Hancock's Half Hour

[Rorschach]

... in any event do you really believe that massive extra taxes would increase efficiency within the NHS as a whole? History shows various periods where money has been thrown at it and wasted with much being absorbed at higher levels rather than front line as well as obscene amounts on doomed to fail technology ...

The wife of a work colleague of my wife wanted a weekend job as she looked after the children in the week. She got an admin. job in the NHS .......... paying double time, as it's weekends.
Nearly a full weeks income. Why? She'd have jumped at the job at it's standard rate - it suited her needs. We wonder where the money goes.
My friend, a senior nurse, took early retirement at the same time as her hospital employed a "pillow manager" on the same salary as her. Where the charge nurse used to phone the porter if they needed extra pillow, they then had to phone the pillow manager ........ who rang the porter.

Simple explanation that is exactly for local councils and almost any publicly funded organisation. You get given X budget, if you don't spend X then the following year your budget is cut. So they spend money to make sure that not only do they use all of X but actually X wasn't enough, they need more and the vicious cycle continues.
My father worked in the local council, towards the end of the financial year they used to get given an amount they needed to spend on something, anything, just to make sure the budget wasn't cut.
Government caught onto this and then started looking at when the money was spent so they had to be a bit more clever but the same practice still went on. Efficiencies were only allowed if they made your job easier, not to save money.

 

[Lons]

... in any event do you really believe that massive extra taxes would increase efficiency within the NHS as a whole? History shows various periods where money has been thrown at it and wasted with much being absorbed at higher levels rather than front line as well as obscene amounts on doomed to fail technology ...

The wife of a work colleague of my wife wanted a weekend job as she looked after the children in the week. She got an admin. job in the NHS .......... paying double time, as it's weekends.
Nearly a full weeks income. Why? She'd have jumped at the job at it's standard rate - it suited her needs. We wonder where the money goes.
My friend, a senior nurse, took early retirement at the same time as her hospital employed a "pillow manager" on the same salary as her. Where the charge nurse used to phone the porter if they needed extra pillow, they then had to phone the pillow manager ........ who rang the porter.

Simple explanation that is exactly for local councils and almost any publicly funded organisation. You get given X budget, if you don't spend X then the following year your budget is cut. So they spend money to make sure that not only do they use all of X but actually X wasn't enough, they need more and the vicious cycle continues.
My father worked in the local council, towards the end of the financial year they used to get given an amount they needed to spend on something, anything, just to make sure the budget wasn't cut.
Government caught onto this and then started looking at when the money was spent so they had to be a bit more clever but the same practice still went on. Efficiencies were only allowed if they made your job easier, not to save money.

Still happens everywhere including some private companies as the potential arises wherever budgets are allocated without incentive to actually save, a typical examples is my local golf course where the head greenkeeper a few years ago didn't splash his remaining budget before year end and it was promptly cut the following season.

In a past life I managed a couple of plastics stockholding branches and we always planned for the end of year councils rush to spend. They used to clear out my warehouses of Perspex, rooflights and especially polycarbonate and I was told by mates the same applied to office consumables, and whatever else they could find that didn't need additional or specific authorisation.

The prisons were the same only they would give me orders spread out over a few weeks, sometimes delivering every day because if they kept each order under £500 they didn't need to get it "signed off".

 

[RogerS]

It's not just things like that but individual salary packages sometimes where the incentives are very narrow and are not part of a cohesive plan as far as the overall goals of the company are concerned. So a lot of managers will focus on just what they need to do in order to get their bonus...regardless as to whether or not what they are doing is screwing things up elsewhere. Should be sorted out at Director/Board level but they also have their packages. And so it goes on.

 

[Rorschach]

Want to see opinion backed up by copious amounts of data, sources and qualifications, watch the part here by Knut Wittkowski. The doctor at the beginning is all "I feel" "I think", Knutt is "here is the data, here are the graphs"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtFtjk3YoO8

 

[RogerS]

I really do not see any further point in being involved with this thread. It's become binary.

Rorschach will continue to seek and post up ONLY those youtube videos that provide his confirmation bias. It's not debate. It's not analysing and comparing and contrasting different views. It's more like a sledgehammer going at it day in/day out.

There are just as many other youtube videos, posts etc that put the opposite viewpoint.

As Andy Kev succinctly put, we need to wait until it's all over to see exactly what was what etc.

Until then...

Ta ta.

 

[Rorschach]

I really do not see any further point in being involved with this thread. It's become binary.

Rorschach will continue to seek and post up ONLY those youtube videos that provide his confirmation bias. It's not debate. It's not analysing and comparing and contrasting different views. It's more like a sledgehammer going at it day in/day out.

There are just as many other youtube videos, posts etc that put the opposite viewpoint.

As Andy Kev succinctly put, we need to wait until it's all over to see exactly what was what etc.

Until then...

Ta ta.

I sincerely hope you won't comment here again but I know you can't help yourself so see you soon

 

[doctor Bob]

Hopefully the latest economic figures will wake up the people in dreamland.

 

[Droogs]

I doubt it though Bob, most probably still think it will all go back to "normal" When everything gets to open back up next week.

 

[Chris152]

I'd imagine most people are painfully aware that we're heading into a deep economic recession, serious unemployment etc. UK especially vulnerable now it seems.

Pm's under pressure to reduce the 2m distance rule to 1m, apparently. I've sort of got the hang of 2m, but once it becomes 1 I'm not sure what it means. Is that 1m between any part of the body, or heads? Good luck maintaining that in pubs after a few.
Anyway, I read this this morning
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53014105
- the problems facing schools trying to reopen in September (which is where the 2m/ 1m comes up, among others) and wondered if this is the time to start introducing 'split-shifts' in schools (mentioned way back in this thread) - half the kids in in the morning, half in the afternoon, safe distancing, half the work done online for those that have access. Learning in schools has looked antiquated a long time, maybe a positive outcome.

 

[Rorschach]

I don't think most of the people l promoting this really knows what those numbers mean. They can't see how it will affect them longterm.

I noticed yesterday how the MSM is finally starting to catch up with the knock-on effects of lockdown. They have realised 90% of cancer patients have dropped off the map because the NHS over reacted. People who cried "stay at home, save lives" will now be staying home and slowly dying of cancer.

The backlash is going to get even worse now the WHO is saying that asymptomatic people basically can't spread it. If that is indeed the case then the predication for the which the whole lockdown was based on was a total waste of time and has cost this country and the world dearly.

 

[Lons]

WHO is saying that asymptomatic people basically can't spread it.

It's just as easy to find arguments against and retractions of that so you're doing your usual selective googling. :wink: Here's just one example.

" Atop World Health Organization official clarified on Tuesday that scientists have not determined yet how frequently people with asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 pass the disease on to others, a day after suggesting that such spread is “very rare.”

The clarification comes after the WHO’s original comments incited strong pushback from outside public health experts, who suggested the agency had erred, or at least miscommunicated, when it said people who didn’t show symptoms were unlikely to spread the virus.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on the Covid-19 pandemic, made it very clear Tuesday that the actual rates of asymptomatic transmission aren’t yet known.
............................
She added: “We are constantly looking at this data and we’re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question.”

To some, it came across as if the WHO was suggesting that people without symptoms weren’t driving spread. Some studies, however, have estimated that people without symptoms (whether truly asymptomatic or presymptomatic) could be responsible for up to half of the spread, which is why the virus has been so difficult to contain. Isolating people who are sick, for example, does not prevent the possibility they already passed the virus on to others. Some modeling studies have assumed quite widespread asymptomatic transmission.

“The WHO created confusion yesterday when it reported that asymptomatic patients rarely spread the disease,” an email from the Harvard Global Health Institute said Tuesday. “All of the best evidence suggests that people without symptoms can and do readily spread SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. In fact, some evidence suggests that people may be most infectious in the days before they become symptomatic — that is, in the presymptomatic phase when they feel well, have no symptoms, but may be shedding substantial amounts of virus.”

 

[Garno]

- the problems facing schools trying to reopen in September (which is where the 2m/ 1m comes up, among others) and wondered if this is the time to start introducing 'split-shifts' in schools (mentioned way back in this thread) - half the kids in in the morning, half in the afternoon, safe distancing, half the work done online for those that have access. Learning in schools has looked antiquated a long time, maybe a positive outcome.

I have no wish to sound callous here (I will still get attacked by the select few) but what is this thing about schools?
They are the least likely to get infected and it is very unlikely they would even catch the virus in a room full of infected people.

Are we just protecting the teachers? the very same teachers who claim to be on the front line, whilst they are sitting at home they are no more on the front line than I am. I agree that teachers should be safe gaurded but if that is what we are doing by keeping the children away from school then lets just call it that instead of this constant media bombardment saying we are protecting the children. The longer the children remain away from schools and parents refusing to return to work the longer it will take this country to recover.

It seems to be that many people are happy to return to work if they had face masks, why not let the children have them? in all probability that will have to happen in September anyway unless people plan to never allow their children to return ever again. Do so called intellegent parents really believe that we will have a vaccine in place by September and that covid19 will no longer exist? Somewhere down the line something just has to give, either the children return to schools or they will get shut forever.

Before the fact that there are some teachers and pupils who sadly fall into the most vulnerable group get thrown at me, I do feel they should not return to school at this time, the vulnerable teachers could teach the vulnerable children on-line at home, this can be funded by the government so they provide all of the means and equipment needed. No doubt I will be the only person on here who is not best friends with a teacher or who has relations that are teachers, but I do have great grandchilden and grandchildren of schooling age and I, along with their parents believe they should be at school and restart the enjoyment of growing up in a very broken world.

For the record I also have a lot to say regards the troubles over last weekend, I am not going to hi-jack this thread by posting them and I am very glad that the subject has not yet opened on these forums.

Rant (moan) over.

Garno

 

[Rorschach]

WHO is saying that asymptomatic people basically can't spread it.

It's just as easy to find arguments against and retractions of that so you're doing your usual selective googling. :wink: Here's just one example.

" Atop World Health Organization official clarified on Tuesday that scientists have not determined yet how frequently people with asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 pass the disease on to others, a day after suggesting that such spread is “very rare.”

The clarification comes after the WHO’s original comments incited strong pushback from outside public health experts, who suggested the agency had erred, or at least miscommunicated, when it said people who didn’t show symptoms were unlikely to spread the virus.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on the Covid-19 pandemic, made it very clear Tuesday that the actual rates of asymptomatic transmission aren’t yet known.
............................
She added: “We are constantly looking at this data and we’re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question.”

To some, it came across as if the WHO was suggesting that people without symptoms weren’t driving spread. Some studies, however, have estimated that people without symptoms (whether truly asymptomatic or presymptomatic) could be responsible for up to half of the spread, which is why the virus has been so difficult to contain. Isolating people who are sick, for example, does not prevent the possibility they already passed the virus on to others. Some modeling studies have assumed quite widespread asymptomatic transmission.

“The WHO created confusion yesterday when it reported that asymptomatic patients rarely spread the disease,” an email from the Harvard Global Health Institute said Tuesday. “All of the best evidence suggests that people without symptoms can and do readily spread SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. In fact, some evidence suggests that people may be most infectious in the days before they become symptomatic — that is, in the presymptomatic phase when they feel well, have no symptoms, but may be shedding substantial amounts of virus.”

Ok, they have changed their advice, I was going by what I heard on the news.

We'll see if that changes again

 

[Lons]

Ok, they have changed their advice, I was going by what I heard on the news.
We'll see if that changes again

That statement seemed a fair assessment to me when they suggested they don't yet know in which case it's bound to change as they gather and analyse more data, that's how science works!

My point was and still is that you just bung stuff on here as if it's fact because it fits in with your opinion and without looking at the other information properly.
The retraction was issued very quickly I.E. last Tuesday so plenty of time so unlike a sensible person had you bothered, you would have noted that and not posted as justification that lockdown should never have happened.

For the record I have nothing personal against you and appreciate your self confessed "antagonist" role, I even agree with you occasionally just think you need to widen your viewpoint and maybe think twice before you stick up misleading cr*p. :wink:

You would have fitted in well in the days when published "fact" was that the world was flat because they could see the edge and were scared they'd fall off it. :lol:

 

[Rorschach]

Ok, they have changed their advice, I was going by what I heard on the news.
We'll see if that changes again

That statement seemed a fair assessment to me when they suggested they don't yet know in which case it's bound to change as they gather and analyse more data, that's how science works!

My point was and still is that you just bung stuff on here as if it's fact because it fits in with your opinion and without looking at the other information properly.
The retraction was issued very quickly I.E. last Tuesday so plenty of time so unlike a sensible person had you bothered, you would have noted that and not posted as justification that lockdown should never have happened.

For the record I have nothing personal against you and appreciate your self confessed "antagonist" role, I even agree with you occasionally just think you need to widen your viewpoint and maybe think twice before you stick up misleading cr*p. :wink:

You would have fitted in well in the days when published "fact" was that the world was flat because they could see the edge and were scared they'd fall off it. :lol:

Don't make me point out that we never thought the earth was flat lol

Regarding the asymptomatic it was only this week I heard it, and you are right they have admitted they are not sure. News changes so fast these days.

I am quite happy to be proved wrong if you can provide a credible source (which you did), it's other people, naming no names that assert I am wrong but provide no source or a spurious source or even worse only listen to the MSM narrative which is purely focused around covering their own arses.

I also notice that no-one else decided to lay their cards on the table regarding the personal situation which clouds a lot of their views I think.

 

[doctor Bob]

I think private pension schemes should be taxed heavier than normal.
The lockdown is mainly to protect the older generation, the young are safe and yet they have sacrificed the next economic ten years. Pensions should be heavily taxed for the next 10 to 20 years.
The people who have harped on about saving any life is worth more than the economy will have no objection........ or will they change their mind.............

 

[doctor Bob]

I'm lucky at present, seem to have a cracking order book and thanks to my certainty of doom I acted quickly, cutting company costs early, quite substancially.

 

[worn thumbs]

I think private pension schemes should be taxed heavier than normal.
The lockdown is mainly to protect the older generation, the young are safe and yet they have sacrificed the next economic ten years. Pensions should be heavily taxed for the next 10 to 20 years.
The people who have harped on about saving any life is worth more than the economy will have no objection........ or will they change their mind.............

Every time a budget rolls round and the government is short of cash,the scribblers in the financial pages offer their advice and predictions.Almost every time they speculate on the possibility of pension contributions only receiving tax relief at the basic rate.They state that it would be logical and fair and would raise some cash.Then they say that it won't happen because it would be electoral suicide.

 

[Cordy]

image url

 

[Lons]

I think private pension schemes should be taxed heavier than normal.
The lockdown is mainly to protect the older generation, the young are safe and yet they have sacrificed the next economic ten years. Pensions should be heavily taxed for the next 10 to 20 years.
The people who have harped on about saving any life is worth more than the economy will have no objection........ or will they change their mind.............

So perhaps the businesses that rushed to grab the grants and interest free loans should be paying them back, such as has been stated on this thread received help but were allowed to continue to work.
If you want to go further then the businesses who happily furloughed staff at taxpayers expense with very little intention of protecting those jobs once the payments are stopped, should be penalised and forced to retain the positions or pay the furlough costs?
What about the number of employees who have received those furlough payment / grants and loans who have been working when not supposed to? E.g. I know one who's never had so much income and several doing gardens, 2 cutting hair, I'm not going to make assumption on numbers just the one's I know but it seems pretty clear they are out there if you read between the lines on social media.

Those of us with moderate pensions and savings often rely on interest from the latter to supplement income on a monthly basis and are also feeling the effects as value of those has dropped significantly. Those of us who planned and saved usually by sacrificing other things in order to hopefully protect their families and not place a burden on the state especially when later life care is needed and savings, pensions and house value are used to pay for that care currently well in excess of £50,000 pa just for room and board. Double that if dementia takes hold.

As you well know Bob the vast majority are ordinary responsible people who worked hard for 40 to 50 years but who prudently planned for the future of their families and not the fat cat greedy bast*rds like politicians and bankers etc.