UK General Election 2024

[Florestan]

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-a-discount-with-the-eat-out-to-help-out-scheme

Thanks. How did that killed a lot of people?

[Luke]

AKA Eat Out to Kill Granny

From wiki:

The 2021 academic study said "EOHO scheme may have contributed to indirect economic and public health costs that vastly outstrip its short-term economic benefits"

John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a member of the Sage committee of advisers during the pandemic described the scheme as "a spectacularly stupid idea and an obscene way to spend public money".At the COVID-19 enquiry, Edmunds stated that he was still angry about the scheme and that while it did not cause the second wave of COVID-19, it "encourage[d] people to take an epidemiological risk".


Abstract of the paper quoted above:

This paper documents that a large-scale government subsidy aimed at encouraging people to eat out in restaurants in the wake of the first 2020 COVID-19 wave in the United Kingdom has had a significant causal impact on new cases, accelerating the subsequent second COVID-19 wave. The scheme subsidised 50% off the cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks for an unlimited number of visits in participating restaurants on Mondays–Wednesdays from 3–31 August 2020. Areas with higher take-up saw both a notable increase in new COVID-19 infection clusters within a week of the scheme starting and a deceleration in infections within two weeks of the program ending. Similarly, areas that exhibited notable rainfall during the prime lunch and dinner hours on the days the scheme was active record lower infection incidence—a pattern that is also measurable in mobility data—and non-detectable on days during which the discount was not available or for rainfall outside the core lunch and dinner hours.

[Florestan]

Nice people

Politics is the last place where I would look for nice people.

[Florestan]

AKA Eat Out to Kill Granny

From wiki:

The 2021 academic study said "EOHO scheme may have contributed to indirect economic and public health costs that vastly outstrip its short-term economic benefits"

John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a member of the Sage committee of advisers during the pandemic described the scheme as "a spectacularly stupid idea and an obscene way to spend public money".At the COVID-19 enquiry, Edmunds stated that he was still angry about the scheme and that while it did not cause the second wave of COVID-19, it "encourage[d] people to take an epidemiological risk".

If I understand correctly, he says that because of EOHO people crowded the restaurants, thus increasing the risk of infection. Is that right?

[Luke]

Yes. My edited post has a bit more on it, above.

[Florestan]

Yes. My edited post has a bit more on it, above.

Read that part as well, thanks.

[Luke]

The study itself (just been reading it) concludes that the scheme increased detected cases by between 8%-17% over that summer, and likely many more undetected cases.

(Having said all that, I must admit that, against my better judgement and cajoled into it by my in-laws my wife and I went out a couple of times under the scheme.    The first time was outside, no one else around, but the second was in a crowded room and felt very wrong)

[Florestan]

What about good people?

I'm sure there are good people in the rank and file of any party but I'm not sure it applies to the top echelon.

[Mandryka]

Thanks. How did that killed a lot of people?

The thing to stress is that it wasn't just a lethal scheme in hindsight. Sunak never consulted his scientific advisors about it, presumably because he knew what they would say. His reasoning must have been: let the bodies pile high as long as the money keeps coming in.

[Karl Henning]

Plus, there's all the grift. Nice people don't do that.

On this side of the Pond, it is said that anyone who still gives their money to [a certain party] probably doesn't deserve to keep it.

[Florestan]

On this side of the Pond, it is said that anyone who still gives their money to [a certain party] probably doesn't deserve to keep it.

Except large donors, both individual and corporate, I presume.

[Iota]

Re Sunak, he was a merciful relief after Johnson and Truss, but as a politician he seems cloaked in mediocrity and rather nondescript. Starmer is hardly a swashbuckling inspiration either, but I'll be voting Labour as usual, the biggest reason for which is that I trust them more with NHS. There are other reasons, but the aching tragedy of allowing the NHS to be insidiously dismantled by the Tory right is too nightmare-ish to contemplate.

[Mandryka]

Re Sunak, he was a merciful relief after Johnson and Truss, but as a politician he seems cloaked in mediocrity and rather nondescript. Starmer is hardly a swashbuckling inspiration either, but I'll be voting Labour as usual, the biggest reason for which is that I trust them more with NHS. There are other reasons, but the aching tragedy of allowing the NHS to be insidiously dismantled by the Tory right is too nightmare-ish to contemplate.

|I'mnot convinced that the NHS will fare better with Starmer's Labour.

[Iota]

|I'mnot convinced that the NHS will fare better with Starmer's Labour.

Well it's all speculation of course, and if you asked me are there lots of blurred lines between Tory and Labour these days, I'd say yes. But if you asked me if I thought most Tory MP's really believe in the NHS, I think I'd say no, whereas if you asked me if most Labour MP's do, I'd certainly say yes.
I still think the sort of person that wants to become a Labour MP is going to be different from the sort that wants to become a Conservative MP. And ideologically the idea of subsidising the poor still requires something of a nosegay for the Tory party, where for Labour it doesn't at all.

[Florestan]

the idea of subsidising the poor still requires something of a nosegay for the Tory party, where for Labour it doesn't at all.

Poverty should be reduced rather than subsidized. Just saying.

[ritter]

Poverty should be reduced rather than subsidized. Just saying.

Or this other approach



Apologies to non-Spanish spreaders, but I cant find an English translation of Mafalda, and in many instances it would be untranslatable anyway.

Good day to you, Andrei.

[Florestan]

Or this other approach

 

[vandermolen]

Which is isn't great if waiting for hospital appointments etc.

Announced yesterday that Daniel Kretinsky aka "Czech Sphinx" has taken full control of Royal Mail. I am familiar with him as he has a 25% stake in West Ham United FC (similar stake in Sainsburys too).

Your point about hospital appointments (several of which I have coming up) is a very good one Lol.

[Iota]

Poverty should be reduced rather than subsidized. Just saying.

Yes, by investing in people's health for example .. But tbh your point is a non sequitur in this instance, as I was talking about poverty in relation to health, which tends to require immediate treatment and does not have time to wait around for long term poverty-reducing measures to kick in.
There are always going to be people not able to afford private medical costs the way things are and have been for hundreds of years, and one needs to deal with them in the here and now, and the NHS throughout its history has done just that in an inspiring and laudable way imo. I'm all for reducing poverty, but it doesn't solve the problems of the present.

[71 dB]

Or this other approach



Apologies to non-Spanish spreaders, but I cant find an English translation of Mafalda, and in many instances it would be untranslatable anyway.

I tried to produce an English translation anyway: