c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 29, 2021 22:58:21 GMT
That sounds a very sensible arrangement. I am insufficiently equipped in the larder department and so have to resort to other means. (Plus, Samsung fridges are good for VI. Allegedly). I'm sticking with EU produced products, where possible and Miele fridges are tested to last 20 years. Samsung may be good for VI but not so good for the environment given the sea haulage from Korea. yes, there is the reliability benefit with Miele. I have a Miele vacuum which is not only reliable, it is so powerful they could use it to dry out a cricket pitch. (Must admit I didn’t pay too much heed to the haulage issue, as I was panicking a bit wanting to make sure I had a fridge in time for for Xmas after my initial attempt at fridges, procurement of, messed up as was slightly too big. There’s a lot to this fridge thing). |
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Post by tancred on Dec 29, 2021 23:00:22 GMT
No, the concept of middle class is very different in the USA from here. It refers to people like car workers, steel workers, miners, farmers - what we would call the skilled working class. The US has seen an increase in already high inequality, and a decrease in social mobility, as a result of the disappearance of this type of job (offshoring and outsourcing yes, but also changes in economic structure). So the statement that the middle class of the 1960-90 period has become the new wealthy class is flat out wrong. Immigration certainly can increase competition for jobs, but it will also increase the number of jobs, as the immigrants consume goods, require services etc. And in the generality their tax payments outweigh the costs, and insofar as they are “better” workers, output becomes cheaper for everyone. Of course there are always individuals who lose out, and they tend to be concentrated in certain sectors. I don't fully agree with you. Middle class is middle class - Americans do tend to use the term more broadly and focus purely on income rather than social aspects (e.g. education, habits, artistic tastes etc), but ultimately middle class in terms of income means the broad sector of people in the middle of the national earning band. This is the definition I am using here, not whether you prefer Boy George to Bach or football to rugby. If you look at the attached graph you can see that the upper middle and highest incomes combined comprised 14% in 1971 but have risen to 21% in 2015 - these are the the very well off and the wealthy. By contrast you can see that the middle class has gone from 61% in 1971 to 50% in 2015. So what has happened? Quite obviously there has been a migration of people from the middle class to the two highest income classes. Also, note that two lowest classes have increased slightly from 25% to 29%. So we can see that there has been upward mobility from the middle class but also downward mobility. The disappearance of well paying manufacturing jobs has prompted the downward mobility but the upward mobility has been due to salaries of the better educated 'white collar' sector of the middle class increasing substantially due to new jobs in the service sector. I don't want to debate the merits of immigration with you as that is a completely different area, but I take issue with your assertion that immigration creates jobs - it creates demand, for sure, but also places strain on national services (e.g. health, education) and infrastructure. Your statement about costs, taxes and output depends on various factors, so you can look at it both ways.  |
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bantams
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Known as Bantams on UKPR
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Post by bantams on Dec 29, 2021 23:01:47 GMT
That sounds a very sensible arrangement. I am insufficiently equipped in the larder department and so have to resort to other means. (Plus, Samsung fridges are good for VI. Allegedly). I'm sticking with EU produced products, where possible and Miele fridges are tested to last 20 years. Samsung may be good for VI but not so good for the environment given the sea haulage from Korea. Making a Miele out of this tonight.😉 |
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Post by alec on Dec 29, 2021 23:02:18 GMT
steve - "Nice of you to totally ignore the 35% fall of covid deaths in the UK in the last seven days." Not ignoring, no. I'm just waiting for the Christmas reporting lag to unwind before commenting on a set of data that is bound to be heavily distorted by the holiday period.
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Post by tancred on Dec 29, 2021 23:03:10 GMT
Well, who is doing the 'granting' is of course the Crown, and HM Government acting on behalf of the Crown. Simple. These are the constitutional rules under which we live in this country. The Scottish people decided in 2014 that they are better off inside the UK and I have no doubt that they will continue to hold this view in the future, but, given that a large minority want independence, my opinion is that a devolution-max option should also be put to the Scottish people as another alternative. You need to read up on the UK constitution. Please enlighten me. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2021 23:05:31 GMT
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Post by alec on Dec 29, 2021 23:06:03 GMT
hireton - I think you've hit the nail on the head with Drivegate. It seems a reasonable objective for funding, in general terms, although the reported wealth of the owning trust does place some pressure on the award, although we don't know if any conditions were placed on the grant. But it is the messaging and hype that creates the problem, as ever. The lack of definition of levelling up means everything is levelling up, which then leaves you wide open to all manner of accusations when a normal funding decision is presented in the wrong light. This is a consistent problem with boosterism and the fakery that accompanies it.
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Post by mercian on Dec 29, 2021 23:06:23 GMT
Alec As we don't have the figures for the last two days why do you assume you will be right. Nice of you to totally ignore the 35% fall of covid deaths in the UK in the last seven days. If a surge produces less serious outcomes it's good news. You should know by now that Alec doesn't do good news. He's a Four Horsemen supporter. |
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Post by tancred on Dec 29, 2021 23:08:18 GMT
Graham I wouldn’t think the Tory membership would be in the slightest interested in Truss personal life especially a one off affair that happened 17yrs ago, perhaps they tend to have a more grown up view of life than some with a more immature outlook. I was not aware that the said affair was as far back as 17 years, but I think you will find that many older traditional Tory types are not likely to be impressed at the prospect of having an adultress as their leader and PM.Were Thatcher or May to have had that baggage, neither would have become party leader. Times have changed - few people care about such tittle tattle. |
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Post by alec on Dec 29, 2021 23:09:25 GMT
steve - on the death numbers: I've just read that NHS England haven't reported any deaths data since the 24th. This will be updated tomorrow, so we'll get the best part of a weeks worth of deaths dropped into the figures in one go. Suggest you revisit the deaths tally then if you wish to make an issue of it?
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Post by tancred on Dec 29, 2021 23:13:08 GMT
This is not a fridge comparison forum. Well said, and I for one would not pay nearly a thousand quid on a bloody fridge freezer! |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2021 23:22:58 GMT
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
Posts: 6,721
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 29, 2021 23:24:37 GMT
Well said, and I for one would not pay nearly a thousand quid on a bloody fridge freezer! I thought it was quite restrained. It’s not like one of those big American fridges (which admittedly could have more impact on VI) |
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steve
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Post by steve on Dec 29, 2021 23:33:05 GMT
Bad news for covid Cassandra's total deaths from omicron variant in UK under 60 less than 1000 of hospital admissions with omicon and most cases in hospital with covid now incidental , they would have been in hospital anyway. Seriously ill patients numbers not increasing and 36% fall in death rate in last week.
With omicron replacing delta we can expect less not more severe outcomes.
This is good news it might actually mean for all the wrong reasons the Spaffer regime actually did something right by ignoring demands for another pointless lockdown lite.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2021 23:38:26 GMT
I live near Charleston House and have been to a couple of events there.
It is haven for middle class and wealthy bohemian types and of virtually no interest to anyone else!! I doubt it provides much tourism to the local area as there are very few local amenities nearby.
Charleston has only recently had a massive injection of funding to build some huge barns for conferences, exhibitions, new restaurant etc….it would appear that they certainly don’t struggle to find their own funding and considering what a very niche product they offer, it’s remarkable how much money they have raised.
In essence, it’s a dilapidated four bedroom farm house that housed some raunchy artists and writers…and has a very average garden, .not exactly good reason for the government to be funding a road…it’s a road to nowhere
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Post by crossbat11 on Dec 29, 2021 23:41:29 GMT
After a day, or most of it, traipsing the canal towpaths of the Worcester-Birmingham Canal, in my role as official Volunteer Towpath Ranger (the job comes with a badge, cap and a CRT branded life jacket), I have only intermittently paid much attention to the rip-roaring badinage and polling analysis on UKPR2 today. However, as I sat and communed with a variety of wildfowl in Vines Park in Droitwich, whilst sipping a coffee or two, I did flick through the thread on my excellent OPPO phone, acquired at a very competitive price from a phone shop in Evesham, just off Bridge Street and not far from the slowly flowing Avon. As I scrolled Mark's masterpiece, I did settle on a few interesting contributions on the coming economic problems, most notably the return of Mr Rising Price, that might bedevil the Johnson Government and, more particularly, put strain on the ever slipping halo that sits above the putative successor to the the crown, Lord Sunak of Furlough.
It got me thinking a little of the 1992 Clinton campaign mantra; it's the economy, stupid. The received wisdom being that mastery of the economy, or an absence of such prowess, settles all elections. Or should that be the perception of competence/incompetence as applied to an opposition? I mean, an opposition has no levers to pull. Perception is everything in their benighted case.
I accept that falling living standards brought about by stagnant wages, rising prices and insecure and precarious employment, amongst other things, are not good political circumstances in which to ask for voters endorsement, but, back to my tipping point, I wonder if the macro trumps the micro in terms of people's views about a government's competence on the economy? Voters might be quite tolerant of short term ructions if they feel they are partly to do with global and external factors out of the Chancellor's control and they see government trying to alleviate them too. But what if something happens, so seismic in effect, that an electorate never forgives their government and never fully trusts them ever again? I give you the 1992 ERM fiasco and what that did for Major's government. Remember that, under Clarke's stewardship, the economy was booming by 1997, but little good did it do Major. OK, I accept there was a lot else going on that contributed to his defeat, but it was interesting that neither he nor his Chancellor got much credit for the boom. Voters had made their minds up in September 1992. Brown's government many years later paid for the financial crash induced recession, and the Tories skilful messaging about its cause, and he never got any credit for his handling of the crisis or the slowly recovering economy in 2010. Again, other factors at play, but the crash did for his and Darling's reputation for economic competence.
A long preamble, but what equivalent event could cook Johnson and Sunak's goose? Sleaze, cronyism and hypocrisy aren't helping, and they may prove to be the daggers at the heart of Toryism that scupper its ability to ever recover, but I'm wondering whether this forthcoming Independent Inquiry into the handling of the pandemic may provide the nuclear bomb for not just Johnson, but for the 11 years of Toryism that has gone before. What if it finds that so much of the pandemic in the UK was worsened by the austerity of the previous 11 years? How our death toll was increased by the failure to prepare properly and how our front line health workers were let down by the failure to stockpile and supply adequate PPE. How not properly funding the NHS and other public services fatally weakened our ability to manage the public health crisis. Could the findings be so devastating that, finally, the electorate decide to punish those who so misgoverned us for so long? Failed us in an hour of need, if you like. Criminal negligence on a grand scale. If so, then I don't think it will matter very much what the inflation rate is or how much fuel duty is being axed, or how much universal credit thresholds are tweaked come 2024.
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steve
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Post by steve on Dec 29, 2021 23:42:20 GMT
Alec
Death data is reported daily the last day shown in the government website is the 28th.The NHS data is announced on weekdays and excluded weekends and bank holidays but this doesn't mean they don't already have the data and this is fed into the daily covid update.
I find it frankly bizarre that you appear to wish to ignore any and all positive indications.
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steve
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Post by steve on Dec 29, 2021 23:46:54 GMT
Hireton
It is an aristocrats driveway the fact that a part of their stately home is a museum is largely irrelevant.
Private access ways to private museums aren't routinely maintained at public expense.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2021 23:47:54 GMT
Carfrew: “I am insufficiently equipped in the larder department .”
Oo-er Missis!
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Post by eor on Dec 30, 2021 0:29:27 GMT
Graham I wouldn’t think the Tory membership would be in the slightest interested in Truss personal life especially a one off affair that happened 17yrs ago, perhaps they tend to have a more grown up view of life than some with a more immature outlook. I was not aware that the said affair was as far back as 17 years, but I think you will find that many older traditional Tory types are not likely to be impressed at the prospect of having an adultress as their leader and PM.Were Thatcher or May to have had that baggage, neither would have become party leader. That pivot would almost work, had you not (rather gleefully) started this by saying she was regarded as the "Tory trollop" - a somewhat implausible sobriquet to now try to pin entirely on Tory voters. Best just stop digging  |
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Post by eor on Dec 30, 2021 0:33:07 GMT
@davwell - your comment on vaccine efficacy and fourth boosters brought to mind an odd discovery I made today. I found my way to the Intensive Care NationalAudit & Research Centre (ICNARC) website and their recent covid data. [See www.icnarc.org/our-audit/audits/cmp/reports downloads to the right of the page]. Chart 26 on their latest report (England only) showed rates of admission to intensive care (1st May 2021 - 15th Nov 2021) with covid by vaccination status, and showed the expected overwhelming bias toward unvaccinated patients. However, unusually this chart split the vaccinated cohorts into single and double jabbed, which were both low and remarkably similar. From the chart as published, it looked like the single jabbed were slightly less likely to be admitted, but the lines were so close I couldn't tell. So I checked the spreadsheet data released by the ICNARC and this had the admission rates per 100,000 for double and single jabbed and unvaccinated. Across all age groups the single jabbed were less likely to require intensive care over the period than double jabbed, with the 18 - 29 cohort at 56% of the double jabbed rate, rising to just over 60% between 50 and 70 and 80% for the over 70s. It should be said that all the rates for double/single jabbed were very low - most were less than 0.5 admissions per 100,000 per week for both categories, and the rates for the unvaccinated were far higher - between 15 and 90 times higher. But there is a consistent signal across all age cohorts that you are statistically less likely to have required intensive care treatment for covid if you had only received a single jab as opposed to full vaccination. For various reasons this is personally reassuring to me, to an extent, but I am genuinely puzzled as to why this is. It may be a statistical anomaly, although if it were, it seems remarkably consistent across the age ranges over an extended data period. It could be behavioural, perhaps with the single jabbed being more cautious than the double jabbed, but it's a set of numbers I can't really explain. - I suppose in addition to your behavioural point, another possibility would be a self-skew from people not bothering to take the second jab because they knew they were low risk (either through age/conditions/etc or behaviour). Also I'd guess a certain volume of people for whom the effects of the first jab were sufficiently harsh that they figured it wasn't worth going through a second time, especially if by then they'd encountered many people who'd actually had COVID and had described symptoms that seemed quite manageable. |
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Post by graham on Dec 30, 2021 0:40:54 GMT
I was not aware that the said affair was as far back as 17 years, but I think you will find that many older traditional Tory types are not likely to be impressed at the prospect of having an adultress as their leader and PM.Were Thatcher or May to have had that baggage, neither would have become party leader. That pivot would almost work, had you not (rather gleefully) started this by saying she was regarded as the "Tory trollop" - a somewhat implausible sobriquet to now try to pin entirely on Tory voters. Best just stop digging Not really. The term 'Tory Trollop' was being widely used at the time she became the local MP. I did not invent it. |
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Post by jib on Dec 30, 2021 0:53:52 GMT
graham"traditional Tory types are not likely to be impressed at the prospect of having an adultress as their leader and PM" How sexist when they have a multiply adulterous man as PM now. If Truss has lived a little, good for her. The world is not black and white dear Graham.
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Post by eor on Dec 30, 2021 0:56:47 GMT
In 2014 it was reported " some Red Guards have issued public apologies to their victims," (1)-about their conduct during The Cultural Revolution in China. The same process seems to have started in The Labour Party :- "Speaking at this year’s Limmud festival, a Jewish event, the shadow foreign secretary said he “never believed” Corbyn would become leader and that his nomination was “a mistake”. “I regret nominating Jeremy Corbyn and if I knew what I do now, I never would have nominated him,” Lammy told an online audience of about 300, in comments first reported in Jewish News. “I never believed he would become leader. That was a mistake and I am sorry for that.” Guardian.  (1)npr.org As I understand it Lammy was one of the cleverdicks who thought nominating a surefire left-wing loser for the leadership would help validate whoever actually won. Staggering error, but he was hardly alone - Margaret Beckett and Frank Field have already self-criticised (to borrow your rather odd but timely analogy) and I suspect Sadiq Khan wasn't exactly on board with the project either. |
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Post by eor on Dec 30, 2021 1:03:51 GMT
That pivot would almost work, had you not (rather gleefully) started this by saying she was regarded as the "Tory trollop" - a somewhat implausible sobriquet to now try to pin entirely on Tory voters. Best just stop digging Not really. The term 'Tory Trollop' was being widely used at the time she became the local MP. I did not invent it. I didn't say you invented it - just that you found it funny enough to post here and then when called out for being sexist tried to blame it entirely on archaic Tories who surely wouldn't have stigmatised her as the "Tory" anything. |
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Post by mercian on Dec 30, 2021 1:09:26 GMT
After a day, or most of it, traipsing the canal towpaths of the Worcester-Birmingham Canal, in my role as official Volunteer Towpath Ranger (the job comes with a badge, cap and a CRT branded life jacket), I have only intermittently paid much attention to the rip-roaring badinage and polling analysis on UKPR2 today. However, as I sat and communed with a variety of wildfowl in Vines Park in Droitwich, whilst sipping a coffee or two, I did flick through the thread on my excellent OPPO phone, acquired at a very competitive price from a phone shop in Evesham, just off Bridge Street and not far from the slowly flowing Avon. We visit Vines park from time to time. It's a pleasant walk along the river and canal, though I can't walk too far these days. Interesting place. Next time we go I'll look out for someone with a badge and a cap! I might even say hello. 🙂 |
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Post by eor on Dec 30, 2021 1:16:56 GMT
Alec Education isn't a necessity in year one of brexitania. It's rather a hindrance actually. I would point out that the Greek government managed to permit eating out for the summer of 2020 while having one of the lowest death rates from covid in Europe, it's a bit more nuanced than that. The major issue with the regime response was that normally it wasn't necessarily appropriate, they were hardly unique in this and because of the objective to earn dosh out of delivering it wasn't as effective as it could have been.With an inept regime based on loyalty to the brexitanian cult rather than competence what more could you expect. And sidestepping back to reality for a moment; alec - did you ever find any advance on that single un-reviewed preprint about Eat Out To Help Out causing extra COVID? Cos the data remains strongly the other way, in that there was none of the predicted impact on cases for weeks and weeks after. steve - you spent a lot of time in 2020 telling us how fabulously better Greece's COVID approach was. Given that they've had a substantially worse performance than the UK (and most other countries) since that time, would you care to explain the policy failings that have led to this? |
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Post by moby on Dec 30, 2021 1:42:18 GMT
How much is that really the case though? They might accept foreign employees lower down the scale, but feel secure because they’ve erected barriers to make it harder for foreign people to prosper further. Whether because not recognising foreign qualifications, or more informal means. Have come across research recently of how foreign people and indeed women too are leaving science and engineering careers because can’t get past the bottom rungs of the ladder. Also, another bit of research about how often professors tend to appoint people like them rather than foreign folk. And these are supposed to be liberal institutions. (There is also the data concerning immigration I posted a couple of years back, where second generation immigrants seemed to do less well than their parents, another potential example of being held back). There is something called 'unconscious bias' in the way we treat colleagues and consider people for promotion etc. There is a natural human tendency to favour people who are like us, speak like us, look like us and have similar habits and interests as us - it's just human nature. Many corporate giants have introduced training to combat unconscious bias and this is helping to mitigate this tendency, though it's hard to completely eradicate. The problem is that the management structure in many organisations operates in a cliquey environment - those who are in the 'in crowd' will always do better than those who lie outside of it, no matter how good they are at their jobs. In many ways getting on depends on who you know instead of what you know. I don't think that this is as big an issue in IT as it is in other industries - many senior managers in IT come from offshore backgrounds these days. I would think that in older, more traditional professions, such as law, this is more of an issue. Totally agree. Unconscious bias training in most professions can be a revelation if you are prepared to look inside yourself. |
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Post by moby on Dec 30, 2021 2:07:08 GMT
Colin Couldn’t agree more it was ever thus in politics . On another subject I see the U.K. has a shortage of lateral flow test kits. All I can say you should be in the US we really have a shortage of kits here and those that are available are rapidly going up in price. They use to be 25 bucks now if you can get hold of one it’s 75 bucks. The US gets it’s kits from China mostly I don’t know if it’s the same in the U.K. It does seem to be a worldwide problem I suppose it’s the sudden demand for kits caused by people wanting to meet relatives over the Christmas period let’s hope it gets better soon what would we do without China eh. Strange I've just got a pack of 7 free kits from a chemist in Llandovery. |
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Post by moby on Dec 30, 2021 2:26:21 GMT
This is not a fridge comparison forum. Well said, and I for one would not pay nearly a thousand quid on a bloody fridge freezer! Miele do brilliant washing machines as well. My partner has been testing ours non stop every day for the last 12 years. |
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