LongTimeLurker

Alex O'Hara and George O'Boyle? Not always safe to make assumptions as plenty of Irish Gaels converted over the centuries, but let's not derail the thread. BJ, Nigel Farage and Douglas Ross (there's the masonic conspiracy surrounding the possible failed TIAR waiting to happen) should be the focus of our angst.

Know any Celtic supporters? Don't think that last bit stands up to scrutiny given what a lot of them genuinely seem to believe about referees. It will probably turn very nasty over the next few months if Rangers do stop TIAR. Always cheated never defeated. Agree the LOL (there's some clown on here thought I was using that as a secret code rather than as a mild pisstake) shouldn't be taken too seriously as it's mainly a social thing and just another excuse to get bevvied but there's nothing like a big Orange walk to find out who the complete out and out cranks on here are. Any attempt at rational discussion with them to explain that they maybe shouldn't be viewed ultra-seriously as the equivalent of the KKK or SA best avoided.

I was thinking more a psychiatrist and strongly suspect the people involved would have a very similar mentality on whether being a Rangers supporter is compatible with being pro-SNP. Union Jack seethe how dare they, GSTQ splutter the end of civilisation as we have known it, etc. Do think though that when a Conservative government is doing things that are clearly completely incompatible with Ulster Unionism (the Irish Sea customs border) and are hanging their Scottish wing out to dry in the run up to a Holyrood election (fishing quotas actually going down for white fish stocks in the North Sea) people who go into an exagerated Billy Briton mode to wind up the less cerebral SNP supporters on here should maybe devote some of their energy towards inquiring of Boris and co WTAF is going on.

...which if two doses up to 12 weeks apart are involved would fit having things a lot closer to normal by spring once the higher risk group have all had the first jag. 70% efficacy on a single dose with almost no hospitalisations for those that do still catch it. Potentially up to 95% effective after the second dose.

Do we get our full order before anyone else, ... Not applying for or expecting EU and FDA approval suggests the UK is being prioritised in the short to medium term . The US will mainly go with Moderna, the EU with Pfizer, Russia with Sputnik and China with Sinovac. India is the other country that is likely to move quickly with OxfordAZ and is where most of its mass production capacity is based, so is the other destination for vials to keep an eye on right now.

The anti-Leave parties needed to do an electoral deal so it was a straight Remain vs Leave contest in each constituency otherwise the side that was less split electorally was likely to win in an election defined by Brexit. Unity government long enough to get Brexit completely reversed or EEA status achieved then hold another election once that was out the way. Jo Swinson and Nicola Sturgeon were way too eager to have an election for narrow party political advantage (the one that sounds like Lulu delusionally and with a well-deserved outcome on a personal level, and the other very cynically but with good reason) when there was zero chance of that happening and every chance that the Brexit Party was going to do what they ultimately did as they were only in it to secure Leave.

Compare and contrast with progress on HIV research over the years and what happens annually with influenza. I was very pleasantly surprised they could do 90%+ for something like this and had assumed all the talk of a vaccine as a magic bullet was mainly about giving people a sense of hope rather than a blunt explanation of how herd immunity normally unfolds and how we would have been well and truly forked back in March and April if the IFR had been as bad as initially feared and we had been relying on Dyson to expand the supply of ventilators. Fingers crossed the immunity from the various vaccines lasts a few years minimum.

The moment that was extended to offshore trusts it was time for a large portion of the UK elite to hit the eject button lest they have to start paying their fair share of tax for a change. The timeline of what unfolded on David Cameron's referendum lines up very closely with what was happening in Brussels on that. Half arsed job on the Remain campaign from the governing Tories, morons like the eel guy on twitter from Gloucester, Peter Reid the trawler fae Peterheid or whatever he was called (Jimmy Buchan?) and Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley Jr from the DUP swayed with a bit of jingoism and union Jack waving from the tabloids and Nigel Farage et voila...

Often gets described as the chimp vaccine by devotees of the new mRNA technology and I think RT has made fun of that angle as well given they want to push their own Sputnik one, but I'd be more wary of using the first examples of a new technology than an approach that's previously tried and tested.

Different approach involved. Oxford use a more traditional approach with a modified chimpanzee virus, while the other two use a new modified mRNA technology.

They (NS and BJ) seem to be saying the spring for Level 0 type conditions. In some ways it is good there is no detailed road map because doing so would be claiming a level of knowledge that would be more about PR rather than science. The main rate limiting factor is how quickly vaccine vials can be supplied by Pfizer and AstraZeneca and that is outside their control.

As long as it still works against the new variant but there seems to be confidence that it will given its not a completely new strain. Hope it wasn't delayed by a couple of weeks to deflect attention from the Brexit mess that is about to unfold. Suspect it probably was.

Funny how it's always clubs in the relegation zone that talk this up. How are Blackburn doing in the EoS premier these days?

The initial one shot strategy described to get as many at-risk people immunised as quickly as possible will hugely ramp up the pace of vaccination over the next few weeks. It starts working after the first jag and the second one is a booster shot for longer term immunity.

Maybe because the EU's starting position was 18% while the UK's was 80% and it wound up at 25% by value, the EU had a much clearer picture of what they wanted and how to make the 25% on paper a lot less damaging to themselves in reality. If Boris only caved in and agreed to the final figure after Dover to Calais was closed the negotiators wouldn't necessarily be well briefed on what to do under that scenario with time limited to formulate everything. Sounds like they didn't take into account that quota swaps would not be happening any more and how that would affect Scottish fisherman who go after fish like haddock and cod that British people actually eat rather than herring and mackerel that are more popular on the continent: Not being able to send mince and sausages from Scotland to NI appears to be another bizarre thing in the deal that will soon be the new reality.

One of these things would be happening indoors and is high risk in transmission terms, while the other happens outdoors and is very low risk if regulations are followed properly.

Given so much of the Tory revival in Scotland revolved around creating a fisherman's utopia post-Brexit while the big bad SNP supposedly wanted the CFP, you have to wonder what Boris was playing at when the spreadsheets were being sorted out species by species. Would his negotiating team have even understood when trying to come up with an overall 25% hand back figure by value that haddock is the preferred fish in a Scottish fish supper and a species they should probably be paying very close attention to in a Scottish context?

Good things will start to ramp up very quickly on vaccination from Jan 4th if the MHRA approves the Oxford vaccine for emergency use. Fingers crossed on that as it is supposed to happen this week after all the data needed was handed in just before Christmas.

Posted links earlier about David Cameron personally intervening over trusts in the Cayman Islands et al when the EU started clamping down on tax havens.

What does what happened in Greece have to do with going after trusts in the Cayman Islands, etc? There was no need for the level of austerity that happened in a UK context if everybody was made to actually pay their taxes.

Labour needed someone young to the left of the pseudo-Tory Blairites who could articulate a modern pro-European Remain orientated left wing agenda in which the EU helps to close down all the offshore tax havens post Panama Papers freeing up more revenue to end austerity and fund left of centre policies. Don't blame immigrants blame the tax-dodging elite that ran the banks that needed the bailouts. Instead, they got a Sinn Fein and Hamas sympathising geriatric crank that wanted to leave the EU to pursue a 1970s insular hard left agenda and actively helped derail any attempt to secure a second referendum or EEA type outcome. The Lib Dems had already fatally compromised themselves by being in coalition with David Cameron when the completely avoidable Brexit referendum was held.

The UK as a concept ends for me emotionally without Ulster as an equal participant, because I have no interest in being an appendage of a Brexit Little England that is thoroughly separatist in EU terms, stuck in some bizarre imperial twilight timewarp and views other portions of the UK as expendable. What would we be to them at this point without oil and gas, and if they didn't see losing us as a threat to UN security council status? I suspect some of the ERG types and Nigel probably secretly do want to jettison us for electoral reasons to create a smaller England & Wales state more safe electorally for their rabid brand of kipperism that wants to create a money laundering haven just off the EU coast with workers rights and environmental standards slashed in a US red state sort of way. Hopefully there is a massive backlash to what is about to unfold and a pro-Remain government starts to undo all the damage post-2024 but not holding my breath. The Union of 1707 might not even last that long. Nigel Farage and all the Little Englanders that drove the crazy Brexit agenda and do not seem capable of ever fully coming to terms with devolution will have played just as big a role as the SNP, if the UK unravels at this point.

Bizarre that anyone thought they could ever be seen to back the Irish Sea customs border (which is very much their f-up for not grasping quickly enough that Boris and ERG are Little Englanders rather than genuinely British on national identity and were hence an even bigger threat to Unionism of the 1801 variety than Corbyn) and I've seen examples of it in recent days.

I strongly suspect that Nigel Farage & Co were chasing a mirage when they talked about turning the UK into the European version of Singapore because as with fish the EU has more leverage, but we will have to wait a bit to see how effectively the EU handles UK access on financial services to their own benefit rather than the UK's. As others have alluded to having ill gotten capital from Latin America, the third world and post-Soviet portions of Eurasia slosh its way back into their economies via offshore tax havens and the City of London after resource and illicit drug purchases send vast sums in the opposite direction is something that ultimately benefits them. Odds on it will always be more about clamping down on EU citizens getting up to no good in taxation terms than anything else, which is what suddenly made Brexit attractive for a lot of the UK's 1%, and why it is not so good for the 99%, if they can see beyond fish and Polish plumbers.

Something that's been happening for a few years but is unlikely to feature in the news as reported by any mainstream media outlet in the UK to any huge extent, especially those of a tabloid variety. There's a move globally to force tax havens to provide much more info about who owns what in terms of overseas assets, so tax evasion and money laundering becomes more difficult. If it ever gets extended effectively from Swiss style bank account secrecy to trusts, the UK elite's traditional way of doing business in offshore jurisdictions, so that tax is something that only the plebs have to worry about, will be under serious threat: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-offshore-trusts-eu-tax-crackdown-2013 It wasn't exactly a shock that David Cameron did what is mentioned in the above link after what appeared in the Panama papers: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-admits-he-profited-fathers-offshore-fund-panama-papers