Congratualtions Keir Starmer

[BillyStubbsTears]

A quiet think about whether MY attitude is justified? You're kidding yourself, Billy, not me.

No. I'm very serious.

No one is lifting your shirt here. Yet you are obsessively convinced that people are trying to deceive.

You REALLY need to reflect on that because it is a very corrosive attitude.

[wilts rover]

If you believe me, take my word for it. If you call me a liar, go check for yourself.

That's not quite how things work. If someone calls you a liar you need to prove otherwise. Or people will think...

Wilts, is Stanley Johnson's main home in London?

Dunno. He appears to give different answers to that question whenever asked. If you had a £12mill house in Camden would that be your main home? Or a farm on Dartmoor?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/uk/inside-boris-johnsons-huge-family-home-market-1125m/

Where was he when he broke lockdown rules again last week do you reckon?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/boris-johnson-stanley-coronavirus-worry-prime-minister-a4435661.html

[wilts rover]

BST, perhaps the opinion some people have of others "trying to bring down the government" could be because of the amount of blame the government gets compared to the lack of consideration of other factors that could at least to some extent defend the country's situation. That's my opinion anyway. For instance, why hasn't there been much emphasis on the fact that making international comparisons on Coronavirus deaths is difficult, and so therefore unreliable? Doesn't it, therefore, suggest that using those figures to make a league table quite unfair to any country deemed to have the most casualties, and quite shocking if it is used to show how bad in comparison YOUR OWN country is doing?

Seems like a political agenda to me.

You mean like the official charts the official government has been using in their press conferences?

From figures that are being kept and compiled worldwide by the Johns Hopkins University.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

But the British public should not be allowed to see because it makes the government response look bad - because it has been bad. Welcome to North Korea!

[wilts rover]

BST, my point is why aren't charts showing the UK in a less negative table position shown, if only to give some perspective? Like this one...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/

Actually the figures have been massaged down.

The true figure is more like this graph here as produced by the leftie rag - The Financial Times:

https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1259894747663122437

[BillyStubbsTears]

BST, my point is why aren't charts showing the UK in a less negative table position shown, if only to give some perspective? Like this one...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/

Actually the figures have been massaged down.

The true figure is more like this graph here as produced by the leftie rag - The Financial Times:

https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1259894747663122437

They haven't been massaged down. They are just numbers produced by different approaches. It doesn't help the tone of the discussion to say things like that.

[Bentley Bullet]

A quiet think about whether MY attitude is justified? You're kidding yourself, Billy, not me.

No. I'm very serious.

No one is lifting your shirt here. Yet you are obsessively convinced that people are trying to deceive.

You REALLY need to reflect on that because it is a very corrosive attitude.

I honestly think you are trying to kid yourself.

[Bentley Bullet]

If you believe me, take my word for it. If you call me a liar, go check for yourself.

That's not quite how things work. If someone calls you a liar you need to prove otherwise. Or people will think...

Wilts, is Stanley Johnson's main home in London?

Dunno. He appears to give different answers to that question whenever asked. If you had a £12mill house in Camden would that be your main home? Or a farm on Dartmoor?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/uk/inside-boris-johnsons-huge-family-home-market-1125m/

Where was he when he broke lockdown rules again last week do you reckon?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/boris-johnson-stanley-coronavirus-worry-prime-minister-a4435661.html

What do you mean dunno? You seemed to know when you said it was in London the other week.

[BillyStubbsTears]

A quiet think about whether MY attitude is justified? You're kidding yourself, Billy, not me.

No. I'm very serious.

No one is lifting your shirt here. Yet you are obsessively convinced that people are trying to deceive.

You REALLY need to reflect on that because it is a very corrosive attitude.

I honestly think you are trying to kid yourself.

Big deep breath.

Go on then. What part of the exchange on this specific theme do you take exception to today? Specifically, where is anyone trying to deceive you in how the data is being presented? Do you accept the shortcomings of the presentation that you put forward as a preferred one?

[drfchound]

BB.

It's very simple.

Some people are "meh" when it is pointed out that we have something like 60,000 deaths, a figure that looks to be the worst in Europe and is FAR worse than some European countries, despite us having had the benefit of starting late and seeing which way the wind was blowing. Those people get cross when other people question whether some of our Govt's policies might be responsible for that.

Other people are rather upset that we seem to have managed this so relatively badly, and would like the country to ask why so that lessons can be learned. Because we are a long, long way from the end, and if the same people make the same mistakes again, we will have a damn sight higher total number of deaths before we get out of this.

You, apparently, are happy that this situation is acceptable. There is no other conclusion to be drawn from your contributions in here.

As I've said before, YOU would have been criticising those who brought down Chamberlain after the Norway fiasco, because it's unpatriotic to ask critical questions of a Govt in a national emergency. You would have hated Churchill in early 1940. You would have questioned his patriotism and claimed he had ulterior motives.

Because your intolerance of the criticism is not based in whether the criticism is accurate. It is based on the fact that criticism is happening at all. And you want to shut down discussion through ad hominems, not through addressing the issues.

BST, I know I shouldn’t but I have to ask.......why are you saying we have 60,000 deaths (in the UK I assume) when the official numbers are much lower.

[Bentley Bullet]

A quiet think about whether MY attitude is justified? You're kidding yourself, Billy, not me.

No. I'm very serious.

No one is lifting your shirt here. Yet you are obsessively convinced that people are trying to deceive.

You REALLY need to reflect on that because it is a very corrosive attitude.

I honestly think you are trying to kid yourself.

Big deep breath.

Go on then. What part of the exchange on this specific theme do you take exception to today? Specifically, where is anyone trying to deceive you in how the data is being presented? Do you accept the shortcomings of the presentation that you put forward as a preferred one?

Sigh. There's no fear of you deceiving me. My fear is you deceiving others. Do you accept the shortcomings in your data, of which there is no consideration of population size, no consideration of density of population, and no consideration of country size in the figures?

[wilts rover]

If you believe me, take my word for it. If you call me a liar, go check for yourself.

That's not quite how things work. If someone calls you a liar you need to prove otherwise. Or people will think...

Wilts, is Stanley Johnson's main home in London?

Dunno. He appears to give different answers to that question whenever asked. If you had a £12mill house in Camden would that be your main home? Or a farm on Dartmoor?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/uk/inside-boris-johnsons-huge-family-home-market-1125m/

Where was he when he broke lockdown rules again last week do you reckon?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/boris-johnson-stanley-coronavirus-worry-prime-minister-a4435661.html

What do you mean dunno? You seemed to know when you said it was in London the other week.

And as I said the other week. How do you know it isn't?

(the farm is on Exmoor btw, No wonder I always get lost when I am out that way)

[Bentley Bullet]

That's not quite how things work. If someone calls you a liar you need to prove otherwise. Or people will think...

[IDM]

Asking someone to evidence their claim isn’t calling them a liar.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB.

It's very simple.

Some people are "meh" when it is pointed out that we have something like 60,000 deaths, a figure that looks to be the worst in Europe and is FAR worse than some European countries, despite us having had the benefit of starting late and seeing which way the wind was blowing. Those people get cross when other people question whether some of our Govt's policies might be responsible for that.

Other people are rather upset that we seem to have managed this so relatively badly, and would like the country to ask why so that lessons can be learned. Because we are a long, long way from the end, and if the same people make the same mistakes again, we will have a damn sight higher total number of deaths before we get out of this.

You, apparently, are happy that this situation is acceptable. There is no other conclusion to be drawn from your contributions in here.

As I've said before, YOU would have been criticising those who brought down Chamberlain after the Norway fiasco, because it's unpatriotic to ask critical questions of a Govt in a national emergency. You would have hated Churchill in early 1940. You would have questioned his patriotism and claimed he had ulterior motives.

Because your intolerance of the criticism is not based in whether the criticism is accurate. It is based on the fact that criticism is happening at all. And you want to shut down discussion through ad hominems, not through addressing the issues.

BST, I know I shouldn’t but I have to ask.......why are you saying we have 60,000 deaths (in the UK I assume) when the official numbers are much lower.

Hound.

It's because ALL the official data sets are several days behind the time. And the Official Govt figures only include those deaths where someone had already tested positive for CV-19. So the figures you see presented every day are doubly underestimating the true death toll as of today.

It is generally accepted that a better measure is total excess deaths over and above what you'd normally accept at this time of year. The ONS publish those figures every week, but they are about 10-12 days behind (because it's a hell of a job to collate them accurately).

Chris Giles of the FT has a model which uses various data sources to try to predict where we are in terms on numbers on this day.

Specifically, he uses the ONS data on total excess deaths and calibrates his model against that. But because the ONS data is several days old, Giles uses various other data sources to try to predict from that 10-12 days old data to where we are today. It's a prediction rather than a fact, but he's been very close to date.. And he updates his model every time new ONS data comes out. So it gets better over time.

At the moment, the ONS data released today says that as of the start of this month, there had been 46,000 excess deaths. That's actually a bit higher than Giles's model which was predicting yesterday that the ONS data released today would have said about 44,000 for the start of the month. He's not generally been out by much, but when he has, it's always been because the actual figures are HIGHER than his prediction. Which suggests that he is being cautious i his predictions. As it currently stands, projecting through from the start of the month to today, Giles is predicting we are at about 58,000 deaths as of today.

[BillyStubbsTears]

A quiet think about whether MY attitude is justified? You're kidding yourself, Billy, not me.

No. I'm very serious.

No one is lifting your shirt here. Yet you are obsessively convinced that people are trying to deceive.

You REALLY need to reflect on that because it is a very corrosive attitude.

I honestly think you are trying to kid yourself.

Big deep breath.

Go on then. What part of the exchange on this specific theme do you take exception to today? Specifically, where is anyone trying to deceive you in how the data is being presented? Do you accept the shortcomings of the presentation that you put forward as a preferred one?

Sigh. There's no fear of you deceiving me. My fear is you deceiving others. Do you accept the shortcomings in your data, of which there is no consideration of population size, no consideration of density of population, and no consideration of country size in the figures?

Do you know how many times I have posted thoughts on everyone of those issues? Either get some respect and join in these discussions seriously or just belt up will you?

But I know you'll do neither. As I keep saying, you have zero interest in dealing with content. All you want to do is provoke arguments. And then you get arsey when people snap.

Utterly bizarre behaviour for a grown man. It's like dealing with a stroppy 13 year old.

[Bentley Bullet]

BST, you asked me if I accepted the shortcomings of the presentation that I put forward as a preferred one? I do accept there are shortcomings in it. For instance, it doesn't provide figures regarding the density of populations and the size of the countries in the chart. But in my amateur opinion, the deaths per 100,000 population statistics is a fairer account of the death rates than simply death numbers.

[BillyStubbsTears]

So you totally ignore the really big picture and focus on a detail to pick at.

But go on. I'm a f**king idiot but I'll humour you again.

1) The figures you posted DID allow for country size. They ARE deaths per 100k. None of that changes in any way the criticisms of that dataset that I gave and which you have studiously ignored.

2 There is no correlation whatsoever between deaths per capita and population density.

Sweden (population density 24/sq.km) has a pretty much exactly the same death rate (32-33 per 100,000) as the Netherlands with 20 times the population density.

Japan has a higher population density than the UK. But we have 47 deaths per 100,000. They have 0.5.

Germany has only a slightly lower population density than us (233 - 259 per sq.km). But they have one fifth the deaths per capita that we have.

Like I say, I really don't know what you think you're trying to establish here. This has all been gone over times many in this very thread. I'm assuming you've not bothered reading that because you assume that people are just deceitful.

Grow up, start acting responsibly and either contribute sensibly or belt up.

[Bentley Bullet]

No I'm not ignoring the big picture at all. I'm merely looking at a more detailed one that presents a different angle to the consequences of the virus in the UK.
The figure I posted did not allow for country size. For instance, France is more than twice the size of the UK but has fewer people. Eighty-three per cent of Britons live in densely populated towns or cities, which drives up the risk of the virus spreading.

What I'm trying to establish is the reason why the UK is top of the death league. That does not mean I am ignoring it.

Now, if you don't think showing a different account of things is contributing responsibly I suggest it's you who should grow up.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Well done BB

You're actually engaging with the subject matter.

And yes, it is clear that urban populations are more vulnerable than non urban ones.

Precisely what I was saying to you 5 weeks ago.

  https://www.drfc-vsc.co.uk/index.php?topic=275849.msg959043#msg959043

And the fact is that there aren't such big differences between western European countries in terms of urban population percentages.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_countries_by_percentage_of_urban_population

Certainly not enough to explain differences in death rates between UK and Italy and Sweden Vs Norway, Germany and Denmark.

[Bentley Bullet]

BST, don't patronise me. I'm always engaged in the subject matters, albeit much of the time in condemnation of the way you and others approach them.

Do you accept that the high UK death figures are, or could be as a result of 83% of Britons living in densely populated areas?

Of course, you're going to come back and blame it on our late entry into lockdown, but could most of the population living in close proximity to each other be a major factor?

[drfchound]

BB.

It's very simple.

Some people are "meh" when it is pointed out that we have something like 60,000 deaths, a figure that looks to be the worst in Europe and is FAR worse than some European countries, despite us having had the benefit of starting late and seeing which way the wind was blowing. Those people get cross when other people question whether some of our Govt's policies might be responsible for that.

Other people are rather upset that we seem to have managed this so relatively badly, and would like the country to ask why so that lessons can be learned. Because we are a long, long way from the end, and if the same people make the same mistakes again, we will have a damn sight higher total number of deaths before we get out of this.

You, apparently, are happy that this situation is acceptable. There is no other conclusion to be drawn from your contributions in here.

As I've said before, YOU would have been criticising those who brought down Chamberlain after the Norway fiasco, because it's unpatriotic to ask critical questions of a Govt in a national emergency. You would have hated Churchill in early 1940. You would have questioned his patriotism and claimed he had ulterior motives.

Because your intolerance of the criticism is not based in whether the criticism is accurate. It is based on the fact that criticism is happening at all. And you want to shut down discussion through ad hominems, not through addressing the issues.

BST, I know I shouldn’t but I have to ask.......why are you saying we have 60,000 deaths (in the UK I assume) when the official numbers are much lower.

Hound.

It's because ALL the official data sets are several days behind the time. And the Official Govt figures only include those deaths where someone had already tested positive for CV-19. So the figures you see presented every day are doubly underestimating the true death toll as of today.

It is generally accepted that a better measure is total excess deaths over and above what you'd normally accept at this time of year. The ONS publish those figures every week, but they are about 10-12 days behind (because it's a hell of a job to collate them accurately).

Chris Giles of the FT has a model which uses various data sources to try to predict where we are in terms on numbers on this day.

Specifically, he uses the ONS data on total excess deaths and calibrates his model against that. But because the ONS data is several days old, Giles uses various other data sources to try to predict from that 10-12 days old data to where we are today. It's a prediction rather than a fact, but he's been very close to date.. And he updates his model every time new ONS data comes out. So it gets better over time.

At the moment, the ONS data released today says that as of the start of this month, there had been 46,000 excess deaths. That's actually a bit higher than Giles's model which was predicting yesterday that the ONS data released today would have said about 44,000 for the start of the month. He's not generally been out by much, but when he has, it's always been because the actual figures are HIGHER than his prediction. Which suggests that he is being cautious i his predictions. As it currently stands, projecting through from the start of the month to today, Giles is predicting we are at about 58,000 deaths as of today.

BST, Thanks for explaining that.
I would imagine then that other countries must have to follow the same methods so with that in mind their death figures must be behind what the death totals actually are.

[wilts rover]

No I'm not ignoring the big picture at all. I'm merely looking at a more detailed one that presents a different angle to the consequences of the virus in the UK.
The figure I posted did not allow for country size. For instance, France is more than twice the size of the UK but has fewer people. Eighty-three per cent of Britons live in densely populated towns or cities, which drives up the risk of the virus spreading.

What I'm trying to establish is the reason why the UK is top of the death league. That does not mean I am ignoring it.

Now, if you don't think showing a different account of things is contributing responsibly I suggest it's you who should grow up.

The UK is the 32nd most densely populated country in the world. It has 226000 case with 32692 deaths (gov figures)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Vietnam is the 30th most densely populated country in the world. With a population a third larger than the UK and a 900 mile long land border with China. They have had a total of 226 cases and 0 deaths.

What evidence do you have that population density has any correlation to death rate from covid-19? As opposed to say - how quickly and effectively a government acted to keep its citizens safe?

[Bentley Bullet]

The evidence I go on is social distancing being of major importance. Those Vietnam figures shine a poor light on every other European country. Why single out The UK?

[wilts rover]

That's not quite how things work. If someone calls you a liar you need to prove otherwise. Or people will think...

He was calling from Somerset his second home.
https://www.entertainmentdaily.co.uk/news/stanley-johnson-criticised-coronavirus-boris/

What evidence do you have it isn't?

[wilts rover]

The evidence I go on is social distancing being of major importance. Those Vietnam figures shine a poor light on every other European country. Why single out The UK?

First you mention population density. Now you mention social distancing. This was the question.

What evidence do you have that population density has any correlation to death rate from covid-19? As opposed to say - how quickly and effectively a government acted to keep its citizens safe?

Shall we say - none?

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB.

I've said precisely that urban living  affects the virulence if the disease. But we are not that much different from other western European countries. So that cannot explain the differences.

In fact I said that in my very last post, so why the f**k are you asking that question.

As for why I'm "singling out" the UK, God help us.

I live here you bloody idiot. I want the best for us.

[Bentley Bullet]

That's not quite how things work. If someone calls you a liar you need to prove otherwise. Or people will think...

He was calling from Somerset his second home.
https://www.entertainmentdaily.co.uk/news/stanley-johnson-criticised-coronavirus-boris/

What evidence do you have it isn't?

Itching for an argument again are we! Stan Johnson's main home is in Somerset.https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/stanley-johnson-boris-pub-coronavirus-3958541

[Bentley Bullet]

The evidence I go on is social distancing being of major importance. Those Vietnam figures shine a poor light on every other European country. Why single out The UK?

First you mention population density. Now you mention social distancing. This was the question.

What evidence do you have that population density has any correlation to death rate from covid-19? As opposed to say - how quickly and effectively a government acted to keep its citizens safe?

Shall we say - none?

Itching for an argument again are we! Social distancing becomes more difficult in a more densely populated area.

[Bentley Bullet]

BB.

I've said precisely that urban living  affects the virulence if the disease. But we are not that much different from other western European countries. So that cannot explain the differences.

In fact I said that in my very last post, so why the f**k are you asking that question.

As for why I'm "singling out" the UK, God help us.

I live here you bloody idiot. I want the best for us.

BST, had a bit of a drink, have we? First of all, where did I say you was singling out the UK?  Just check that out and see who's the bloody idiot who got it wrong.

We might not be much different from other Western countries but there is a difference in the figures if you go by the number of deaths per % of people.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Haven't touched a drop BB although talking with you has a similar effect.

Forgive me. When you said "Why single out The UK?" I assumed you were meaning that people were singling out the UK.

Easy mistake to make.

Regarding presenting the numbers as a percentage of population, you seem to be doing your age old thing of going round in circles.

Find some self respect and reflect on how this discussion has gone and what it has covered.