Coronavirus

[wanderer]

5 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

There will be no advised about. Hospitality being closed for minimum of two weeks. 

Also travel ban again.

SG bern drop feeding media past few days.

Need to wait and see, even the BBC are choosing their words carefully.

Using "could" and "might" close when talking about what a circuit breaker might impose, and saying a travel ban is "possible" (but also saying that would be very extreme)

[thplinth]

19 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Think folk are starting to get fed up with Sturgeons high and mighty act whilst she and has husband are on guts of 200k a year, whilst shes talking measures that will kill many businesses over next two weeks with no plan how to support them.

Murrell alone might be approaching 200k a year. No one actually knows for sure because amazingly it is kept a strict secret from all other SNP members including even the National Treasurer of the SNP who I think has to sign the accounts. Kenny MacAskill briefly mentions it in this recent article. 

https://wingsoverscotland.com/on-no-accounts/

"I’m led to believe that the National Treasurer has had them audited and concluded, even if there are aspects such as certain salaries that it appears he isn’t privy to. Now, the party may be of a far larger scale than in my day, but there is something strange when the person in such a critical post is denied such relevant information. But that’s a separate issue.

Murrell is one and I understand Susan Ruddick the COO of the SNP is another. Speculation is that between the two of them alone they account for a third of a million pounds per annum in payroll costs. The total SNP HQ payroll for 20 staff is a million quid. 

So Sturgeon and Murrell combined would I think be well above 200k a year.

And they have been on these salaries for many years now. They are not going to be worried that is for sure. Gold plated pensions as well no doubt.

Edited October 6, 2020 by thplinth

[phart]

19 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

I vote SNP out of necessity for indyref2 but their handling of this is almost on a par with boris. Both in excess deaths and calamity.

Nah the Tories are in charge of track and trace, in charge of financial packages. The SNP don't have the powers to legislate against Covid.

I don't even vote SNP at all. Now they might have made as big a fuck up as the Tories if they did have the powers.

[wanderer]

Nicola has said at her briefing that "No national lockdown will be announced tomorrow"

[Orraloon]

1 hour ago, ThistleWhistle said:

My wife works in a hotel and she's lucky as it gets tourists with the gowf so she's had pretty much full hours since going back.  October is booked solid but November, December is dead so taking away the last two weeks of the year it could be busy, and potentially having four months where its on its arse, isn't going to be great for a lot of the staff there.

Personally I reckon they'll go in to lockdown every school holiday from here until Easter.  

Schools in some places are already on holiday. This week and next.

[phart]

Last Tuesday was 123 folk in hospital; 16 in ICU. This Tuesday 262 with 25 in ICU.

Peak was 1520 with about 208 in ICU.

800 new infections 13.2% positive.

2 new deaths.

EDIT: so basically 3 doubles away from a worse situation in raw numbers. Although i think deaths will still be down due to an increase in best practices. I can see why folk are getting nervous around the numbers. Fuck knows what the best course is through it though.

Edited October 6, 2020 by phart

[phart]

September 11th to september 25th went 45 to 89. so 2 weeks to double. Folk in hospital, this is.

September 25th to October 3rd went 89 to 191 so that's 8 days.

7 day average took 11 days to double though for new admissions. (chart updates tomorrow for this weeks numbers so that's 6 days out fo date atm)

 

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by phart

[Orraloon]

1 hour ago, thplinth said:

Murrell alone might be approaching 200k a year. No one actually knows for sure because amazingly it is kept a strict secret from all other SNP members including even the National Treasurer of the SNP who I think has to sign the accounts. Kenny MacAskill briefly mentions it in this recent article. 

https://wingsoverscotland.com/on-no-accounts/

"I’m led to believe that the National Treasurer has had them audited and concluded, even if there are aspects such as certain salaries that it appears he isn’t privy to. Now, the party may be of a far larger scale than in my day, but there is something strange when the person in such a critical post is denied such relevant information. But that’s a separate issue.

Murrell is one and I understand Susan Ruddick the COO of the SNP is another. Speculation is that between the two of them alone they account for a third of a million pounds per annum in payroll costs. The total SNP HQ payroll for 20 staff is a million quid. 

So Sturgeon and Murrell combined would I think be well above 200k a year.

And they have been on these salaries for many years now. They are not going to be worried that is for sure. Gold plated pensions as well no doubt.

The first minister is entitled to draw a salary of about 160K. She doesn't take all of that, as they agreed to kind a pay freeze a few years back. Her salary isn't paid for out of SNP funds though. So her salary won't be included in that million that you mentioned.

 

[thplinth]

37 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

The first minister is entitled to draw a salary of about 160K. She doesn't take all of that, as they agreed to kind a pay freeze a few years back. Her salary isn't paid for out of SNP funds though. So her salary won't be included in that million that you mentioned.

I know.

So combined (Mr & Mrs Murrell) they must be easily north of 300k per annum between them, just on salary.

Edited October 6, 2020 by thplinth

[Kirk]

6 hours ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Circuit breaker from Friday night.

Would love to see the scientific justification for this.

Complete farce.

 

6 hours ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Yip.

Making it up as they go along.

Essentially closing the country down without even debating it, never mind voting on it in parliament. 

Farcical. 

 

 

Think someone got a bit carried away

[Alibi]

On 10/2/2020 at 5:04 PM, phart said:

There's also stories of folk slowly making recoveries alibi mate, so sorry for bringing the doom and gloom in. I'm hoping it's a temporary situation you find yourself in!

Actually the past couple of days I have been feeling a lot better.  Managed to mow my (newly enlarged) lawn yesterday, which I haven't managed to do since I attempted it back in June, which left me exhausted for a couple of days. Started an increased dosage of one of my meds at the weekend and it seems that at last they are starting to have a significant effect.  There's a small margin between being largely incapacitated and being able to function reasonably well.  Losing a stone and a half has helped so that's a small win.

[phart]

16 minutes ago, Alibi said:

Actually the past couple of days I have been feeling a lot better.  Managed to mow my (newly enlarged) lawn yesterday, which I haven't managed to do since I attempted it back in June, which left me exhausted for a couple of days. Started an increased dosage of one of my meds at the weekend and it seems that at last they are starting to have a significant effect.  There's a small margin between being largely incapacitated and being able to function reasonably well.  Losing a stone and a half has helped so that's a small win.

Great news! Let's hope it continues.

[Orraloon]

2 hours ago, thplinth said:

I know.

So combined (Mr & Mrs Murrell) they must be easily north of 300k per annum between them, just on salary.

I would guess at about 250K. About 135K for Mrs and about 115K for Mr.

But, as you say, that's just salary.

 

[phart]

UK 14,542 new cases.

76 deaths.

over 450 new hospitalisations as well, apparently that's a jump of 25% in a single day.

It's crazy how localised it is as well. North and London, while a lot of other places nowhere near as bad. Also the fuck up cause using excel... mental.

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by phart

[aaid]

1 hour ago, phart said:

UK 14,542 new cases.

76 deaths.

over 450 new hospitalisations as well, apparently that's a jump of 25% in a single day.

It's crazy how localised it is as well. North and London, while a lot of other places nowhere near as bad. Also the fuck up cause using excel... mental.

 

I think a lot of people who don’t have an IT background would be surprised at the extent to which key line of business applications are either built entirely on excel or use it as a key component. 

When I worked for a tier one IB, of other 20000 registered applications there were a good few thousand which were essentially excel spreadsheets with a bit of VBA on top.  They had an ongoing programme to replace these but it’s easier said than done. 

I think there’s a fair bit of spin going on here from people who don’t really know the details.   They had to build a system from scratch, very quickly and under serious pressure.  

As I understand it, they use excel to transfer data from wherever it is the local data is collected and collated and is then transferred into the central system. 

Excel actually makes a lot of sense in those situations, it’s a tool that’s readily available, which people are familiar with and will have and is well understood.  You wouldn’t want to rely on it in the long term for good reasons around security and maintainability but in the short term and in a limited scope and shelf life I can understand why they’ve done it this way. 

That said, the system was developed and rolled out when the number of cases was very low and the 64k row restriction in excel is *very* well known. It sounds very much like the testing has been pretty poor. 

Move quickly and break things isn’t a great approach when breaking things puts people’s lives at risk. 

 

[exile]

9 hours ago, wanderer said:

Only the Sun claiming they have it from a source within the NHS who have all been told apparently its to be announced, so until something official is announced take it with a pinch of salt.

Sound of things hospitality sector will be advised to close for two weeks, and more emphasis on work from home where possible, but nothing really more than that (it was clear last week that had furlough been extended then we would be in lockdown now).... been talk on staying within your boundary also, but Jason Leach was saying that unless mass testing can be done right across the country, this would not be feasible. 

A strange news day today. I only had one eye on it but it seems to be (as summed up in BBC website) "Nicola Sturgeon 'not proposing return to full lockdown'"

In other news, Sturgeon not proposing to build a bridge to Ireland, and Sturgeon not proposing to reintroduce university tuition fees.

Saw some people objecting that "she's only trying to do it to make Scotland's health performance better than England's" which is maybe a back handed compliment?

[aaid]

6 minutes ago, exile said:

A strange news day today. I only had one eye on it but it seems to be (as summed up in BBC website) "Nicola Sturgeon 'not proposing return to full lockdown'"

 

I think that's because a lot of commentators had been speculating that there was a full lockdown imminent.

[King Of Paisley]

If NS isn't shutting down the economy (assuming that includes hospitality), not going back into lockdown, told not to stay at home then scratching my mapper as to what's in store tomorrow 

[phart]

On 10/6/2020 at 1:04 PM, phart said:

Last Tuesday was 123 folk in hospital; 16 in ICU. This Tuesday 262 with 25 in ICU.

Peak was 1520 with about 208 in ICU.

800 new infections 13.2% positive.

2 new deaths.

EDIT: so basically 3 doubles away from a worse situation in raw numbers. Although i think deaths will still be down due to an increase in best practices. I can see why folk are getting nervous around the numbers. Fuck knows what the best course is through it though.

319 people in hospital today. so increase of 57. was 137 a week ago.

28 in ICU so that's +3

1054 new cases with 13% positive rate on new cases.

[Orraloon]

I'm not sure any of the new restrictions are going to make much difference. The folk who are ignoring the current guidelines are just going to ignore the new ones. She could close down pubs, but I don't think there is a lot of evidence to suggest that pubs are currently a major contributor to the spread. If there isn't going to be tougher enforcement of the rules, she is just farting into the wind.

[Och Aye]

As much as new restrictions are a pain it has to be done now to get the stats down and not in the run up to the festive season which is crucial for the retail and hospitality industries survival. 

[Orraloon]

13 minutes ago, Och Aye said:

As much as new restrictions are a pain it has to be done now to get the stats down and not in the run up to the festive season which is crucial for the retail and hospitality industries survival. 

I agree that they have to do something but if most people are just ignoring the rules and there is very little attempt to enforce them, then I can't see what good so called "tighter" restrictions are going to do.

[TDYER63]

Ouch. This is not going to go down well. 

[phart]

I'm pretty fatalistic about it now. I haven't been out to eat, went to the gym, had a holiday, been inside a public place or anything like that since start of March. Been inside 1 persons home once back when it was at lowest point, and met friends outside multiple times. I go shopping once a week when it isn't busy. However i'm in a position to do all that no problem, it doesn't affect me financially and it isn't really affecting me mentally. So i'm not experiencing any hardship.

It's herding cats at this point, the Scottish Government doesn't have the range of powers needed to tackle this autonomously so we're beholden to a bunch of crony capitalists who've failed miserably at everyturn to mitigate this properly when you compare it relative to other countries.

What can you do? Not much.

Edited October 7, 2020 by phart

[phart]

paper released today about state of play in scotland

https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2020/10/coronavirus-covid-19-evidence-paper---october-2020/documents/coronavirus-covid-19-evidence-paper-october-2020/coronavirus-covid-19-evidence-paper-october-2020/govscot%3Adocument/Coronavirus%2BCOVID-19%29%2B-%2Bevidence%2Bpaper%2B-%2B7October%2B2020.pdf