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Still get the knee-jerk "oh no" feeling when I see the cases and positivity. This is a Pavlov's Dog reflex to the last 15 months when rising cases always meant bad news. Then you read down...and it isn't all that bad.

Spock's half-brother Sybok in Star Trek 5 was also supposed to be played by Connery. They even named the planet in the movie after him (Sha Ka Ree). He dodged a bullet there, this film was utter mince.

He did what none of the following managed. Berti Vogts Walter Smith Alex Mcleish George Burley Craig Levein Gordon Strachan That counts for something

I hope the facemasks go soon. My wife really struggles with them - in a supermarket she lasts about 10 minutes before she goes to sit back in the car. The mask makes her feel very hot and a bit faint. That, and it steams up her glasses. I am not keen on them either. I can live with them but all these "oh, it's just like taking your keys with you" folk can just...

Clarkson's Farm is (I've found) quite educational. I never knew why crop fields had big tyre tracks in them until now. He's turned down the nonsense a fair bit and it's a good show. Just watched the one with all the lambs being born - both happy and sad.

Not been following the briefing other than here - is it good news? Time for the snakecharmer? Or just more nonsense?

Just finished re-watching all five seasons. It is a fantastic show. The character arcs, the minor stories, all played out brilliantly. Season 5 did sag a little but maybe that's because a) it was shorter than the others, b) it was clearly the final season and they were tying up stories rather than playing the long game, and c) the bonkers McNulty storyline. McNulty was hardly in season 4 and now was back and up to ridiculous antics. I watched it first when it was originally on, but this is the first time I have gone back for a re-watch and enjoyed it much more this time around.

9.1% test positivity is a massive jump. We've been keeping it below 5% for ages. School holidays start on Friday and, as said before, this should reduce the "wave" quite a bit.

True enough. The people I speak to in real life are in two broad camps. One reflects opinion here - that the vaccine has done it's job, and is doing it's job, and we should lift restrictions ASAP. The second (including my wife) want restrictions lifted slowly, but not because they're scared of catching the virus and dying. No, the people I speak to are scared of another lockdown. In mental health terms I know people that simply will not be able to cope with a new lockdown. So they want the restrictions lifted slowly to keep the numbers down, so this doesn't happen.

Jimmy Carr:

Don't know if he was ever in the news. He fell ill in May, 2 months after we were all sent home so didn't catch Covid from students. He is a right pain in the backside though, so wouldn't put it past him to contact the BBC

Yes, one professor was very ill last May. The only one I know.

Source here

We had a discussion about teaching at the uni in "level zero" this morning. Level zero still includes social distancing, so hampering our class sizes. Unis are trying to get the government to agree to 1 metre distancing rather than 2.

Provisional Nat 5 results came out today for Scott. Seven A's and a C. Much, much better than I ever managed during my Standard Grades. Just waiting to see the SQA turn these in to seven C's and a D.

1. I bought a moped over the internet in 2005. It came from China, but in a box in pieces. I had to pay a mechanic to build it. 2. I played badminton for Scotland as a youth. 3. I once drunkenly asked Jorg Haider directions back to my hotel. 4. I broke in to a laboratory in France to steal a magnum of champagne. I replaced it the next day with 2 bottles of champagne as I couldn't buy a magnum at the shop. One of the above is NOT true.

Cases are today roughly the same as what they were on October 14th. On that day there were 570 people in hospital (versus 158 today) 49 in ICU (versus 14 today) and 15 deaths (against 0 today).

Part of Corbyn's issue with Jewish people wasn't so much what he said. It's that he somehow accumulated a host of batshit crazy followers who are utter anti-semites and he didn't do enough, or say enough, to get rid of them. It's an odd problem as past Labour leaders were not as consumed by this issue as Corbyn was.

Nicky Morgan, another of the useless cabinet ministers this Tory government have enjoyed for the last decade. I thought they stuck her in the Lords to stop her talking nonsense.

I am going to my office next week for the first time since March 2020. Looking forward to going to my office, visiting my favourite coffee mug and seeing the (few) people there. Not looking forward to driving on the M8, raging at Audi drivers, sitting in traffic and paying for petrol. The commute can bog off

I said before on another thread that Covid could cause some fun at the Euros by forcing teams in to unwanted changes. I didn't mean this!! Jeez, can't Modric catch it now?

It goes further. We'll have our booster jags (3rd and 4th jags) before many folk worldwide get even one. But, I can understand it. The government's first responsibility is at home, they want Scotland and the UK back to normal quickly to get the economy going properly again. Schemes like furlough cannot keep going on. Whether you agree or disagree with this approach, I do get it.

Holy cow. Just saw the message sent to @Bairn in Exile about Zoom meetings. Do the club assume nobody has used online meetings at all before? It's the easiest thing in the world to manage who attends. As for the costs element, I'm calling BS. Wow, what a message. Send us your questions by email, we'll group them (presumably into 2 piles - ones we want to answer and ones we don't), then answer them. You can then watch our replies asynchronously later on where you cannot follow up. It's actually bizarre. More than insulting, bizarre.