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asylum seekers housed at a former military site have been removed from dormitories after they caught Covid-19, the Home Office confirmed.
The department has not given figures for those infected at Kent’s Napier Barracks but said there had been “a small number” of cases.An outbreak at the camp in Folkestone in January led to 200 people catching the virus and calls for its closure. The Home Office said all public health protocols were being followed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-58186216I wonder if lessons ever get learned by officials.
I guess it is all about cheapness?
Michael, good question. Another is, what can we do to change it?
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[ Mod: Clark, can you specify which of Michael’s questions you’re replying to? It isn’t clear, even discounting the 2 recent comments from Michael that were in the moderation queue when you posted this.Ta. ]
“So the questions then turn to why do they do their damndest to stop you learning the truth?”
I believe it is about power and control.
Those in the power structures want to stay in the power structures, like Robert Mugabe. He had to be winkled out by his own wife and generals, he had already gone ga ga. Why did Democrat Jo Biden, want to become president, some think he is already ga ga.
Some say that Maggie Thatcher was already ga ga, as was Harold Wilson, as some of the leaders of the Soviet Union were, clinging insanely to some sort of power.
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[ Mod (O/T): Michael, with regard to the new discussion topic you started about the First Minister of Scotland: the title should be more specific than “Nicola Sturgeon” and the content should be more informative than “She’s up to something, what is it?”.Please don’t reply in this thread. Just post a new topic with a suitable title and substantial content. Thanks. ]
Michael:
– “…why do they do their damndest to stop you learning the truth?”
i agree that it is about power and control. I have today happened upon a very good article that helps fill in some details:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-06-01/wuhan-lab-leak-inquiry/
– What we are dealing with here is a set of professional classes doing everything in their power to preserve their own interests and the interests of the system that rewards them. And that requires strenuous efforts on their part to make sure we do not understand that policy is driven chiefly by greed and a craving for status, not by the common good or by a concern for truth and transparency.
ET, thanks for that excellent excerpt from Caitlin Johnstone.
Mods – thanks for the reminder. I generally try to be specific, but end up feeling a bit OCD about the attempt. Even more important now that all comments are on pre-mod.
I’m all for a duty of candour on all public servants, politicians and indeed private corporations. If you fucked up you must tell everyone you fucked up including near miss events. A duty of candour for public civil servants in political departments must be separate from that of politicians so that one or other owning a mistake does not relieve the other from having to do so also.
As it stands there is zero incentive for a politician to admit a mistake and little room for civil servants to make such a mistake known.
If I ruled the world (it’s coming :D) I’d pay politicians very large salaries, enough for life in their first term as an MP, but they can never have another paid job again and their bank accounts are scrutinised by a public body for the remainder of their lives and that of their spouses and children for 10 years after they leave office. Thay could take voluntary work but non paid. Of course, the problem is that any system will be open to some abuse.Mods and Michael – (belatedly) – the question I was replying to was “So the question then turns to why do they do their damndest to stop you learning the truth?”
Michael, do please start your First Minister of Scotland / Nicola Sturgeon thread as recommended by the mods, as I suspect that I have some relevant replies 🙂
The governments and corporations have set up mass surveillance systems, spying upon the general public, and delivering the data collected into private and government hands.
That entire system should be turned to point in precisely the opposite direction. It should gather data from within governments and corporations, and make it public.
Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern has locked down New Zealand so firmly that she is shutting down commerce in those islands.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58196473
With the massively quick covid vbaccination effort in the U.K.
The U.K. is again open for business.
Lord of the Rings, will not now be filmed in New Zealand but in the United Kingdom.– “… Ardern has locked down New Zealand so firmly…”
New Zealand isn’t locked down at all. The whole country is covid-free, except the border quarantine centres. No restrictions, no masks, no covid.
So I doubt that Amazon Studios’ decision is about restrictions, and the article you linked doesn’t even mention covid:
– “[Amazon Studios] said the shift in locations was part of a plan to expand its production space and consolidate its footprint in the UK.“
It is about covid restrictions, if they ship their people in those people have to be shut up, difficult filming if you are shut up?
Quarantine is two weeks I think, and conditions are good, like a hotel. No problem for crew and major characters but a nuisance for bit part actors.
But I still doubt that it’s about covid because Amazon Studios is finishing the series currently being made there. Beyond that, in the near future, either vaccination will end the problem and New Zealand will discontinue quarantine requirements, or a new variant will undermine vaccination and New Zealand will continue being a haven from covid, somewhere most would be glad to have a valid reason to spend some time.
There is massive new film studios being constructed in Wokingham. Bray Studios are also being expanded. The U.K. seems to be the to go to place for new films. I think Game of Thrones is filmed in Ulster.
New Zealand and Australia seem to be vaccinating very few. They are both in lock-down mode, in actuality but also mentally. Australia used to be known as the Golden Land, 29 years without recession, not these days. They are going backwards and people are angry.
The trouble is,
one day New Zealand might want to get out of its bubble and re-join the real world, like play rugby again, have overseas visitors
but as they have ordered so few vaccines, they do not make their own, until N.Z. vaccinate most people, the pandemic will flare-off the moment they stop being in a bubble.Two weeks quarantine on entry to the country, known in advance and with no restrictions thereafter as in New Zealand, must surely be better conditions for television production than unpredictable three to four month lockdowns on top of suddenly changing local restrictions, as has been the case in the UK.
I suppose Amazon Studios may have guestimated that new variants won’t get past the vaccines and thereby lead to a return of either restrictions or unworkable conditions in the UK. But that would be a gamble.
I think it is also the case that those countries that have suppressed transmission most effectively are also the countries whose economies have been least damaged by the pandemic. The supposed “balance between public health versus the economy” has always been misleading, a red herring; the people are the economy.
J.R.M. wants all Parliamentarians to return in real not virtual, when Parliament kicks off after their Summer Holidays. The main reasoning is that the hub of the British Economy is London.
They want the banksters to return to the city, they want the tourists to return to the theatres. They want investors to return to the city. In short they want the economy to re-start to pay for all the covid crap.Australia goes to war on covid
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-58170440The leader of New South Wales has warned this is “the worst situation Australia’s been in” since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
State Premier Gladys Berejiklian said rules would be tightened in Sydney, the state capital, which is in LOCKDOWN
Covid fines will also go up to AU$5,000 or £2,656 from AU$1,000.
“This is literally a WAR, and we’ve known we’ve been in a war for some time, but never to this extent,” Ms Berejiklian told reporters.
Australia vaccine roll-otr, massive failure.
Some on here have been blowing trumpets for Australia and New Zealand.
Troops on the streets of Sydney, the people are getting fucking tired of all the restrictions, clamping down harder and harder and harder on people and the economy is going to back-fire, soon.
In normal times Australians do not like being told what to do, they have been used to doing what they want, when they want.Southern Ireland is starting to vaccinate youngsters down to the age of twelve. Parents and grandparents have been asked to convince the children that this is good for them. In Northern Ireland youngsters down to the age of sixteen are now being asked to have the vaccine. Some Northern Irish politicians think 12 years should also get the jab. It seems like quite a few countries are now giving the jab to older children.
It seems many countries are looking at the U.K. as a covid experiment. An opened up society, now with almost no rules, with only a partially vaccinated population?
“Some on here have been blowing trumpets for Australia and New Zealand.”
And still do. For context Michael, Australia cases per million 1534, New Zealand 585. UK cases per million 91,783, Ireland 64,955, Spain 100,343, USA 112,463. Australia is still amongst the lowest in the world and they are reacting quickly in NSW with a 7 day lock down state wide. It’s the most populous state but not the only state. The other six states are not in lockdown yet.
Also, Michael, you should appreciate the geography of Australia with 25 million people spread across the very large continent. A lot of their health care infrastructure is rural and/or remote. Whilst most people live on the east coast there are still remote populated areas. A doc might be assessing a patient who is 600km away, pop in so I can take a look at you doesn’t cut it. There are a lot of small towns where the local small hospital is run by a single doc or even smaller towns without any hospital and one GP and a long way from a hospital. They use medivac services a lot, small aircraft, helicopters and their ambulance system to transfer people from rural/remote areas to the bigger urban centres where there might be ICU facilities. Sometimes it can take hours for those services to get to you.
“Australia vaccine roll-out, massive failure.”
As I pointed out in a previous post there wasn’t vaccine availability, they couldn’t get their hands on a supply to buy. A position most of the world is in thanks to hoarding on behalf of the EU, UK, USA and India and not just vaccines but their precursors too. And patents. So who failed who? Australia has a very good health system and their docs are very well trained, and broadly trained across a number of disciplines as junior docs.
Who is going to be in a better position if the vaccines fail to contain the virus? Numbers are rising across most of the “western” world despite vaccinations.
In New Zealand only 20% of Adults have so far been double jabbed.
N.Z. is now in Lock-DownN.Z. is now in Lock-Down, after one case and for 3-7 days. If there are no further cases they won’t be in lockdown after that and they will have no covid. None, Zero, eliminated as it ought to have been everywhere in the same manner. Then there would have been no need of vaccines or lockdowns (nor economic shutdown, nor all the taxpayers debt that will require to be repaid). Vaccination represents a failure to eliminate it in the first placce, a failure of policy. Vaccination may well be the only (realistic) answer now but it need not have been so in the first place AND that plan ain’t working out so well now in many places.
ET – “Vaccination represents a failure to eliminate it in the first place, a failure of policy.”
And an utter failure of leadership.
I’ve never before really seen a situation that called for large scale leadership, but this was it. The public needed to be told: that elimination was desirable and possible; that elimination was to be our objective; how we were going to do it; and then daily national and especially regional update reports, rather like what is now at last happening with vaccination. The public needed to understand the strategy in order to implement it. Instead, we got silence, then procrastination and spin, and finally a massive and utterly confusing U-turn in which a load of rules were very suddenly imposed upon us.
Widespread cooperation cannot be imposed from the top downwards. It has to be evoked from the bottom upwards, because a pyramid is always widest at its base. To do things well, people need to know why they need to be done.
Yesterday, France again took the top spot in Europe.
“The multicultural, working-class region of Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, initially struggled in getting the word out about vaccines to a population where many are immigrants who don’t speak French or lack access to regular medical care.
But offering vaccinations at a highly visible location with easy access seems to be doing the trick.”
I had tried to suggest that one of the reasons why France had a slow vaccine take up was because they had the highest immigrant population in Europe.
I was told that that view was nuts.quote
“To do things well, people need to know why they need to be done.”
could not agree more, Clark.
I am in an environmental group where we undertake physical projects.
If the project is just detailed from the council to the leader for the day, there will be a certain level of enthusiasm but if the whole group, who turn up on the day are encouraged to think about why we are doing what we are doing, they quickly own the project.
The spark is quick and will burn brightest, if participants know all about it and then to think things through, before and as we go.
Government, should not just be done to us.“I had tried to suggest that one of the reasons why France had a slow vaccine take up was because they had the highest immigrant population in Europe.
I was told that that view was nuts.”No you were not, it was pointed out to you that the premise for your assertion was wrong, namely, that France has the highest immigrant population. It doesn’t, in fact it has the fourth largest population of immigrants with Spain almost equal footing.
“In absolute terms, the largest numbers of non-nationals living in the EU Member States on 1 January 2018 were found in Germany (9.7 million persons), the United Kingdom (6.3 million), Italy (5.1 million), France (4.7 million) and Spain (4.6 million).”
The wiki article on European immigration gives more nuance with the UK and Germany having higher Immigrants as percentage of national population as does this data from OECD.org. So your reaoning that because France has the highest immigrant population they have low vaccine uptake does not work. If you look at the percentage of total population immigrants comprise of a country you will see France is about middle ground with UK and Ireland higher, where vaccine uptake has been highest.
This is leg work you should have done before you post Michael. Instead you leave it to others to do it for you. If you are going to state x is because of y at least make the effort to ensure that your assertion that ‘fact y is correct’ is indeed correct before you post.
