Casual-observer
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Posts posted by Casual-observer
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1 minute ago, Bob8 said:
The problem with the thin-end-of the wedge argument is that retrictions are loosening. I went to the pub recently, it was great.
Aldo, the other problem is you are a dick. And it is not the brilliant intellectual argument that you think.
Why thankyou, I love you too.
As I said, good luck enjoying the ultra Government centric future you're clamouring for whereby you're measured on how green you are and how fat you are....because it's coming.
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I would actually urge the lockdown supporters a word of caution because eventually they'll bring in measures you may not want to do or agree with. I can see the beginnings of it already.
These measures are a slippery slope.
Considering the correlation between COVID and obesity what's the difference between not allowing someone not vaccinated to travel and someone with an unhealthy BMI not to travel?
Lockdown is easy enough for people to be lethargic at home, in a garden working from their bedroom.
I very much hope you do enjoy the future dystopia that looms because it may not always entail comfortable living in your houses.
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8 minutes ago, scottbeard said:
I don't understand why you would think that the government would think like that.
If I were in government I would want people to be (1) getting out and doing what they want so that they stop moaning and voting against me in by elections and (2) getting out and working so they increase the tax revenues and reduce the benefit bill.
There is no need for the government to be overly restrictive against scientific advice. If anything, it's the reverse - scientists are the ones wanting to be cautious with the government having to be up against the wall before it does things like enact a lockdown or move 21 June to 19 July.
I can think of one, the inevitable inquest that will occur into the future on this, they all know it's coming and have one eye on it.
No scientist or politician wants to be facing a future inquest admitting they didn't do everything feasibly possibly to 'save lives' with the legal ramifications that would later bring.
Sixty years ago there would have been no inquest, the same scientists will have been allowed to deliver the hard maths and say X amount of people will die, the pandemics over and society will roll on.
The problem is todays over politicised over hyped legal world where 'for every accident, there's a claim'.
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5 minutes ago, Bob8 said:
I agree the NHS cannot be a great panacea in itself, but I fail to see a better alternative.
I was being slightly glib but considering the NHS is the fifth largest employer in the world and the fanfare it gets you'd expect to see some significant advantages to the concept above others without one and the bottom line is there hasn't been.
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7 minutes ago, Sour Mash said:
This has long been known but lots of companies don't care - they'll just offshore and save a bundle, putting up with the drawbacks.
Plus, plenty of Eastern European offshoring operations that do a bang up job. Last place I worked outsourced their desktop support there - totally excellent service. Everyone I dealt with spoke excellent English, was polite and knowledgeable.
They had less luck with stuff that they sent to India but they still kept it up and paid a few of the UK ex-workers a tidy sum to come back and bolster/oversee the Indian teams to get the work up to standard. We just worked around issues that we had with the Indian team who provided monitoring for a system we managed. In general, they did the best job that they could and TBH it would have been tricky for anyone to deal with that rolling disaster.
If it's absolutely clear that the job can be done 100% from home, there is even more impetus to transfer it somewhere lower cost. It doesn't even require a study to find out if it is feasible.
Right but it's mostly if not all predicated on the cost savings existing.
The problem my old firm is having with East Europe is a) getting the workers through the door and b) keeping them. East Europe is tapped out in regards to cheaper labour on tap, the labour costs from here on in are only going up.
In regards to Indian support I've seen, again I disagree from my own industry. The drawbacks can't be tolerated when you're losing your client base. Once the quality of that data wanes it's over, you've lost your client by the next tender and to be frank that data quality wanes when the upstairs are too separated from the shop floor.
Most corporates are simply too inept to manage remotely varying teams across the globe once the outsoruce project is complete. The project team evaporates and the BAU declines.
There's also the simple problem of experience, where are the future western managers replacements going to coming from? It won't be from a shop floor in India from people with no exposure of the industry outside their direct bubble.
WFH and outsourcing relies heavily on on a pool of people who've picked up their experience in the traditional sense, working at a coal face in an office with a multitude of people to collaborate with.
WFH and outsourcing is compartmentalisation on steroids as far as I'm concerned.
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I never realised the power of trade deals meant it forces you to eat dog meat.
Personally I ensure to look at the item on the shelf before deciding to eat it
Thank god for the EU, without it we'd all have began inexplicably eating dog meat for the past 40 years.
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5 hours ago, dugsbody said:
And round we come... "we could have got the unicorn deal if it wasn't for those darn remainers".
Predicted several thousand posts and a few years back. Sorry champ, we saw you coming.
Just on this again I also see Dominic Raab is in Vietnam organising a trade deal.
You know who I don't see out there, the speaker of the house or the leader of the opposition or the SNP undermining his position.
I don't hear mass cries of various MP's demanding Parliament oversight on this potential deal.I don't see a prime minister simultaneously sending over a civil servant undermining Raabs position
It's almost as if our EU negotiations were never approached from a position of honesty in regards to remainers adapting to a status quo which was politically dead.
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8 minutes ago, Bob8 said:
If your interest is genuine, there is this for comparisons:
https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938
We have done very badly for western Europe, but better than several East European nations.
So much for the NHS then, I certainly agree it's not as good as certain quarters profess it is
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29 minutes ago, Freki said:
Yes, there is once again for the umpteenth time:
You can't have a better deal outside the club. SM membership means: contribution to the budget and FOM. Norway is subject to FOM and paying access to the SM
Hmmm indeed, but then again as you all keep repeatedly saying how many other large economies are sitting twenty miles off the EU's coast of which they aren't tapping into as much as they'd prefer?
I think you'll find when cooler heads eventually prevail new bespoke deals can be created.
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1 minute ago, dugsbody said:
Cop out answer, as expected.
All talk, no bite.
Relax, Relax.
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17 minutes ago, dugsbody said:
You're still not following.
CU, no chance. Single market, no chance.
The deal as it stands is the best FTA that the EU has with a third party. Clearly the EU nations would have preferred the UK to remain in the single market because it is the pinnacle for seamless trade, but that was never on the cards.
So what possible better deal do you think exists? Spell it out.
Until the political landscape in Europe changes and we are an election cycle away from that, it's really a moot argument to have. The Tories aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
There's no reason a bespoke trade deal can cannot be tailored, that's the nature of business but again you need a fresh round of elections throughout Europe before that could even happen.
As it stands the current crop politically have to standby prior actions.
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3 minutes ago, yelims said:
The EU doesn’t care for UK economy, it’s a competitor now
name anything produced in uk which can’t be sourced in Eu often for less
and before you say financial services I have news for you those left as quickly as their legs could carry them or had no choice but to move large chunks their operations and continue to do so as reality of not being able to offer services sinks in
Name anything produced in the EU which can't be sourced in China?
Your point is irrelevant, there's always going to be an economy in UK with a population of 66 million just for starters.
It's hard to take anyone serious when remainers paint this picture of barren waste lands.
These continuous examples/threats of the contents of the city of London entirely upping sticks and migrating to europe is also I'm afraid utter ********. You clearly don't understand the predominant reason why financial services are based in the city and why the bulk of it couldn't just move to this so far nameless area in Europe.
If it were going to happen it would have happened long before now.
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1 minute ago, dugsbody said:
🤣
Another cart before the horse argument. "The deal is shit therefore it proves we could have got a better deal".
Saw you coming years back, champ.
I never said sh1t chief, I said bare bones which is also bad news for the EU for a host of reasons, despite this regurgitated nonsense posted on this thread that the EU doesn't care about the UK economy. 😄
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5 minutes ago, Huggy said:
Local BBC news had an article a few minutes ago on a retsaurant that wasn't going to open up for the lunchtime service due to staff shortages. A lot of workers have left the UK apparently.
The solution...........?
Special immigration rules to get staff back in. 😂 FFS.
Got to think of the costs, and only the costs, as a hard-nosed London businessman I guess 🙄
Why would anyone return to that industry as it stands when Boris alluded to more lockdowns by winter?
The problem isn't immigration, the problems COVID. You couldn't drag me into a job in hospitality as it stands.
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6 minutes ago, dugsbody said:
You've repeatedly made that assertion, which doesn't make it a fact.
I think that is what you're missing. It isn't that we're not listening, it is that we don't accept your claim. The lump of labour fallacy is that there is a fixed number of jobs. If there were, then a large number of immigrants would indeed depress wages significantly. But there is not a fixed number of jobs. As I already pointed out, every new immigrant consumes goods and services. That creates more jobs. Which is why, at most, the impact of immigration on low skill jobs was to the tune of 0.86% and why (where I live) the cost of getting any tradesman job done has only ever gone up.
Not only that but the social mobility aspect means new immigrants can start businesses, innovate, integrate. Social mobility is considered a good thing for society as it means people can efficiently make their own autonomous decisons to allocate their labour where they see it as most efficient. That is why we don't live in a command economy.
The real difference between brexiters and remainers is that remainers saw ourselves as part of Europe, int he same was brexiters see themselves as part of the UK. We didn't consider an Eastern European moving to the UK as an invasion, in the same way we don't consider someone from Darlington moving to London as "stealing our jobs".
Well firstly it is a fact, it did depress wages, by how much is open to interpretation and really it depends who you ask.
No official source is realistically going to be honest about the situation because it does lead you to places like a Brexit, clearly. People ultimately got out of bed to vote leave for a reason.
Secondly if that is peoples point then just state that, don't allude to others irrelevant points no one actually made.
Again I clearly said immigration done sensibly and gradually won't lead you to the very places you don't like, like a Brexit. I'm almost certain if the UK Govt could rewind the clock they'd wish they did open up the UK labour markets to east europe more gradually than they did.
14 minutes ago, dugsbody said:And round we come... "we could have got the unicorn deal if it wasn't for those darn remainers".
Predicted several thousand posts and a few years back. Sorry champ, we saw you coming.
The proof is in the pudding, the deal Boris got was bare bones because ultimately both parties run out of time chasing ridiculous remainer unicorn scenarios, like second referendums. Just nonsense ideas that were never grounded in reality.
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2 minutes ago, dugsbody said:
There was never a realistic chance of not following through with the referendum. Customs union impossible, single market impossible, anything with FOM, impossible.
I think you know this.
I'd say one of the greatest difficulties of the negotiations was the false hope remainers in Parliament kept giving Brussels.
The negotiations were never approached from either side with a position of honesty because there were too many fingers in the pie, let alone the ludicrous amount of differing parties being allowed to continually fly to Brussels to give out unrealistic advice. Far too many MP remainers were operating under the illusion the referendum could be ignored.
I recall Portillo at the time saying as much, this false hope fed Brussels a false idea of what was achieveable.
A better deal could have been thrashed out but as crashisles says, remainers overplayed their hand ignoring the hard reality on the ground in local tory branches and red wall seats.
Enough Tories certainly had the good sense not to follow labour off the cliff, those red wall seats are for the foreseeable are at least marginal seats going forwards now.
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23 minutes ago, Peter Hun said:
As a remainer I had a strong suspicion that it would go as it did.
Doesn't affect that I was surrounded by EU citizens in professional jobs and you are clueless if you think that EU immigration was only about unskilled jobs.
Hence the government commitment to protect the jobs of the unskilled and keep up immigration from the educated.
You need to rub your eyes because I never implied the EU WAS only about unskilled immigration.
What I've said repeatedly was the brunt end of opening our labour markets was felt at the bottom end of the labour market and the average middle/upper class Brit just didn't care. Nor did any Government.
Had that transition been carried out more gradually, intelligently and with less greed I would hazard a guess remain would have won.
As it stands though that lesson is still as far as sinking in for remainers now as it was 15 years ago, I guess it goes hand in hand with the arrogance that flows through their veins
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6 minutes ago, Ah-so said:
Obesity might have got him 30 years down the track, but it wouldn't have got him this year. But it was idiocy that got him, not obesity.
He lost 30 years of his life because he was an arrogant anti-vaxxer who thought that his immune system was all he needed. I don't think that idiocy or being overweight deserves death at such a young age, however. A wife has lost a husband and a son his father.
There is such an eagerness to write off deaths (and in your case in particular a very disturbing enthusiasm to will the deaths on). "He's old, she's fat, he's black, she's got a comorbidity, he's got a weak immune system etc" until it seems like everyone who dies deserved their death in someway for the good of society.
But it didn't did it, it got him now because a novel virus hit. Much like it nailed many other obese people earlier than liked long before a Vax arrived.
You can't alluded to other natural causes of death but then discount the scenario of when a novel virus hits, it doesn't work like that. Viruses are a natural and recurring pattern of being on this rock and there are no guarantees of a quick vax being available.
He lost 30 years of his life due to his combined obesity and novel virus hitting, his political beliefs are irrelevant.
The main lesson from this entire episode is you cannot rely on the rest of society perpetually bending over backwards, plus a miracle rushed out cure to be there, all so you can remain obese. The harsh truth is our obese demographics have been a huge burden on the rest of society in this scenario and it isn't sustainable
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9 minutes ago, zugzwang said:
There's no evidence of pre-existing immunity in Asia. Hong Kong has just entered its fourth lockdown. Japan has been similarly afflicted. The recent and current explosion of Covid in India and Indonesia argues strongly against the possibility.
I understood this was still being reviewed.
May I also point out the obesity rate in Vietnam is 2%, in Japan it's roughly 4%
As has been repeatedly said there's no golden bullet for overweight elderly western demographics when a novel respiratory virus hits.
Ethically I'm not convinced perpetual zero COVID policy is a long term solution, ethically do you feel it's correct to deny children education on a permanent basis every time we need to nip an outbreak in the bud?
Do you feel it's ethically appropriate to deny people the ability to earn an income on a regular basis in some crazy world of stopping the tide of reaching natural immunity?
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3 minutes ago, zugzwang said:
Taiwan is much smaller than the UK and has a population of 23 million.
Vietnam has a land border with China and a population of 95 million.
Which also means they've had a higher frequency of Sars like viruses over recent years unlike the west.
I highly suspect (as other scientists are looking into) that ultimately natural immunity offered them better protection as opposed to some mythological, heavy handed central Government solution.
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1 minute ago, zugzwang said:
When the alternative is 150,000 dead, a double digit economic contraction and the semi-permanent suspension of our civil liberties?
Yes, I most certainly do.
How about a 5 million population versus a 66 million population to boot?
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2 minutes ago, The Spaniard said:
Coincidentally American Airlines have cancelled almost 500 flights over Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon due to a reported shortage of pilots.
https://onemileatatime.com/news/american-airlines-canceling-hundreds-of-flights/
Didn't a lot of airline pilots end up being delivery drivers during COVID.
I highly suspect the long term implication of COVID is getting people back into industries that face a long term unstable future so long as lockdowns are on the table now and into the future.
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35 minutes ago, Marshall211 said:
I could not locate any authentic CEBR article predicting what OP's comment mentioned. A quick look on their website has the prediction from Sept 2020. Could Express be recycling an old article on their own?
Having said above, I do notice a slowdown (I am in SE London) with very few new listings, few properties coming back (with no change in their price tag). Anything reasonably priced still sells like hot cakes while the overpriced ones keeps hanging.
I expect some slowdown from SD Holiday ending, I do not expect a major correction in the absence of interest rate rises. The only thing that will cause correction if steep dip in affordability on account of higher rates or continued high unemployment.
I agree with this, the job market seems too strong to see any sort of major price reductions across the board.
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21 minutes ago, coypondboy said:
Those Dr's/graduate professionals did come over and work in unskilled jobs until their english was good enough so they could apply to work in NHS this has happened in many middle class professions especially in the poorer eastern europe countires. They are now competing with UK graduates with a few years experience for the same jobs as fluent english speakers with more work experience and harder workers. This started happening years ago and explains why london is the 7th largest french conurbation as is italy and spain/portugal all graduates with good english our kids will have a much tougher time getting promotions in the future and wait until the HK Chinese come over again competition for medical/dentistry degress etc will be from immigrants kids or private school educated kids.
Yes but you're talking much smaller volumes of people vying for those top end careers versus a Romanian chap who couldn't utter a word of spoken English but also doesn't need to when all he's doing is hauling boxes in a warehouse.
It's that kind of coal face where the Brexit vote was lost, not top end professions that rely mostly on old school ties and networking for job protection.
Coronavirus - potential Black Swan?
in House prices and the economy
Posted
The correlation is there because obesity is the predominant reason why the risk of COVID was inflated.
Its been that demographic that's been the burden in terms of resource.
It was the obese whom required the full bulk of ICU capacity, which naturally then deprived people who needed ICU for the other host of reasons.
It is not practical on any sense to ever have a big enough ICU capacity the next time a respiratory viruses hits and we are stuck with a two thirds overweight population needing a scarce resource to stay alive.
Boris is already starting to spell this out. The elites in society aren't going to sit idly by and allow this.....one way or the other it's a Chernobyl of the west and they aren't going to sit on it.
The costs of the NHS are simply too vast now.