July 4th.
Isn’t that a holiday in the USA?
It’s also a General Election here.
My MP will get returned because they have a majority as large as the population of Sweden, and under electoral law this constituency must return the Labour candidate.
So I’ve always been able to vote for whoever in the secure knowledge that it will make absolutely no difference at all.
But this time, I will append a silent protest.
I will not vote for anyone who voted for lockdown in March 2020.
All of them must lose their seats. It’s the only thing politicians understand.
Showing posts with label Lockdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lockdown. Show all posts
Tuesday, 11 June 2024
Tuesday, 6 June 2023
Johns Hopkins University on the UK Lockdown
Prof Steve Hanke from Johns Hopkins University, in the US, Dr Lars Jonung, from Lund University, Sweden, and Jonas Herby, special adviser at the Centre for Political Studies (CEPOS), recently completed a study that showed, to exactly no-one's surprise, that during the first wave of the pandemic (March - June 2020, but they don't say specifically) 1,700 lives were saved buy the lockdown measures. They say that Government-imposed lockdowns were un-necessary, because people would have adjusted their behaviour.
In other words, the Government didn't need to impose a lockdown, because the people would have imposed their own. This was pretty much what happened in Sweden.
Sweden, by the way, has one million more people (10m) in it than London (9m). The UK has 63m people. One of those countries is not like the other.
What would have been the economic damage of leaving the people to decide for themselves, but with Local Government continuing to charge the Business Rate, and landlords continuing to charge rent? It does not take much of a loss of business before a cafe or cinema can't pay rent and business rates, and it does not take much more before the balliffs or the bank come thundering in. Railways must run, or trees will grow through the tracks, so public transport would have needed subsidising. I don't know what the numbers would look like, but I do know that much of the economic activity in the UK relies on low wages, debt, and overdrafts.
What happens if a nurse decides she doesn't "feel safe" going in for her shift? Or a policeman? Or a supermarket lorry driver? Or a sewage plant maintenance man? Or the people who run your local pharmacy? Would employers be able to sack workers who "didn't feel safe"? With every other Government in the world telling people there's a killer virus on the loose? Even if employers could "hibernate" concerned workers, who would replace them? Would businesses lay off people in anticipation of a loss of income? And what do those people do for money, since employment has dropped?
You can feel the chaos already.
But... divide the workforce into two, with "non-esssential" workers forced to "work from home", and the "essential" workers are, by contrast, required to show up at the hospital, depot, supermarket, bus garage, sewage plant, power station, and so on. Declare an emergency and Councils can be made to hold back on the Business Rate, landlords on rents (some of the better ones, not the De Walden Estate), while furlough can be paid to keep people in money...
The correct comparison is what the figures would have been if the UK had carried on as usual, with white-collar workers adopting in-the-office schedules and working from home otherwise. Businesses, shops, cafes, restaurants, gyms, swimming pools, cinemas, theatres, and the like all open as usual. No restrictions. Anyone who gets the symptoms, stays home for five days. (We should be doing that anyway!) The Government makes it clear that: a) you cannot sue anyone if you caught the Virus on their premises; b) you will be sent toRe-Education HR for an "assessment" if you claim to be that scared of getting what is actually a bad case of the flu that almost everyone will survive.
And someone would have needed to shut those whining, hand-wringing journalists up. Let's not forget, it was Piers f******g Morgan who bullied the Prime Minister into making the Police enforce lockdown, which the Police did not want to do.
My guess is that even a part-time working-from-home / office regime would hit the town-centre businesses the same way it has now, a lot of marginal business would still have closed, and many managements would have used the opportunity to rationalise.
If the Virus had struck in 2010, nobody would have been working at home, because the internet / broadband infrastructure was just not good enough. But in 2010, people still had their own desks in the open-plan offices, and more space around them, compared to the crammed offices of 2019, so they would not have adopted working from home with the same enthusiasm. A curfew on social life would have been impossible to justify: if it's not safe to go to the movies, it's not safe to go to work. Maybe some restrictions on the number of people in social spaces could have been imposed. We would have worn masks in public spaces (but not offices), but not as a badge of our virtuous compliance, but as a nuisance just to keep the b****y Government happy. A lot more people would have had a bad few days, and then enjoyed subsequent immunity. The kids would have stayed at school. Families would have been able to see each other, and attend funerals and weddings as they should.
We cannot use the Swedish figures as a proxy for "no lockdown" because the Swedes put themselves into a self-imposed lockdown and the population density is lower. What we do know is that almost nobody died solely from the Virus: they died - often painfully and tragically - because they had other conditions, and the Virus was one too many. This was known from the start. Because of that, the additional deaths would have been smaller. In fact, from what we know already, if the transfer of older people into care homes had been done with the slightest bit of care, there may have been fewer deaths.
In other words, the Government didn't need to impose a lockdown, because the people would have imposed their own. This was pretty much what happened in Sweden.
Sweden, by the way, has one million more people (10m) in it than London (9m). The UK has 63m people. One of those countries is not like the other.
What would have been the economic damage of leaving the people to decide for themselves, but with Local Government continuing to charge the Business Rate, and landlords continuing to charge rent? It does not take much of a loss of business before a cafe or cinema can't pay rent and business rates, and it does not take much more before the balliffs or the bank come thundering in. Railways must run, or trees will grow through the tracks, so public transport would have needed subsidising. I don't know what the numbers would look like, but I do know that much of the economic activity in the UK relies on low wages, debt, and overdrafts.
What happens if a nurse decides she doesn't "feel safe" going in for her shift? Or a policeman? Or a supermarket lorry driver? Or a sewage plant maintenance man? Or the people who run your local pharmacy? Would employers be able to sack workers who "didn't feel safe"? With every other Government in the world telling people there's a killer virus on the loose? Even if employers could "hibernate" concerned workers, who would replace them? Would businesses lay off people in anticipation of a loss of income? And what do those people do for money, since employment has dropped?
You can feel the chaos already.
But... divide the workforce into two, with "non-esssential" workers forced to "work from home", and the "essential" workers are, by contrast, required to show up at the hospital, depot, supermarket, bus garage, sewage plant, power station, and so on. Declare an emergency and Councils can be made to hold back on the Business Rate, landlords on rents (some of the better ones, not the De Walden Estate), while furlough can be paid to keep people in money...
The correct comparison is what the figures would have been if the UK had carried on as usual, with white-collar workers adopting in-the-office schedules and working from home otherwise. Businesses, shops, cafes, restaurants, gyms, swimming pools, cinemas, theatres, and the like all open as usual. No restrictions. Anyone who gets the symptoms, stays home for five days. (We should be doing that anyway!) The Government makes it clear that: a) you cannot sue anyone if you caught the Virus on their premises; b) you will be sent to
And someone would have needed to shut those whining, hand-wringing journalists up. Let's not forget, it was Piers f******g Morgan who bullied the Prime Minister into making the Police enforce lockdown, which the Police did not want to do.
My guess is that even a part-time working-from-home / office regime would hit the town-centre businesses the same way it has now, a lot of marginal business would still have closed, and many managements would have used the opportunity to rationalise.
If the Virus had struck in 2010, nobody would have been working at home, because the internet / broadband infrastructure was just not good enough. But in 2010, people still had their own desks in the open-plan offices, and more space around them, compared to the crammed offices of 2019, so they would not have adopted working from home with the same enthusiasm. A curfew on social life would have been impossible to justify: if it's not safe to go to the movies, it's not safe to go to work. Maybe some restrictions on the number of people in social spaces could have been imposed. We would have worn masks in public spaces (but not offices), but not as a badge of our virtuous compliance, but as a nuisance just to keep the b****y Government happy. A lot more people would have had a bad few days, and then enjoyed subsequent immunity. The kids would have stayed at school. Families would have been able to see each other, and attend funerals and weddings as they should.
We cannot use the Swedish figures as a proxy for "no lockdown" because the Swedes put themselves into a self-imposed lockdown and the population density is lower. What we do know is that almost nobody died solely from the Virus: they died - often painfully and tragically - because they had other conditions, and the Virus was one too many. This was known from the start. Because of that, the additional deaths would have been smaller. In fact, from what we know already, if the transfer of older people into care homes had been done with the slightest bit of care, there may have been fewer deaths.
Thursday, 23 March 2023
Lockdown: The Third Anniversary
On this day in 2020, the British Government made it illegal for people to leave their houses without excuse, shut schools, closed hospitals for regular operations and consultation, shut down small businesses, kept families from visiting their elderly relatives, and spent billions of future taxpayers' money on the failed Track-and-Trace project, sub-standard PPE, and furlough payments and business loans that were often fraudulent.
To enforce this it filled the media and news with fear-mongering propaganda, confused the public and the Police with ever-changing conflicting and vague instructions, and provided incomplete and misleading statistics based on implausible definitions. At one point, it reached the absurdity of outlawing sex between people who were not living together. Not one of its policies was based on facts. Even more absurd was that just under half the UK workforce was still leaving the house five days a week to go to work, even in the Spring 2020 lockdown.
And then in February 2022, it vanished into thin air.
Leaving behind troubled children, spoiled educations, ruined businesses, a backlog of medical treatment that will beggar the NHS for years, creaking public services, massive debts, and double-figure inflation.
The Daily Telegraph has been doing a good job of bringing all the issues to the front pages. The WhatsApp messages it obtained prove that the Government and civil servants were making up rules in an absence of facts, to promote a policy that was only made possible by improvements in the internet infrastructure since the mid-2010's. Working from home would have been impossible in 2010 at the FTSE 100 company I worked for.
I was not scared of the virus. Even by the end of March 2020 we knew that almost everyone who got it survived, and the few who died were very old, obese or had a number of other conditions. Some people would go on to have long-term effects. That happens with any viral infection.
I was scared of getting quarantined. I would have starved, for one thing. I don't have two week's supply of food in the house, and the supermarket delivery services weren't taking on new customers. So I took all the actions and inactions necessary to decrease those chances.
I was scared of a Government and State that had clearly lost its grip, if not its mind; of the powers devolved to unaccountable local councils and other bureaucrats, who could (and did) make up rules from thin air; and of the license it gave to every snitch, crazy person, control freak and busybody. It was a crisis that many, many people could and did exploit, from swindling the Government to re-igniting family feuds.
I did not want to find out that anyone I respected actually believed any of it, because they would be lost to me. Falling for the Lockdown propaganda was a litmus test: if you did... well, there's that.
My deepest fear was that I had fallen for the hype, and was just putting a defiant face on it. After all, look at how I behaved. Did I go along with the Lockdown? What choice did I have? There was nowhere to go, except for a thirty-minute walk round the local park. The job kept me indoors, or in the garden, since the weather was fine. Outwardly I was behaving like a True Believer. Inwardly, and after June 2021 outwardly, when I finally revolted (!) and declared myself mask-exempt, none of it ever made sense. As we get further from it, Lockdown will enter into history as another Extraordinary Popular Delusion and a Madness of the Crowd.
To this day, I'm not sure about why everyone rolled over for it at the start. At the time, I suggested that life in 2019 had become ridiculous for many people: too crowded, too expensive, too hectic. They saw the chance to take a break: after all, it was only three weeks to flatten the curve. What they did not know what that the Minister of Health and the Civil Service had other plans. Those three weeks turned out to be a bait-and-switch.
There are many people who assume that the 2020-22 Lockdown has proved itself so awful in its consequences that it will never happen again. On past form it will, and sooner than 2041. Every year potentially deadly viruses appear, mostly in animals, and every year there is a brief fluster about what might happen if this one crosses over to people. Any of these could be promoted to Lockdown status using the same techniques used in 2020. All that's missing is the money to pay for it, and the wrong people in the wrong jobs making the wrong decisions.
Not sure? 1914-18 was supposed to be the "War to end all Wars". Which is why they had another one twenty-one years later in 1939-45.
To enforce this it filled the media and news with fear-mongering propaganda, confused the public and the Police with ever-changing conflicting and vague instructions, and provided incomplete and misleading statistics based on implausible definitions. At one point, it reached the absurdity of outlawing sex between people who were not living together. Not one of its policies was based on facts. Even more absurd was that just under half the UK workforce was still leaving the house five days a week to go to work, even in the Spring 2020 lockdown.
And then in February 2022, it vanished into thin air.
Leaving behind troubled children, spoiled educations, ruined businesses, a backlog of medical treatment that will beggar the NHS for years, creaking public services, massive debts, and double-figure inflation.
The Daily Telegraph has been doing a good job of bringing all the issues to the front pages. The WhatsApp messages it obtained prove that the Government and civil servants were making up rules in an absence of facts, to promote a policy that was only made possible by improvements in the internet infrastructure since the mid-2010's. Working from home would have been impossible in 2010 at the FTSE 100 company I worked for.
I was not scared of the virus. Even by the end of March 2020 we knew that almost everyone who got it survived, and the few who died were very old, obese or had a number of other conditions. Some people would go on to have long-term effects. That happens with any viral infection.
I was scared of getting quarantined. I would have starved, for one thing. I don't have two week's supply of food in the house, and the supermarket delivery services weren't taking on new customers. So I took all the actions and inactions necessary to decrease those chances.
I was scared of a Government and State that had clearly lost its grip, if not its mind; of the powers devolved to unaccountable local councils and other bureaucrats, who could (and did) make up rules from thin air; and of the license it gave to every snitch, crazy person, control freak and busybody. It was a crisis that many, many people could and did exploit, from swindling the Government to re-igniting family feuds.
I did not want to find out that anyone I respected actually believed any of it, because they would be lost to me. Falling for the Lockdown propaganda was a litmus test: if you did... well, there's that.
My deepest fear was that I had fallen for the hype, and was just putting a defiant face on it. After all, look at how I behaved. Did I go along with the Lockdown? What choice did I have? There was nowhere to go, except for a thirty-minute walk round the local park. The job kept me indoors, or in the garden, since the weather was fine. Outwardly I was behaving like a True Believer. Inwardly, and after June 2021 outwardly, when I finally revolted (!) and declared myself mask-exempt, none of it ever made sense. As we get further from it, Lockdown will enter into history as another Extraordinary Popular Delusion and a Madness of the Crowd.
To this day, I'm not sure about why everyone rolled over for it at the start. At the time, I suggested that life in 2019 had become ridiculous for many people: too crowded, too expensive, too hectic. They saw the chance to take a break: after all, it was only three weeks to flatten the curve. What they did not know what that the Minister of Health and the Civil Service had other plans. Those three weeks turned out to be a bait-and-switch.
There are many people who assume that the 2020-22 Lockdown has proved itself so awful in its consequences that it will never happen again. On past form it will, and sooner than 2041. Every year potentially deadly viruses appear, mostly in animals, and every year there is a brief fluster about what might happen if this one crosses over to people. Any of these could be promoted to Lockdown status using the same techniques used in 2020. All that's missing is the money to pay for it, and the wrong people in the wrong jobs making the wrong decisions.
Not sure? 1914-18 was supposed to be the "War to end all Wars". Which is why they had another one twenty-one years later in 1939-45.
Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Did 500,000 Retirements Cause Inflation?
tl;dr Uh, no, because there weren't 500,000 extra retirements.
The Bank of England is blaming inflation and our current recession on 500,000 mostly older people who quit working before 65 over the last two years. This, according to the Bank, is creating an upward pressure on wages and hence prices. It's talking nonsense, of course, but then, that's it's job(*).
Let's go find those miscreants. The Labour Force survey looks at the economic activity of everyone aged 16-64 (it's still living in an age when 65 was a mandatory retirement age). If there are 500,000 people who should be in the labour force but retired early, we would expect to see 500,000 more people retired in the 2022 Labour Force surveys. There were 501,000 retired 16-64 y/o men at the end of 2019, and 523,000 in summer 2022 : an increase of 22,000. For women the numbers were 610,000 in 2019 and 658,000 in 2022: an increase of 48,000. That's a total of 60,000 more retired 16-64 y/o people, 12% of the Bank's claim.
There's more. According to the ONS
What is getting everyone excited is this graph
showing that there were 1,246,000 vacancies at the end of September 2022 against 820,000 at the end of 2019: an increase of 426,000.
Vacancies arise from a) economic growth that creates employment, b) industrial re-structuring as new sectors appear, c) everyday churn as people leave this company and join that one, d) people leaving employment to e.g. care for family members or take up education, e) retirement. Vacancies decline because of a) economic recession, b) improvements in productivity, c) industrial re-structuring as existing sectors decline, d) removing jobs as people leave. Net all that out, and we get an underlying rate of around 600-700 thousand vacancies a quarter (plus or minus economic trends). Which is two-three per cent of the number of jobs in the economy.
Vacancies fell in 2020 because employers whose work was expanding (parcels companies, supermarkets) could find people as soon as they needed them, so those new jobs were never reported as vacancies, while the employers who were shrinking (cafes, hotels, airlines) had no vacancies because they were being prevented from doing business. Vacancy levels returned to the underlying rate in Summer 2021, despite many industries still being in hibernation. People carried on retiring, changing jobs, and temporarily leaving the workforce, effectively migrating out of sectors which were not hiring into sectors that were. As the lockdowns and economic restrictions eased during H2 2021, and then were removed in Spring 2022, a lot of hibernated jobs become available again. "Pent-up demand", if you like. But the people who would have done those jobs, are now working somewhere else (maybe back in their home countries) at better jobs.
What kind of jobs are not being filled? The largest numerical increases in vacancies are in "Accommodation & food service activities", "Human health and social work activities" and "Professional scientific & technical activities". Aka baggage handlers, airport security, zero hours retail jobs, on-call cleaners, cooks, care workers, hotel staff... 400,000 mostly low-paid / fake-self-employed / zero-hours s**t jobs that no-one wants. Pre-2020 those jobs were done by all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons: many left the country, or they switched sectors, found full-time work, or signed on(**).
So that's why that's happening.
(*)The job of the Bank of England is not to provide insightful analysis, but to lead the harumphing
so everyone can protect their phoney-baloney jobs. Nothing does that better than claims that can't be checked and blame a bunch of harmless victims.
(**) The Claimant Count was 1,240,000 at the end of 2019. It's 1,554,000 now, an increase of 314,000.
The Bank of England is blaming inflation and our current recession on 500,000 mostly older people who quit working before 65 over the last two years. This, according to the Bank, is creating an upward pressure on wages and hence prices. It's talking nonsense, of course, but then, that's it's job(*).
Let's go find those miscreants. The Labour Force survey looks at the economic activity of everyone aged 16-64 (it's still living in an age when 65 was a mandatory retirement age). If there are 500,000 people who should be in the labour force but retired early, we would expect to see 500,000 more people retired in the 2022 Labour Force surveys. There were 501,000 retired 16-64 y/o men at the end of 2019, and 523,000 in summer 2022 : an increase of 22,000. For women the numbers were 610,000 in 2019 and 658,000 in 2022: an increase of 48,000. That's a total of 60,000 more retired 16-64 y/o people, 12% of the Bank's claim.
There's more. According to the ONS
Our latest estimated number of workforce jobs for June 2022 (next updated December 2022) was a record high of 35.8 million, an increase of 171,000 jobs from December 2019, and the first time it has exceeded pre-[lockdown] levels. The total number of jobs includes both employee jobs and self-employment jobs, with both rising in the quarter to June 2022. Employee jobs in June 2022 continued to grow and are now at a record high of nearly 31.5 million, 710,000 above their December 2019...level. However, this rate of growth has not been seen in the self-employment jobs which remain 548,000 below December 2019 levels.So there are more people in full-time work than there were before the lockdowns. Not less.
What is getting everyone excited is this graph
showing that there were 1,246,000 vacancies at the end of September 2022 against 820,000 at the end of 2019: an increase of 426,000.
Vacancies arise from a) economic growth that creates employment, b) industrial re-structuring as new sectors appear, c) everyday churn as people leave this company and join that one, d) people leaving employment to e.g. care for family members or take up education, e) retirement. Vacancies decline because of a) economic recession, b) improvements in productivity, c) industrial re-structuring as existing sectors decline, d) removing jobs as people leave. Net all that out, and we get an underlying rate of around 600-700 thousand vacancies a quarter (plus or minus economic trends). Which is two-three per cent of the number of jobs in the economy.
Vacancies fell in 2020 because employers whose work was expanding (parcels companies, supermarkets) could find people as soon as they needed them, so those new jobs were never reported as vacancies, while the employers who were shrinking (cafes, hotels, airlines) had no vacancies because they were being prevented from doing business. Vacancy levels returned to the underlying rate in Summer 2021, despite many industries still being in hibernation. People carried on retiring, changing jobs, and temporarily leaving the workforce, effectively migrating out of sectors which were not hiring into sectors that were. As the lockdowns and economic restrictions eased during H2 2021, and then were removed in Spring 2022, a lot of hibernated jobs become available again. "Pent-up demand", if you like. But the people who would have done those jobs, are now working somewhere else (maybe back in their home countries) at better jobs.
What kind of jobs are not being filled? The largest numerical increases in vacancies are in "Accommodation & food service activities", "Human health and social work activities" and "Professional scientific & technical activities". Aka baggage handlers, airport security, zero hours retail jobs, on-call cleaners, cooks, care workers, hotel staff... 400,000 mostly low-paid / fake-self-employed / zero-hours s**t jobs that no-one wants. Pre-2020 those jobs were done by all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons: many left the country, or they switched sectors, found full-time work, or signed on(**).
So that's why that's happening.
(*)The job of the Bank of England is not to provide insightful analysis, but to lead the harumphing
so everyone can protect their phoney-baloney jobs. Nothing does that better than claims that can't be checked and blame a bunch of harmless victims.
(**) The Claimant Count was 1,240,000 at the end of 2019. It's 1,554,000 now, an increase of 314,000.
Tuesday, 6 September 2022
Science, Scientists, and the Pandemic
here's a video by UpAndAtom about why the scientists seemed to make such a hash of dealing with Covid.
It's good stuff, until the end, when she lets them all off the hook. (See point Seven about this.)
With my former-philospher hat on, I want to add a few points.
First. Making policy decisions is not something that science can do. Facts can inform policy decisions, but not constrain them. This is Hume: facts cannot entail policies. Scientists and historians can dig out what studies there may be, what happened last time, and figure out if any of it is relevant to whatever they are dealing with. Those are facts. The leap to e.g. locking children up at home for months on end can only be made by a judgement that the bad effects of doing that are worth whatever the bad effects of letting them stay at school might be. That's not a "scientific" decision. It's a flat-out political one.
Second. Mathematical models are guesswork unless they are based on well-confirmed physical theories of the phenomenon. There is a textbook model of infection spread, based on a pair of coupled partial differential equations. It relies on some parameters that are specific to the disease, and if the disease is new, nobody will know what those parameters are until it has spread, and they have had time to collect and analyse the data. Which is already too late.
Third. Scientists are human, and some are more human than others. Neil Ferguson had long been known as the go-to forecaster for Government departments wanting to justify slaughtering vast herds of animals. That's how he keeps his job at Imperial. Nobody who knew about forecasting and Ferguson put any credibility in his announcements. Treating his forecasts as credible was either incredibly naive or incredibly cynical.
Fourth. When Governments quote a known scienziati di comodo, you know the decisions sono state fissate(*). Politicians and corporate managers decide what they are going to do first, and back-fill the facts and business plans to fit the decision. There is a very brief period between a problem appearing and the bad decision about handling it being made, when facts can sway the managers and politicians, and then only if the facts are presented by people they trust. And sometimes even the consiglieri has to accept that the wrong thing is going to be done. Because politics.
Fifth. There are no experts on pandemics. There haven't been enough pandemics to produce the conditions for expertise. See a very good video by Veristatium about this.
Sixth. Medicine and Public Health are not sciences, but technologies. Both make use of the products of scientific theories as filtered through technology and pharmaceutical companies. Doctors used leeches when that was the best theory, and they prescribe statins now that's the best theory. Most doctors have no idea about how PET scanners work (or Ibuprofen, for that matter), but they can follow the operating instructions and interpret the results. This is okay until something goes wrong or the results are atypical, when nobody can do anything about it. When diagnosing, if the symptoms don't add up to something they have a cure for, they tend to tell the patient there's nothing wrong with them, or resort to the current all-purpose explanation (diabetes, obesity, long Covid, and so on). Public health is even worse. It hasn't had another success on the scale of public sewers and water treatment plants, and that was nearly 170 years ago. See Ben Goldacre's Bad Science if you want to know just how dreadful pharmaceutical industry research is, and Dr James Le Fanu's The Rise And Fall Of Modern Medicine if you want to know just how medicine has stagnated in the past decades. (Unless it benefits from technological advances elsewhere, such as keyhole surgery.)
Seventh. Using extra-scientific criteria to justify one's decision to pursue one theory rather than another is okay, though you may risk being thought a little eccentric if the facts just aren't with you. Deciding on your personal line of research is not the same as deciding on public health policies that will mess up the lives of millions of children and young people, or consign a million or so vulnerable people to living in one room of their family home and avoiding everyone for months on end. It is not okay for scientists to add extra-scientific arguments to make life easier for the politicians. If the scientists have no relevant facts, they should say so and leave the room. I know they aren't going to, because holding an establishment post (Chief Medical Officer, say) means they are ambitious, and ambitious people please their political patrons. That's why, if you ever get to be a Minister, you should not listen too closely to the official experts.(**)
Eighth. The last of the old-fashioned experts died a while ago. What we have instead are true-believer activists. Whereas the old-fashioned experts said that they didn't know when they didn't, and weren't pushing any explicit agendas, activists know already what is wrong and what must be done, and facts are merely rhetorical devices. This is especially so in the fact-lite, speculation-heavy subjects where the systems, from the weather to the human body, are way more complex than any bunch of equations could describe. Major organisations from the Met Office to Public Health England facts are run by people who are pushing socio-economic agendas that are defended by repeated cries that "the science is in" or "the consensus is overwhelming". Facts can be publicised when it helps The Cause, and kept quiet otherwise. Which is why you never hear anything about climate change during a long spell of dull, mild weather.
Science, as the search for a better theory, did not fail us during the pandemic. If anything, the political establishment failed science, trying to impose a consensus that had no basis in fact.
Many scientists failed in their role as citizens, from the crowd that covered up the Wuhan Lab leak, to the deceitful and panic-mongering briefings of Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and others. They went along with policies, especially mask-wearing, that they knew had no basis in fact, and were proposed for political reasons. It doesn't matter why they did it, or even if they were sincere. They should have stayed out of the policy debate, and they should not have been on the rostrum in Press Briefings. As for Anthony Fauci, he has a special circle of Hell being dug for him even now.
The failings of some scientists were compounded by the failure of the mainstream and social media, most of which obligingly spewed out a stream of poisonous and misleading propaganda about the threat posed by Covid, and did everything they could to suppress dissent about Government policy, and to create an illusion that there was a factual basis for any of it. The real failures were and still are in Broadcasting House.
They created the panic in the first place.
It's good stuff, until the end, when she lets them all off the hook. (See point Seven about this.)
With my former-philospher hat on, I want to add a few points.
First. Making policy decisions is not something that science can do. Facts can inform policy decisions, but not constrain them. This is Hume: facts cannot entail policies. Scientists and historians can dig out what studies there may be, what happened last time, and figure out if any of it is relevant to whatever they are dealing with. Those are facts. The leap to e.g. locking children up at home for months on end can only be made by a judgement that the bad effects of doing that are worth whatever the bad effects of letting them stay at school might be. That's not a "scientific" decision. It's a flat-out political one.
Second. Mathematical models are guesswork unless they are based on well-confirmed physical theories of the phenomenon. There is a textbook model of infection spread, based on a pair of coupled partial differential equations. It relies on some parameters that are specific to the disease, and if the disease is new, nobody will know what those parameters are until it has spread, and they have had time to collect and analyse the data. Which is already too late.
Third. Scientists are human, and some are more human than others. Neil Ferguson had long been known as the go-to forecaster for Government departments wanting to justify slaughtering vast herds of animals. That's how he keeps his job at Imperial. Nobody who knew about forecasting and Ferguson put any credibility in his announcements. Treating his forecasts as credible was either incredibly naive or incredibly cynical.
Fourth. When Governments quote a known scienziati di comodo, you know the decisions sono state fissate(*). Politicians and corporate managers decide what they are going to do first, and back-fill the facts and business plans to fit the decision. There is a very brief period between a problem appearing and the bad decision about handling it being made, when facts can sway the managers and politicians, and then only if the facts are presented by people they trust. And sometimes even the consiglieri has to accept that the wrong thing is going to be done. Because politics.
Fifth. There are no experts on pandemics. There haven't been enough pandemics to produce the conditions for expertise. See a very good video by Veristatium about this.
Sixth. Medicine and Public Health are not sciences, but technologies. Both make use of the products of scientific theories as filtered through technology and pharmaceutical companies. Doctors used leeches when that was the best theory, and they prescribe statins now that's the best theory. Most doctors have no idea about how PET scanners work (or Ibuprofen, for that matter), but they can follow the operating instructions and interpret the results. This is okay until something goes wrong or the results are atypical, when nobody can do anything about it. When diagnosing, if the symptoms don't add up to something they have a cure for, they tend to tell the patient there's nothing wrong with them, or resort to the current all-purpose explanation (diabetes, obesity, long Covid, and so on). Public health is even worse. It hasn't had another success on the scale of public sewers and water treatment plants, and that was nearly 170 years ago. See Ben Goldacre's Bad Science if you want to know just how dreadful pharmaceutical industry research is, and Dr James Le Fanu's The Rise And Fall Of Modern Medicine if you want to know just how medicine has stagnated in the past decades. (Unless it benefits from technological advances elsewhere, such as keyhole surgery.)
Seventh. Using extra-scientific criteria to justify one's decision to pursue one theory rather than another is okay, though you may risk being thought a little eccentric if the facts just aren't with you. Deciding on your personal line of research is not the same as deciding on public health policies that will mess up the lives of millions of children and young people, or consign a million or so vulnerable people to living in one room of their family home and avoiding everyone for months on end. It is not okay for scientists to add extra-scientific arguments to make life easier for the politicians. If the scientists have no relevant facts, they should say so and leave the room. I know they aren't going to, because holding an establishment post (Chief Medical Officer, say) means they are ambitious, and ambitious people please their political patrons. That's why, if you ever get to be a Minister, you should not listen too closely to the official experts.(**)
Eighth. The last of the old-fashioned experts died a while ago. What we have instead are true-believer activists. Whereas the old-fashioned experts said that they didn't know when they didn't, and weren't pushing any explicit agendas, activists know already what is wrong and what must be done, and facts are merely rhetorical devices. This is especially so in the fact-lite, speculation-heavy subjects where the systems, from the weather to the human body, are way more complex than any bunch of equations could describe. Major organisations from the Met Office to Public Health England facts are run by people who are pushing socio-economic agendas that are defended by repeated cries that "the science is in" or "the consensus is overwhelming". Facts can be publicised when it helps The Cause, and kept quiet otherwise. Which is why you never hear anything about climate change during a long spell of dull, mild weather.
Science, as the search for a better theory, did not fail us during the pandemic. If anything, the political establishment failed science, trying to impose a consensus that had no basis in fact.
Many scientists failed in their role as citizens, from the crowd that covered up the Wuhan Lab leak, to the deceitful and panic-mongering briefings of Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and others. They went along with policies, especially mask-wearing, that they knew had no basis in fact, and were proposed for political reasons. It doesn't matter why they did it, or even if they were sincere. They should have stayed out of the policy debate, and they should not have been on the rostrum in Press Briefings. As for Anthony Fauci, he has a special circle of Hell being dug for him even now.
The failings of some scientists were compounded by the failure of the mainstream and social media, most of which obligingly spewed out a stream of poisonous and misleading propaganda about the threat posed by Covid, and did everything they could to suppress dissent about Government policy, and to create an illusion that there was a factual basis for any of it. The real failures were and still are in Broadcasting House.
They created the panic in the first place.
Friday, 5 August 2022
Is It Safe To Come Out Yet?
Freedom Day was in July 2021, but the restrictions weren't removed until the end of February 2022, SAGE wasn't disbanded until the start or March, and according to Rishi Sunak, we were this far away from an Omicron lockdown in Winter 21/22.
Even so, we're only three months from the end of free testing for Covid.
The last of the perspex screens are coming down in the shops.
It seems to me that everyone on public transport has stopped watching everyone else as if they may be infected with the plague.
Over-cautious, virtue-signalling Arts Venues have finally accepted that their customers do not want to wear masks while listening to Beethoven.
So I guess it's safe to come out. Not that I haven't been going to the shops and wandering around bits of London.
I mean, other people look normal now. They really didn't even in March.
Even so, we're only three months from the end of free testing for Covid.
The last of the perspex screens are coming down in the shops.
It seems to me that everyone on public transport has stopped watching everyone else as if they may be infected with the plague.
Over-cautious, virtue-signalling Arts Venues have finally accepted that their customers do not want to wear masks while listening to Beethoven.
So I guess it's safe to come out. Not that I haven't been going to the shops and wandering around bits of London.
I mean, other people look normal now. They really didn't even in March.
It feels like we are about ninety-five per cent normal: regional wars, strikes, near double-digit inflation, the NHS in crisis, all business-as-usual for my generation. Now if the Grown-Ups could only put a stop to this Woke provokatsiya (or possibly provokáció), we might be okay.
My thought was that, in ordinary times, I would start going out to movies and concerts in the evenings (again) and let the sleep patterns take care of themselves. Especially since parking near tube stations gets cheaper if I do that. So I'm going to start doing that now.
It is not, however, safe to go near airports, ferry ports, or any other kind of international travel. Long queues, missed flights, delayed flights, only half the security desks opened at any given time, passport control half-manned... no freaking way. Even if I did have a passport.
My thought was that, in ordinary times, I would start going out to movies and concerts in the evenings (again) and let the sleep patterns take care of themselves. Especially since parking near tube stations gets cheaper if I do that. So I'm going to start doing that now.
It is not, however, safe to go near airports, ferry ports, or any other kind of international travel. Long queues, missed flights, delayed flights, only half the security desks opened at any given time, passport control half-manned... no freaking way. Even if I did have a passport.
Friday, 8 April 2022
Why The Cases Really Don't Matter
According to the ONS survey, one in thirteen people currently have the virus. A year ago that would have had us all locked into our houses. But everybody is chill, nobody is wearing masks and the trains are packed. Why so cavalier about the once all-important "case numbers"? (Aside from the fact that the money to support all that lockdown nonsense has run out.)
The answer is in this graph.
It's the graph of the ratio of deaths-with and deaths-from the Virus to the infections (lagged by four weeks o fit the 28-day rule). (Accepting the convention that with-Covid is as bad as from-Covid: with-deaths are about the same as from-deaths, but note that it is a 'medical' judgement whether a death is with- or from- or even if the Virus was involved at all.)
One week at the start, the Alpha strain killed about 1 in 45 of the people who got it. The rest had a really bad couple of weeks. Fatality fell off sharply towards summer 2020, as it does for respiratory diseases. The Delta variant hit in autumn 2020 and through winter 20/21, killing up to 1 in 125 of the people who got it at one point. Again, fatality fell off towards summer 2021. As we went into autumn / winter 2021, fatality did not increase significantly That was the vaccines.
Here's the next graph, of the prevalence of the Virus (again, I'm accepting the convention that positive tests are an accurate proxy for actual infections, which is not as obvious as you might think, as medical tests do not work the way you think they do).
Almost nobody had the Alpha variant in 2020, and more than 98% of those survived. Delta was known to be more infectious, and the autumn 2020 restrictions were looser than the four month lockdown that followed. The graph follows the usual respiratory curve in 2021, falling to a restriction-induced low in Spring, before increasing after so-called "Freedom Day". There it remains until Omicron appears and sends the numbers through the roof, especially in the Christmas and New Year weeks. January is now a socially quiet month, which brought the prevalence down, and then removing restrictions and the legal requirement to self-isolate allowed people to behave "normally", sending the prevalence up again. By then, between the vaccines and the relatively benign nature of Omicron, so-called "cases" ceased to matter.
The answer is in this graph.
It's the graph of the ratio of deaths-with and deaths-from the Virus to the infections (lagged by four weeks o fit the 28-day rule). (Accepting the convention that with-Covid is as bad as from-Covid: with-deaths are about the same as from-deaths, but note that it is a 'medical' judgement whether a death is with- or from- or even if the Virus was involved at all.)
One week at the start, the Alpha strain killed about 1 in 45 of the people who got it. The rest had a really bad couple of weeks. Fatality fell off sharply towards summer 2020, as it does for respiratory diseases. The Delta variant hit in autumn 2020 and through winter 20/21, killing up to 1 in 125 of the people who got it at one point. Again, fatality fell off towards summer 2021. As we went into autumn / winter 2021, fatality did not increase significantly That was the vaccines.
Here's the next graph, of the prevalence of the Virus (again, I'm accepting the convention that positive tests are an accurate proxy for actual infections, which is not as obvious as you might think, as medical tests do not work the way you think they do).
Tuesday, 22 March 2022
Taking (Personal) Stock After The Lockdowns - Part Two
What did I do before the Great Void that is still worth doing?
I was whinging about the cost and content of movies, and the cost and quality of eating out, before 2020. My ability to leave almost all of it on the gym floor and still make the commute home was waning. Millennials have been ruining the workplace, and everywhere else, with their virtue-signalling and bullying since about 2010. Corporate hypocrisy has always been strong, but for an employer to claim it cares about my `well-being' while moving all the desks closer together and turning the aircon down...? And TV programmes, even the police shows, featuring strong independent women being irritated by dumb, insensitive men? Puh. Lease.
Movies. okay, a new one now and again when I like the idea. Most of my movie watching will be at home. Let's try finding some of those 70's movies I liked and seeing them again. MUBI has a reasonable good selection of art movies. What I miss: going out to the cinema.
Restaurants. Apparently lots of chefs have lost their sense of taste because of the Virus. Sit-down meals are pretty much out at these prices.
Sadlers Wells. Just booked some shows in the 2022 Flamenco season this June.
Gym. Replaced by light exercises at home. As befits my years.
Museums and Galleries. Now that they are abandoning advance booking, and have dropped masks, this is back on. Let's have a project to go round all the ones I never had time to get to.
Foreign trips. Entirely dependent on other countries and airlines getting the message.
Hanging out in cafes. Sure. Not writing though. Don't like shlepping a shoulder bag everywhere now.
What do I do instead?
Snacks in bijou cafes.
Walks and trips to places in London I haven't been to for years.
More housekeeping and gardening. (Care for your house, care for yourself.)
For the moment that will do.
I was whinging about the cost and content of movies, and the cost and quality of eating out, before 2020. My ability to leave almost all of it on the gym floor and still make the commute home was waning. Millennials have been ruining the workplace, and everywhere else, with their virtue-signalling and bullying since about 2010. Corporate hypocrisy has always been strong, but for an employer to claim it cares about my `well-being' while moving all the desks closer together and turning the aircon down...? And TV programmes, even the police shows, featuring strong independent women being irritated by dumb, insensitive men? Puh. Lease.
Movies. okay, a new one now and again when I like the idea. Most of my movie watching will be at home. Let's try finding some of those 70's movies I liked and seeing them again. MUBI has a reasonable good selection of art movies. What I miss: going out to the cinema.
Restaurants. Apparently lots of chefs have lost their sense of taste because of the Virus. Sit-down meals are pretty much out at these prices.
Sadlers Wells. Just booked some shows in the 2022 Flamenco season this June.
Gym. Replaced by light exercises at home. As befits my years.
Museums and Galleries. Now that they are abandoning advance booking, and have dropped masks, this is back on. Let's have a project to go round all the ones I never had time to get to.
Foreign trips. Entirely dependent on other countries and airlines getting the message.
Hanging out in cafes. Sure. Not writing though. Don't like shlepping a shoulder bag everywhere now.
What do I do instead?
Snacks in bijou cafes.
Walks and trips to places in London I haven't been to for years.
More housekeeping and gardening. (Care for your house, care for yourself.)
For the moment that will do.
Friday, 18 March 2022
Taking (Personal) Stock After The Lockdowns - Part One
Sunday will be the second anniversary of the UK Lockdown.
Just to be clear: f**k everyone who imposed, administered or enabled lockdowns. A special Circle of Hell is being dug for them now.
It's supposed to be over now. I will believe that when we get through Winter 22/23 without any backsliding "Plan B's".
Anyway, let's take stock (*).
I've been trying to work out if I'm suffering from any kind of Post-Lockdown-Stress-Disorder. After all, I keep reading that I should be. Everyone else is, if they are a journalist.
I wasn't scared of The Virus. I had a laptop job and I live on my own, so I wasn't ever going to get close enough to anyone to get it.
I was concerned about a bogus stay-at-home order from some bored track-and-tracer having a lark.
So I took sensible precautions: no Track and Trace app, no signing in anywhere, no PCR tests, get the jabs to avoid pariah status, stay away from travel, and have nothing to do with people in the NHS (hospital workers are a primary vector of contagion, because hospitals are where all the sick people go).
I walked every day. Still do.
I did not put on a `lockdown stone'. Nor did I binge-watch anything. Well, unless you count You Tube. I did not have problems sleeping. I did save a bunch of money.
Basically, my strategy, after the first six or so weeks I spent in mild shock, was: wake me up when this b**ls**t is over. It seemed to have served me well.
Eventually I got into ordering stuff online and that is not going to change. I still shop for food, and I shopped for headphones, and I prefer to buy books and CDs from actual shops. Not going back into department stores unless it is utterly unavoidable.
What did I miss?
I used to go to Sadlers Wells, to a good gym in the West End, to the London art museums and galleries, to restaurants, and the Curzons and Everymans, to the big London bookshops. I used to walk in the parks, travel on the buses. Sit on the platform at Barons Court on a warm summer evening waiting for a District Line train. I used to sit in cafes reading or writing for half-an-hour, watching the people go by, feeling the atmosphere. And I'd take a foreign trip now and again. There were some light social interactions with various people, usually behind counters.(**)
Not much, but it was enough.
But I didn't miss it, because you can only miss something that is happening without you. The Lockdown cancelled everything like a hyperactive Millennial on Twitter. Nothing was happening, so there was nothing to miss.(***) The Lockdown was a two-year void.
What did I do before the Great Void that is still worth doing?
What do I drop?
What do I do instead?
It occurred to me after a while that I would have been asking those questions last year in a no-Virus alternative universe, because those questions aren't about the Virus, but about retirement. Under the circumstances, the two have been a little muddled for a while.
(*) This is about my life. If you lost a loved one, or a job, or a business, or your children were badly affected, or you got divorced, or your health was compromised, my condolences.
(**) For complicated but tedious reasons, office socialising was de minimus.
(***) This only makes sense if you live One Day At A Time. Normies can miss things that used to happen, but don't now. But that's Normies for you: they don't make sense.
Just to be clear: f**k everyone who imposed, administered or enabled lockdowns. A special Circle of Hell is being dug for them now.
It's supposed to be over now. I will believe that when we get through Winter 22/23 without any backsliding "Plan B's".
Anyway, let's take stock (*).
I've been trying to work out if I'm suffering from any kind of Post-Lockdown-Stress-Disorder. After all, I keep reading that I should be. Everyone else is, if they are a journalist.
I wasn't scared of The Virus. I had a laptop job and I live on my own, so I wasn't ever going to get close enough to anyone to get it.
I was concerned about a bogus stay-at-home order from some bored track-and-tracer having a lark.
So I took sensible precautions: no Track and Trace app, no signing in anywhere, no PCR tests, get the jabs to avoid pariah status, stay away from travel, and have nothing to do with people in the NHS (hospital workers are a primary vector of contagion, because hospitals are where all the sick people go).
I walked every day. Still do.
I did not put on a `lockdown stone'. Nor did I binge-watch anything. Well, unless you count You Tube. I did not have problems sleeping. I did save a bunch of money.
Basically, my strategy, after the first six or so weeks I spent in mild shock, was: wake me up when this b**ls**t is over. It seemed to have served me well.
Eventually I got into ordering stuff online and that is not going to change. I still shop for food, and I shopped for headphones, and I prefer to buy books and CDs from actual shops. Not going back into department stores unless it is utterly unavoidable.
What did I miss?
I used to go to Sadlers Wells, to a good gym in the West End, to the London art museums and galleries, to restaurants, and the Curzons and Everymans, to the big London bookshops. I used to walk in the parks, travel on the buses. Sit on the platform at Barons Court on a warm summer evening waiting for a District Line train. I used to sit in cafes reading or writing for half-an-hour, watching the people go by, feeling the atmosphere. And I'd take a foreign trip now and again. There were some light social interactions with various people, usually behind counters.(**)
Not much, but it was enough.
But I didn't miss it, because you can only miss something that is happening without you. The Lockdown cancelled everything like a hyperactive Millennial on Twitter. Nothing was happening, so there was nothing to miss.(***) The Lockdown was a two-year void.
What did I do before the Great Void that is still worth doing?
What do I drop?
What do I do instead?
It occurred to me after a while that I would have been asking those questions last year in a no-Virus alternative universe, because those questions aren't about the Virus, but about retirement. Under the circumstances, the two have been a little muddled for a while.
(*) This is about my life. If you lost a loved one, or a job, or a business, or your children were badly affected, or you got divorced, or your health was compromised, my condolences.
(**) For complicated but tedious reasons, office socialising was de minimus.
(***) This only makes sense if you live One Day At A Time. Normies can miss things that used to happen, but don't now. But that's Normies for you: they don't make sense.
Friday, 11 February 2022
Convergents 93%, Divergents 7%
Management gurus love to quote the mavericks on the need to think differently, go against the consensus, dodge the groupthink and otherwise swim against the mainstream. It takes bravery and moral courage to resist
The people who don't are, they imply, suffering from some kind of moral fault. They are unable to resist peer pressure. They have a fear of freedom. They are too willing to go-along-to-get-along. They just aren't smart enough. They are dreadful conformists.
Insults are not explanations, even if they do make the reader feel superior.
For one thing, follow the crowd at chow time
is a very effective rule-of-thumb. If it wasn't, the human race would not have survived. Nor would starlings or any of the herd animals.
For another thing, there is no correlation between dodging groupthink, and intelligence or occupation. A lot of the most cliched material I read about our customers and markets at work was produced by clever young people with good degrees from Russell Group universities. Consultancies pay good money to young people who are smart and energeticbut don't make connections across different subjects or problems and who can focus.
What proportion of the population follow the crowd at chow time? This has always been a puzzle, but recently we had what I think is the definitive answer.
According to a study in 2020, 93% of the UK population (who expressed a preference) wanted or approved of the March 2020 lockdown(*). Call them the Convergents.
Not because they were brainwashed, lead on, hoodwinked, mislead, lied to, deceived, tricked or bamboozled into their opinion. Neither were they lazy, scared, conformist, or virtue-signalling. You're not allowed to be rude about or make excuses for 93% of the population. Half of the under-35's who approved had a degree. A quarter of everyone had a degree. All those people made that judgement in the belief it was well-informed and well-judged.
So what about the 7% who were right? The Divergents. They weren't smarter. They may not have even been as well-informed as some of the people (including most medical professionals) who got the answer wrong.
What they did have is a sixth sense for something not-being-quite-right about a situation, proposal, argument or bunch of alleged facts. Not all the time about everything, but often enough for it to be a common feature of their lives.
It's the pupil who senses that the teacher's explanation has crucial missing bits, and finding their own explanation. It's the instinct we all have in varying degrees about when someone is being insincere and when they aren't. It's a knowledge of red flags in other people's behaviour, or in press releases, or the statements of experts. It's knowing that people only appeal to `expert consensus' when the facts aren't on their side. It's having a mass of usually unsystematic background knowledge about one's society and economy, and about how different industries and markets work. It's having a sense of which anecdotes are data, and which are just anecdotes. It's knowing when absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It's being dissatisfied with the usual way of doing something and wanting to make it quicker, simpler, more accurate. It's wanting to fill in the missing pieces of knowledge, or questioning the received opinions based on flimsy research. It can have a hundred sources.
Faced with a boat with a small leak, the Convergents would treat leaks as a feature, take the boat and appoint a couple of people to bail out. The Divergents would point out that leaks are a bug, and look for a way to fix the leak.
Almost all daily activity is by clever, ingenious, hard-working people who apply what they were taught in school and in their professional courses, to keeping the ramshackle Behemoth of the economy rolling. Changing the way they do things is not in their job description: they are there to work what already exists. If any change is needed, it will be imported or imposed from outside. This applies to research in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. It applies in the arts as well, especially when the world is having one of its recurrent moral panics.
Convergents live by if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Divergents point out that just because it ain't broke, don't mean that it's what you need, and figure out what we need.
Innovation, change, insight, originality happen in the fringes. Sometimes it becomes mainstream, other times it doesn't. Too much `disruption' and a society or an economy stops working well enough to be worth keeping. Too little and it is eroded by outside forces. Divergents need Convergents to keep it all running: Convergents need Divergents to stop it all decaying.
(*) I can't find out if that was on the basis that the lockdown would be for three weeks. Please leave me with the illusion that most people would have objected to an indefinite lockdown!
The people who don't are, they imply, suffering from some kind of moral fault. They are unable to resist peer pressure. They have a fear of freedom. They are too willing to go-along-to-get-along. They just aren't smart enough. They are dreadful conformists.
Insults are not explanations, even if they do make the reader feel superior.
For one thing, follow the crowd at chow time
is a very effective rule-of-thumb. If it wasn't, the human race would not have survived. Nor would starlings or any of the herd animals.
For another thing, there is no correlation between dodging groupthink, and intelligence or occupation. A lot of the most cliched material I read about our customers and markets at work was produced by clever young people with good degrees from Russell Group universities. Consultancies pay good money to young people who are smart and energetic
What proportion of the population follow the crowd at chow time? This has always been a puzzle, but recently we had what I think is the definitive answer.
According to a study in 2020, 93% of the UK population (who expressed a preference) wanted or approved of the March 2020 lockdown(*). Call them the Convergents.
Not because they were brainwashed, lead on, hoodwinked, mislead, lied to, deceived, tricked or bamboozled into their opinion. Neither were they lazy, scared, conformist, or virtue-signalling. You're not allowed to be rude about or make excuses for 93% of the population. Half of the under-35's who approved had a degree. A quarter of everyone had a degree. All those people made that judgement in the belief it was well-informed and well-judged.
So what about the 7% who were right? The Divergents. They weren't smarter. They may not have even been as well-informed as some of the people (including most medical professionals) who got the answer wrong.
What they did have is a sixth sense for something not-being-quite-right about a situation, proposal, argument or bunch of alleged facts. Not all the time about everything, but often enough for it to be a common feature of their lives.
It's the pupil who senses that the teacher's explanation has crucial missing bits, and finding their own explanation. It's the instinct we all have in varying degrees about when someone is being insincere and when they aren't. It's a knowledge of red flags in other people's behaviour, or in press releases, or the statements of experts. It's knowing that people only appeal to `expert consensus' when the facts aren't on their side. It's having a mass of usually unsystematic background knowledge about one's society and economy, and about how different industries and markets work. It's having a sense of which anecdotes are data, and which are just anecdotes. It's knowing when absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It's being dissatisfied with the usual way of doing something and wanting to make it quicker, simpler, more accurate. It's wanting to fill in the missing pieces of knowledge, or questioning the received opinions based on flimsy research. It can have a hundred sources.
Faced with a boat with a small leak, the Convergents would treat leaks as a feature, take the boat and appoint a couple of people to bail out. The Divergents would point out that leaks are a bug, and look for a way to fix the leak.
Almost all daily activity is by clever, ingenious, hard-working people who apply what they were taught in school and in their professional courses, to keeping the ramshackle Behemoth of the economy rolling. Changing the way they do things is not in their job description: they are there to work what already exists. If any change is needed, it will be imported or imposed from outside. This applies to research in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. It applies in the arts as well, especially when the world is having one of its recurrent moral panics.
Convergents live by if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Divergents point out that just because it ain't broke, don't mean that it's what you need, and figure out what we need.
Innovation, change, insight, originality happen in the fringes. Sometimes it becomes mainstream, other times it doesn't. Too much `disruption' and a society or an economy stops working well enough to be worth keeping. Too little and it is eroded by outside forces. Divergents need Convergents to keep it all running: Convergents need Divergents to stop it all decaying.
(*) I can't find out if that was on the basis that the lockdown would be for three weeks. Please leave me with the illusion that most people would have objected to an indefinite lockdown!
Friday, 7 January 2022
Follow The Money vs Mass Formation Psychosis
The latest theory about why we accepted lockdowns and restrictions is called "Mass Formation Psychosis" (MFP). It says that when a population experiences a) lack of social bond and isolation, b) feels life as meaningless or senseless, and c) has free-floating anxiety, then they are sitting targets for someone offering up a scapegoat, and if the accompanying rhetoric takes, people will start to do things they would never otherwise thing of doing. (Don't mention Germany in the 1930's.)
I don't like theories that excuse people's behaviour by saying, in effect, that they went bonkers because their lives were a bit off, and were tipped over the edge by some crass propaganda.
Most people are not fragile. Most people do not go bonkers. (Except people who go to psychiatrists and therapists, who in turn come up with ideas like MFP.)
Most people do know a good thing when they see it.
So when the Government told us all to go home - well, except train drivers, farmers, shepherds, foresters, binmen, nurses, supermarket workers, lorry drivers, firemen, policemen, pharmacists, builders, telecoms repairmen, sewage plant workers... oh, actually, pretty much the entire working class, making up about 50% of the working population - so when the Government told everyone with a cushy laptop job to go home, they all went home.
Because they could sleep in and save a ton of money. They saved a lot in April-June 2020, and then what amounted to an average train fare / petrol costs after that. (I looked at the data. People who didn't have laptop jobs saved much less, but not many actually came out worse.) They saved money by not going on expensive foreign holidays, or buying takeaways at lunchtime. They spent some of that money doing up the house / flat. Parents who liked their children got to see more of their great kids. Couples who had been wanting to, um, "spend more time together", did so. Unscrupulous people took out emergency business loans they had no intention of repaying, and bought Porsches. Unscrupulous employers claimed furlough and kept their people at work, effectively getting a salary subsidy. Drama queens were in seventh heaven. Amazon brought things to your door, and you were in to receive them. Employees were getting furlough, self-employed people were getting subsidies. Most businesses were not paying rates and many were paying reduced rents. Banks gave out repayment holidays to anyone who asked. Builders, decorators and other tradesmen were making out like bandits.
What was not to like?(*)
But.
No-one wanted to admit they were doing well out of this.
Other People were dying. Other People were suffering from psychological problems. Other People's kids were having a hard time. Some businesses were closing.
Walking around with a big grin on your face would be... tactless? Tone-deaf?
Masks, social distancing, testing, Track-and-Trace, getting Pinged, not being able to see the In-Laws you never really liked anyway... these weresmall prices to pay for all the advantages absolutely essential public health measures for Other People's benefit. What self-sacrifice! What virtue!
The appearance of nationwide bonkers-ness was created by Government policies were badly-thought out, inconsistent and fragmentary, communicated and enforced by crass and crude propaganda. Of course they weren't gaslighting psychopaths, but that was how they behaved.
Add to that the special interest pushers, apoplectic wanna-be tyrants, strong-leader fetishists, policy dumb-asses, creepy careerists, corporate cost-savers, faceless bureaucrats looking for fifteen minutes of fame, airhead marketeers, get-rich-quick operators selling PPE and tests... all given free column inches and airtime by the usual bunch of mavens, journalists and commentators desperate for content.
The sense of crazy was entirely an artefact of the media.
So we don't need an elaborate and dubious psychiatric theory to explain why someone paid six figures to be smart, thinks that wearing a tissue-flimsy mask is effective against a nano-virus modified to be highly contagious(**).
We just need to follow the money.
(*) Yes. I am telling you that at least almost half the population actually mostly liked the first lockdown, and made the best of it, especially if they avoided the media. The anxiety was about when it would end, to which the answer was July. The second lockdown was nothing like as bad, and most people who wanted to be at the workplace could be and were. The other almost-half of the population went about its jobs as usual right from the start. The people who suffered were those "shielding", or in bad domestic situations, or who were vulnerable. That's not a large proportion of the population, but when the population is 63,000,000, it is still a lot of people.
(**) If masks work, it is because they make talking awkward and shouting almost uncomfortable. That reduces the amount of air you expel with force from your respiratory tract where all those nasty viruses live. But if they said that, you would feel like a naughty child every time you wore one.
I don't like theories that excuse people's behaviour by saying, in effect, that they went bonkers because their lives were a bit off, and were tipped over the edge by some crass propaganda.
Most people are not fragile. Most people do not go bonkers. (Except people who go to psychiatrists and therapists, who in turn come up with ideas like MFP.)
Most people do know a good thing when they see it.
So when the Government told us all to go home - well, except train drivers, farmers, shepherds, foresters, binmen, nurses, supermarket workers, lorry drivers, firemen, policemen, pharmacists, builders, telecoms repairmen, sewage plant workers... oh, actually, pretty much the entire working class, making up about 50% of the working population - so when the Government told everyone with a cushy laptop job to go home, they all went home.
Because they could sleep in and save a ton of money. They saved a lot in April-June 2020, and then what amounted to an average train fare / petrol costs after that. (I looked at the data. People who didn't have laptop jobs saved much less, but not many actually came out worse.) They saved money by not going on expensive foreign holidays, or buying takeaways at lunchtime. They spent some of that money doing up the house / flat. Parents who liked their children got to see more of their great kids. Couples who had been wanting to, um, "spend more time together", did so. Unscrupulous people took out emergency business loans they had no intention of repaying, and bought Porsches. Unscrupulous employers claimed furlough and kept their people at work, effectively getting a salary subsidy. Drama queens were in seventh heaven. Amazon brought things to your door, and you were in to receive them. Employees were getting furlough, self-employed people were getting subsidies. Most businesses were not paying rates and many were paying reduced rents. Banks gave out repayment holidays to anyone who asked. Builders, decorators and other tradesmen were making out like bandits.
What was not to like?(*)
But.
No-one wanted to admit they were doing well out of this.
Other People were dying. Other People were suffering from psychological problems. Other People's kids were having a hard time. Some businesses were closing.
Walking around with a big grin on your face would be... tactless? Tone-deaf?
Masks, social distancing, testing, Track-and-Trace, getting Pinged, not being able to see the In-Laws you never really liked anyway... these were
The appearance of nationwide bonkers-ness was created by Government policies were badly-thought out, inconsistent and fragmentary, communicated and enforced by crass and crude propaganda. Of course they weren't gaslighting psychopaths, but that was how they behaved.
Add to that the special interest pushers, apoplectic wanna-be tyrants, strong-leader fetishists, policy dumb-asses, creepy careerists, corporate cost-savers, faceless bureaucrats looking for fifteen minutes of fame, airhead marketeers, get-rich-quick operators selling PPE and tests... all given free column inches and airtime by the usual bunch of mavens, journalists and commentators desperate for content.
The sense of crazy was entirely an artefact of the media.
So we don't need an elaborate and dubious psychiatric theory to explain why someone paid six figures to be smart, thinks that wearing a tissue-flimsy mask is effective against a nano-virus modified to be highly contagious(**).
We just need to follow the money.
(*) Yes. I am telling you that at least almost half the population actually mostly liked the first lockdown, and made the best of it, especially if they avoided the media. The anxiety was about when it would end, to which the answer was July. The second lockdown was nothing like as bad, and most people who wanted to be at the workplace could be and were. The other almost-half of the population went about its jobs as usual right from the start. The people who suffered were those "shielding", or in bad domestic situations, or who were vulnerable. That's not a large proportion of the population, but when the population is 63,000,000, it is still a lot of people.
(**) If masks work, it is because they make talking awkward and shouting almost uncomfortable. That reduces the amount of air you expel with force from your respiratory tract where all those nasty viruses live. But if they said that, you would feel like a naughty child every time you wore one.
Friday, 10 December 2021
SAGE = Red Army Faction
Bear with me here.
Right at the start of this nonsense, I said that the March 2020 lockdown felt like a war.
I never examined that any further, partly because I couldn't hear any bombs, and nobody was dying in the streets.
But it doesn't feel like a war.
It feels like a terrorist campaign.
Terrorists aim to create an atmosphere of paranoia.
The Government must be made to suspect every innocent citizen of carrying adeadly virus bomb.
Innocent citizens must feel imposed upon by the Government's security measures.
Innocent citizens must look at each other as if they might be a threat.
Governments and corporations set up elaborate security theatre: X-Ray machines at airports; masks and social distancing.
A class of suspect people is created: Marxists, right-wing activists, asymptomatic carriers.
Special committees are convened to assess risks.
Government agencies get arbitrary powers to impose restrictions and searches.
Terrorists attack and scare the people...
The Great Toilet Roll shortage was a PR stunt that worked too well, and caused panic buying.
Pro-Virus propaganda was put out because we weren't scared enough.
Social distancing made us treat each other like disease-ridden curs.
Carefully-staged videos showing the Police bullying members of the public appeared on You Tube.
Restrictions on our behaviour were intentionally confusing and pointless, to make us feel insecure.
Working from home made the Virus seem deadly.
... but terrorists leave the infrastructure alone.
Middle-class civil servants had to work from home, but working-class Amazon drivers could still deliver things. And all those "essential jobs".
That's why I never felt right about any of the Government's actions around the Virus.
It's too much like what happens when a bunch of terrorists gets too active.
Governments over-react beyond all reason.
Flabby-faced men, and hatchet-faced women, in grey suits, with establishment jobs.
Can they be terrorists? So close to retirement and without guns and bombs?
But who needs guns and bombs when you have the Government to do your dirty work?
Walk. Duck. Quack.
Right at the start of this nonsense, I said that the March 2020 lockdown felt like a war.
I never examined that any further, partly because I couldn't hear any bombs, and nobody was dying in the streets.
But it doesn't feel like a war.
It feels like a terrorist campaign.
Terrorists aim to create an atmosphere of paranoia.
The Government must be made to suspect every innocent citizen of carrying a
Innocent citizens must feel imposed upon by the Government's security measures.
Innocent citizens must look at each other as if they might be a threat.
Governments and corporations set up elaborate security theatre: X-Ray machines at airports; masks and social distancing.
A class of suspect people is created: Marxists, right-wing activists, asymptomatic carriers.
Special committees are convened to assess risks.
Government agencies get arbitrary powers to impose restrictions and searches.
Terrorists attack and scare the people...
The Great Toilet Roll shortage was a PR stunt that worked too well, and caused panic buying.
Pro-Virus propaganda was put out because we weren't scared enough.
Social distancing made us treat each other like disease-ridden curs.
Carefully-staged videos showing the Police bullying members of the public appeared on You Tube.
Restrictions on our behaviour were intentionally confusing and pointless, to make us feel insecure.
Working from home made the Virus seem deadly.
... but terrorists leave the infrastructure alone.
Middle-class civil servants had to work from home, but working-class Amazon drivers could still deliver things. And all those "essential jobs".
That's why I never felt right about any of the Government's actions around the Virus.
It's too much like what happens when a bunch of terrorists gets too active.
Governments over-react beyond all reason.
Flabby-faced men, and hatchet-faced women, in grey suits, with establishment jobs.
Can they be terrorists? So close to retirement and without guns and bombs?
But who needs guns and bombs when you have the Government to do your dirty work?
Walk. Duck. Quack.
Tuesday, 7 December 2021
This Goes On Until At Least 2025. There's Always Another Virus
In January this year, I suggested we should plan for this nonsense to be going on for another four years. Until 2025. I had a moment's hope after July 19th, as the Government switched policy from looking at cases to looking at deaths. Maybe we would get through Christmas without restrictions and suggestions that we all might like to stay home. Maybe Boris wanted to be the only leader of a Top Ten economy whose people had Christmas at all.
And then along came Omicron, and the PR turned on a sixpence. Suddenly cases mattered. Boris imposed mask wearing in shops and trains. It wasn't so much the condition, but that he felt he could do it. One of two things will happen: Omicron will be declared harmless, the restrictions removed and a Happy Christmas to all; or the restrictions will be tightened and a work-from-home advice given. There will be almost no enforcement of this, but it will be enough to p**s everyone off. As a result, the wary people will plan for another lockdown, and another two terms of home-schooling.
Break out that "I Am Exempt" badge. I've been using mine and have had zero problems. Shop assistants smile, they don't frown.
I am pretty sure that the Government cannot afford another lockdown, or even to close "non-essential shops" and restrict hospitality activity. The next one will be a LINO (lockdown in name only) that restricts our social lives, but is enforced by exactly nobody (except the twats and bullies, and there are always those).
But I am now confident that this is not going to go away in Summer 2022.
WW2 might have ended in 1945, but rationing remained until 1954. Bomb sites were common in the 1960s. It wasn't until the 1980s that The War faded from our social memory.
Economically, this is as expensive as a conventional old-school world war.
This stuff is going on until at least summer 2025. There's always another virus.
Travel restrictions, masking, working-from-home, cut-back-on-socialising-in-Winter, tests, Red Lists, quarantine hotels, and inoculation drives. Threats of passports this and certificates that. Closing shops, opening shops. Years of bulls**t PR gaslighting and of special interest groups advancing their causes in the chaos.
It will be a few years before we believe that restrictions will not suddenly be re-imposed.
Our lives will feel worn-out and shabby.
Like the world does after the snow turns to dirty slush.
And then along came Omicron, and the PR turned on a sixpence. Suddenly cases mattered. Boris imposed mask wearing in shops and trains. It wasn't so much the condition, but that he felt he could do it. One of two things will happen: Omicron will be declared harmless, the restrictions removed and a Happy Christmas to all; or the restrictions will be tightened and a work-from-home advice given. There will be almost no enforcement of this, but it will be enough to p**s everyone off. As a result, the wary people will plan for another lockdown, and another two terms of home-schooling.
Break out that "I Am Exempt" badge. I've been using mine and have had zero problems. Shop assistants smile, they don't frown.
I am pretty sure that the Government cannot afford another lockdown, or even to close "non-essential shops" and restrict hospitality activity. The next one will be a LINO (lockdown in name only) that restricts our social lives, but is enforced by exactly nobody (except the twats and bullies, and there are always those).
But I am now confident that this is not going to go away in Summer 2022.
WW2 might have ended in 1945, but rationing remained until 1954. Bomb sites were common in the 1960s. It wasn't until the 1980s that The War faded from our social memory.
Economically, this is as expensive as a conventional old-school world war.
This stuff is going on until at least summer 2025. There's always another virus.
Travel restrictions, masking, working-from-home, cut-back-on-socialising-in-Winter, tests, Red Lists, quarantine hotels, and inoculation drives. Threats of passports this and certificates that. Closing shops, opening shops. Years of bulls**t PR gaslighting and of special interest groups advancing their causes in the chaos.
It will be a few years before we believe that restrictions will not suddenly be re-imposed.
Our lives will feel worn-out and shabby.
Like the world does after the snow turns to dirty slush.
Monday, 19 July 2021
On and Off Treadmills
As best as I can figure out from a diary-search, my life started to close in on itself in 2017. I was 63, after all. All the fun kids at work had moved on, and being replaced by Snowflakes. I couldn't hack the full hour session at the gym, and was doing about forty minutes instead. No holidays. Girls were pretty much a thing of the past. I was not learning new things that were work-related. I was three years past the normal retirement age at work, had almost three more years to go before I could claim my State Pension, my savings weren't great, and though my financial advisor kept telling me I was okay, and much better off than a lot of people, what he didn't mention was that 'most people' are terminally screwed come retirement. Every month I stayed at work was another month's money saved, and another month I didn't have to live on a pension. I kept that up for another four years, until I could keep it up no more.
That's a long time to be in treadmill mode. The job was okay, the people were okay, I was in the City, the commute was manageable, but regular readers will remember I spent a whilebitching and moaning noting dispassionately how going to bed at 09:30 to wake up at 05:15 does not leave one with much of a life. Plus no-one was making or showing movies I wanted to watch, which is why I got an Apple TV and a MUBI subscription. And I was going round and round in a figure-eight, not travelling and not `going anywhere'. Every now and then I'd go to an early evening Meeting in Soho, and I even got a commitment so I had to turn up every week. When I came out at 19:00, Soho was rammed. Nowhere to have a coffee or a light snack. Not like 2010.
One on level, I hardly noticed Lockdown. Except for the lack of commuting, the money I wasn't saving, and the whole silly working from home stuff. In fact, life was probably better, since I wasn't going into that horrible office.
The definition of treadmill is doing what you're doing so you can do what you're doing, and not getting anywhere doing it. I was doing what I was doing to bank the paycheque, and once I had done that, I'd done what I was doing for the month. Except not spending any money because I had to bank it.
(That will be your life as you approach retirement: putting as much cash as possible into bonds or savings so you can pay for a new roof when the old one starts to give, but the insurers won't replace it.)
No, parents, you're not on a treadmill, not while you're raising your children. You're not on a treadmill if you have friends you like being with, holidays you enjoy going on, activities you like doing. You're not on a treadmill if you just love love love the office gossip and the shenanigans after work, and all the gossip on your social media apps. Nope, you're having some kind of fun.
It takes a while to get out of the habits of the treadmill. Work seems like a decade ago, but it's only eleven weeks. Which don't count as real weeks, because lockdown and other BS. I thought it would help if I had some plans and objectives to work on, but that turned out not to do the trick.
The Interwebz is gung-ho for the idea of volunteering, part-time jobs, getting involved with your community, and otherwise replacing paid work with unpaid work. Because that's what you retired for, right? Or we could travel... wait, no, we can't. The advice is as asinine as the advice to I used to hear when I was out of work in the Nineties. But hey, if you want to volunteer, please go right ahead.
So the next phase is getting off the treadmill. Which means not working up schedules about how my days and weeks should be - I tried that and it didn't feel right.
That's a long time to be in treadmill mode. The job was okay, the people were okay, I was in the City, the commute was manageable, but regular readers will remember I spent a while
One on level, I hardly noticed Lockdown. Except for the lack of commuting, the money I wasn't saving, and the whole silly working from home stuff. In fact, life was probably better, since I wasn't going into that horrible office.
The definition of treadmill is doing what you're doing so you can do what you're doing, and not getting anywhere doing it. I was doing what I was doing to bank the paycheque, and once I had done that, I'd done what I was doing for the month. Except not spending any money because I had to bank it.
(That will be your life as you approach retirement: putting as much cash as possible into bonds or savings so you can pay for a new roof when the old one starts to give, but the insurers won't replace it.)
No, parents, you're not on a treadmill, not while you're raising your children. You're not on a treadmill if you have friends you like being with, holidays you enjoy going on, activities you like doing. You're not on a treadmill if you just love love love the office gossip and the shenanigans after work, and all the gossip on your social media apps. Nope, you're having some kind of fun.
It takes a while to get out of the habits of the treadmill. Work seems like a decade ago, but it's only eleven weeks. Which don't count as real weeks, because lockdown and other BS. I thought it would help if I had some plans and objectives to work on, but that turned out not to do the trick.
The Interwebz is gung-ho for the idea of volunteering, part-time jobs, getting involved with your community, and otherwise replacing paid work with unpaid work. Because that's what you retired for, right? Or we could travel... wait, no, we can't. The advice is as asinine as the advice to I used to hear when I was out of work in the Nineties. But hey, if you want to volunteer, please go right ahead.
So the next phase is getting off the treadmill. Which means not working up schedules about how my days and weeks should be - I tried that and it didn't feel right.
Tuesday, 29 June 2021
Bad Photographs
I have utterly and completely lost the knack of taking photographs. I'm pretty sure Aristotle thought that was a sign that a man had fallen into a rut and needed to get out more. It may be in the Nichomachean Ethics somewhere. Or maybe the Metaphysics. I'm not sure. I just can't see the pictures anymore. I could blame the damn iPhone, or the lockdown, or the fact that I don't get out much. The truth is that I just can't see the pictures anymore. That requires serious therapy. Aristotle is pretty clear on that.
Monday, 19 April 2021
What I Did In The First Post-Lockdown Week
(aside from the day job, daily walks, cooking food and all that routine stuff)
Monday: the nice man from the AA pumped up my flat tyre and drove with me to the local tyre emporium just before it opened, where I had the whole lot changed over. Later that morning, I stopped by the local Pure Gym. A manager was there to show me around.
Tuesday: early morning shopping at Sainsbury's. Joined the gym online. 50% discount. (Even at the full rate, that gym costs as much in a year as my old one did in a month. And I was happy to pay that money then.) Added Qobuz to my streaming services. I am liking that decision more and more.
Mid-week: lots of hefting of books and building of IKEA shelving. Didn't need to leave the house for that.
Thursday: first visit to the gym. Man those pull-downs felt good.
Friday: a visit to London by train. Haircut at George the Barber's in Bedfordbury; sunbed session at the Tanning Shop, Covent Garden; a visit to the Vodafone and Apple shops; lunch outside at Maxwells; a browse round Foyles; and a visit to Lillywhites for some new trainers.
Saturday: a visit to Sis's new house in a secret location for lunch.
Sunday: second visit to the gym in the morning. That was more tiring than I thought. Snooze in garden sun-trap. Get new iPhone SE2 working, and set the old one up to be another iPod Touch (that's why Apple downplay the iPod Touch).
And all I had to do was wear a mask almost everywhere.
Masks do not counts as "freedom", and sure as hell not as "normal".
This ain't over 'til the masks get burned.
I have my second jab this week.
Two more weeks before I never have to open that work laptop again.
Monday: the nice man from the AA pumped up my flat tyre and drove with me to the local tyre emporium just before it opened, where I had the whole lot changed over. Later that morning, I stopped by the local Pure Gym. A manager was there to show me around.
Tuesday: early morning shopping at Sainsbury's. Joined the gym online. 50% discount. (Even at the full rate, that gym costs as much in a year as my old one did in a month. And I was happy to pay that money then.) Added Qobuz to my streaming services. I am liking that decision more and more.
Mid-week: lots of hefting of books and building of IKEA shelving. Didn't need to leave the house for that.
Thursday: first visit to the gym. Man those pull-downs felt good.
Friday: a visit to London by train. Haircut at George the Barber's in Bedfordbury; sunbed session at the Tanning Shop, Covent Garden; a visit to the Vodafone and Apple shops; lunch outside at Maxwells; a browse round Foyles; and a visit to Lillywhites for some new trainers.
Saturday: a visit to Sis's new house in a secret location for lunch.
Sunday: second visit to the gym in the morning. That was more tiring than I thought. Snooze in garden sun-trap. Get new iPhone SE2 working, and set the old one up to be another iPod Touch (that's why Apple downplay the iPod Touch).
And all I had to do was wear a mask almost everywhere.
Masks do not counts as "freedom", and sure as hell not as "normal".
This ain't over 'til the masks get burned.
I have my second jab this week.
Two more weeks before I never have to open that work laptop again.
Monday, 5 April 2021
Catching Up: It's Been A Long Time...
...since I published anything. I've written stuff, but held it back.
Vaccine passports. The irrational fear of the insides of pubs and restaurants. Schoolgirl allegations without police charges, blaming boys. The EU threatening to stop vaccine exports. Teenagers burning the Union flag and complaining about 'colonial' history. NFT's in art. Museums turning into social justice institutions. Police breaking up Easter Sunday services.
Never try to understand crazy. There's nothing to understand, that's why it's called crazy. Walk away, have minimum contact if you can't, and never ever try to figure out what's going on. Because crazy makes no sense.
So I have to pass to No Comment.
I put in my retirement a couple of weeks ago. I stop work at the end of April. I have had conversations about pensions, taxes and investments. This stuff I really don't want to discuss, because most of the thoughts I'm having are first drafts, and so are just the cliches and stock responses, that I have to work through to get the real issues.
For the next four weeks I still have to show up at the work laptop four days a week (I've booked every Friday off in April). It wasn't the lockdown that kept me in the house during the week, it was the work laptop.
Retirement doesn't start until work stops. I don't know what I'll feel until the first Monday I never have to show up to work. In the meantime, my motivation to work is... fading.
Writing this, I have realised that I've put my plans on hold for four weeks because of work.
Nope. Don't do that.
I should go ahead and order the things I want, even if I don't unwrap them until the 1st of May.
See? That's what writing a journal entry does for you.
Vaccine passports. The irrational fear of the insides of pubs and restaurants. Schoolgirl allegations without police charges, blaming boys. The EU threatening to stop vaccine exports. Teenagers burning the Union flag and complaining about 'colonial' history. NFT's in art. Museums turning into social justice institutions. Police breaking up Easter Sunday services.
Never try to understand crazy. There's nothing to understand, that's why it's called crazy. Walk away, have minimum contact if you can't, and never ever try to figure out what's going on. Because crazy makes no sense.
So I have to pass to No Comment.
I put in my retirement a couple of weeks ago. I stop work at the end of April. I have had conversations about pensions, taxes and investments. This stuff I really don't want to discuss, because most of the thoughts I'm having are first drafts, and so are just the cliches and stock responses, that I have to work through to get the real issues.
For the next four weeks I still have to show up at the work laptop four days a week (I've booked every Friday off in April). It wasn't the lockdown that kept me in the house during the week, it was the work laptop.
Retirement doesn't start until work stops. I don't know what I'll feel until the first Monday I never have to show up to work. In the meantime, my motivation to work is... fading.
Writing this, I have realised that I've put my plans on hold for four weeks because of work.
Nope. Don't do that.
I should go ahead and order the things I want, even if I don't unwrap them until the 1st of May.
See? That's what writing a journal entry does for you.
Monday, 25 January 2021
**** The Lockdown - There, I've Said It
My inner ACoA thinks lockdown will be forever. Even though my rational self knows it won't be. I'm worried that by the time it does end, I won't care anymore and there won't be anything worth going back to. But mostly, I'm tired of the denial. I'm tired of telling myself that I have to treat lockdown as if it is normal, just a different normal.
Yeah. Well. Frak that.
This ain't a different normal.
Pretending otherwise would be outright denial.
I'm tired of trying to be nice about this nonsense and the traitors who push it.
Find some other damn way of protecting people over 70 or with chronic bad health, from a nasty virus, should their immune system over-react to it. If someone called a Chief Medical Officer can't do better than this, they should resign. Maybe replace them with a monkey throwing darts at a list of policies.
Ah, the heck with all that. It's not my problem.
You know what? I do not care about reasons. I care that I can't do the things that I enjoy doing. I need Foyles and the Curzon and Fopp and the National and the Tate(s) and London AA meetings and the parks and the restaurants and cafes and Jermyn Street and walking across the Thames and the South Bank and and and. I was hoping to add travelling around the UK this year. Go ahead, call me petty.
I had all the answers in a post on the 28th December. At least in terms of actions. What I didn't have was the answer in terms of attitude. Which is why I've been circling.
So here is my new attitude...
**** everyone who legislates lockdown. **** everyone who enables lockdown. **** everyone who enforces it.
MP's, Ministers, Police, so-called scientists, Chief Health Officers, Chief Scientists, compliant business owners, journalists, doctors, so-called-experts, pro-lockdown activists, the media agencies producing Project Fear propaganda, and everybody who would rather be safe than free.
**** everyone using this to push their dumb ideologies, pitch for funding, save money by closing offices, force social change, and otherwise make hay from a crisis.
**** all of them. When they die they are going to a new circle of hell, dug just for them.
So this is what being authentic and honest about my feelings is like.
Feels good.
Yeah. Well. Frak that.
This ain't a different normal.
Pretending otherwise would be outright denial.
I'm tired of trying to be nice about this nonsense and the traitors who push it.
Find some other damn way of protecting people over 70 or with chronic bad health, from a nasty virus, should their immune system over-react to it. If someone called a Chief Medical Officer can't do better than this, they should resign. Maybe replace them with a monkey throwing darts at a list of policies.
Ah, the heck with all that. It's not my problem.
You know what? I do not care about reasons. I care that I can't do the things that I enjoy doing. I need Foyles and the Curzon and Fopp and the National and the Tate(s) and London AA meetings and the parks and the restaurants and cafes and Jermyn Street and walking across the Thames and the South Bank and and and. I was hoping to add travelling around the UK this year. Go ahead, call me petty.
I had all the answers in a post on the 28th December. At least in terms of actions. What I didn't have was the answer in terms of attitude. Which is why I've been circling.
So here is my new attitude...
**** everyone who legislates lockdown. **** everyone who enables lockdown. **** everyone who enforces it.
MP's, Ministers, Police, so-called scientists, Chief Health Officers, Chief Scientists, compliant business owners, journalists, doctors, so-called-experts, pro-lockdown activists, the media agencies producing Project Fear propaganda, and everybody who would rather be safe than free.
**** everyone using this to push their dumb ideologies, pitch for funding, save money by closing offices, force social change, and otherwise make hay from a crisis.
**** all of them. When they die they are going to a new circle of hell, dug just for them.
So this is what being authentic and honest about my feelings is like.
Feels good.
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Plan For Another Four Years of Lockdown. Here's Why...
I used to be a strategic planner. Micro-economic modelling of the company, economic forecasts, translating business policies into numbers, five-year projected P&L's, Balance Sheets and Cash Flows.
We would run at least three different sets of assumptions, which would later be called scenarios. These would be: Do Nothing; do this; do that. Do Nothing was the shocker: what would happen if we just sat on our butts. The answer was always some kind of wasting commercial illness. Scenario planning was a good technique: it made management think about the future and what they might or might not do.
All those scenarios were run against the same background, and we were hardly aware of it. There would be no wars, space invasions, plagues, civic uprisings, collapses of social order, no changes to the overall political, social and economic structure of the country, and no 'this changes everything' new technology. At least not that would involve our home markets.
Some things are just elephants that you have to wait to leave the room. Wars are an obvious example. Turns out that Government-imposed emergency public health measures are another. When something like that happens, there are no if's and maybe's and what else could we do's. There's only the freaking elephant in the room, and it is going to move when it wants to. The plans you make when there's an elephant in the room are not the plans you make when there isn't. Elephant-in-the-room plans are all short-term, because, well, the elephant never stays that long in the room?
Does it?
Typically, most businesses and people fall into a holding pattern: do as much as we can to keep what we can remember of pre-elephant life going, and wait for the elephant to leave. The short-term is a lousy planning horizon, when you don't know how short a term it is. That's how you put on weight, go soft, lose customers, delay maintenance, and don't upgrade.
What if the elephant never leaves the room? At least for another four years?
A never-ending series of erratic lockdowns. But they never repeal the laws. They never make it illegal. They never stop the Lockdown Committee meeting. Public Health professors never stop muttering about a possible lockdown this winter, and the press never stops reporting them. The mask signs are never taken down. Every now and then the Police stop a pensioner getting on a train. Each summer there is less point in going anywhere, because each summer less remains open.
But lockdowns can't last forever? Wouldn't society wither away? And anyway vaccines?
Not the point.
The point is that assuming the lockdowns go on forever forces you to think about what you would do if you weren't twiddling your thumbs waiting for Governments to grow a pair. You know what you're going to do if the restrictions ever end. You don't know what you're going to do if they don't.
The moment I thought of four more years, I knew that I would retire by Autumn 2021 (certain things assumed having happened), because I did not want to see my life vanish three-months-at-a-time. If I'm going to be locked in my house, I'd rather be reading, writing, playing music and watching movies. Bashing away pointlessly on a laptop? No thank you. I've had enough of that.
You will make other decisions. Yours may be tougher than mine, because you could be looking at four more years of home schooling. But suppose you were? Wouldn't you go back to your employer and say Sorry, but I have to give my children four hours uninterrupted a day, then I have to do an hour's lesson prep for tomorrow. You get about four hours tops. And I get full salary, because you won't be able to stop calling me when it's teaching time. Right now, you won't have that conversation because this is an emergency that will be over in three months. But you would if you knew it was going on for four more years.
Will lockdowns really go on for another four years or more? I don't know. I do know that this one is going on until Easter, and it will be followed by a period of lighter restrictions over summer, to be followed by another winter when old people will start dying again. Vaccines? Are developed six months after the latest super-spreader / super-killer variation of the original Virus, and we will need to be locked up for those six months. It's a flu virus, so it will always mutate. And every year there is another bunch of vulnerable old people.
What part of that sounds like a process with an end?
We would run at least three different sets of assumptions, which would later be called scenarios. These would be: Do Nothing; do this; do that. Do Nothing was the shocker: what would happen if we just sat on our butts. The answer was always some kind of wasting commercial illness. Scenario planning was a good technique: it made management think about the future and what they might or might not do.
All those scenarios were run against the same background, and we were hardly aware of it. There would be no wars, space invasions, plagues, civic uprisings, collapses of social order, no changes to the overall political, social and economic structure of the country, and no 'this changes everything' new technology. At least not that would involve our home markets.
Some things are just elephants that you have to wait to leave the room. Wars are an obvious example. Turns out that Government-imposed emergency public health measures are another. When something like that happens, there are no if's and maybe's and what else could we do's. There's only the freaking elephant in the room, and it is going to move when it wants to. The plans you make when there's an elephant in the room are not the plans you make when there isn't. Elephant-in-the-room plans are all short-term, because, well, the elephant never stays that long in the room?
Does it?
Typically, most businesses and people fall into a holding pattern: do as much as we can to keep what we can remember of pre-elephant life going, and wait for the elephant to leave. The short-term is a lousy planning horizon, when you don't know how short a term it is. That's how you put on weight, go soft, lose customers, delay maintenance, and don't upgrade.
What if the elephant never leaves the room? At least for another four years?
A never-ending series of erratic lockdowns. But they never repeal the laws. They never make it illegal. They never stop the Lockdown Committee meeting. Public Health professors never stop muttering about a possible lockdown this winter, and the press never stops reporting them. The mask signs are never taken down. Every now and then the Police stop a pensioner getting on a train. Each summer there is less point in going anywhere, because each summer less remains open.
But lockdowns can't last forever? Wouldn't society wither away? And anyway vaccines?
Not the point.
The point is that assuming the lockdowns go on forever forces you to think about what you would do if you weren't twiddling your thumbs waiting for Governments to grow a pair. You know what you're going to do if the restrictions ever end. You don't know what you're going to do if they don't.
The moment I thought of four more years, I knew that I would retire by Autumn 2021 (certain things assumed having happened), because I did not want to see my life vanish three-months-at-a-time. If I'm going to be locked in my house, I'd rather be reading, writing, playing music and watching movies. Bashing away pointlessly on a laptop? No thank you. I've had enough of that.
You will make other decisions. Yours may be tougher than mine, because you could be looking at four more years of home schooling. But suppose you were? Wouldn't you go back to your employer and say Sorry, but I have to give my children four hours uninterrupted a day, then I have to do an hour's lesson prep for tomorrow. You get about four hours tops. And I get full salary, because you won't be able to stop calling me when it's teaching time. Right now, you won't have that conversation because this is an emergency that will be over in three months. But you would if you knew it was going on for four more years.
Will lockdowns really go on for another four years or more? I don't know. I do know that this one is going on until Easter, and it will be followed by a period of lighter restrictions over summer, to be followed by another winter when old people will start dying again. Vaccines? Are developed six months after the latest super-spreader / super-killer variation of the original Virus, and we will need to be locked up for those six months. It's a flu virus, so it will always mutate. And every year there is another bunch of vulnerable old people.
What part of that sounds like a process with an end?
Thursday, 15 October 2020
I went up to London last Friday during the day. I obeyed all the rules. I caught a cold.
Notice how the health policy discussion has changed? Nobody now even makes a gesture to the idea that the Virus is serious or life-threatening. Sometime in the last month or so, everyone accepted that it was the flu, unless you were unlucky, but then you can get unlucky with the flu as well.
Nobody thinks there is any `science’ behind lockdowns, social distancing and masks. Equally, most people accept that crowds, indoors, and / or poor ventilation encourage infection. Turns out that 75% of all infections happen in family homes, hospitals and homes for the elderly. Or halls of residence, which combine crowds and lack of decent air-conditioning.
We have accepted that there are four of them, locked in a folie a quatre, making stuff up as they go along. Doubling-down on actions that don’t work is the first sign of desperation. But then, thinking that you can legislate and penalise your way out of a public health event is the first sign of political madness. It turns out that the people in SAGE have lost the plot as well.
It should be obvious that all a lockdown does is temporarily halt the spread of any virus, unless you can lock everyone down, seal the borders and hold on until the last virus cell dies. Then you can't let anyone or anything in from anywhere else in the world without decontaminating it and them. Virus gonna virus. The only people who don't know this are SAGE and a bunch of professors whom I would not hire as a junior analyst.
I went up to London last Friday during the day. I obeyed all the rules. I caught a cold. Not the Virus. A cold. I don't need to say any more.
If there were dead bodies in the streets, the sounds of ambulance sirens throughout the day, hearses daily on every street, if our work-mates were falling before our eyes... there would be no need to make any rules. Those of us who could carry on with our laptop jobs would, and the rest could choose between death by bankruptcy or the Virus. It’s exactly because the Virus was not killing everyone in its path that Governments could do a ‘national lockdown with more holes in it for essential services than a sieve’ that kept far more of the economy going than anyone had a right to expect.
In other words, the politicians can only **** around like this because the Virus is not that serious. And that's what we all know in the back of our minds.
Nobody thinks there is any `science’ behind lockdowns, social distancing and masks. Equally, most people accept that crowds, indoors, and / or poor ventilation encourage infection. Turns out that 75% of all infections happen in family homes, hospitals and homes for the elderly. Or halls of residence, which combine crowds and lack of decent air-conditioning.
We have accepted that there are four of them, locked in a folie a quatre, making stuff up as they go along. Doubling-down on actions that don’t work is the first sign of desperation. But then, thinking that you can legislate and penalise your way out of a public health event is the first sign of political madness. It turns out that the people in SAGE have lost the plot as well.
It should be obvious that all a lockdown does is temporarily halt the spread of any virus, unless you can lock everyone down, seal the borders and hold on until the last virus cell dies. Then you can't let anyone or anything in from anywhere else in the world without decontaminating it and them. Virus gonna virus. The only people who don't know this are SAGE and a bunch of professors whom I would not hire as a junior analyst.
I went up to London last Friday during the day. I obeyed all the rules. I caught a cold. Not the Virus. A cold. I don't need to say any more.
If there were dead bodies in the streets, the sounds of ambulance sirens throughout the day, hearses daily on every street, if our work-mates were falling before our eyes... there would be no need to make any rules. Those of us who could carry on with our laptop jobs would, and the rest could choose between death by bankruptcy or the Virus. It’s exactly because the Virus was not killing everyone in its path that Governments could do a ‘national lockdown with more holes in it for essential services than a sieve’ that kept far more of the economy going than anyone had a right to expect.
In other words, the politicians can only **** around like this because the Virus is not that serious. And that's what we all know in the back of our minds.
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