[Boiler]

Well, here's hoping a bullet finds Conings before it finds Van Ranst.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57358492

[AOB]

Well, here's hoping a bullet finds Conings before it finds Van Ranst.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57358492

It's a bit weird somebody who has chosen a vocation in which they are told what time to get up, go to bed, what to eat, drink, think etc to get a titty on over lockdown. It would be ironic if he spends the rest of his life behind bars.

[The All New KevS]

Firstly people are allowed in pubs, secondary why would that matter to "our boys", maybe not booing them when taking the knee would be a better way of showing support.

"Speaking after England's 7-0 defeat, Gareth Southgate refused to blame his players or the baffling refereeing decisions, saying that the fact the Flying Horse in Ipswich wasn't open and packed to the rafters was what really did for them."

[AOB]

Two of England's three Euro 2020 games/group games (I was tempted to delete the second option) are before 21st June anyway.

[Boiler]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57374241

Most recently, she tweeted that the urine and faeces of people who had received the jab needed to be separated from general sewage supplies while tests were done to measure its impact on non-vaccinated people through drinking water.

One of my denier colleagues raised a point the other day: have we been too quick to accept what gives us hope without questioning it, and mindful of what the cartoonist Scott Adams said of Trump, has the pro-vaccine movement simply got better persuaders? Why, in particular, has the US - a country that believes that science will cure global warming - got such an anti-science view about Covid?

[AOB]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57374241

Most recently, she tweeted that the urine and faeces of people who had received the jab needed to be separated from general sewage supplies while tests were done to measure its impact on non-vaccinated people through drinking water.

One of my denier colleagues raised a point the other day: have we been too quick to accept what gives us hope without questioning it, and mindful of what the cartoonist Scott Adams said of Trump, has the pro-vaccine movement simply got better persuaders? Why, in particular, has the US - a country that believes that science will cure global warming - got such an anti-science view about Covid?

I don't think it has. Those that have are outweighed, but make the news in the same way perpetrators of mass shootings give the impression middle aged American men have a tendency to shoot dead work colleagues. They're just the ones who make the news. The law abiding majority don't. I still think guns should be banned from public ownership in the US though, I hasten to add.

I'm curious as to how a functioning adult thinks it's possible to separate human waste as she advocates.

[Cyclist]

A *lot* of Americans don't believe climate change is happening.

On vaccines, I'd rather trust scientists who have some understanding of what they're doing over a seething mass of stupid who believe the world is only 6000 years old, was made in a week, and all of the truth you need is contained in one old mistranslated book.

[Boiler]

Quick aside - is your .sig from the film, @Cyclist ?

[Boiler]

I'm curious as to how a functioning adult thinks it's possible to separate human waste as she advocates.

A functioning adult with a doctorate at that.

[Samanfur]

DPhil in English Literature. As much as it should've given her reasonable critical thinking skills, she's not a scientist.

[Cyclist]

Quick aside - is your .sig from the film, @Cyclist ?

Yep. An excellent film. I love the way we'll still be using 1940s and 50s motor vehicles in 2150!

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57374241

Most recently, she tweeted that the urine and faeces of people who had received the jab needed to be separated from general sewage supplies while tests were done to measure its impact on non-vaccinated people through drinking water.

One of my denier colleagues raised a point the other day: have we been too quick to accept what gives us hope without questioning it, and mindful of what the cartoonist Scott Adams said of Trump, has the pro-vaccine movement simply got better persuaders? Why, in particular, has the US - a country that believes that science will cure global warming - got such an anti-science view about Covid?

I'd say that it's more that they see science as a tool - if convenient, very good. If not, to be ignored. So it's good for nuclear weapons, making cars go, or adding a dash of rigour and manly discipline to cooking or opinions; not so good for anything that limits your freedoms* or shows up your stupidity.

The anti-vaccine market in the USA is also very motivated by the idea of any perceived assault on personal liberty** to be un-American.

*Or grants freedoms to others, bringing them up to your scale.
**Particularly the freedom to make money.

[Boiler]

Quick aside - is your .sig from the film, @Cyclist ?

Yep. An excellent film. I love the way we'll still be using 1940s and 50s motor vehicles in 2150!

I thought they were stolen from a museum in the film? ISTR a valved McMichael radio making an appearance...

As for Watford: I drove there once, to collect a nice early '30s radiogram.

The Daleks can have the bloody place

[Boiler]

Elsewhere I pointed out to someone that she really should stop reading bollocks on Faecebook, because of this:

https://www.reuters.com/article/factche ... SL1N2MG0Z0

A viral Facebook post has repeated misinformation that people vaccinated against COVID-19 will suffer from overactive immune responses called cytokine storms. There is no evidence to support this.

As a result, she's scared now because she's finally had a jab after going through immense difficulties with anxiety over getting it. Telling her that a cytokine storm was more likely if she caught Covid whilst unvaccinated would only make matters worse. for her.

On a personal note, I have no idea - vaccination aside - why I'm not in a state of abject terror about the virus any more, merely cautious. Yet other things can have me in a frightening state.

[Nigredo]

DPhil in English Literature. As much as it should've given her reasonable critical thinking skills, she's not a scientist.

Piers Corbyn has proven that not even an MSc in astrophysics ensures one is a scientist

[Cyclist]

We're not out of the woods yet:

There are signs the UK is in the early stages of a third wave of coronavirus infections, a scientist advising the government has said.

Prof Ravi Gupta, from the University of Cambridge, said although new cases were "relatively low" the Indian variant had fuelled "exponential growth".

He said ending Covid restrictions in England on 21 June should be postponed.

Environment Secretary George Eustice said the government could not rule out a delay to the planned lockdown easing.

But business leaders have warned of the harmful impact of any change to the proposed dates.

On Monday, the UK reported more than 3,000 new Covid infections for a sixth day in a row.

Prior to this, the UK had not surpassed that number since 12 April.

No deaths within 28 days of a positive test were reported in England, Wales or Northern Ireland - but one death was reported in Scotland.


Prof Gupta told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the UK was already in a third wave of infections and at least three quarters of cases were the variant identified in India.

He said: "Of course the numbers of cases are relatively low at the moment - all waves start with low numbers of cases that grumble in the background and then become explosive, so the key here is that what we are seeing here is the signs of an early wave."

However, he said the number of people who had been vaccinated in the UK meant this wave would probably take longer to emerge than previous ones.

"There may be a false sense of security for some time, and that's our concern."'''


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57304515

[Andy McDandy]

Rumours in the papers of a 2 week delay. Cue more "July 4th, Independence Day" bollocks in 5, 4, 3, 2...

[Boiler]

Rumours in the papers of a 2 week delay. Cue more "July 4th, Independence Day" bollocks in 5, 4, 3, 2...

Dear God, no. Pointing out that Independence Day is a US thing from British rule won't go down too well, I assume. Maybe Johnson can get his pet Yank over to publicise it.

[Andy McDandy]

They did it last year.

One of the very heavy messages from the right over the last 40 years is that American is just naturally better. More glamorous, sexier, less stuffy, more whooping. We have Blake's Seven, they have Battlestar Galactica. We have the Children's Film Foundation, they have the A Team.

As a child of the eighties, this was painfully apparent, to the point that several kids TV dramas had the "token Yank" (more often than not played by Dexter Fletcher) who was the "cool guy". Then we met actual Americans and realised they had the same capacity for utter mediocrity as we did.

Nicely parodied in a Fry and Laurie sketch where they play advertising executives, and every ad they plan is "a guy in shades and a leather jacket, driving an old Cadillac down a desert road, listening to classic rock music", with the message being "this product is so good it'll make you an American".

[Nigredo]

And also the absorption of American hegemony (certainly at least during my short-ish life time) has probably left plenty of Brits more familiar with some aspects of Amerian culture than their own. 4th July is probably known the world over but take the magna carta (as an example), do they even what date it was signed? Do they even care?