goods was a case of Coke Zero and a DFS sofa inflation would be way under control.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    I think we'll be seeing prices lower than they are now, yes. I absolutely don't think we'll get back to where we were a year ago, and I don't think we'll get long-term deflation, but I think we will see quite a dip before things start tracking more slowly up again. Longer term inflation rate of closer to 5% or so?
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    But energy bills will soon hit a peak (in my view). And then gradually head downwards. Once that happens, prices fall.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    Unleaded is an energy bill and it's down 20% and still falling off the peak.

    The world detoxing itself from Russian gas has caused a price shock but the world is adopting fast. People are urgently finding ways to reduce gas demand and/or find alternative supplies.

    The Russians have shot their bolt. This winter should be the worst of it, but once the winter is over where are price hikes coming from? Next spring and summer could see Gas start rapidly falling in price, just as Brent Crude already has.
    Neither us nor the EU is going to be able to build power capacity quickly enough to cushion the lack of gas for the next 3 or 4 years I think. It'll help us a bit, but Dogger bank is only onstream mid 2025. These things take a while.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    A cautionary tale

    There's a really boring ETF called Aberdeen Standard Physical Gold Shares ETF. The US market symbol for this is SGOL

    Then there's London Stock Exchange symbols which are different. To them, SGOL is Leverage Shares 3x Short Gold ETC GBP. Much less boring.

    So if you are doing a look up by symbol and not paying much attention, you can glance over the name and just see Gold and ETX and fill your boots with the opposite of what you intended. It's like what3words, near misses are not much of a worry if one is in Staffordshire and one in Mongolia, but these are a bit close for comfort.

    moral: concentrate on one thing at a time.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    moonshine said:

    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it

    From the east...

    https://www.windy.com/?47.538,34.865,8
  • Cookie said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    I think we'll be seeing prices lower than they are now, yes. I absolutely don't think we'll get back to where we were a year ago, and I don't think we'll get long-term deflation, but I think we will see quite a dip before things start tracking more slowly up again. Longer term inflation rate of closer to 5% or so?
    Well indeed prices aren't likely to go back where they were but hence my point about the early rises rolling out of the figures.

    If prices go to a level above where they were but below the peak, then once "were they were" rolls out of the data and "the peak" becomes the "were they were" that would be deflation, officially.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,602
    Mortimer said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Par example





    Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this

    It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.

    The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
    If you consider a perfectly decent retrospective questioning of whether we may have been a little too eager to restrict personal liberty 'mewling' then it sort of shows the problem of the tyranny of a fearful majority, doesn't it?
    It certainly does, and was one of the huge problems with PB during Covid. Also, there are many on the left, too, who would wish to investigate the decisions to lockdown at certain points during the pandemic.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    tlg86 said:

    moonshine said:

    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it

    From the east...

    https://www.windy.com/?47.538,34.865,8
    East then south then West. That might screw Egypt and Saudi more than Europe
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    Cookie said:

    Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    But energy bills will soon hit a peak (in my view). And then gradually head downwards. Once that happens, prices fall.
    Well it's undeniable that demand for gas will fall over the next couple of years, with because of the huge current cost, and for reasons of risk mitigation.

    And longer term, should fall further.
    Japan is definitely rethinking nuclear, for example.
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-24/japan-wants-to-restart-more-reactors-to-avoid-power-shortages?srnd=markets-vp
    ...Japan is planning a dramatic shift back to nuclear power more than a decade on from the Fukushima disaster, aiming to restart a sweep of idled reactors and to develop new plants using next-generation technologies.

    Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Wednesday that the government will explore development and construction of new reactors as the country aims to avoid new strains on power grids that buckled under heavy demand this summer, and to curb the nation’s reliance on energy imports...
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 2,800
    Some competition for Dalle2 coming along from google : https://imagen.research.google/
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,831
    edited August 2022
    moonshine said:

    tlg86 said:

    moonshine said:

    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it

    From the east...

    https://www.windy.com/?47.538,34.865,8
    East then south then West. That might screw Egypt and Saudi more than Europe
    Completely disconnected from the Ukraine grid, radiation levels normal is the latest
  • Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    Unleaded is an energy bill and it's down 20% and still falling off the peak.

    The world detoxing itself from Russian gas has caused a price shock but the world is adopting fast. People are urgently finding ways to reduce gas demand and/or find alternative supplies.

    The Russians have shot their bolt. This winter should be the worst of it, but once the winter is over where are price hikes coming from? Next spring and summer could see Gas start rapidly falling in price, just as Brent Crude already has.
    Neither us nor the EU is going to be able to build power capacity quickly enough to cushion the lack of gas for the next 3 or 4 years I think. It'll help us a bit, but Dogger bank is only onstream mid 2025. These things take a while.
    We don't need to replace it all in one go to have deflation though, replacing even some of it could cause it.

    In 2022 there is a significant shortage relative to demand versus 2021, hence inflation. But in 2023 we won't be looking versus 2021, we'll be looking versus 2022.

    Unless the situation gets worse before it gets better, even relatively better to now will show as lower inflation or potentially deflation versus now. If in 2023 we have better adjusted to have lower demand than 2022, and have better adnusted to have more supply than 2022, then prices might be coming down not going up in 2023.

    Just as petrol at 161.9 is inflation versus 124.9 but deflation versus 196.9

    It's all relative.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    Unleaded is an energy bill and it's down 20% and still falling off the peak.

    The world detoxing itself from Russian gas has caused a price shock but the world is adopting fast. People are urgently finding ways to reduce gas demand and/or find alternative supplies.

    The Russians have shot their bolt. This winter should be the worst of it, but once the winter is over where are price hikes coming from? Next spring and summer could see Gas start rapidly falling in price, just as Brent Crude already has.
    Neither us nor the EU is going to be able to build power capacity quickly enough to cushion the lack of gas for the next 3 or 4 years I think. It'll help us a bit, but Dogger bank is only onstream mid 2025. These things take a while.
    Are we likely to see anything like 74-81, though, when prices rose every single year ?
    I doubt it.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    edited August 2022
    tlg86 said:

    moonshine said:

    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it

    From the east...

    https://www.windy.com/?47.538,34.865,8
    Looks like a disconnect from the grid.

    I don't know if the design allows them to dump heat without the turbines?

    I wonder if they could keep one reactor running at low power in order to keep all the pumps running after shutdown?

    Otherwise, brace, although nothing is going to happen immediately.

    Wind is easterly for a few days, then switches to north-westerly.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,602

    Nigelb said:

    Dynamo said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Haven't spotted this being posted already, but you can fill in the government survey on just why you think imperial units are brilliant, here : https://beisgovuk.citizenspace.com/opss/measurements/

    Embarrassingly slanted "survey" - really from the same mindset as the authors of LibDem barcharts, but from our own Government. Even if I agreed with the objective, my toes would curl if I had anything to do with it.
    It could be in the Sun or the Daily Express. But they have no shame.

    It's scary. If Truss gives Leavers their pounds and inches back, few of them will call her Remainy-face any more. Next on the list for reversal could be the bill their patron saint made a speech against in 1968.

    Interesting timing for that "survey".
    "3a. If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items (i) in imperial units? (ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent?"

    No metric only option.
    iii) relegate imperial units to the status of quaint historical relic.
    Which tbf is where they already are for the vast majority of people.
    Eh? Are they? I prefer metric but don't recall ever ordering half a litre of bitter or reading road signage in km.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,138

    Nigelb said:

    Dynamo said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Haven't spotted this being posted already, but you can fill in the government survey on just why you think imperial units are brilliant, here : https://beisgovuk.citizenspace.com/opss/measurements/

    Embarrassingly slanted "survey" - really from the same mindset as the authors of LibDem barcharts, but from our own Government. Even if I agreed with the objective, my toes would curl if I had anything to do with it.
    It could be in the Sun or the Daily Express. But they have no shame.

    It's scary. If Truss gives Leavers their pounds and inches back, few of them will call her Remainy-face any more. Next on the list for reversal could be the bill their patron saint made a speech against in 1968.

    Interesting timing for that "survey".
    "3a. If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items (i) in imperial units? (ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent?"

    No metric only option.
    iii) relegate imperial units to the status of quaint historical relic.
    Which tbf is where they already are for the vast majority of people.
    Eh? Are they? I prefer metric but don't recall ever ordering half a litre of bitter or reading road signage in km.
    wine is in metric ...
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    tlg86 said:

    moonshine said:

    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it

    From the east...

    https://www.windy.com/?47.538,34.865,8
    Looks like a disconnect from the grid.

    I don't know if the design allows them to dump heat without the turbines?

    I wonder if they could keep one reactor running at low power in order to keep all the pumps running after shutdown?

    Otherwise, brace, although nothing is going to happen immediately.

    Wind is easterly for a few days, then switches to north-westerly.
    Source for all this?
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,602
    Eabhal said:

    RobD said:

    Taz said:

    dixiedean said:

    Indeed it is.
    But. We urgently need to be expanding domestic energy generation.
    Hydrocarbons, Nuclear and renewables. It is too late to do anything this winter but they need to crack on ASAP.

    This should be greenlit, irrespective of what the NIMBYs say.

    https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-east/solar-farm-proposed-for-county-durham-site

    The NIMBYs here should have been told to swivel by Durham Council, who seem to be no better than the labour regime they replaced.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-62086628
    The bit missing from the Guardian article is the rate of refusal - what percentage are being turned down?

    You will expect the number of rejected schemes to go up, if the number of overall schemes is increasing (the number of applications for solar schemes is through the roof)

    There may also be a rush of hastily designed/planned schemes as part of such an increase.

    Without such information it is just Daily Mailing from the other point of view.
    Do journalists even understand what percentages are?
    Don't get me started on percentages v percentage points.
    Often conflated in threaders on here by OGH
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    moonshine said:

    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it

    From the east...

    https://www.windy.com/?47.538,34.865,8
    Looks like a disconnect from the grid.

    I don't know if the design allows them to dump heat without the turbines?

    I wonder if they could keep one reactor running at low power in order to keep all the pumps running after shutdown?

    Otherwise, brace, although nothing is going to happen immediately.

    Wind is easterly for a few days, then switches to north-westerly.
    Source for all this?
    Ukrainian nuclear authority.

    https://nitter.42l.fr/KyivIndependent/status/1562805492812251138#m
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,831
    edited August 2022
    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    moonshine said:

    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it

    From the east...

    https://www.windy.com/?47.538,34.865,8
    Looks like a disconnect from the grid.

    I don't know if the design allows them to dump heat without the turbines?

    I wonder if they could keep one reactor running at low power in order to keep all the pumps running after shutdown?

    Otherwise, brace, although nothing is going to happen immediately.

    Wind is easterly for a few days, then switches to north-westerly.
    Source for all this?
    Energoatom, Ukrainian regulators confirm the shutdown, plenty videos of fires in the forest nearby etc. Ive seen a couple 'power restored' tweets too, nothing official
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853

    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    moonshine said:

    What way is the wind blowing from Zaporizhzhia then? Looks like the mad bastard has gone and done it

    From the east...

    https://www.windy.com/?47.538,34.865,8
    Looks like a disconnect from the grid.

    I don't know if the design allows them to dump heat without the turbines?

    I wonder if they could keep one reactor running at low power in order to keep all the pumps running after shutdown?

    Otherwise, brace, although nothing is going to happen immediately.

    Wind is easterly for a few days, then switches to north-westerly.
    Source for all this?
    Ukrainian nuclear authority.

    https://nitter.42l.fr/KyivIndependent/status/1562805492812251138#m
    Although they use the past tense. I wonder if someone fixed it pronto?
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594

    Mortimer said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Par example





    Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this

    It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.

    The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
    If you consider a perfectly decent retrospective questioning of whether we may have been a little too eager to restrict personal liberty 'mewling' then it sort of shows the problem of the tyranny of a fearful majority, doesn't it?
    It certainly does, and was one of the huge problems with PB during Covid. Also, there are many on the left, too, who would wish to investigate the decisions to lockdown at certain points during the pandemic.
    Is that really true Mr Anabo? I haven't come across any.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,613

    Quite a lot of people are less than thrilled with the liberties taken with the lore of Tolkien by the Amazon series (which is not canon).

    Not least the implication that given there are black elves, dwarves, and humans in it but not in the Third Age the elves, dwarves, and humans may have launched a little bit of a racial genocide in between...

    Sounds like rewriting a lot, some modern political bullshit, racial recasting, and missed opportunities. A show set in Harad (south of Mordor, human but not white, and not fond of Numenor/Gondor) and either telling of an individual Nazgul's origin sympathetically or about the blue wizards, or both, would've both been consistent with Tolkien lore and allowed them to tick their diversity boxes.

    What about the imperialist oppression experienced by the Dunlendings?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,237


    My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.

    Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.

    Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

    Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.

    What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.

    And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?

    Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
    Curiously, you’ve told us many times how much you enjoyed lockdown

    And here you are. Pro lockdown

  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,602
    MISTY said:

    Mortimer said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Par example





    Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this

    It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.

    The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
    If you consider a perfectly decent retrospective questioning of whether we may have been a little too eager to restrict personal liberty 'mewling' then it sort of shows the problem of the tyranny of a fearful majority, doesn't it?
    It certainly does, and was one of the huge problems with PB during Covid. Also, there are many on the left, too, who would wish to investigate the decisions to lockdown at certain points during the pandemic.
    Is that really true Mr Anabo? I haven't come across any.
    You just have!
  • Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    Bart is an anecdotal amateur economist he knows these things. If the only items in the basket of goods was a case of Coke Zero and a DFS sofa inflation would be way under control.
    Ha ha ha.

    I specifically mentioned other things like futures for commodities but all you picked up on was the Coke Zero? How droll.

    While cans of Coke Zero coming down by 1/8th of their price from a few months ago may seek like an odd anecdote alone, the more serious point is what has happened to the aluminium market in that time.

    Check the 1 year chart for the price of aluminium and you'll see why cans of Coke Zero shot up in price a few months ago, and why they're coming back down in price now.

    Aluminium surged to $3850 at the start of March. It's now down to $2434 - https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/ali:cmx

    Right now we are getting inflation figures comparing against prior to Putin's invasion. Next March onwards that rolls out and we start comparing inflation with this year. Many commodities will be cheaper in March 2023 than March 2022.

    Unless the price of aluminium goes back up again, in March 2023 it will be 37% cheaper than March 2022.

    What's true for aluminium is true for many other commodities too.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    There'll be a huge lag from these massive energy prices. Take glass for instance, it's gas intensive process for both capital and production, it'll roll out in the price of plonk, pop and windows for buildings eventually.
    Same for aluminium cans..
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226

    Pulpstar said:

    I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?

    The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.

    Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.

    In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?

    Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
    Bart is an anecdotal amateur economist he knows these things. If the only items in the basket of goods was a case of Coke Zero and a DFS sofa inflation would be way under control.
    Ha ha ha.

    I specifically mentioned other things like futures for commodities but all you picked up on was the Coke Zero? How droll.

    While cans of Coke Zero coming down by 1/8th of their price from a few months ago may seek like an odd anecdote alone, the more serious point is what has happened to the aluminium market in that time.

    Check the 1 year chart for the price of aluminium and you'll see why cans of Coke Zero shot up in price a few months ago, and why they're coming back down in price now.

    Aluminium surged to $3850 at the start of March. It's now down to $2434 - https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/ali:cmx

    Right now we are getting inflation figures comparing against prior to Putin's invasion. Next March onwards that rolls out and we start comparing inflation with this year. Many commodities will be cheaper in March 2023 than March 2022.

    Unless the price of aluminium goes back up
    again, in March 2023 it will be 37% cheaper than March 2022.

    What's true for aluminium is true for many other commodities too.
    The reason why commodities prices are tailing off is because the major consumer of them, China, is heading for a very hard landing indeed.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    Leon said:


    My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.

    Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.

    Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

    Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.

    What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.

    And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?

    Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
    Curiously, you’ve told us many times how much you enjoyed lockdown

    And here you are. Pro lockdown

    He's right in my case. Lockdown does set me off, for all sorts of reasons. Chiefly because I believe it is a deeply iniquitous policy, and one I never ever thought we would ever see in our country.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,602
    I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Leon said:


    My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.

    Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.

    Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

    Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.

    What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.

    And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?

    Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
    Curiously, you’ve told us many times how much you enjoyed lockdown

    And here you are. Pro lockdown

    Lockdown killed people too.

    One of the most audacious arguments at the time - since many people would only listen to arguments phrased in terms of how many people would die - was that lockdown would cause more deaths than let-it-rip covid would.
    Now obviously in the long term this is true, since lockdown made us poorer, resulting in less money to spend on health, and more poor people who have worse health outcomes. But we also tried the argument that in the short term it was also true, due to taking the health focus off anything that wasn't covid. Karol Sikora was one of the strongest proponents of this argument. But the evidence we are seeing now - with excess deaths higher than during covid - suggests he was right. Lockdown led to poorer health outcomes than no-lockdown would have done.

    Again, obvious caveat here that there are degrees of lockdown and almost no-one is in reality arguing for let-it-rip - just rather less single-mindedness than we saw.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,043
    Alistair said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    @Andy_Cooke

    “Which you are, indeed, pretty good at, and you've managed to get a well-remunerated career out of, so you can't complain, I guess.”

    Thanks. I’ll take that

    In all seriousness your Covid stat stuff has been enlightening and much gratitude for that. I simply believe you’ve lost sight, perhaps, of the incredible yet invisible damage wrought by lockdowns…

    And I only insulted you because I realised I hadn’t insulted anyone for days, and you have to keep practising

    Hope you get well soon

    Thanks. As I said, it was so over-the-top that I laughed instead of being insulted.

    I will say, as I've said several times before: Lockdowns are terrible things. To quote myself from just yesterday:
    "Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse."

    I remain genuinely angry that they didn't do enough analysis during the first summer to home in on what worked best and what didn't, so went back to that crude hammer simply because they didn't know any other way to achieve it. I mean, we already knew that outside stuff was far safer by then, at the very least.

    I hated the lockdown periods - partly because I have a severely autistic son who struggled a lot, and partly because I had to do a lot of work to help organise the food parcels to those being shielded, and that got far harder in lockdown.

    My latest obsession has been: for the love of God, properly investigate things like HEPA filtration and far-uv for air filtering. The early stuff indicates that it can halve transmission rates or more, which is stunningly good. In effect, that could provide something like two Tiers-worth of restrictions (or two steps in the emergence from lockdown roadmap) in one.

    Meaning that Tier 2 restrictions (with schools open, etc) would equate to a full Tier 4 lockdown. Twenty-twenty hindsight, but we know there'll be another pandemic again some day. I'd prefer the period of waiting for a vaccine to never get another lockdown.
    Trouble is that all that preventing bad things by good public health stuff is boring. (And yes- air filtering looks like a fairly obvious intervention given how much sickness and time off work is caused by airborne viruses.) And it requires collective action and defering to boffins to work.

    If you can get the same effect by just saying "I don't want to do bad things", that's so much cheaper, easier and more fun.

    If that works.
    Has anyone looked at the cost of (gradually?) adding HEPA filters/UV to building air conditioning standards? Once in the standards for new and replacement systems, within a surprisingly small number of years a big percentage of places would be covered…. Make the future bug proof?
    Here's a piece from Schools Week, suggesting about £500 - £1000 to put a suitable air filter into a classroom;

    https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-buy-air-purifier-covid-cleaning-unit-dyson-camfil/

    You don't need to stop that much sickness for that to be a sensible spend.
    Alas due to health authorities absolute dogged insistence of the completely false droplet-vs-aerosol spread hypothesis when it comes to Covid we've spent fuck all time or effort looking at this.

    AS you say, it wouldn't just stop Covid infections, it would reduce all airborne infections. The cost-benefit is an absolute no brainer but there is hee-haw political will to look at it.
    Playing devil's advocate, wouldn't open windows work nearly as well?
    Schools have been doing that but thay doesn't always guarantee good airflow and in winter it doesn't work so well as the hypothermia outweighs the airflow benefit.
    Kids are resilient.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,237
    Workers from the Zap Power Station address the world


    https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1562804210873159681?s=21&t=FcY9n_qBQH6wuBGLQzzXBw

    Bleak and scary
  • DynamoDynamo Posts: 651
    edited August 2022
    moonshine said:

    https://www.ft.com/content/5ce3801f-51a9-45e8-858a-d56ef129894c

    25 min podcast with Phillips O’Brien, “Who is winning the Ukraine War”.

    Spoiler: Russia are stuffed unless Putin orders full mobilisation.

    So strategic nuclear weapons are useless. Who'd have guessed it? Upper Volta with nukes was the same as Upper Volta without nukes all along. A historian at St Andrews explains the position. Will all the powers that hold strategic nukes now be giving them up?
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,156
    edited August 2022


    My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.

    Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.

    Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

    Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.

    What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.

    And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?

    Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
    I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.

    You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.

    It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    Cookie said:

    Leon said:


    My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.

    Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.

    Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

    Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.

    What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.

    And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?

    Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
    Curiously, you’ve told us many times how much you enjoyed lockdown

    And here you are. Pro lockdown

    Lockdown killed people too.

    One of the most audacious arguments at the time - since many people would only listen to arguments phrased in terms of how many people would die - was that lockdown would cause more deaths than let-it-rip covid would.
    Now obviously in the long term this is true, since lockdown made us poorer, resulting in less money to spend on health, and more poor people who have worse health outcomes. But we also tried the argument that in the short term it was also true, due to taking the health focus off anything that wasn't covid. Karol Sikora was one of the strongest proponents of this argument. But the evidence we are seeing now - with excess deaths higher than during covid - suggests he was right. Lockdown led to poorer health outcomes than no-lockdown would have done.

    Again, obvious caveat here that there are degrees of lockdown and almost no-one is in reality arguing for let-it-rip - just rather less single-mindedness than we saw.
    Andy Cooke's point ( I think) is that poorer health outcomes are not happening post lockdown in other countries, ergo lockdowns cannot be responsible for poorer health outcomes anywhere.
  • MISTY said:

    Mortimer said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Par example





    Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this

    It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.

    The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
    If you consider a perfectly decent retrospective questioning of whether we may have been a little too eager to restrict personal liberty 'mewling' then it sort of shows the problem of the tyranny of a fearful majority, doesn't it?
    It certainly does, and was one of the huge problems with PB during Covid. Also, there are many on the left, too, who would wish to investigate the decisions to lockdown at certain points during the pandemic.
    Is that really true Mr Anabo? I haven't come across any.
    Piers Corbyn left-libertarian types spring to mind.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,043
    Pulpstar said:

    There'll be a huge lag from these massive energy prices. Take glass for instance, it's gas intensive process for both capital and production, it'll roll out in the price of plonk, pop and windows for buildings eventually.
    Same for aluminium cans..

    Most glass comes from China doesn't it? They have plenty of cheap gas. Though the price has been rising due to shortages for other reasons.
This discussion has been closed.