Someone was gasing on about the TNT equivalence of battery storage systems.
Well, the average petrol station has on its premises the equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon’ worth of TNT - as measured in the raw energy equivalence.
But that's different! Petrol isn't dangerous because, ugh... reasons.
According to the oil company* I worked for, petrol is
- Toxic - Inflammable - Explosive - Carcinogenic - Suspected of being a mutagen
It was a common joke that if petrol was invented today, there was absolutely no way you’d be allowed to sell it to the general public.
Elon Musk’s family foundation took Tommy Robinson to Russia, says Musk’s father
Errol Musk says far-right activist is ‘a fine young man’ and held meetings with Russian business figures
Elon Musk’s family foundation took Tommy Robinson to Russia, according to the billionaire X owner’s father, who was with the British far-right activist in Moscow as he encouraged anti-migration protests in Britain.
Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – appeared last month in Moscow, from where he issued calls for supporters to take to the streets after a knife attack in Belfast. He shared video of himself in a luxury Moscow hotel with the older Musk, whose son has been a vocal supporter of Robinson.
“I brought him out to Russia,” Musk’s father, Errol, told the Guardian, adding that both men had held meetings with Russian business figures. He said the trip had been covered by the Musk Foundation, a private philanthropic organisation founded by Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk.
The visit to Moscow came at a time when Vladimir Putin’s regime and its proxies have appeared to be forging links with European far-right figures. At the same time, Russia was also hosting Andrew Tate, the self-styled misogynistic influencer, and his brother, who posted footage of themselves firing weapons and riding in a tank in the apparent company of the Russian military.
Sport can be so cruel . All those missed match points . Muchova should be heavy favourite now and Noskova sticking her fingers in her ears to drown out the crowd isn’t good .
It’s not that they’re against her but just want a longer final and I hope she understands that.
Off topic: A week ago, I walked north 10 blocks to watch Kirkland's annual 4th of July Parade. As usual, it began with the best part, the kids parade:
(There are a couple of blocks of kids, often with parents or grandparents, behind those you see.)
I didn't try for a count, but would guess that the largest group in the kids parade were east Asians. There were many mixed race couples, something common in this area, and becoming more and more common in the US, as a whole.
(For those obsessed with climate change: In recent years I have notice that our summers are beginning a little earlier; in the past we often saw summer begin on July 5th. This year, and last, it began about the middle of the day on July 4th.)
And yet World Cup matches require hydration breaks. Global warming in action!
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Sorry but this is utter garbage.
According to.the ONS in September of 2021, amongst those who had received the Covid vaccine more than 21 days prior to death, covid only accounted for 0.8% of total deaths. Amongst the same cohort who had not received the covid vaccine, deaths from covid accounted for 37.4% of total deaths.
Vaccination worked. Anti vaxxers are ill informed morons.
Why not use overall death rates from the ONS? Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023 were only 20,000 less than 2020..🤔
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Sorry but this is utter garbage.
According to.the ONS in September of 2021, amongst those who had received the Covid vaccine more than 21 days prior to death, covid only accounted for 0.8% of total deaths. Amongst the same cohort who had not received the covid vaccine, deaths from covid accounted for 37.4% of total deaths.
Vaccination worked. Anti vaxxers are ill informed morons.
Why not use overall death rates from the ONS? Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023 were only 20,000 less than 2020..🤔
I am trying to think of a reason why 2020 is a terrible baseline.
Oh yes, for the majority of 2020 most of us weren't interacting with anybody.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Says the person who this very afternoon was lauding the notion of drawing conclusions from facts rather than just starting with a conclusion you happen to like or rejecting one you don't.
Chutzpah or what. You should get into populist right wing politics.
Someone was gasing on about the TNT equivalence of battery storage systems.
Well, the average petrol station has on its premises the equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon’ worth of TNT - as measured in the raw energy equivalence.
But that's different! Petrol isn't dangerous because, ugh... reasons.
There is a certain point to this - with batteries people are remarkably relaxed about installing boxes containing an awful lot of energy inside their houses. If you installed replacing a tank containing an equivalent quantity of petrol into someone's loft/utility room or similar, everyone would think you'd gone insane.
I'll install a big battery for the house I'm buying (we should live there long enough to make it worthwhile) but it installed externally or in an outbuilding, not in the main house.
Sport can be so cruel . All those missed match points . Muchova should be heavy favourite now and Noskova sticking her fingers in her ears to drown out the crowd isn’t good .
It’s not that they’re against her but just want a longer final and I hope she understands that.
Great final now though having looked for all the world like a damp squib.
It's one of my tennis betting tips btw that 'mo' is overrated in a final set. The person who's done the comeback usually goes fav but very often the major effort to get back in the match takes its toll and they lose.
So ceteris paribum I tend to back the other one. Being Noskova here.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Says the person who this very afternoon was lauding the notion of drawing conclusions from facts rather than just starting with a conclusion you happen to like or rejecting one you don't.
Chutzpah or what. You should get into populist right wing politics.
Oh, hang on.
It reminds me of a certain poster here…
1) there is a prominent car fire 2) he starts banging on about how EVs burn all the time 3) it turns out the vehicle that started the fire was fossil fuel 4) various posters point out the derailed stats that show that EVs burn less often than ICE vehicles. 5) he goes quiet 6) there is a prominent car fire….
Was at the Clermont last week - was OK nothing great.
Next weekend I'm staying at the Great Northern (which is the one on Kings Cross) so will report back - but we are very fairly often for drinks so the bar is very acceptable.
London hotel prices have gone up so much recently.
The cost of living crisis is real.
Early on this week I nearly fainted when I found out 30g of Beluga caviar is now £400 in Claridge's (plus service charge).
I paid £250 in 2023.
Claridge’s wanted £900 for a basic room, 35sqm. £1,250 for a balcony room.
In my mind the fanciest London hotels were in the £500 range, it’s obviously been a long time since I checked them out! Thinking back, it’s probably about 20 years!
It's causing me grief.
Back in 2023 I took my then girlfriend for a 4 night stay at Claridge's.
Current girlfriend wants the same experience but the prices are shocking, I'd be paying nearly double 3 years later.
As one of my colleagues put it, the cost must be really bad if even I baulking at the costs.
Last time I stayed in London with the missus, we were counting the pennies and stayed at a crappy Ibis next to CIty Airport and a B&B on Edgeware Rd.
This time I thought I’d push the boat out and surprise her with a stay in a fancy place, as a thank-you to her for spending the previous week with my family, but after spending the morning researching the signature hotels they’re all miles over budget.
I’ve realised that Dubai hotels are great value, there’s almost nothing above £600-700 for a king room, and the Burj-al-Arab is £1,000 for a suite (but closed for refurb at the moment).
To be honest, if you really want to treat her, perhaps go for a luxury hotel outside of London.
Pound for pound those places are much better.
One of the reasons I really don't like The Ritz is that the gentlemen are required to wear suits and ties in the public areas at all time, no exceptions.
Claridge's don't have such a ludicrous dress policy.
Which is why it is also useful to check such policies.
That's exactly why I like The Ritz.
The cocktails are terrible and the bar is full of influencer type clowns.
The Corinthian employees people who can make a Stinger the right way.
Was Burnham there? He seems to suffer from Main Character Syndrome - god help us.
Was at the Clermont last week - was OK nothing great.
Next weekend I'm staying at the Great Northern (which is the one on Kings Cross) so will report back - but we are very fairly often for drinks so the bar is very acceptable.
London hotel prices have gone up so much recently.
The cost of living crisis is real.
Early on this week I nearly fainted when I found out 30g of Beluga caviar is now £400 in Claridge's (plus service charge).
I paid £250 in 2023.
Claridge’s wanted £900 for a basic room, 35sqm. £1,250 for a balcony room.
In my mind the fanciest London hotels were in the £500 range, it’s obviously been a long time since I checked them out! Thinking back, it’s probably about 20 years!
It's causing me grief.
Back in 2023 I took my then girlfriend for a 4 night stay at Claridge's.
Current girlfriend wants the same experience but the prices are shocking, I'd be paying nearly double 3 years later.
As one of my colleagues put it, the cost must be really bad if even I baulking at the costs.
Last time I stayed in London with the missus, we were counting the pennies and stayed at a crappy Ibis next to CIty Airport and a B&B on Edgeware Rd.
This time I thought I’d push the boat out and surprise her with a stay in a fancy place, as a thank-you to her for spending the previous week with my family, but after spending the morning researching the signature hotels they’re all miles over budget.
I’ve realised that Dubai hotels are great value, there’s almost nothing above £600-700 for a king room, and the Burj-al-Arab is £1,000 for a suite (but closed for refurb at the moment).
To be honest, if you really want to treat her, perhaps go for a luxury hotel outside of London.
Pound for pound those places are much better.
One of the reasons I really don't like The Ritz is that the gentlemen are required to wear suits and ties in the public areas at all time, no exceptions.
Claridge's don't have such a ludicrous dress policy.
Which is why it is also useful to check such policies.
That's exactly why I like The Ritz.
The cocktails are terrible and the bar is full of influencer type clowns.
The Corinthian employees people who can make a Stinger the right way.
Was Burnham there? He seems to suffer from Main Character Syndrome - god help us.
I've, rather sadly (like I'm a saddo, rather than I'm upset) noticed that I have more than a thousand more likes than comments for the first time
Will likes be preserved on WordPress?
I think that @OnlyLivingBoy would be the biggest loser from likes being forgotten
I've just checked mine.
I'm now seeking counselling.
(Still, Mrs P. says she still likes me.)
Forget the likes.
I am proud that nobody has ever flagged one of my posts.
That's tempting tbh...
Spoiler.
It is impossible to flag any of my posts (ditto Robert).
You cannot flag an Administrator.
Surely this must be against the new legislation? There must be a mechanism to report you to Robert or vice versa if you post something illegal...
You can DM us.
It's a good job there are no safeguarding requirements on the site.
Otherwise that would be reminiscent of the lead OFSTED inspector in a school in Staffs five years ago. When caught feeling up an 11 year old girl, the only recourse was to tell him he'd been seen doing it and ask him to report himself.
The wonder is not that OFSTED under Spielman had a terrible record on safeguarding, but that it did not have a much worse one.
Used to go there as Chair of the local Pipe band. Marvellous day out if you forget the politics and just enjoy the atmosphere. It was also very lucrative for band funds.
Used to go there as Chair of the local Pipe band. Marvellous day out if you forget the politics and just enjoy the atmosphere. It was also very lucrative for band funds.
Gets too busy for me. I love Durham and visiting but I like to be able to move around.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Says the person who this very afternoon was lauding the notion of drawing conclusions from facts rather than just starting with a conclusion you happen to like or rejecting one you don't.
Chutzpah or what. You should get into populist right wing politics.
Oh, hang on.
You can't really accuse me of drawing a conclusion when I've been at pains to suggest we cannot draw one.
Does Socialism boil down to: "If one person is poor, everyone should be poor"?
No. "If nine people are poor and one person is wealthy, ten people could be comfortably off."
They want 99 people to be poor and one weathly, and they want to be that 1%.
Or, at best, "it's better that everyone loses as long as the rich lose most than everyone gaining if the rich gain most".
Here's a challenge for the PB righties. Come up with a non-caricatured summary of left-wing politics on the basis of an assumption of good faith among lefties.
I think I made a pretty good attempt of describing the essence of Tory ideology the other day, without restoring to caricature. Can any of you do the same?
Every person deserves to enjoy a dignified, broadly equal standard of living, with those who are more able or driven paying more to support those who are less able to contribute. Each person is a blank slate and as such should not benefit from their parents' wealth accumulation or other advantages conferred by linage.
Feels pretty close.
The first sentence is a decent attempt, but it makes the second redundant.
I'd say the second is essential - a key part of modern left wing thought is the fungibility of humans - a 10th generation 60km from Mogadishu subsistence farmer is there because they never got the opportunity or support of someone who went to Eton and then did good, so that entirely explains their differences, rather than acknowledging that actually in a lot of cases, while there is a large amount of intergeneration variability, IQ is extremely heritable. That's why there's so much bleating about private school overrepresentation - if people used their common sense to see that humans are not a blank slate private school overrepresentation makes absolutely perfect sense.
Estimates of the heritability of IQ are about 50%, which I wouldn’t call “extremely”. IQ has a correlation with income of about 0.3-0.4, so it explains about 10-15% of variation in income. The correlation between IQ and wealth is even lower, about 0.16, so it explains about 3% of the variation in wealth.
The fact IQ only explains about 3% of the variation in wealth, doesn’t that make you more sympathetic to socialist views? Our current system isn’t rewarding ability or merit!
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
From Wikipedia: “Ivermectin is an antiparasitic medication.[7] After its discovery in 1975,[8] its first uses were in veterinary medicine to prevent and treat heartworm and acariasis.[9] Approved for human use in 1987,[10] it is used to treat infestations including head lice, scabies, river blindness (onchocerciasis), strongyloidiasis, trichuriasis, ascariasis and lymphatic filariasis.[9][11][12][13]” It is a horse de-wormer and it is more than that, and describing it like that is a bit of a rhetorical flourish, not an indicator of ignorance.
Ivermectin is a great drug, but it has absolutely no value whatsoever in treating or preventing COVID-19. Believing it does is a top sign that someone has fallen deep into a particular set of conspiracy theories associated with MAGA and the populist right.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Says the person who this very afternoon was lauding the notion of drawing conclusions from facts rather than just starting with a conclusion you happen to like or rejecting one you don't.
Chutzpah or what. You should get into populist right wing politics.
Oh, hang on.
You can't really accuse me of drawing a conclusion when I've been at pains to suggest we cannot draw one.
You are rejecting a conclusion that is proven beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence.
Why you would do that is a mystery. I don't know the reason and you obviously can't tell me.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It’s not a question of faith. It’s a question of science. Multiple studies on hundreds of thousands of people have shown the vaccines’ effectiveness. They’ve saved over 15 million lives.
Sandpit talked about how the discovery of Ivermectin led to a Nobel prize. So did the mRNA COVID vaccine.
Does Socialism boil down to: "If one person is poor, everyone should be poor"?
No. "If nine people are poor and one person is wealthy, ten people could be comfortably off."
They want 99 people to be poor and one weathly, and they want to be that 1%.
Or, at best, "it's better that everyone loses as long as the rich lose most than everyone gaining if the rich gain most".
Here's a challenge for the PB righties. Come up with a non-caricatured summary of left-wing politics on the basis of an assumption of good faith among lefties.
I think I made a pretty good attempt of describing the essence of Tory ideology the other day, without restoring to caricature. Can any of you do the same?
Every person deserves to enjoy a dignified, broadly equal standard of living, with those who are more able or driven paying more to support those who are less able to contribute. Each person is a blank slate and as such should not benefit from their parents' wealth accumulation or other advantages conferred by linage.
Feels pretty close.
The first sentence is a decent attempt, but it makes the second redundant.
I'd say the second is essential - a key part of modern left wing thought is the fungibility of humans - a 10th generation 60km from Mogadishu subsistence farmer is there because they never got the opportunity or support of someone who went to Eton and then did good, so that entirely explains their differences, rather than acknowledging that actually in a lot of cases, while there is a large amount of intergeneration variability, IQ is extremely heritable. That's why there's so much bleating about private school overrepresentation - if people used their common sense to see that humans are not a blank slate private school overrepresentation makes absolutely perfect sense.
Estimates of the heritability of IQ are about 50%, which I wouldn’t call “extremely”. IQ has a correlation with income of about 0.3-0.4, so it explains about 10-15% of variation in income. The correlation between IQ and wealth is even lower, about 0.16, so it explains about 3% of the variation in wealth.
The fact IQ only explains about 3% of the variation in wealth, doesn’t that make you more sympathetic to socialist views? Our current system isn’t rewarding ability or merit!
Isn't this partly because IQ is a pretty crude measure?
Levels of both income and wealth are almost certainly linked to things such as "work ethic" and "deferred gratification" which aren't directly connected to intelligence, and are presumably partially learnt behaviours, and partially inherited.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 25m It is absolutely staggering that a senior political leader would openly speculate on an ongoing murder investigation in this way.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Says the person who this very afternoon was lauding the notion of drawing conclusions from facts rather than just starting with a conclusion you happen to like or rejecting one you don't.
Chutzpah or what. You should get into populist right wing politics.
Oh, hang on.
You can't really accuse me of drawing a conclusion when I've been at pains to suggest we cannot draw one.
You are rejecting a conclusion that is proven beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence.
Why you would do that is a mystery. I don't know the reason and you obviously can't tell me.
Some people find scientific truth scary, and feel it dis-empowers them.
Staging a performance of the story The Cold Equations, as a play at university was fascinating in this respect.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
The COVID vaccines crushed the death rates to nothing, as they did with serious illness & hospitalisation.
This is extremely clear, both from the medical trials and the data from actual usage.
The side effects of the vaccines have also been tracked, in detailed, published data and are in line with other vaccinations.
So away with your “question of faith” stuff.
I have not said anything about side effects.
Regarding the efficacy of vaccines, the studies there are based on modelling non-existent counterfactuals. We had the vaccines. We cannot know with any certainty what would have happened in a world where we didn't.
No. There were a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines, which are the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 25m It is absolutely staggering that a senior political leader would openly speculate on an ongoing murder investigation in this way.
Does Socialism boil down to: "If one person is poor, everyone should be poor"?
No. "If nine people are poor and one person is wealthy, ten people could be comfortably off."
They want 99 people to be poor and one weathly, and they want to be that 1%.
Or, at best, "it's better that everyone loses as long as the rich lose most than everyone gaining if the rich gain most".
Here's a challenge for the PB righties. Come up with a non-caricatured summary of left-wing politics on the basis of an assumption of good faith among lefties.
I think I made a pretty good attempt of describing the essence of Tory ideology the other day, without restoring to caricature. Can any of you do the same?
Every person deserves to enjoy a dignified, broadly equal standard of living, with those who are more able or driven paying more to support those who are less able to contribute. Each person is a blank slate and as such should not benefit from their parents' wealth accumulation or other advantages conferred by linage.
Feels pretty close.
The first sentence is a decent attempt, but it makes the second redundant.
I'd say the second is essential - a key part of modern left wing thought is the fungibility of humans - a 10th generation 60km from Mogadishu subsistence farmer is there because they never got the opportunity or support of someone who went to Eton and then did good, so that entirely explains their differences, rather than acknowledging that actually in a lot of cases, while there is a large amount of intergeneration variability, IQ is extremely heritable. That's why there's so much bleating about private school overrepresentation - if people used their common sense to see that humans are not a blank slate private school overrepresentation makes absolutely perfect sense.
Estimates of the heritability of IQ are about 50%, which I wouldn’t call “extremely”. IQ has a correlation with income of about 0.3-0.4, so it explains about 10-15% of variation in income. The correlation between IQ and wealth is even lower, about 0.16, so it explains about 3% of the variation in wealth.
The fact IQ only explains about 3% of the variation in wealth, doesn’t that make you more sympathetic to socialist views? Our current system isn’t rewarding ability or merit!
Isn't this partly because IQ is a pretty crude measure?
Levels of both income and wealth are almost certainly linked to things such as "work ethic" and "deferred gratification" which aren't directly connected to intelligence, and are presumably partially learnt behaviours, and partially inherited.
Sure, there are lots of problems with IQ as a measure, and whatever IQ measures, it clearly isn’t everything that matters.
Levels of both income and wealth are also clearly linked to things such as “inherited wealth”, “going to private school” and “your parents knowing people”… and indeed also “luck”.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 25m It is absolutely staggering that a senior political leader would openly speculate on an ongoing murder investigation in this way.
Trump will declare election result in November rigged and will impose MARTIAL LAW IN DEMOCRATIC WINNING STATES AND IMMEDIATELY MOVE TO INCARCERATE LEADING DEMOCRATIC MEMBERS OF CONGRESS AND SENATE.
South Korean situation repeated, he will not have a problem with his supplicant Republican representatives. The streets will almost certainly run with blood.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Sorry but this is utter garbage.
According to.the ONS in September of 2021, amongst those who had received the Covid vaccine more than 21 days prior to death, covid only accounted for 0.8% of total deaths. Amongst the same cohort who had not received the covid vaccine, deaths from covid accounted for 37.4% of total deaths.
Vaccination worked. Anti vaxxers are ill informed morons.
Why not use overall death rates from the ONS? Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023 were only 20,000 less than 2020..🤔
I am trying to think of a reason why 2020 is a terrible baseline.
Oh yes, for the majority of 2020 most of us weren't interacting with anybody.
And there wasn’t much COVID around for a third of the year, or so!
Someone was gasing on about the TNT equivalence of battery storage systems.
Well, the average petrol station has on its premises the equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon’ worth of TNT - as measured in the raw energy equivalence.
But that's different! Petrol isn't dangerous because, ugh... reasons.
There is a certain point to this - with batteries people are remarkably relaxed about installing boxes containing an awful lot of energy inside their houses. If you installed replacing a tank containing an equivalent quantity of petrol into someone's loft/utility room or similar, everyone would think you'd gone insane.
I'll install a big battery for the house I'm buying (we should live there long enough to make it worthwhile) but it installed externally or in an outbuilding, not in the main house.
I think the difference in attitude is mostly because batteries only really fail in one way - catching fire, and there are plenty of fire risks in the average home. We're pretty comfortable with that in general.
Petrol is much more complex. Yes, a petrol tank can catch fire but it can also poison you with fumes or leak and silently become a boom waiting to happen. I store petrol outside, but I have multiple large Li-ion and Li-Po batteries inside.
Someone was gasing on about the TNT equivalence of battery storage systems.
Well, the average petrol station has on its premises the equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon’ worth of TNT - as measured in the raw energy equivalence.
It's bizarre that people are so afraid of batteries*, which have an extremely good safety record on the whole, and yet the same people wouldn't even blink about all sorts of chemicals used in industry, traffic pollution, fuel storage, flooding, and other things that are considerably more dangerous. It's like when a train crashes and people think "I'll drive instead" there's no understanding of the risk just emotions taking over.
* Battery storage systems don't even need to optimised for mass or volume, and so are free to use batteries that are even safer than the norm, like LFP batteries, and eventually we'll likely see solid state batteries take over, which will probably be about as safe a store of energy as we have got.
Trump will declare election result in November rigged and will impose MARTIAL LAW IN DEMOCRATIC WINNING STATES AND IMMEDIATELY MOVE TO INCARCERATE LEADING DEMOCRATIC MEMBERS OF CONGRESS AND SENATE.
South Korean situation repeated, he will not have a problem with his supplicant Republican representatives. The streets will almost certainly run with blood.
God help us all.
Is this a prediction? Or a quote from somewhere else on the Web?
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
I'm just surprised there's a real-life person out there called "Rupert".
I thought that was a name for fictional bears only.
It's in the top 100 of boys names, so he has one upped Nigel, which apparently is a really uncommon name now with only a handful born every year.
Olivia has apparently been the most popular girls name for a decade, yet I've never come across one so it must really have risen from nowhere after my generation. You'd think it would be getting so common people would start sliding from it at this point.
My own name has gone from a top 20 name to outside the top 600, for shame.
I am somewhat surprised that kle4 made the top 20 at any time.
His name isn’t kle4. His name is Kle, but three previous Kles already had accounts here, what with it being a quite common name.
Nigel 'Morse' Farage, as he is known in Westminster, weighs in with his theories on the crime and time of day and motives.
Same drinking problem! Can imagine Farage in the original Lancia, but perhaps not the TV Jag.
(When the TV series debuted, morse's car had been out of production for only 15 years. Driving a 15 year old car would not seem quirky these days. Perhaps fashions changed more quickly then...)
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
I'm just surprised there's a real-life person out there called "Rupert".
I thought that was a name for fictional bears only.
It's in the top 100 of boys names, so he has one upped Nigel, which apparently is a really uncommon name now with only a handful born every year.
Olivia has apparently been the most popular girls name for a decade, yet I've never come across one so it must really have risen from nowhere after my generation. You'd think it would be getting so common people would start sliding from it at this point.
My own name has gone from a top 20 name to outside the top 600, for shame.
I am somewhat surprised that kle4 made the top 20 at any time.
His name isn’t kle4. His name is Kle, but three previous Kles already had accounts here, what with it being a quite common name.
My first teacher, in primary school, was a Mr Clee. Nice chap.
London & Southeast 🔆 @TheSnowDreamer · 2h Day 20 of 30C or above in #London so 1976 has now been equalled, it did very well to hold 50 years in midst of quickly rising global temperatures. But sooner or later it becomes inescapable.
Does Socialism boil down to: "If one person is poor, everyone should be poor"?
No. "If nine people are poor and one person is wealthy, ten people could be comfortably off."
They want 99 people to be poor and one weathly, and they want to be that 1%.
Or, at best, "it's better that everyone loses as long as the rich lose most than everyone gaining if the rich gain most".
Here's a challenge for the PB righties. Come up with a non-caricatured summary of left-wing politics on the basis of an assumption of good faith among lefties.
I think I made a pretty good attempt of describing the essence of Tory ideology the other day, without restoring to caricature. Can any of you do the same?
Every person deserves to enjoy a dignified, broadly equal standard of living, with those who are more able or driven paying more to support those who are less able to contribute. Each person is a blank slate and as such should not benefit from their parents' wealth accumulation or other advantages conferred by linage.
Feels pretty close.
The first sentence is a decent attempt, but it makes the second redundant.
I'd say the second is essential - a key part of modern left wing thought is the fungibility of humans - a 10th generation 60km from Mogadishu subsistence farmer is there because they never got the opportunity or support of someone who went to Eton and then did good, so that entirely explains their differences, rather than acknowledging that actually in a lot of cases, while there is a large amount of intergeneration variability, IQ is extremely heritable. That's why there's so much bleating about private school overrepresentation - if people used their common sense to see that humans are not a blank slate private school overrepresentation makes absolutely perfect sense.
Estimates of the heritability of IQ are about 50%, which I wouldn’t call “extremely”. IQ has a correlation with income of about 0.3-0.4, so it explains about 10-15% of variation in income. The correlation between IQ and wealth is even lower, about 0.16, so it explains about 3% of the variation in wealth.
The fact IQ only explains about 3% of the variation in wealth, doesn’t that make you more sympathetic to socialist views? Our current system isn’t rewarding ability or merit!
Isn't this partly because IQ is a pretty crude measure?
Levels of both income and wealth are almost certainly linked to things such as "work ethic" and "deferred gratification" which aren't directly connected to intelligence, and are presumably partially learnt behaviours, and partially inherited.
What that misses is the huge role that everone's frenemy, Lady Luck, plays in all of this. There are people who work harder than I do for less reward. There are people who work less hard than me for more reward. Everyone's life is full of sliding doors moments, where a random spur-of-the-moment decision takes you down one path or another. Which person did you talk to at that party who went on to be an entry into a really interesting/profitable career?
And the sum of all those random interactions leads to rich and poor. In physical chemistry, it's called statistical mechanics; dumb atoms bouncing off each other at random separate out into upper, middle and lower class. For society to keep progressing, it's essential that we ignore that, that we persuade ourselves and others that we are the authors of our own success or failure, but it's much less true than self-described self-made men like to believe.
The best rich people have lived in a way that understands that- if you win in the lottery of life, great, now pay it forward. Consider Andrew Carneige's dictum about dying rich.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
The COVID vaccines crushed the death rates to nothing, as they did with serious illness & hospitalisation.
This is extremely clear, both from the medical trials and the data from actual usage.
The side effects of the vaccines have also been tracked, in detailed, published data and are in line with other vaccinations.
So away with your “question of faith” stuff.
I have not said anything about side effects.
Regarding the efficacy of vaccines, the studies there are based on modelling non-existent counterfactuals. We had the vaccines. We cannot know with any certainty what would have happened in a world where we didn't.
No. There were a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines, which are the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
It was a significantly compressed timeline though compared to normal vaccine approval. For obvious reasons. So longer term effects were clearly not able to be understood at the time.
Still aren’t. We’re living through an extended trial.
Someone was gasing on about the TNT equivalence of battery storage systems.
Well, the average petrol station has on its premises the equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon’ worth of TNT - as measured in the raw energy equivalence.
It's bizarre that people are so afraid of batteries*, which have an extremely good safety record on the whole, and yet the same people wouldn't even blink about all sorts of chemicals used in industry, traffic pollution, fuel storage, flooding, and other things that are considerably more dangerous. It's like when a train crashes and people think "I'll drive instead" there's no understanding of the risk just emotions taking over.
* Battery storage systems don't even need to optimised for mass or volume, and so are free to use batteries that are even safer than the norm, like LFP batteries, and eventually we'll likely see solid state batteries take over, which will probably be about as safe a store of energy as we have got.
I have a concern about Lithium Ion batteries as, due to work I had to arrange to get spares shipped overseas, and it was drummed into us the risk involved in sending them.
Also my wife’s cousin, her lad had his house go up in flames due to a battery on his golf trolley of all things, for goodness sake.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
The COVID vaccines crushed the death rates to nothing, as they did with serious illness & hospitalisation.
This is extremely clear, both from the medical trials and the data from actual usage.
The side effects of the vaccines have also been tracked, in detailed, published data and are in line with other vaccinations.
So away with your “question of faith” stuff.
I have not said anything about side effects.
Regarding the efficacy of vaccines, the studies there are based on modelling non-existent counterfactuals. We had the vaccines. We cannot know with any certainty what would have happened in a world where we didn't.
No. There were a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines, which are the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
It was a significantly compressed timeline though compared to normal vaccine approval. For obvious reasons. So longer term effects were clearly not able to be understood at the time.
Still aren’t. We’re living through an extended trial.
Still needs must.
One of the main reasons for the compressed timeline was because the UK authorities made the decision to enbed themselvs in the labs to monitir development rather than following the normal course which is to wait for the developer to complete initial tests and they be sent allgthe data for review. It dramatically cut the approval time by removing all the 'dead; time that is normally involved in such a process.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
The COVID vaccines crushed the death rates to nothing, as they did with serious illness & hospitalisation.
This is extremely clear, both from the medical trials and the data from actual usage.
The side effects of the vaccines have also been tracked, in detailed, published data and are in line with other vaccinations.
So away with your “question of faith” stuff.
I have not said anything about side effects.
Regarding the efficacy of vaccines, the studies there are based on modelling non-existent counterfactuals. We had the vaccines. We cannot know with any certainty what would have happened in a world where we didn't.
No. There were a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines, which are the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
It was a significantly compressed timeline though compared to normal vaccine approval. For obvious reasons. So longer term effects were clearly not able to be understood at the time.
Still aren’t. We’re living through an extended trial.
Still needs must.
One of the main reasons for the compressed timeline was because the UK authorities made the decision to enbed themselvs in the labs to monitir development rather than following the normal course which is to wait for the developer to complete initial tests and they be sent allgthe data for review. It dramatically cut the approval time by removing all the 'dead; time that is normally involved in such a process.
Yes
None of the tests and procedures was “rushed” or “omitted”
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Sorry but this is utter garbage.
According to.the ONS in September of 2021, amongst those who had received the Covid vaccine more than 21 days prior to death, covid only accounted for 0.8% of total deaths. Amongst the same cohort who had not received the covid vaccine, deaths from covid accounted for 37.4% of total deaths.
Vaccination worked. Anti vaxxers are ill informed morons.
Why not use overall death rates from the ONS? Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023 were only 20,000 less than 2020..🤔
I am trying to think of a reason why 2020 is a terrible baseline.
Oh yes, for the majority of 2020 most of us weren't interacting with anybody.
And there wasn’t much COVID around for a third of the year, or so!
Feeling that Richard's figures may have included an element of selection bias - those who were already suffering from covid were not vaccinated until they recovered - I queried it with AI. Publishing the response unedited:
The Flaw in the Raw Percentages The statistic you cited compares the proportion of COVID-19 deaths within two very different groups:
Unvaccinated Group: In mid-2021, this group was disproportionately younger and healthier (as the elderly and vulnerable were prioritized for vaccination). However, they lacked immune protection. Consequently, when they died, COVID-19 was a leading cause (37.4%), simply because they were dying of fewer other age-related causes at that specific time.
Vaccinated Group (21+ days post-dose): By September 2021, this group included almost the entire elderly and clinically vulnerable population. These individuals have a much higher baseline mortality rate from non-COVID causes (cancer, heart disease, old age). Therefore, even if the vaccine prevented many COVID deaths, the sheer volume of non-COVID deaths in this high-risk group mathematically dilutes the percentage of deaths attributed to COVID (dropping it to 0.8%).
ONS Clarification and Confounding Factors The ONS explicitly stated in their November 2021 analysis that these figures are not a measure of vaccine effectiveness due to several confounding factors:
Age and Health Status: The vaccinated population was significantly older and frailer than the unvaccinated population during the rollout. Comparing raw death counts or percentages without adjusting for age leads to misleading conclusions. Natural Immunity: By September 2021, a portion of the unvaccinated cohort had acquired natural immunity from prior infection, which may have influenced their risk profile, though the ONS noted that vaccination provided a more consistent and safer level of protection.
Risk vs. Proportion: The correct metric for efficacy is the age-standardized mortality rate (risk of dying per person), not the proportion of total deaths. When adjusted for age, the ONS data showed the risk of dying from COVID-19 was roughly 32 times higher in unvaccinated individuals compared to fully vaccinated individuals during that period.
Conclusion The statistic highlights a demographic reality: vaccinated people were dying of other causes because they were older, not because the vaccine failed. The unvaccinated group appeared to die more frequently of COVID-19 partly because they were less likely to die of other causes during that specific window, but their overall risk of catching and dying from the virus was substantially higher.
Apparently the ONS has specifically cautioned against using the statistics as proof of vaccine efficacy in the way Richard has attempted.
Perhaps we should be a little more cautious about describing peoples' posts as 'utter garbage' if we're going to abuse statistics in a way that the producers of those statistics specifically warn against.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
The COVID vaccines crushed the death rates to nothing, as they did with serious illness & hospitalisation.
This is extremely clear, both from the medical trials and the data from actual usage.
The side effects of the vaccines have also been tracked, in detailed, published data and are in line with other vaccinations.
So away with your “question of faith” stuff.
I have not said anything about side effects.
Regarding the efficacy of vaccines, the studies there are based on modelling non-existent counterfactuals. We had the vaccines. We cannot know with any certainty what would have happened in a world where we didn't.
No. There were a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines, which are the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
It was a significantly compressed timeline though compared to normal vaccine approval. For obvious reasons. So longer term effects were clearly not able to be understood at the time.
Still aren’t. We’re living through an extended trial.
Still needs must.
One of the main reasons for the compressed timeline was because the UK authorities made the decision to enbed themselvs in the labs to monitir development rather than following the normal course which is to wait for the developer to complete initial tests and they be sent allgthe data for review. It dramatically cut the approval time by removing all the 'dead; time that is normally involved in such a process.
Yes, I’m well aware thanks. I used to work in Biopharma supply of cleanroom consumables for vaccine production and worked with all of the main vaccine providers bar one.
The bigger issue was availability of parts and constrained supply. Especially after warp Drive.
There are also compressed timelines anyway for emergencies like this.
Still doesn’t change the point the long term effects are not known yet. I was happy to have the jab.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
The COVID vaccines crushed the death rates to nothing, as they did with serious illness & hospitalisation.
This is extremely clear, both from the medical trials and the data from actual usage.
The side effects of the vaccines have also been tracked, in detailed, published data and are in line with other vaccinations.
So away with your “question of faith” stuff.
I have not said anything about side effects.
Regarding the efficacy of vaccines, the studies there are based on modelling non-existent counterfactuals. We had the vaccines. We cannot know with any certainty what would have happened in a world where we didn't.
No. There were a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines, which are the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
It was a significantly compressed timeline though compared to normal vaccine approval. For obvious reasons. So longer term effects were clearly not able to be understood at the time.
Still aren’t. We’re living through an extended trial.
Still needs must.
Much of the compressed timeline was just about organising the research more quickly, not changing the design of the trials. But, yes, there was an initial shorter follow-up to track effects in some trials. However, the longer term evidence was subsequently collected and we have as much data from those now as we do for other vaccines.
The wide-scale usage of the vaccine (over 5 billion) also now means we have better data on its effects than the vast majority of other vaccines or drugs. OK, we don’t know about any super long term effects, like 20 years on, but there’s nothing we can do about that.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
The COVID vaccines crushed the death rates to nothing, as they did with serious illness & hospitalisation.
This is extremely clear, both from the medical trials and the data from actual usage.
The side effects of the vaccines have also been tracked, in detailed, published data and are in line with other vaccinations.
So away with your “question of faith” stuff.
I have not said anything about side effects.
Regarding the efficacy of vaccines, the studies there are based on modelling non-existent counterfactuals. We had the vaccines. We cannot know with any certainty what would have happened in a world where we didn't.
No. There were a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines, which are the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
It was a significantly compressed timeline though compared to normal vaccine approval. For obvious reasons. So longer term effects were clearly not able to be understood at the time.
Still aren’t. We’re living through an extended trial.
Still needs must.
One of the main reasons for the compressed timeline was because the UK authorities made the decision to enbed themselvs in the labs to monitir development rather than following the normal course which is to wait for the developer to complete initial tests and they be sent allgthe data for review. It dramatically cut the approval time by removing all the 'dead; time that is normally involved in such a process.
Yes, I’m well aware thanks. I used to work in Biopharma supply of cleanroom consumables for vaccine production and worked with all of the main vaccine providers bar one.
The bigger issue was availability of parts and constrained supply. Especially after warp Drive.
There are also compressed timelines anyway for emergencies like this.
Still doesn’t change the point the long term effects are not known yet. I was happy to have the jab.
Pretty much every drug is approved after just a couple of years of testing, so that is going to be true of essentially pharmaceutical.
What we do know, and the evidence keeps growing every week, is that all causes mortality is much lower for people who got jabbed, than those who didn't.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Sorry but this is utter garbage.
According to.the ONS in September of 2021, amongst those who had received the Covid vaccine more than 21 days prior to death, covid only accounted for 0.8% of total deaths. Amongst the same cohort who had not received the covid vaccine, deaths from covid accounted for 37.4% of total deaths.
Vaccination worked. Anti vaxxers are ill informed morons.
Why not use overall death rates from the ONS? Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023 were only 20,000 less than 2020..🤔
I am trying to think of a reason why 2020 is a terrible baseline.
Oh yes, for the majority of 2020 most of us weren't interacting with anybody.
And there wasn’t much COVID around for a third of the year, or so!
Feeling that Richard's figures may have included an element of selection bias - those who were already suffering from covid were not vaccinated until they recovered - I queried it with AI. Publishing the response unedited:
The Flaw in the Raw Percentages The statistic you cited compares the proportion of COVID-19 deaths within two very different groups:
Unvaccinated Group: In mid-2021, this group was disproportionately younger and healthier (as the elderly and vulnerable were prioritized for vaccination). However, they lacked immune protection. Consequently, when they died, COVID-19 was a leading cause (37.4%), simply because they were dying of fewer other age-related causes at that specific time.
Vaccinated Group (21+ days post-dose): By September 2021, this group included almost the entire elderly and clinically vulnerable population. These individuals have a much higher baseline mortality rate from non-COVID causes (cancer, heart disease, old age). Therefore, even if the vaccine prevented many COVID deaths, the sheer volume of non-COVID deaths in this high-risk group mathematically dilutes the percentage of deaths attributed to COVID (dropping it to 0.8%).
ONS Clarification and Confounding Factors The ONS explicitly stated in their November 2021 analysis that these figures are not a measure of vaccine effectiveness due to several confounding factors:
Age and Health Status: The vaccinated population was significantly older and frailer than the unvaccinated population during the rollout. Comparing raw death counts or percentages without adjusting for age leads to misleading conclusions. Natural Immunity: By September 2021, a portion of the unvaccinated cohort had acquired natural immunity from prior infection, which may have influenced their risk profile, though the ONS noted that vaccination provided a more consistent and safer level of protection.
Risk vs. Proportion: The correct metric for efficacy is the age-standardized mortality rate (risk of dying per person), not the proportion of total deaths. When adjusted for age, the ONS data showed the risk of dying from COVID-19 was roughly 32 times higher in unvaccinated individuals compared to fully vaccinated individuals during that period.
Conclusion The statistic highlights a demographic reality: vaccinated people were dying of other causes because they were older, not because the vaccine failed. The unvaccinated group appeared to die more frequently of COVID-19 partly because they were less likely to die of other causes during that specific window, but their overall risk of catching and dying from the virus was substantially higher.
Apparently the ONS has specifically cautioned against using the statistics as proof of vaccine efficacy in the way Richard has attempted.
Perhaps we should be a little more cautious about describing peoples' posts as 'utter garbage' if we're going to abuse statistics in a way that the producers of those statistics specifically warn against.
Do you accept that there have been a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines that provide direct evidence that they work?
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
The COVID vaccines crushed the death rates to nothing, as they did with serious illness & hospitalisation.
This is extremely clear, both from the medical trials and the data from actual usage.
The side effects of the vaccines have also been tracked, in detailed, published data and are in line with other vaccinations.
So away with your “question of faith” stuff.
I have not said anything about side effects.
Regarding the efficacy of vaccines, the studies there are based on modelling non-existent counterfactuals. We had the vaccines. We cannot know with any certainty what would have happened in a world where we didn't.
No. There were a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines, which are the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
It was a significantly compressed timeline though compared to normal vaccine approval. For obvious reasons. So longer term effects were clearly not able to be understood at the time.
Still aren’t. We’re living through an extended trial.
Still needs must.
Much of the compressed timeline was just about organising the research more quickly, not changing the design of the trials. But, yes, there was an initial shorter follow-up to track effects in some trials. However, the longer term evidence was subsequently collected and we have as much data from those now as we do for other vaccines.
The wide-scale usage of the vaccine (over 5 billion) also now means we have better data on its effects than the vast majority of other vaccines or drugs. OK, we don’t know about any super long term effects, like 20 years on, but there’s nothing we can do about that.
Of course not and that, in part, is my point. It’s not risk free but a calculated risk.
Actually there were multiple vaccines from multiple providers. We even worked with the manufacturers of the Sputnik vaccine in Russia. It is not ‘The’ vaccine, singular, it is multiple vaccines from several OEMs.
Oh, and expected demand never followed through either.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Sorry but this is utter garbage.
According to.the ONS in September of 2021, amongst those who had received the Covid vaccine more than 21 days prior to death, covid only accounted for 0.8% of total deaths. Amongst the same cohort who had not received the covid vaccine, deaths from covid accounted for 37.4% of total deaths.
Vaccination worked. Anti vaxxers are ill informed morons.
Why not use overall death rates from the ONS? Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023 were only 20,000 less than 2020..🤔
I am trying to think of a reason why 2020 is a terrible baseline.
Oh yes, for the majority of 2020 most of us weren't interacting with anybody.
And there wasn’t much COVID around for a third of the year, or so!
Feeling that Richard's figures may have included an element of selection bias - those who were already suffering from covid were not vaccinated until they recovered - I queried it with AI. Publishing the response unedited:
The Flaw in the Raw Percentages The statistic you cited compares the proportion of COVID-19 deaths within two very different groups:
Unvaccinated Group: In mid-2021, this group was disproportionately younger and healthier (as the elderly and vulnerable were prioritized for vaccination). However, they lacked immune protection. Consequently, when they died, COVID-19 was a leading cause (37.4%), simply because they were dying of fewer other age-related causes at that specific time.
Vaccinated Group (21+ days post-dose): By September 2021, this group included almost the entire elderly and clinically vulnerable population. These individuals have a much higher baseline mortality rate from non-COVID causes (cancer, heart disease, old age). Therefore, even if the vaccine prevented many COVID deaths, the sheer volume of non-COVID deaths in this high-risk group mathematically dilutes the percentage of deaths attributed to COVID (dropping it to 0.8%).
ONS Clarification and Confounding Factors The ONS explicitly stated in their November 2021 analysis that these figures are not a measure of vaccine effectiveness due to several confounding factors:
Age and Health Status: The vaccinated population was significantly older and frailer than the unvaccinated population during the rollout. Comparing raw death counts or percentages without adjusting for age leads to misleading conclusions. Natural Immunity: By September 2021, a portion of the unvaccinated cohort had acquired natural immunity from prior infection, which may have influenced their risk profile, though the ONS noted that vaccination provided a more consistent and safer level of protection.
Risk vs. Proportion: The correct metric for efficacy is the age-standardized mortality rate (risk of dying per person), not the proportion of total deaths. When adjusted for age, the ONS data showed the risk of dying from COVID-19 was roughly 32 times higher in unvaccinated individuals compared to fully vaccinated individuals during that period.
Conclusion The statistic highlights a demographic reality: vaccinated people were dying of other causes because they were older, not because the vaccine failed. The unvaccinated group appeared to die more frequently of COVID-19 partly because they were less likely to die of other causes during that specific window, but their overall risk of catching and dying from the virus was substantially higher.
Apparently the ONS has specifically cautioned against using the statistics as proof of vaccine efficacy in the way Richard has attempted.
Perhaps we should be a little more cautious about describing peoples' posts as 'utter garbage' if we're going to abuse statistics in a way that the producers of those statistics specifically warn against.
Do you accept that there have been a large number of randomised controlled trials of the vaccines that provide direct evidence that they work?
I accept/accepted it enough to have two jabs. However, continuing to use and top up what is still a new medication should be carefully weighed with the risk from the disease itself.
A reminder that much of the far right is ideologically aligned with our enemies and promoted by them to divide and weaken our society. So called "patriots" who are anything but.
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Sorry but this is utter garbage.
According to.the ONS in September of 2021, amongst those who had received the Covid vaccine more than 21 days prior to death, covid only accounted for 0.8% of total deaths. Amongst the same cohort who had not received the covid vaccine, deaths from covid accounted for 37.4% of total deaths.
Vaccination worked. Anti vaxxers are ill informed morons.
Why not use overall death rates from the ONS? Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023 were only 20,000 less than 2020..🤔
She may well be right but I cannot see what choice they had.
I don't think the initial lockdown was avoidable. It was shit, but we had no idea about the long-term consequences, no vaccines (or any idea when they might arrive), and no proper understanding of optimal treatment.
What followed, on the other hand, was a complete clusterfuck.
80% of the reduction in "R" could probably have been achieved with 20% of the restrictions. (Not *no* restrictions... but fewer restrictions, and with the most destructive and least effective removed. So, there should have been no restrictions whatsoever on meeting up outside for example.)
Does Socialism boil down to: "If one person is poor, everyone should be poor"?
No. "If nine people are poor and one person is wealthy, ten people could be comfortably off."
They want 99 people to be poor and one weathly, and they want to be that 1%.
Whereas the Conservatives are that 1% and want to keep it that way.
The pie is big enough to give everyone a slice.
That may have been the case last century it isn't so much now. Harris won the richest voters in 2024, as did Starmer and Macron in France in 2022 and Carney in 2025. Albeit Burnham's shift left might send a few of them back to the Tories
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
I'm just surprised there's a real-life person out there called "Rupert".
I thought that was a name for fictional bears only.
It's in the top 100 of boys names, so he has one upped Nigel, which apparently is a really uncommon name now with only a handful born every year.
Olivia has apparently been the most popular girls name for a decade, yet I've never come across one so it must really have risen from nowhere after my generation. You'd think it would be getting so common people would start sliding from it at this point.
My own name has gone from a top 20 name to outside the top 600, for shame.
I am somewhat surprised that kle4 made the top 20 at any time.
His name isn’t kle4. His name is Kle, but three previous Kles already had accounts here, what with it being a quite common name.
They're clones. He was the fourth in his line to be decanted.
Reform remains ahead in the polls but has suffered its weakest result in over 18 months, while Nigel Farage’s personal ratings have fallen to their lowest point of this Parliament. The findings suggest recent negative headlines Nigel Farage may be beginning to affect Reform’s standing in the polls, although neither Labour nor the Conservatives appear to be making significant gains.
The poll also finds growing public concern about the influence of large political donations, with Reform now viewed as the party most influenced by wealthy donors.
Reform leads despite slipping back
Reform remains the largest party on 24%, down two points since last week and its lowest vote share in an Opinium/Observer poll since January 2025. Labour follows on 19%, with the Conservatives close behind on 18%. The Greens continue to rise, reaching 16%, while the Liberal Democrats stand on 12%.
Nigel Farage’s approval rating has fallen sharply to net -27, comfortably his lowest rating of this Parliament. Elsewhere, Kemi Badenoch improves to -3, Ed Davey remains on -5, Andy Burnham stands on -8, Zack Polanski improves slightly to -16, and Keir Starmer falls to -45.
2 years after Le Pen was convicted she is leading the polls in France by a massive margin. My guess is Farage will win Clacton, by a massive margin on a big turnout & Binface get a few thousand votes! Clacton will tell Westminster to stick it !
Does Socialism boil down to: "If one person is poor, everyone should be poor"?
No. "If nine people are poor and one person is wealthy, ten people could be comfortably off."
They want 99 people to be poor and one weathly, and they want to be that 1%.
Or, at best, "it's better that everyone loses as long as the rich lose most than everyone gaining if the rich gain most".
Here's a challenge for the PB righties. Come up with a non-caricatured summary of left-wing politics on the basis of an assumption of good faith among lefties.
I think I made a pretty good attempt of describing the essence of Tory ideology the other day, without restoring to caricature. Can any of you do the same?
Every person deserves to enjoy a dignified, broadly equal standard of living, with those who are more able or driven paying more to support those who are less able to contribute. Each person is a blank slate and as such should not benefit from their parents' wealth accumulation or other advantages conferred by linage.
Feels pretty close.
The first sentence is a decent attempt, but it makes the second redundant.
I'd say the second is essential - a key part of modern left wing thought is the fungibility of humans - a 10th generation 60km from Mogadishu subsistence farmer is there because they never got the opportunity or support of someone who went to Eton and then did good, so that entirely explains their differences, rather than acknowledging that actually in a lot of cases, while there is a large amount of intergeneration variability, IQ is extremely heritable. That's why there's so much bleating about private school overrepresentation - if people used their common sense to see that humans are not a blank slate private school overrepresentation makes absolutely perfect sense.
Estimates of the heritability of IQ are about 50%, which I wouldn’t call “extremely”. IQ has a correlation with income of about 0.3-0.4, so it explains about 10-15% of variation in income. The correlation between IQ and wealth is even lower, about 0.16, so it explains about 3% of the variation in wealth.
The fact IQ only explains about 3% of the variation in wealth, doesn’t that make you more sympathetic to socialist views? Our current system isn’t rewarding ability or merit!
Plenty of the highest paid people on the rich lists did jobs which don't need especially high IQs, business founders and entrepreneurs, Premier League footballers, F1 drivers, pop stars, Hollywood actors, stockbrokers. They need some ability and merit and hard work certainly but beyond a skill in their particular field they don't need a very high overall IQ.
Plenty with the highest IQs will become academics, a solid middle class job but not particularly highly paid. Some will be doctors and lawyers but beyond commercial and tax lawyers or Harley Street doctors with mainly private clients, a doctor or surgeon working mainly in the NHS isn't going to be very highly paid. Nor is a lawyer doing legal aid work or working for the CPS or in human rights going to be in the top 1% of earners, certainly not unless they make KC.
The quickest way to ensure equality on wealth is 100% inheritance tax and most people living in social housing but no party would ever get elected taking all the value of homeowners' properties and the inheritance for their heirs in tax
She may well be right but I cannot see what choice they had.
I don't think the initial lockdown was avoidable. It was shit, but we had no idea about the long-term consequences, no vaccines (or any idea when they might arrive), and no proper understanding of optimal treatment.
What followed, on the other hand, was a complete clusterfuck.
80% of the reduction in "R" could probably have been achieved with 20% of the restrictions. (Not *no* restrictions... but fewer restrictions, and with the most destructive and least effective removed. So, there should have been no restrictions whatsoever on meeting up outside for example.)
Yes they could have been but the govt was cowed by the press, TV pundits and the opposition.
Every day on the TV people like Piers Morgan would be demanding more and more restrictions.
Remember SKS labelling one version the ‘Johnson Variant’
I hadn't realised that in addition to being a racist and, at best, incredibly insensitive about victims of gun massacres, Lowe is also an anti-vaxxer moron, but to a degree these things do seem to go together - everythingism, right wing edition.
This slip of the tongue on one murder vs one mass shooting seems less significant than Lowe describing himself as a “pureblood” because he refused the Covid vaccine.
He went on to say horse de-wormer Ivermectin was “just as effective” as the vaccine.
It's llke he exists purely to make people realise that Farage is not as bad by comparison.
That said, anyone who describes Ivermectin as “horse de-wormer”, rather than an invention that earned the Nobel Prize in Medicine and has likely saved millions of lives, is probably best ignored.
I know nothing about Ivermectin (though oddly I was once accused here of having been an Ivermectin fan during Covid), but it wouldn't be the first medicine that originally had another quite different application, and that feels like a rather heavy-handed way to imply crankiness.
I am also not sure we can say too much for the effectiveness of the covid vaccines. Everyone knows people who have had it (yes, I know it's not supposed to make you immune) and had it badly, despite being boosted up to the nines. We can say they'd have had it even worse, but that is largely a question of faith.
It's not a question of faith, it's a question of statistics. We can see the numbers who are hospitalised or die, and compare with the numbers for the same before the vaccines.
The comparison is pretty compelling in favour of the vaccines.
Sure, but as the pandemic progressed, those numbers would have fallen naturally, even without any form of medical intervention - this happens in all epidemics. And with different methods (not ivermectin) in another universe, they might have fallen faster. They might not have. Perhaps the vaccines were the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps they were not. We can't really know.
Says the person who this very afternoon was lauding the notion of drawing conclusions from facts rather than just starting with a conclusion you happen to like or rejecting one you don't.
Chutzpah or what. You should get into populist right wing politics.
Oh, hang on.
You can't really accuse me of drawing a conclusion when I've been at pains to suggest we cannot draw one.
You are rejecting a conclusion that is proven beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence.
Why you would do that is a mystery. I don't know the reason and you obviously can't tell me.
Some people find scientific truth scary, and feel it dis-empowers them.
Staging a performance of the story The Cold Equations, as a play at university was fascinating in this respect.
Does Socialism boil down to: "If one person is poor, everyone should be poor"?
No. "If nine people are poor and one person is wealthy, ten people could be comfortably off."
They want 99 people to be poor and one weathly, and they want to be that 1%.
Or, at best, "it's better that everyone loses as long as the rich lose most than everyone gaining if the rich gain most".
Here's a challenge for the PB righties. Come up with a non-caricatured summary of left-wing politics on the basis of an assumption of good faith among lefties.
I think I made a pretty good attempt of describing the essence of Tory ideology the other day, without restoring to caricature. Can any of you do the same?
Every person deserves to enjoy a dignified, broadly equal standard of living, with those who are more able or driven paying more to support those who are less able to contribute. Each person is a blank slate and as such should not benefit from their parents' wealth accumulation or other advantages conferred by linage.
Feels pretty close.
The first sentence is a decent attempt, but it makes the second redundant.
I'd say the second is essential - a key part of modern left wing thought is the fungibility of humans - a 10th generation 60km from Mogadishu subsistence farmer is there because they never got the opportunity or support of someone who went to Eton and then did good, so that entirely explains their differences, rather than acknowledging that actually in a lot of cases, while there is a large amount of intergeneration variability, IQ is extremely heritable. That's why there's so much bleating about private school overrepresentation - if people used their common sense to see that humans are not a blank slate private school overrepresentation makes absolutely perfect sense.
Estimates of the heritability of IQ are about 50%, which I wouldn’t call “extremely”. IQ has a correlation with income of about 0.3-0.4, so it explains about 10-15% of variation in income. The correlation between IQ and wealth is even lower, about 0.16, so it explains about 3% of the variation in wealth.
The fact IQ only explains about 3% of the variation in wealth, doesn’t that make you more sympathetic to socialist views? Our current system isn’t rewarding ability or merit!
Plenty of the highest paid people on the rich lists did jobs which don't need especially high IQs, business founders and entrepreneurs, Premier League footballers, F1 drivers, pop stars, Hollywood actors, stockbrokers. They need some ability and merit and hard work certainly but beyond a skill in their particular field they don't need a very high overall IQ.
Plenty with the highest IQs will become academics, a solid middle class job but not particularly highly paid. Some will be doctors and lawyers but beyond commercial and tax lawyers or Harley Street doctors with mainly private clients, a doctor or surgeon working mainly in the NHS isn't going to be very highly paid. Nor is a lawyer doing legal aid work or working for the CPS or in human rights going to be in the top 1% of earners, certainly not unless they make KC.
Comparing your first and second paragraphs, why should some of the most successful people in business and sport even bother about some who have the higher IQ as if it is some gold standard of success when in practical terms they are more successful
Comments
- Toxic
- Inflammable
- Explosive
- Carcinogenic
- Suspected of being a mutagen
It was a common joke that if petrol was invented today, there was absolutely no way you’d be allowed to sell it to the general public.
I am proud that nobody has ever flagged one of my posts.
Elon Musk’s family foundation took Tommy Robinson to Russia, says Musk’s father
Errol Musk says far-right activist is ‘a fine young man’ and held meetings with Russian business figures
Elon Musk’s family foundation took Tommy Robinson to Russia, according to the billionaire X owner’s father, who was with the British far-right activist in Moscow as he encouraged anti-migration protests in Britain.
Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – appeared last month in Moscow, from where he issued calls for supporters to take to the streets after a knife attack in Belfast. He shared video of himself in a luxury Moscow hotel with the older Musk, whose son has been a vocal supporter of Robinson.
“I brought him out to Russia,” Musk’s father, Errol, told the Guardian, adding that both men had held meetings with Russian business figures. He said the trip had been covered by the Musk Foundation, a private philanthropic organisation founded by Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk.
The visit to Moscow came at a time when Vladimir Putin’s regime and its proxies have appeared to be forging links with European far-right figures. At the same time, Russia was also hosting Andrew Tate, the self-styled misogynistic influencer, and his brother, who posted footage of themselves firing weapons and riding in a tank in the apparent company of the Russian military.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/11/elon-musk-family-foundation-took-tommy-robinson-to-russia-says-musks-father
It is impossible to flag any of my posts (ditto Robert).
You cannot flag an Administrator.
Five championship points saved.
It’s not that they’re against her but just want a longer final and I hope she understands that.
A modern version of the MG Metro Turbo.
I did drive the old version for about 12 months. It was okay.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-15965371/MG-Metro-Turbo-electric-hot-hatch-comeback.html
Oh yes, for the majority of 2020 most of us weren't interacting with anybody.
Chutzpah or what. You should get into populist right wing politics.
Oh, hang on.
I'll install a big battery for the house I'm buying (we should live there long enough to make it worthwhile) but it installed externally or in an outbuilding, not in the main house.
It's one of my tennis betting tips btw that 'mo' is overrated in a final set. The person who's done the comeback usually goes fav but very often the major effort to get back in the match takes its toll and they lose.
So ceteris paribum I tend to back the other one. Being Noskova here.
1) there is a prominent car fire
2) he starts banging on about how EVs burn all the time
3) it turns out the vehicle that started the fire was fossil fuel
4) various posters point out the derailed stats that show that EVs burn less often than ICE vehicles.
5) he goes quiet
6) there is a prominent car fire….
The bar above Rules isn’t bad either.
Otherwise that would be reminiscent of the lead OFSTED inspector in a school in Staffs five years ago. When caught feeling up an 11 year old girl, the only recourse was to tell him he'd been seen doing it and ask him to report himself.
The wonder is not that OFSTED under Spielman had a terrible record on safeguarding, but that it did not have a much worse one.
India, meanwhile, have been an embarrassment throughout this tour.
I hope they improve for the one dayers.
The fact IQ only explains about 3% of the variation in wealth, doesn’t that make you more sympathetic to socialist views? Our current system isn’t rewarding ability or merit!
And I’m very happy she managed to win . Her mum died of cancer two years ago so it must be a bittersweet moment for her ,
Ivermectin is a great drug, but it has absolutely no value whatsoever in treating or preventing COVID-19. Believing it does is a top sign that someone has fallen deep into a particular set of conspiracy theories associated with MAGA and the populist right.
Why you would do that is a mystery. I don't know the reason and you obviously can't tell me.
https://news.sky.com/story/ann-widdecombe-death-live-murder-investigation-police-12593360
Sandpit talked about how the discovery of Ivermectin led to a Nobel prize. So did the mRNA COVID vaccine.
Levels of both income and wealth are almost certainly linked to things such as "work ethic" and "deferred gratification" which aren't directly connected to intelligence, and are presumably partially learnt behaviours, and partially inherited.
@DPJHodges
·
25m
It is absolutely staggering that a senior political leader would openly speculate on an ongoing murder investigation in this way.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/2075996087131767099
===
This is one of many reasons why Farage is unfit to be prime minister.
Staging a performance of the story The Cold Equations, as a play at university was fascinating in this respect.
Although it’s hardly surprising that someone who denies climate change doesn’t understand science!
Levels of both income and wealth are also clearly linked to things such as “inherited wealth”, “going to private school” and “your parents knowing people”… and indeed also “luck”.
South Korean situation repeated, he will not have a problem with his supplicant Republican representatives. The streets will almost certainly run with blood.
God help us all.
Petrol is much more complex. Yes, a petrol tank can catch fire but it can also poison you with fumes or leak and silently become a boom waiting to happen. I store petrol outside, but I have multiple large Li-ion and Li-Po batteries inside.
* Battery storage systems don't even need to optimised for mass or volume, and so are free to use batteries that are even safer than the norm, like LFP batteries, and eventually we'll likely see solid state batteries take over, which will probably be about as safe a store of energy as we have got.
(When the TV series debuted, morse's car had been out of production for only 15 years. Driving a 15 year old car would not seem quirky these days. Perhaps fashions changed more quickly then...)
London & Southeast 🔆
@TheSnowDreamer
·
2h
Day 20 of 30C or above in #London so 1976 has now been equalled, it did very well to hold 50 years in midst of quickly rising global temperatures. But sooner or later it becomes inescapable.
https://x.com/TheSnowDreamer/status/2075963354250690998
And the sum of all those random interactions leads to rich and poor. In physical chemistry, it's called statistical mechanics; dumb atoms bouncing off each other at random separate out into upper, middle and lower class. For society to keep progressing, it's essential that we ignore that, that we persuade ourselves and others that we are the authors of our own success or failure, but it's much less true than self-described self-made men like to believe.
The best rich people have lived in a way that understands that- if you win in the lottery of life, great, now pay it forward. Consider Andrew Carneige's dictum about dying rich.
Still aren’t. We’re living through an extended trial.
Still needs must.
Also my wife’s cousin, her lad had his house go up in flames due to a battery on his golf trolley of all things, for goodness sake.
So I’ll excercise caution.
Pickford, Konsa, Guehi, Stones, O'Reilly, Anderson, Rice, Madueke, Gordon, Bellingham, Kane.
None of the tests and procedures was “rushed” or “omitted”
This is another anti-vax fairy tale.
I wonder when we will get to the dead BA pilots?
The statistic you cited compares the proportion of COVID-19 deaths within two very different groups:
Unvaccinated Group: In mid-2021, this group was disproportionately younger and healthier (as the elderly and vulnerable were prioritized for vaccination). However, they lacked immune protection. Consequently, when they died, COVID-19 was a leading cause (37.4%), simply because they were dying of fewer other age-related causes at that specific time.
Vaccinated Group (21+ days post-dose): By September 2021, this group included almost the entire elderly and clinically vulnerable population. These individuals have a much higher baseline mortality rate from non-COVID causes (cancer, heart disease, old age). Therefore, even if the vaccine prevented many COVID deaths, the sheer volume of non-COVID deaths in this high-risk group mathematically dilutes the percentage of deaths attributed to COVID (dropping it to 0.8%).
ONS Clarification and Confounding Factors
The ONS explicitly stated in their November 2021 analysis that these figures are not a measure of vaccine effectiveness due to several confounding factors:
Age and Health Status: The vaccinated population was significantly older and frailer than the unvaccinated population during the rollout. Comparing raw death counts or percentages without adjusting for age leads to misleading conclusions.
Natural Immunity: By September 2021, a portion of the unvaccinated cohort had acquired natural immunity from prior infection, which may have influenced their risk profile, though the ONS noted that vaccination provided a more consistent and safer level of protection.
Risk vs. Proportion: The correct metric for efficacy is the age-standardized mortality rate (risk of dying per person), not the proportion of total deaths. When adjusted for age, the ONS data showed the risk of dying from COVID-19 was roughly 32 times higher in unvaccinated individuals compared to fully vaccinated individuals during that period.
Conclusion
The statistic highlights a demographic reality: vaccinated people were dying of other causes because they were older, not because the vaccine failed. The unvaccinated group appeared to die more frequently of COVID-19 partly because they were less likely to die of other causes during that specific window, but their overall risk of catching and dying from the virus was substantially higher.
Perhaps we should be a little more cautious about describing peoples' posts as 'utter garbage' if we're going to abuse statistics in a way that the producers of those statistics specifically warn against.
The bigger issue was availability of parts and constrained supply. Especially after warp Drive.
There are also compressed timelines anyway for emergencies like this.
Still doesn’t change the point the long term effects are not known yet. I was happy to have the jab.
The wide-scale usage of the vaccine (over 5 billion) also now means we have better data on its effects than the vast majority of other vaccines or drugs. OK, we don’t know about any super long term effects, like 20 years on, but there’s nothing we can do about that.
What we do know, and the evidence keeps growing every week, is that all causes mortality is much lower for people who got jabbed, than those who didn't.
Then we can move seamlessly on to Brexit.
Should keep us going until kick-off.
Now (1) Covid evolved, and (2) the immune response weakens over time. But the chart shows an incredible effect.
Actually there were multiple vaccines from multiple providers. We even worked with the manufacturers of the Sputnik vaccine in Russia. It is not ‘The’ vaccine, singular, it is multiple vaccines from several OEMs.
Oh, and expected demand never followed through either.
https://x.com/JamesAHogg2/status/2075995880134455761/video/1?s=61
Britain’s mad lockdown experiment has damaged a generation of young people
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/11/mental-health-young-people-lockdown-impact/
A reminder that much of the far right is ideologically aligned with our enemies and promoted by them to divide and weaken our society. So called "patriots" who are anything but.
https://x.com/MattCartoonist/status/2075966374128607242?s=20
I expect he’ll now go back to his original excuse for the 5 million gift as needed for security and point to her murder .
He really is a vile odious creature .
What followed, on the other hand, was a complete clusterfuck.
80% of the reduction in "R" could probably have been achieved with 20% of the restrictions. (Not *no* restrictions... but fewer restrictions, and with the most destructive and least effective removed. So, there should have been no restrictions whatsoever on meeting up outside for example.)
I have my fears when the England fans are back in the UK.
Panic buying bog roll will be acceptable this time.
Reform remains ahead in the polls but has suffered its weakest result in over 18 months, while Nigel Farage’s personal ratings have fallen to their lowest point of this Parliament. The findings suggest recent negative headlines Nigel Farage may be beginning to affect Reform’s standing in the polls, although neither Labour nor the Conservatives appear to be making significant gains.
The poll also finds growing public concern about the influence of large political donations, with Reform now viewed as the party most influenced by wealthy donors.
Reform leads despite slipping back
Reform remains the largest party on 24%, down two points since last week and its lowest vote share in an Opinium/Observer poll since January 2025. Labour follows on 19%, with the Conservatives close behind on 18%. The Greens continue to rise, reaching 16%, while the Liberal Democrats stand on 12%.
Nigel Farage’s approval rating has fallen sharply to net -27, comfortably his lowest rating of this Parliament. Elsewhere, Kemi Badenoch improves to -3, Ed Davey remains on -5, Andy Burnham stands on -8, Zack Polanski improves slightly to -16, and Keir Starmer falls to -45.
Reform remains ahead, but its vote share has fallen to its lowest level since early January 2025.
➡️ Reform 24% (-2)
🌹 Labour 19% (-1)
🌳 Conservatives 18% (-1)
🌍 Greens 16% (+2)
🔶 Liberal Democrats 12% (+1)
https://x.com/opiniumresearch/status/2076018690881974697?s=46
The Tele. Never knowingly under fruity.
Arron Banks
@Arron_banks
2 years after Le Pen was convicted she is leading the polls in France by a massive margin. My guess is Farage will win Clacton, by a massive margin on a big turnout & Binface get a few thousand votes! Clacton will tell Westminster to stick it !
https://x.com/Arron_banks/status/2075953198498500787
Likes should be as simple as COMMENT_ID and USER_ID, presumably with an index somewhere to quickly retrieve tens of millions of them.
It’s also possible to ‘like’ an article, which might cause other complications.
Importing them into Wordpress in a legible way, however, is a different issue.
Anyway, off to the pub to watch the footy!
Plenty with the highest IQs will become academics, a solid middle class job but not particularly highly paid. Some will be doctors and lawyers but beyond commercial and tax lawyers or Harley Street doctors with mainly private clients, a doctor or surgeon working mainly in the NHS isn't going to be very highly paid. Nor is a lawyer doing legal aid work or working for the CPS or in human rights going to be in the top 1% of earners, certainly not unless they make KC.
The quickest way to ensure equality on wealth is 100% inheritance tax and most people living in social housing but no party would ever get elected taking all the value of homeowners' properties and the inheritance for their heirs in tax
What have Greens done in last couple of weeks? Attention has been elsewhere.
Every day on the TV people like Piers Morgan would be demanding more and more restrictions.
Remember SKS labelling one version the ‘Johnson Variant’
Being regularly logged in as admin is dangerous.
It’s utterly rank. My homemade banana wine is much better.
So to see him now still standing, no matter what the argument, has frankly taken my breath away.
GB News
@GBNEWS
‘Childish…learn some history!’
Falklands war veteran Simon Weston slams Gary Lineker for using the Argentinian word to describe the islands.
https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/2075946618801795177
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations