Following on from An Influence which WAS Number One, 3 June, here are some of the nine songs I've chosen to follow on from The Beatles Please Please Me as the songs that most influenced my taste in music:
You Really Got Me - The Kinks, 1964
I first heard this when it got in the charts in early September 1964. We must have just been back at school because I recall hardly anyone else in the class liking it at first. They all seemed to think it was a raucous noise. To be fair, a record company executive had described the guitar sound, courtesy of Dave Davies's deliberately slashed speaker, as sounding like a "barking dog". The song is credited as the first to use deliberate distortion. Producer Shel Talmy recorded two guitar tracks, one distorted, the other not to make it sound louder. And he used an unprecedented 12 microphones to record the drums, so it would sound like they were "bouncing off the walls". A couple of weeks later it was number one and you can trace a direct line from here through to hard rock, punk, heavy metal, garage and grunge. It's not just me saying that but also Ray Davies's biographer Thomas M Kitts* who also quotes Mike Rutherford of Genesis saying "I heard
it when I was at school and it really blew me away. I’d never heard a riff like it. It’s still one of the greatest riffs
of all time”.
One of the greatest riffs of all time is also one of the simplest, based around two chords, F and G. While it then goes up a tone to G and A and then to C and D it's still basically a two chord riff (the joke a decade later being that you needed three chords to play punk rock). There a fascinating interchange between guitarists on the riff on a site called kindakinks.net**
Ray Davies was a songwriting genius but his vision of the song was jazz/bluesy and it was his brother Dave who created the guitar sound. He slashed his speaker cone with a razor blade in anger because his childhood sweetheart got pregnant. Their parents said they were too young to get married and split them up. Fortunately he decided not to slash his wrists.....
Reach Out I'll Be There - The Four Tops, 1966
Arguably there were two great worldwide sounds of the 60s - The Beatles and Motown. I could have picked a Supremes song but I think it was this song that made me realise there was a lot more to Motown than Diana Ross and Smokey, Marvin et al have been a constant source of pleasure ever since.
Purple Haze - The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1967
Dave Davies was a pioneer but Hendrix virtually re-imagined what the electric guitar could be and made guitarists all over the world see their instrument differently overnight. Hey Joe was a good song but this was the song that made me realise something special was going on.
See Emily Play - Pink Floyd, 1967
Pop music's vintage year, 1967 had lots of great songs: Waterloo Sunset, Paper Sun, San Francisco, All You Need Is Love and so on. But it was this particular song that paved the way for me to psychedelia and one of the other great musical loves of mine, progressive rock.
Five more to go in a post to follow.
* From Ray Davies - Not Like Anybody Else, Thomas M Kitts
** Chords for You Really Got Me, https://www.kindakinks.net/discography/showsong.php?chord=470#:~:text=However%2C%20just%20one%20correction.,Got%20Me%20are%3A%20F%20G%20F%20G.
See also How The Kinks Changed Rock Music With One Riff, https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kinks-you-really-got-me-anniversary/
Thursday, 18 June 2020
Wednesday, 17 June 2020
It's coming home!
Premier League football returns today. I'm sure the government is delighted to get something (anything!) going again, but especially football as it will undoubtedly deflect some attention away from both covid and what statues matter. We can't go to the matches - and I currently don't know if or when I will ever feel comfortable again pushing through the pre-match throng to get to the bar in the Winslow on Goodison Road:
But football is, in a way, coming home as many matches will be live in many homes around the country over the next few weeks. 33 of the 92 fixtures due to be played to complete the 2019/20 season are being shown free to air so football really is coming into our homes. Even Sky is making some games available free, including Sunday's Merseyside derby. But not tonight's first matches, Aston Villa hosting Sheffield United and Manchester City against Arsenal.
It will be interesting to see whether the games are as intense without fans present in the grounds and to hear how the, er, eloquent banter between players is dealt with - presumably with a lot of apologies from the commentator if sounds from within the ground can be clearly heard. I expect I will find any added fake crowd noise, which EA Sports has made available from its FIFA video game, highly irritating and much less entertaining than hearing the players bad mouth each other.
There is a huge amount at stake for the teams that could qualify for Europe but even more for the teams facing relegation. Ejection from the Premier League is financially catastrophic at the best of times but the vastly lower TV revenue in the Championship means the lack of a definite timescale for capacity crowds will make budgeting a huge headache this time.
We also learned something interesting from the shutdown. Suggestions of curtailing the season brought a firm response from the commercial rights holders, who made it clear that the battle to avoid relegation is every bit as important as the race for European places in the squeaky bum stage of the season. This cheered me up no end as I've always held that the TV money should be shared out equally by appearances. I know more people normally watch Man U than Sheff U but not many are interested in watching Man U play anyone unless it's a Premier League match. It takes 20 teams to form the league, not half a dozen and we now have hard commercial evidence for that.
The only unfortunate aspect about the return is that the race for the top and bottom places doesn't look much of a race and could be pretty well all over very quickly leaving a lot of dead rubbers.
Unusually, as readers will know they are the team I've loved to hate for nearly 50 years, I hope Manchester City do not lose tonight because that would mean that Liverpool cannot clinch the league by winning at Goodison on Sunday. Yes, of course that reveals the extent of my confidence in my own team. Liverpool have never won the Premier League title (oh, I so enjoyed writing that) but it will take a lot more than a Stevie G la slip this time and so it is of course only a matter of time before they deservedly clinch their first top flight title since 1990. But, please, not at Goodison Park.
What else will happen? After an unplanned spring break there is no form to go on. Even so, while other clubs are not, in that strange phrase, "mathematically safe" - after all, can you be "mathematically pregnant?" - it's hard to see any team outside the bottom six going down. Southampton are 7th bottom with 34 points and one would think 38 points or lower might be where the line is drawn. So Norwich, stranded at the bottom on 21 points, look sunk even without examination of their fixture list - which looks "interesting". After warming up against Southampton and Everton at home they face 3 key head to head matches in a row against other relegation rivals - Brighton, Watford and West Ham. Even if they pick up wins in those matches their last three games then include Chelsea and Man City away. So Norwich are surely gone. Even though striker Teemu Pukki - whose name always reminds me of Pukka pies even though my preferred half time snack is a chunky KitKat - has a goal in him, their goal difference is the worst in the division by some margin, so they don't score many and they let in a lot.
The other teams in the bottom three, Villa and Bournemouth, also have hard fixtures with more than three-quarters of their remaining games against teams in the top twelve. Watford, and West Ham, both on 27 points with Bournemouth, have more like half their games against top twelve teams. Watford and West Ham look to me to have a good chance of getting clear, though not quickly as their easier games don't come at the start.
The team that might make take a late dive for the trap door is Brighton, currently in 15th place and only two points ahead of the three way tie between Watford, West Ham and Bournemouth for the third relegation spot. Their next 6 matches are against Arsenal, Leicester, Man United, relegation rivals Norwich, Liverpool and Man City. So for me it looks like the relegated teams will be Norwich, Villa (ouch, after net transfer spending of £142 million in the last two windows, more than any club in Europe apart from Real Madrid!) and a south coast death battle between Bournemouth and Brighton.
Which clubs will do well from the break and low-atmosphere matches? Well several clubs have got players back to fitness. I imagine Spurs fans will be the most pleased at the prospect of having Kane and Son back, but Man United fans will be intrigued to watch perennial under-performer Paul Pogba alongside Bruno Fernandes. If, as many expect, the break and the empty stadia produce lower intensity matches Pogba, who seems to like the pace of Serie A rather than the Premier League, may well hit his stride. I also expect several other teams to do well in what is likely to be a training ground atmosphere lacking in edge. Man City and Arsenal always like to play "training ground" football and I would fancy Wolves and maybe Chelsea to also benefit. Jurgen Klopp has challenged Liverpool to produce their normal intensity - it will be difficult, but not actually that important. They might be better coasting to the League and saving some energy for next season. I think it will be more difficult for teams like Leicester and Sheffield United to reproduce their pre-lockdown form. I think we will learn quite a bit about the character of players in mid-table squads like Burnley's and Everton's where we will see if the coaches and leaders on the pitch can cajole performances out of the squad members who have rather enjoyed being at home with their families, some of whom are likely to be playing as if wearing their flip flops ready for their summer holidays.
As for European qualification, the big question is whether Sheffield United can do it. It would be a marvellous feat and the manager's achievements with the club are remarkable, though I think they are far from the easiest club to warm to. I doubt the break will help them in terms of momentum and, looking at it with cold hearted scepticism, Man United, Wolves, Tottenham and Arsenal are vying with the Blades for one European place, two if Man City's ban is upheld for next season at least. Five of the top 9 clubs, down to Arsenal and including Sheffield United, are in the F A Cup quarter finals which could therefore provide an extra European place to this group. That still makes the odds only around 50-50 without allowing for pedigree. For what it's worth I don't think Sheffield United will qualify for Europe. But then I said Leicester definitely wouldn't win the Premier League at the beginning of 2016.
As for the intensity of the programme rather than the matches, I hear Pep Guardiola is worried about injuries from the schedule of up to 13 games in 40 days, depending on their F A Cup results. The poor dears. With their big squads I suspect the real joker over the next month will be positive coronavirus tests in Premier League squads rather than injuries.
I don't normally watch much live football on tv if my own team isn't playing and I haven't missed live sport on tv as much as I would have expected. But I am quite excited about it coming back and more interested than usual in seeing teams other than my own. Mrs H is, of course, absolutely thrilled.
However, as we are ploughing our way through the Shetland crime series on catch up tv football probably won't be coming into our home much tonight and will have to wait for the weekend. Going to the match? Who knows but, for old times sake, here I am in the Winslow, aka the People's Pub, with my blue son, our faces filled with pre-match excitement before the last game we went to at Goodison in January:
I know the picture was taken before the match because I doubt we looked that thrilled at the end. Everton were coasting at 2-0 after an hour and had plenty more chances to seal the deal. Newcastle looked pretty sorry throughout until they scored in the 4th minute of time added on, then came alive and equalised with practically the last touch of the game in the 96th minute to make it 2-2.
It's been quite nice not having to get agitated about my team, VAR, etc. But this week the emotional roller coaster gets switched back on...... I'm sure football fans across the country will enjoy the ride and the government will welcome the distraction provided by the modern day opium of the people.
But football is, in a way, coming home as many matches will be live in many homes around the country over the next few weeks. 33 of the 92 fixtures due to be played to complete the 2019/20 season are being shown free to air so football really is coming into our homes. Even Sky is making some games available free, including Sunday's Merseyside derby. But not tonight's first matches, Aston Villa hosting Sheffield United and Manchester City against Arsenal.
It will be interesting to see whether the games are as intense without fans present in the grounds and to hear how the, er, eloquent banter between players is dealt with - presumably with a lot of apologies from the commentator if sounds from within the ground can be clearly heard. I expect I will find any added fake crowd noise, which EA Sports has made available from its FIFA video game, highly irritating and much less entertaining than hearing the players bad mouth each other.
There is a huge amount at stake for the teams that could qualify for Europe but even more for the teams facing relegation. Ejection from the Premier League is financially catastrophic at the best of times but the vastly lower TV revenue in the Championship means the lack of a definite timescale for capacity crowds will make budgeting a huge headache this time.
We also learned something interesting from the shutdown. Suggestions of curtailing the season brought a firm response from the commercial rights holders, who made it clear that the battle to avoid relegation is every bit as important as the race for European places in the squeaky bum stage of the season. This cheered me up no end as I've always held that the TV money should be shared out equally by appearances. I know more people normally watch Man U than Sheff U but not many are interested in watching Man U play anyone unless it's a Premier League match. It takes 20 teams to form the league, not half a dozen and we now have hard commercial evidence for that.
The only unfortunate aspect about the return is that the race for the top and bottom places doesn't look much of a race and could be pretty well all over very quickly leaving a lot of dead rubbers.
Unusually, as readers will know they are the team I've loved to hate for nearly 50 years, I hope Manchester City do not lose tonight because that would mean that Liverpool cannot clinch the league by winning at Goodison on Sunday. Yes, of course that reveals the extent of my confidence in my own team. Liverpool have never won the Premier League title (oh, I so enjoyed writing that) but it will take a lot more than a Stevie G la slip this time and so it is of course only a matter of time before they deservedly clinch their first top flight title since 1990. But, please, not at Goodison Park.
What else will happen? After an unplanned spring break there is no form to go on. Even so, while other clubs are not, in that strange phrase, "mathematically safe" - after all, can you be "mathematically pregnant?" - it's hard to see any team outside the bottom six going down. Southampton are 7th bottom with 34 points and one would think 38 points or lower might be where the line is drawn. So Norwich, stranded at the bottom on 21 points, look sunk even without examination of their fixture list - which looks "interesting". After warming up against Southampton and Everton at home they face 3 key head to head matches in a row against other relegation rivals - Brighton, Watford and West Ham. Even if they pick up wins in those matches their last three games then include Chelsea and Man City away. So Norwich are surely gone. Even though striker Teemu Pukki - whose name always reminds me of Pukka pies even though my preferred half time snack is a chunky KitKat - has a goal in him, their goal difference is the worst in the division by some margin, so they don't score many and they let in a lot.
The other teams in the bottom three, Villa and Bournemouth, also have hard fixtures with more than three-quarters of their remaining games against teams in the top twelve. Watford, and West Ham, both on 27 points with Bournemouth, have more like half their games against top twelve teams. Watford and West Ham look to me to have a good chance of getting clear, though not quickly as their easier games don't come at the start.
The team that might make take a late dive for the trap door is Brighton, currently in 15th place and only two points ahead of the three way tie between Watford, West Ham and Bournemouth for the third relegation spot. Their next 6 matches are against Arsenal, Leicester, Man United, relegation rivals Norwich, Liverpool and Man City. So for me it looks like the relegated teams will be Norwich, Villa (ouch, after net transfer spending of £142 million in the last two windows, more than any club in Europe apart from Real Madrid!) and a south coast death battle between Bournemouth and Brighton.
Which clubs will do well from the break and low-atmosphere matches? Well several clubs have got players back to fitness. I imagine Spurs fans will be the most pleased at the prospect of having Kane and Son back, but Man United fans will be intrigued to watch perennial under-performer Paul Pogba alongside Bruno Fernandes. If, as many expect, the break and the empty stadia produce lower intensity matches Pogba, who seems to like the pace of Serie A rather than the Premier League, may well hit his stride. I also expect several other teams to do well in what is likely to be a training ground atmosphere lacking in edge. Man City and Arsenal always like to play "training ground" football and I would fancy Wolves and maybe Chelsea to also benefit. Jurgen Klopp has challenged Liverpool to produce their normal intensity - it will be difficult, but not actually that important. They might be better coasting to the League and saving some energy for next season. I think it will be more difficult for teams like Leicester and Sheffield United to reproduce their pre-lockdown form. I think we will learn quite a bit about the character of players in mid-table squads like Burnley's and Everton's where we will see if the coaches and leaders on the pitch can cajole performances out of the squad members who have rather enjoyed being at home with their families, some of whom are likely to be playing as if wearing their flip flops ready for their summer holidays.
As for European qualification, the big question is whether Sheffield United can do it. It would be a marvellous feat and the manager's achievements with the club are remarkable, though I think they are far from the easiest club to warm to. I doubt the break will help them in terms of momentum and, looking at it with cold hearted scepticism, Man United, Wolves, Tottenham and Arsenal are vying with the Blades for one European place, two if Man City's ban is upheld for next season at least. Five of the top 9 clubs, down to Arsenal and including Sheffield United, are in the F A Cup quarter finals which could therefore provide an extra European place to this group. That still makes the odds only around 50-50 without allowing for pedigree. For what it's worth I don't think Sheffield United will qualify for Europe. But then I said Leicester definitely wouldn't win the Premier League at the beginning of 2016.
As for the intensity of the programme rather than the matches, I hear Pep Guardiola is worried about injuries from the schedule of up to 13 games in 40 days, depending on their F A Cup results. The poor dears. With their big squads I suspect the real joker over the next month will be positive coronavirus tests in Premier League squads rather than injuries.
I don't normally watch much live football on tv if my own team isn't playing and I haven't missed live sport on tv as much as I would have expected. But I am quite excited about it coming back and more interested than usual in seeing teams other than my own. Mrs H is, of course, absolutely thrilled.
However, as we are ploughing our way through the Shetland crime series on catch up tv football probably won't be coming into our home much tonight and will have to wait for the weekend. Going to the match? Who knows but, for old times sake, here I am in the Winslow, aka the People's Pub, with my blue son, our faces filled with pre-match excitement before the last game we went to at Goodison in January:
I know the picture was taken before the match because I doubt we looked that thrilled at the end. Everton were coasting at 2-0 after an hour and had plenty more chances to seal the deal. Newcastle looked pretty sorry throughout until they scored in the 4th minute of time added on, then came alive and equalised with practically the last touch of the game in the 96th minute to make it 2-2.
It's been quite nice not having to get agitated about my team, VAR, etc. But this week the emotional roller coaster gets switched back on...... I'm sure football fans across the country will enjoy the ride and the government will welcome the distraction provided by the modern day opium of the people.
Monday, 15 June 2020
Time to take some risk or get a two word answer
The government's strategy of using its scientists as human shields may be about to implode. We've heard ad nauseam that it has been either "following the science" or "guided by the science". Yet the "science" has not yet had the answer to more than a small proportion of the many relevant questions we are facing in tackling the novel coronavirus. So we are being guided by the judgement (or guesswork) of some admittedly knowledgeable scientists. Scientists whose advice continued to be based on a flu type rather than a SARS type virus in the early stages of the outbreak, which may have contributed to some of the missteps made by the decision makers.
While support for the government was very high at the start of lockdown it was always going to be the case that it would wane as we started to ease, with some feeling we are going to fast and others feeling we aren't moving fast enough. But the government has exacerbated this natural dichotomy by appearing indecisive at best.
A classic example of this is the face mask issue. It was understandable in the early stage of lockdown, when there were severe PPE shortages in health and care settings, that the government was not inclined to recommend face coverings. After all the "science" (and the WHO) always said there wasn't much, if any, benefit. For what it's worth I've always believed that bit of the science. But whether there is any benefit also depends on the particular situation you are in. More significantly it seemed to me that, to purloin a phrase from health and safety legislation, wearing a face covering is "reasonably practicable". Home made versions aren't costly and don't reduce the availablity of PPE for others. It's not particularly onerous and it might make the wearer feel safer though at the risk of giving false confidence. Or, since the main benefit is to others not the wearer, it might make wearers feel better about themselves. So it seemed to me that it was an easy thing for the government to say at the outset that the wearing face coverings, but not medical standard PPE, was a sensible precaution while warning that the benefit might be small.
While the science didn't change, some circumstantial evidence showed that countries with a mask-wearing culture were doing better in terms of controlling spread of the disease. That might just be noise on the line as there are a lot of confusing patterns when you look at what various countries are doing and their stats on numbers of cases. But another opportunity to advocate face coverings was missed. They didn't go there, resisted when Sadiq Khan called for face coverings on public transport and then finally back tracked and made them compulsory as part of the lockdown easing as two metre separation is impossible in that context.
For what it's worth, as I don't normally use public transport or have to work in an environment where 2 metre separation is problematic, I'm going with the original science and not wearing a face mask when I shop, having tried it early in lockdown and found it extremely uncomfortable. There is also a problem with spectacles misting though I've been told if you dunk them in the washing up bowl and leave them to dry the detergent film stops them from misting. But from a political point of view the face mask issue has made the government look confused and indecisive. Playing catch up with Khan after about a month was embarrassing.
There was a lot of criticism in the early stages of lockdown about the absence of an exit plan. At the time I pooh-poohed this criticism but I was wrong. If ministers (and their advisers) had thought some of these steps through at the outset then they might have taken some different decisions - on advising face coverings for starters - and they might have adopted different messaging from the outset. I've written before about people who could have worked opting to be furloughed. Having put the fear of God into most people and given many the financial opportunity to stay at home it isn't a surprise that some are reluctant to engage in the move back towards normality.
In the case of schools there is nothing the teaching unions like more than to defy a Tory government. As the risk to children has always been small and evidence from other countries seems to show that schools being open does not contribute significantly to the spread of the virus the teachers protestations about risk have always rung hollow. I could understand concerns about the welfare of older and BAME teachers but the blanket resistance to schools opening appears to me a blatantly politically driven tactic. Making things awkward for the government and increasing the depth and length of the recession is just too tempting.
But here also the government has failed to look more than a single step ahead. It was always obvious that there would be a capacity problem for schools as well as public transport with a 2 metre separation distance. Charging ahead and trying to get schools open more or less normally before reviewing that restriction was always doomed. And why is it only now that we are hearing plans for summer schools to allow some catch up? Mrs H will confirm I've been advocating this since March, taking advantage of the (normally) better weather to have more outdoor classes - and more healthy sport - to split class sizes and provide separation.
Indeed I'm a bit surprised both Gavin Williamson and Grant Schapps (responsible for education and transport respectively) didn't press back on the 2 metre rule saying there was no point in planning any resumption with it in place. But these ministers aren't part of the inner "quad". Williamson's days may be numbered because, as the Sunday Times reports one government insider saying, once you've realised he looks and sounds a bit like Frank Spencer there's no unseeing that image. But the quad is overly influenced by the fact that half of them have been ill with coronavirus and, in Johnson's case certainly, he looked under the weather for a long time after he resumed his duties and he may well not be fully recovered yet.
For education I feel we have already reached the stage where it might be better to aim for a full restart in January 2021, with all year groups starting where they were in January 2020. I accept a cohort of youngsters going to further education aged 19 rather than 18 might present a problem for the universities but I'm sure solutions can be found. The intervening time can be used to broaden educational opportunities for a group that otherwise will have only had reduced levels of teaching. One of my concerns is that a generation of engineers and doctors may be pushed through the system with gaps in their knowledge just to try to keep this and the next academic year moving on the normal timescale.
While we start to collect the worst economic performance data anyone alive has ever seen there is some evidence that
At the start I said the government's strategy of using its scientific advisers as human shields could be about to implode. Sources told the Sunday Times there was concern that Prof Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance could quit: their posture was "much more aggressive" and they were on "resignation watch" (I thought this was normally called "suicide watch" in political circles, but they are scientists not ministers). The flash point may well be the 2m rule.
So where does the 2m "rule" come from? It dates from basic scientific research in the 1930s which showed that droplets released by coughs and sneezes mostly land within 1-2m. Sure, aerosol could get blown further (but also presumably diluted) and MIT recently showed specks could go up to 6m using high speed cameras. But, surprise, surprise the chance of exposure and therefore catching the virus diminishes with distance much as per the classic inverse square rule. Time of exposure, and so the total "load" of virus one gets exposed to, also comes into it. A recent study published in The Lancet concluded that keeping at least 1 metre away from others was "the best way" to limit the chance of infection, saying that the risk is 13% within that distance but 3% beyond it. Sir Patrick Vallance has said spending 6 seconds at a distance of 1m presents the same risk as a minute at 2m implying that the extra metre reduces risk by a factor of 30. But the key question for that statement is what the risk is at 1m: Vallance says it goes from "small" to "very small" at 2m. He also said what you do with this information is a risk-based call rather than "science" per se.
This presents the government with a big problem. The population has never been comfortable with processing information on risks over which they feel they have little control, so-called "involuntary risk". In contrast, where the risk is one they choose to take because of a perceived benefit, whether it be speeding, jaywalking, or going for a bungee jump, they will accept remarkable levels of risk voluntarily. So we had the spectacle of people asking how come schools were dangerous and closed on Sunday 31 May but safe and due to re-open on Monday 1 June: what had changed? (This was a question that might well have been asked by families sitting on a crowded beach that weekend). The question was easily answerable but the government has proved incapable of explaining to people that they weren't completely safe staying at home and they aren't now at huge risk going to work or school. This is a problem the government could have anticipated and could have been preparing the ground for, with information on the benefits and risks of lockdown and easing. The stat that kids are more likely to die by being hit by lightning than going back to school gives some perspective.
I'm not normally one for blaming advisers but it is possible Dominic Cummings is partly to blame as the architect of the mind-numbingly simple messages which worked well in getting people to stay home but have now served their purpose.
But what if Matthew Parris is right* and the scientists are "wrong"? They can look at the wreckage of the economy at some stage in the future and say "it was only prudent to be cautious". Whitty acknowledges the health detriments of lockdown but I can see no evidence that he actually factors that into his advice, let alone the broader impacts.
The government will have to move on this at some point. They might as well make a virtue of doing it sooner rather than later. But there will be a political crisis if the key scientists resign. However, there are plenty of reputable scientists who think it is high time to relax the lockdown and plenty who think it far too early. This is a risk based judgement - a political call where the costs, risks and benefits to the whole country have to be weighed, based on gut feel as much as science.
So the government might need to urgently convene a broader group of scientists if it thinks its current appointees are, ironically, too "conservative". Or it can say that, on this point, it is going to follow the WHO advice - which is 1 metre, pointing to the many countries that have adopted this distance some of which, admittedly, have better track and trace or other measures in place to limit the risk.
The government also urgently needs to communicate a more nuanced message. Two word soundbites won't do the trick. Or they'll be told two words at the next election.
* Matthew Parris, The Times, 12 June
While support for the government was very high at the start of lockdown it was always going to be the case that it would wane as we started to ease, with some feeling we are going to fast and others feeling we aren't moving fast enough. But the government has exacerbated this natural dichotomy by appearing indecisive at best.
A classic example of this is the face mask issue. It was understandable in the early stage of lockdown, when there were severe PPE shortages in health and care settings, that the government was not inclined to recommend face coverings. After all the "science" (and the WHO) always said there wasn't much, if any, benefit. For what it's worth I've always believed that bit of the science. But whether there is any benefit also depends on the particular situation you are in. More significantly it seemed to me that, to purloin a phrase from health and safety legislation, wearing a face covering is "reasonably practicable". Home made versions aren't costly and don't reduce the availablity of PPE for others. It's not particularly onerous and it might make the wearer feel safer though at the risk of giving false confidence. Or, since the main benefit is to others not the wearer, it might make wearers feel better about themselves. So it seemed to me that it was an easy thing for the government to say at the outset that the wearing face coverings, but not medical standard PPE, was a sensible precaution while warning that the benefit might be small.
While the science didn't change, some circumstantial evidence showed that countries with a mask-wearing culture were doing better in terms of controlling spread of the disease. That might just be noise on the line as there are a lot of confusing patterns when you look at what various countries are doing and their stats on numbers of cases. But another opportunity to advocate face coverings was missed. They didn't go there, resisted when Sadiq Khan called for face coverings on public transport and then finally back tracked and made them compulsory as part of the lockdown easing as two metre separation is impossible in that context.
For what it's worth, as I don't normally use public transport or have to work in an environment where 2 metre separation is problematic, I'm going with the original science and not wearing a face mask when I shop, having tried it early in lockdown and found it extremely uncomfortable. There is also a problem with spectacles misting though I've been told if you dunk them in the washing up bowl and leave them to dry the detergent film stops them from misting. But from a political point of view the face mask issue has made the government look confused and indecisive. Playing catch up with Khan after about a month was embarrassing.
There was a lot of criticism in the early stages of lockdown about the absence of an exit plan. At the time I pooh-poohed this criticism but I was wrong. If ministers (and their advisers) had thought some of these steps through at the outset then they might have taken some different decisions - on advising face coverings for starters - and they might have adopted different messaging from the outset. I've written before about people who could have worked opting to be furloughed. Having put the fear of God into most people and given many the financial opportunity to stay at home it isn't a surprise that some are reluctant to engage in the move back towards normality.
In the case of schools there is nothing the teaching unions like more than to defy a Tory government. As the risk to children has always been small and evidence from other countries seems to show that schools being open does not contribute significantly to the spread of the virus the teachers protestations about risk have always rung hollow. I could understand concerns about the welfare of older and BAME teachers but the blanket resistance to schools opening appears to me a blatantly politically driven tactic. Making things awkward for the government and increasing the depth and length of the recession is just too tempting.
But here also the government has failed to look more than a single step ahead. It was always obvious that there would be a capacity problem for schools as well as public transport with a 2 metre separation distance. Charging ahead and trying to get schools open more or less normally before reviewing that restriction was always doomed. And why is it only now that we are hearing plans for summer schools to allow some catch up? Mrs H will confirm I've been advocating this since March, taking advantage of the (normally) better weather to have more outdoor classes - and more healthy sport - to split class sizes and provide separation.
Indeed I'm a bit surprised both Gavin Williamson and Grant Schapps (responsible for education and transport respectively) didn't press back on the 2 metre rule saying there was no point in planning any resumption with it in place. But these ministers aren't part of the inner "quad". Williamson's days may be numbered because, as the Sunday Times reports one government insider saying, once you've realised he looks and sounds a bit like Frank Spencer there's no unseeing that image. But the quad is overly influenced by the fact that half of them have been ill with coronavirus and, in Johnson's case certainly, he looked under the weather for a long time after he resumed his duties and he may well not be fully recovered yet.
For education I feel we have already reached the stage where it might be better to aim for a full restart in January 2021, with all year groups starting where they were in January 2020. I accept a cohort of youngsters going to further education aged 19 rather than 18 might present a problem for the universities but I'm sure solutions can be found. The intervening time can be used to broaden educational opportunities for a group that otherwise will have only had reduced levels of teaching. One of my concerns is that a generation of engineers and doctors may be pushed through the system with gaps in their knowledge just to try to keep this and the next academic year moving on the normal timescale.
While we start to collect the worst economic performance data anyone alive has ever seen there is some evidence that
- the number of new cases in the UK was already declining before we went into lockdown*
- covid-19 might have been much more widespread at a much earlier stage than previously thought with anecdotal stories of people with covid type symptoms in January and February now being joined by some positive antibody tests for some of those people
- if there is any substance in those points then taken together they mean that Prof Ferguson's model (the mathematical one which predicted a quarter to a half a million fatalities in the UK, not his floozy) quite possibly had completely the wrong input data. As his model could give flaky answers anyway (see University Challenged - it's all in his head 8 April and It's On His Head 24 May) Ferguson's estimates for covid may well have been as reliable as his 2009 estimate of 65,000 UK deaths from swine flu. (The actual number turned out to be 457 and this isn't his only "form" in apocalyptic predictions). I've not seen this garbage in - garbage out (or in this case gospel out) argument anywhere else but its seems more than possible to me.
All told we probably locked down too late, then understandably went too hard without much thought on how to exit. Now we are struggling to make coherent changes to ease the lockdown and save the economy, leaving people confused and confidence evaporating.
At the start I said the government's strategy of using its scientific advisers as human shields could be about to implode. Sources told the Sunday Times there was concern that Prof Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance could quit: their posture was "much more aggressive" and they were on "resignation watch" (I thought this was normally called "suicide watch" in political circles, but they are scientists not ministers). The flash point may well be the 2m rule.
So where does the 2m "rule" come from? It dates from basic scientific research in the 1930s which showed that droplets released by coughs and sneezes mostly land within 1-2m. Sure, aerosol could get blown further (but also presumably diluted) and MIT recently showed specks could go up to 6m using high speed cameras. But, surprise, surprise the chance of exposure and therefore catching the virus diminishes with distance much as per the classic inverse square rule. Time of exposure, and so the total "load" of virus one gets exposed to, also comes into it. A recent study published in The Lancet concluded that keeping at least 1 metre away from others was "the best way" to limit the chance of infection, saying that the risk is 13% within that distance but 3% beyond it. Sir Patrick Vallance has said spending 6 seconds at a distance of 1m presents the same risk as a minute at 2m implying that the extra metre reduces risk by a factor of 30. But the key question for that statement is what the risk is at 1m: Vallance says it goes from "small" to "very small" at 2m. He also said what you do with this information is a risk-based call rather than "science" per se.
This presents the government with a big problem. The population has never been comfortable with processing information on risks over which they feel they have little control, so-called "involuntary risk". In contrast, where the risk is one they choose to take because of a perceived benefit, whether it be speeding, jaywalking, or going for a bungee jump, they will accept remarkable levels of risk voluntarily. So we had the spectacle of people asking how come schools were dangerous and closed on Sunday 31 May but safe and due to re-open on Monday 1 June: what had changed? (This was a question that might well have been asked by families sitting on a crowded beach that weekend). The question was easily answerable but the government has proved incapable of explaining to people that they weren't completely safe staying at home and they aren't now at huge risk going to work or school. This is a problem the government could have anticipated and could have been preparing the ground for, with information on the benefits and risks of lockdown and easing. The stat that kids are more likely to die by being hit by lightning than going back to school gives some perspective.
I'm not normally one for blaming advisers but it is possible Dominic Cummings is partly to blame as the architect of the mind-numbingly simple messages which worked well in getting people to stay home but have now served their purpose.
But what if Matthew Parris is right* and the scientists are "wrong"? They can look at the wreckage of the economy at some stage in the future and say "it was only prudent to be cautious". Whitty acknowledges the health detriments of lockdown but I can see no evidence that he actually factors that into his advice, let alone the broader impacts.
The government will have to move on this at some point. They might as well make a virtue of doing it sooner rather than later. But there will be a political crisis if the key scientists resign. However, there are plenty of reputable scientists who think it is high time to relax the lockdown and plenty who think it far too early. This is a risk based judgement - a political call where the costs, risks and benefits to the whole country have to be weighed, based on gut feel as much as science.
So the government might need to urgently convene a broader group of scientists if it thinks its current appointees are, ironically, too "conservative". Or it can say that, on this point, it is going to follow the WHO advice - which is 1 metre, pointing to the many countries that have adopted this distance some of which, admittedly, have better track and trace or other measures in place to limit the risk.
The government also urgently needs to communicate a more nuanced message. Two word soundbites won't do the trick. Or they'll be told two words at the next election.
* Matthew Parris, The Times, 12 June
Wednesday, 3 June 2020
An influence which WAS a number one
Early in the great lockdown I got invited to do one of those things on Facebook where you pick 10 things, one a day, and nominate someone else each day to do the same. A kind of pyramid selling chain letter. This one was to nominate the 10 albums that had most influenced my taste in music. I don't normally go for these things but I carefully chose and posted 10 album covers being sure, as a pedant, that these were not my favourite all time albums, which it seemed to me was how most people read it. No, you CAN'T have three David Bowie albums in your list: the first one influenced you to get the other two, d'oh!!!!
I won't show the ten album covers here, partly because it struck me after picking The Beatles Abbey Road - and then backtracking and selecting an eleventh choice instead - that the question is a false premise for those of us over about 65. That is because it wasn't albums that influenced us the most, at least not initially, simply because we couldn't afford to buy them, at least in any number, until our musical tastes had started to form. Albums, or LPs as they were known (for "long players", kids) were beyond the scope of pocket money and were rare birthday or Christmas presents for a few kids in the class.
Back in the 60s we relied on either a record player - usually a multi-changer made by Dansette like this:
No, kids, piracy wasn't invented with cassettes, or Napster....
The advantage of the tape recorder was that you could blag loads of music for your pocket money. But the disadvantage was how laborious it was to locate particular songs on the tapes, so you tended to move with the times very quickly and listen mainly to the run of songs you had recorded most recently. The advantage of buying vinyl, which we all eventually migrated to, was being able to stack up records on the autochanger and build a once off version of what has now become known as a "playlist".
Anyway this all meant a fair number of the 10 pieces of music that have influenced me the most weren't albums but were singles. So which was the first?
Well, I have an enduring love of pop music. Hit songs from the past tap in to a deep vein of nostalgia in most people and I'm no different. I do draw a line somewhere (Eurovision for a start) but I can even enjoy disposable dross like Sugar Sugar (surely you remember The Archies) or the Bay City Rollers, albeit in small doses.
My love of pop music was initiated by my dad introducing me to it on the BBC Light Programme - the forerunner of Radio 2 - which had a few hours a day of music interspersed with humour (The Goons and Tony Hancock) and drama (well, if you call The Archers drama). As the music slots included things like the Billy Cotton Band show, chart music was very limited. It was restricted by needle time limits which the BBC were party to along with the industry, who managed the copyrights, and the Musicians Union. The Beeb was of course a monopoly apart from stuff beamed in from outside the country - Radio Luxembourg and then the pirates. By 1967 the limit was still only five hours a day until changes were wrung by the influence of the pirates. So there wasn't very much pop but there was Alan Freeman's wonderful Pick Of The Pops, in which he played new releases and records bubbling under the chart in the first half hour then the top 10 in the second half hour. The programme got more time and we basked in the luxury of hearing the top 20. I must have barely missed a single Sunday afternoon show from 1962 when my dad pointed me at the programme until I went off to Uni in 1970.
So my love for pop music is deeply ingrained. And therefore not influenced by any one song, though I'm still very fond of many early 60s pop songs by the likes of Brian Hyland (Sealed with a Kiss) and Del Shannon (several including Runaway and Keep Searchin'). While songs like these got me into pop music their influence was just that, which isn't specific enough for the question. The first song to give me a jolt from the opening bar and change the way I saw music was The Beatles' Please Please Me.
On all official listings the Beatles third single, From Me To You, is listed as their first number one, with Please Please Me shown as having reached number 2. Indeed it's not on the compilation album "1", which Wikipedia says features "virtually every number one single the band achieved in the United Kingdom and the United States from 1962 to 1970". Well, this truly awakens the pedant in me. It either does or doesn't include all those number ones, it can't feature "virtually" all of them. And there weren't any number ones in 1962, though Love Me Do is included as it reached number one in the States when they caught up with the mania in 1964. It also includes Yesterday, The Long and Winding Road and Eight Days a Week which weren't UK singles of the time, or at all. So they count more than Please Please Me, the Beatles' breakthrough single? I don't think so.
In the States Please Please Me only reached number 3 in 1964, with I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You above it that week. This was around the time the Beatles had all the top 5 records in the US chart, unheard of until streaming individual album tracks enabled things like Ed Sheeran having 14 of the top 15 in the UK not so long ago.
And yet... I distinctly remember Please Please Me being played as the number one on Alan Freeman's Pick Of The Pops in late February 1963. On and off since 1973 Radio 1 and then Radio 2 shows have run down charts from selected years in the past. The format was started by the infamous Jimmy Saville, with his Double (then Triple) Top Ten show from 1973 to 1987. We listened to it a lot (and yes, we thought he was pervy). Meanwhile Freeman started doing something similar on Capital Radio before Radio 1 brought the format back with Freeman as host and calling it Pick Of The Pops for old times' sake. On any of those shows, if they happened to choose February 1962 they had Please Please Me at number 2. Now these things matter to a pedant like me and I've often muttered to Mrs H about it. Please Please Me was a number one. So have I got a case of false memory? Well, actually I haven't.
I quote from a super blog site* which orders all the Beatles group and solo releases (and other stuff besides) in handy lists with links. For Please Please Me they say:
So, a common debate ... was this release The Beatles first number 1 !?
"Please Please Me" was the second official release by The Beatles since their signing to E.M.I. It was released on 11th January 1963 after having been recorded in 18 takes on 26th November 1962. To discuss the chart career of The Beatles follow-up to "Love Me Do" and it's omission from the greatest hits CD '1' we need to properly understand the evolution of the U.K. music charts.
The first U.K. chart of record sales was produced 14th November 1952 by the New Musical Express (N.M.E.) which is therefore the longest established chart. In the N.M.E. chart of 1963 "Please Please Me" did indeed reach the top spot on 22nd February where it remained for 2 weeks.
But prior to this, from 10th March 1960, the music industry started to compile it's own chart in "Record Retailer". This was a trade publication as used by record shops and the music industry which later became "Music Week". For a couple of years from it's inception this chart was not the most widely accepted chart and was largely overlooked by the record buying public who, on the whole, still relied on the ever-present N.M.E. listing.
But the "Record Retailer" chart is historically the official chart of the music industry as it was the fullest chart and no less accurate than any other. In this chart The Beatles reached number 2 on the 2nd March 1963 but were kept off of number 1 by Frank Ifield's third consecutive chart-topper "Wayward Wind".
The retrospective (my added word) choice of this chart as the one used for "official" purposes is slightly unfortunate, because in the hit parades of NME, Melody Maker and Disc "Please Please Me" was number 1, and therefore the Beatles FIRST number one.
That will do for me. Alan Freeman played it as number one and everybody apart from some dudes in the trade thought it was number 1. Having it at number 2 for all history is like a cup final goal being disallowed by VAR years after the game has finished.
Please Please Me gave me a jolt of excitement I hadn't felt from music until then, previously I'd liked "nice songs". Suddenly I appreciated that this was happening now and thought "what's coming next?" It would be a few years before I felt that tingle you get in the back of your neck when a piece of music really connects - maybe you have to be adolescent before you get that - but the journey had started. The Beatles were a big part of that journey as the story unfolded through the 60s. While I liked most of their stuff I rarely listen to the early hits now. Indeed, I can remember me and the girl who would become Mrs H walking out of a student hall of residence disco when they went into a prolonged session of by then very old (nearly a decade!) Beatles hits. We must have had something better to do....
But I still think Please Please Me is one of the best early Beatles songs, full of energy and enthusiasm and a big influence on me, even if I only occasionally listen to the later albums now. Abbey Road is my favourite and, for me, the Long Medley on side 2 of Abbey Road is one of the greatest achievements in pop/rock music. So Abbey Road was one of my choices in the Facebook 10 albums question, until I realised that it couldn't have influenced me, I already loved the Beatles music.
So what other songs influenced me in the days before albums were relevant? I have a draft list.....
* Home page for super index of The Beatles recordings: http://www.jpgr.co.uk/i_sound.html?
From which you can go to Beatles singles by date and the individual records, like Please Please Me: http://www.jpgr.co.uk/r4983.html. If you want to know the evolution of what was printed on every label, with pictures, this is the site for you.....
I won't show the ten album covers here, partly because it struck me after picking The Beatles Abbey Road - and then backtracking and selecting an eleventh choice instead - that the question is a false premise for those of us over about 65. That is because it wasn't albums that influenced us the most, at least not initially, simply because we couldn't afford to buy them, at least in any number, until our musical tastes had started to form. Albums, or LPs as they were known (for "long players", kids) were beyond the scope of pocket money and were rare birthday or Christmas presents for a few kids in the class.
Back in the 60s we relied on either a record player - usually a multi-changer made by Dansette like this:
Or a reel to reel tape recorder for blagging music off the radio, like this:
No, kids, piracy wasn't invented with cassettes, or Napster....
The advantage of the tape recorder was that you could blag loads of music for your pocket money. But the disadvantage was how laborious it was to locate particular songs on the tapes, so you tended to move with the times very quickly and listen mainly to the run of songs you had recorded most recently. The advantage of buying vinyl, which we all eventually migrated to, was being able to stack up records on the autochanger and build a once off version of what has now become known as a "playlist".
Anyway this all meant a fair number of the 10 pieces of music that have influenced me the most weren't albums but were singles. So which was the first?
Well, I have an enduring love of pop music. Hit songs from the past tap in to a deep vein of nostalgia in most people and I'm no different. I do draw a line somewhere (Eurovision for a start) but I can even enjoy disposable dross like Sugar Sugar (surely you remember The Archies) or the Bay City Rollers, albeit in small doses.
My love of pop music was initiated by my dad introducing me to it on the BBC Light Programme - the forerunner of Radio 2 - which had a few hours a day of music interspersed with humour (The Goons and Tony Hancock) and drama (well, if you call The Archers drama). As the music slots included things like the Billy Cotton Band show, chart music was very limited. It was restricted by needle time limits which the BBC were party to along with the industry, who managed the copyrights, and the Musicians Union. The Beeb was of course a monopoly apart from stuff beamed in from outside the country - Radio Luxembourg and then the pirates. By 1967 the limit was still only five hours a day until changes were wrung by the influence of the pirates. So there wasn't very much pop but there was Alan Freeman's wonderful Pick Of The Pops, in which he played new releases and records bubbling under the chart in the first half hour then the top 10 in the second half hour. The programme got more time and we basked in the luxury of hearing the top 20. I must have barely missed a single Sunday afternoon show from 1962 when my dad pointed me at the programme until I went off to Uni in 1970.
So my love for pop music is deeply ingrained. And therefore not influenced by any one song, though I'm still very fond of many early 60s pop songs by the likes of Brian Hyland (Sealed with a Kiss) and Del Shannon (several including Runaway and Keep Searchin'). While songs like these got me into pop music their influence was just that, which isn't specific enough for the question. The first song to give me a jolt from the opening bar and change the way I saw music was The Beatles' Please Please Me.
On all official listings the Beatles third single, From Me To You, is listed as their first number one, with Please Please Me shown as having reached number 2. Indeed it's not on the compilation album "1", which Wikipedia says features "virtually every number one single the band achieved in the United Kingdom and the United States from 1962 to 1970". Well, this truly awakens the pedant in me. It either does or doesn't include all those number ones, it can't feature "virtually" all of them. And there weren't any number ones in 1962, though Love Me Do is included as it reached number one in the States when they caught up with the mania in 1964. It also includes Yesterday, The Long and Winding Road and Eight Days a Week which weren't UK singles of the time, or at all. So they count more than Please Please Me, the Beatles' breakthrough single? I don't think so.
In the States Please Please Me only reached number 3 in 1964, with I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You above it that week. This was around the time the Beatles had all the top 5 records in the US chart, unheard of until streaming individual album tracks enabled things like Ed Sheeran having 14 of the top 15 in the UK not so long ago.
And yet... I distinctly remember Please Please Me being played as the number one on Alan Freeman's Pick Of The Pops in late February 1963. On and off since 1973 Radio 1 and then Radio 2 shows have run down charts from selected years in the past. The format was started by the infamous Jimmy Saville, with his Double (then Triple) Top Ten show from 1973 to 1987. We listened to it a lot (and yes, we thought he was pervy). Meanwhile Freeman started doing something similar on Capital Radio before Radio 1 brought the format back with Freeman as host and calling it Pick Of The Pops for old times' sake. On any of those shows, if they happened to choose February 1962 they had Please Please Me at number 2. Now these things matter to a pedant like me and I've often muttered to Mrs H about it. Please Please Me was a number one. So have I got a case of false memory? Well, actually I haven't.
I quote from a super blog site* which orders all the Beatles group and solo releases (and other stuff besides) in handy lists with links. For Please Please Me they say:
So, a common debate ... was this release The Beatles first number 1 !?
"Please Please Me" was the second official release by The Beatles since their signing to E.M.I. It was released on 11th January 1963 after having been recorded in 18 takes on 26th November 1962. To discuss the chart career of The Beatles follow-up to "Love Me Do" and it's omission from the greatest hits CD '1' we need to properly understand the evolution of the U.K. music charts.
The first U.K. chart of record sales was produced 14th November 1952 by the New Musical Express (N.M.E.) which is therefore the longest established chart. In the N.M.E. chart of 1963 "Please Please Me" did indeed reach the top spot on 22nd February where it remained for 2 weeks.
But prior to this, from 10th March 1960, the music industry started to compile it's own chart in "Record Retailer". This was a trade publication as used by record shops and the music industry which later became "Music Week". For a couple of years from it's inception this chart was not the most widely accepted chart and was largely overlooked by the record buying public who, on the whole, still relied on the ever-present N.M.E. listing.
But the "Record Retailer" chart is historically the official chart of the music industry as it was the fullest chart and no less accurate than any other. In this chart The Beatles reached number 2 on the 2nd March 1963 but were kept off of number 1 by Frank Ifield's third consecutive chart-topper "Wayward Wind".
The retrospective (my added word) choice of this chart as the one used for "official" purposes is slightly unfortunate, because in the hit parades of NME, Melody Maker and Disc "Please Please Me" was number 1, and therefore the Beatles FIRST number one.
That will do for me. Alan Freeman played it as number one and everybody apart from some dudes in the trade thought it was number 1. Having it at number 2 for all history is like a cup final goal being disallowed by VAR years after the game has finished.
Please Please Me gave me a jolt of excitement I hadn't felt from music until then, previously I'd liked "nice songs". Suddenly I appreciated that this was happening now and thought "what's coming next?" It would be a few years before I felt that tingle you get in the back of your neck when a piece of music really connects - maybe you have to be adolescent before you get that - but the journey had started. The Beatles were a big part of that journey as the story unfolded through the 60s. While I liked most of their stuff I rarely listen to the early hits now. Indeed, I can remember me and the girl who would become Mrs H walking out of a student hall of residence disco when they went into a prolonged session of by then very old (nearly a decade!) Beatles hits. We must have had something better to do....
But I still think Please Please Me is one of the best early Beatles songs, full of energy and enthusiasm and a big influence on me, even if I only occasionally listen to the later albums now. Abbey Road is my favourite and, for me, the Long Medley on side 2 of Abbey Road is one of the greatest achievements in pop/rock music. So Abbey Road was one of my choices in the Facebook 10 albums question, until I realised that it couldn't have influenced me, I already loved the Beatles music.
So what other songs influenced me in the days before albums were relevant? I have a draft list.....
* Home page for super index of The Beatles recordings: http://www.jpgr.co.uk/i_sound.html?
From which you can go to Beatles singles by date and the individual records, like Please Please Me: http://www.jpgr.co.uk/r4983.html. If you want to know the evolution of what was printed on every label, with pictures, this is the site for you.....
Tuesday, 26 May 2020
Cummings and goings - pot calls kettle Blackford - UPDATED
Ian Blackford, the lead SNP MP at Westminster tweeted this a few hours ago:
He has said lots of other stuff including "I'm afraid this sums it up. One rule for them and another for the rest of us".
The same Ian Blackford tweeted this on 26 March, 2 days after the lockdown started:
London to Skye is over 600 miles. It is assumed he took at least one flight and a ferry journey. Some punters on twitter are saying he had covid symptoms but I don't know where they get that from. But it seems clear his journey had even less justification than that of Dominic Cummings. And Skye has subsequently proved a covid hotspot with a large number of care home deaths.
This has been all over twitter for many hours now but Blackford hasn't responded and, for some reason, the mainstream media is not (yet) running the story.
Lots of people (who mainly look like Tory supporters) have asked Blackford directly on twitter to respond. I saw a suggestion that he just blocks each of them to stop them putting more on his twitter feed.
Now as it happens I am in the minority of people who think Cummings's journey was possibly justified. I wouldn't have wanted to leave my children when young with unfamiliar child minders. It's easy to say he must have had options but nobody knows that. We had relatives we would not have considered it suitable to leave our children with when they were small. I have seen a suggestion that Cumming's son is autistic. I don't know if it's true, but it would seem material. For what it's worth, on what I've heard, I probably would have done the same as him (not sure about the eyesight test drive, though it is logical). However the explanation doesn't really pass what at work we used to call the 'red face' test. Clearly most people think it broke the lockdown rules and/or guidance (whether or not it actually did) and the episode is doing enormous political damage to the government. 71% of people think he should go. (Actually I wondered if that meant he had become more popular....).
Incidentally in Wales it would be clear that he had broken the guidance to "stay local".
Of course, any way you look at it, the government's guidance will now be undermined. Though I have yet to see any of the many points on the lines of "we've sacrificed this or that" which are remotely comparable. No, it's not a justification for going to the beach. Or to see your relatives, which he didn't do. Someone who said they had been scrubbing carrots and decontaminating packaging asked "for what when he was spreading the disease?" But as far as we know he remained isolated with his immediate family and they were presumably scrubbing carrots for their own safety. Yes some NHS and care workers have lived apart from family because of the risk. They made their own assessment of what was best in their situation. As did Cummings, whether you think it was a good or reasonable assessment or not.
Whether or not Cummings goes for me this has revealed three things.
1. Johnson seems desperate to keep him at almost any cost. I can't help linking it to something I saw reported a week or two ago. The PM, going through the plan for the next stage of the covid battle, turned to Sir Mark Sedwill the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service. "Is it your job to implement this?" Sedwill replied "no prime minister, it's yours". Most PMs feel the civil service blocks them as much as assists them but this seemed to me to be pure "Yes, Minister" stuff. It's risible to me that the PM could be responsible for implementing almost anything. I'd have wanted to sack Sedwill on the spot, even if the appropriate answer perhaps should have been "why not set up a task force, prime minister?" (But that would have been too helpful). I can't help wondering if Johnson feels that Cummings is his only chance to get the civil service to do remotely what the government wants. It looks like he'll have to find another way.
2. Cummings has had an almost universally bad press over the years. "Career psychopath" was one famous comment from a "colleague". This episode has made him seem more human to me.
3. Blackford confirms hypocrisy knows no bounds in politics. Now he does happen to be perhaps the single current politician I love to hate the most (he's turned me from a confirmed unionist to an independence supporter for Scotland just to get him off my tv). But the media presumably don't want to dilute the attention from Cummings. If Cummings goes, Blackford will probably be next in the firing line, but it seems not before.
P.S. 27 May: I got this one wrong. Blackford was returning to his main home after Parliament stopped sitting. This was after the lockdown but presumably travelling back to your home was allowed - and nearly all MPs will have done it. Blackford just happened to have on of the longer journeys. I've tried to check the regulations but most explanations of them give the reasons you were allowed to leave home, not under what circumstances you can travel home. Still a bit odd though - "I travelled 600 miles because I was allowed, you did a 260 miles each way trip which wasn't" still sounds like trying to take political advantage. Anyway, I still don't like the man and I just wish he'd stay permanently on Skye.....
.
is trashing public confidence and doing lasting damage to public health messaging by undermining trust in the rules. With every public utterance they dig the hole deeper and deeper. The situation is intolerable- the PM must sack Cummings and he must do it now.
is trashing public confidence and doing lasting damage to public health messaging by undermining trust in the rules. With every public utterance they dig the hole deeper and deeper. The situation is intolerable- the PM must sack Cummings and he must do it now.
He has said lots of other stuff including "I'm afraid this sums it up. One rule for them and another for the rest of us".
The same Ian Blackford tweeted this on 26 March, 2 days after the lockdown started:
London to Skye is over 600 miles. It is assumed he took at least one flight and a ferry journey. Some punters on twitter are saying he had covid symptoms but I don't know where they get that from. But it seems clear his journey had even less justification than that of Dominic Cummings. And Skye has subsequently proved a covid hotspot with a large number of care home deaths.
This has been all over twitter for many hours now but Blackford hasn't responded and, for some reason, the mainstream media is not (yet) running the story.
Lots of people (who mainly look like Tory supporters) have asked Blackford directly on twitter to respond. I saw a suggestion that he just blocks each of them to stop them putting more on his twitter feed.
Now as it happens I am in the minority of people who think Cummings's journey was possibly justified. I wouldn't have wanted to leave my children when young with unfamiliar child minders. It's easy to say he must have had options but nobody knows that. We had relatives we would not have considered it suitable to leave our children with when they were small. I have seen a suggestion that Cumming's son is autistic. I don't know if it's true, but it would seem material. For what it's worth, on what I've heard, I probably would have done the same as him (not sure about the eyesight test drive, though it is logical). However the explanation doesn't really pass what at work we used to call the 'red face' test. Clearly most people think it broke the lockdown rules and/or guidance (whether or not it actually did) and the episode is doing enormous political damage to the government. 71% of people think he should go. (Actually I wondered if that meant he had become more popular....).
Incidentally in Wales it would be clear that he had broken the guidance to "stay local".
Of course, any way you look at it, the government's guidance will now be undermined. Though I have yet to see any of the many points on the lines of "we've sacrificed this or that" which are remotely comparable. No, it's not a justification for going to the beach. Or to see your relatives, which he didn't do. Someone who said they had been scrubbing carrots and decontaminating packaging asked "for what when he was spreading the disease?" But as far as we know he remained isolated with his immediate family and they were presumably scrubbing carrots for their own safety. Yes some NHS and care workers have lived apart from family because of the risk. They made their own assessment of what was best in their situation. As did Cummings, whether you think it was a good or reasonable assessment or not.
Whether or not Cummings goes for me this has revealed three things.
1. Johnson seems desperate to keep him at almost any cost. I can't help linking it to something I saw reported a week or two ago. The PM, going through the plan for the next stage of the covid battle, turned to Sir Mark Sedwill the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service. "Is it your job to implement this?" Sedwill replied "no prime minister, it's yours". Most PMs feel the civil service blocks them as much as assists them but this seemed to me to be pure "Yes, Minister" stuff. It's risible to me that the PM could be responsible for implementing almost anything. I'd have wanted to sack Sedwill on the spot, even if the appropriate answer perhaps should have been "why not set up a task force, prime minister?" (But that would have been too helpful). I can't help wondering if Johnson feels that Cummings is his only chance to get the civil service to do remotely what the government wants. It looks like he'll have to find another way.
2. Cummings has had an almost universally bad press over the years. "Career psychopath" was one famous comment from a "colleague". This episode has made him seem more human to me.
3. Blackford confirms hypocrisy knows no bounds in politics. Now he does happen to be perhaps the single current politician I love to hate the most (he's turned me from a confirmed unionist to an independence supporter for Scotland just to get him off my tv). But the media presumably don't want to dilute the attention from Cummings. If Cummings goes, Blackford will probably be next in the firing line, but it seems not before.
P.S. 27 May: I got this one wrong. Blackford was returning to his main home after Parliament stopped sitting. This was after the lockdown but presumably travelling back to your home was allowed - and nearly all MPs will have done it. Blackford just happened to have on of the longer journeys. I've tried to check the regulations but most explanations of them give the reasons you were allowed to leave home, not under what circumstances you can travel home. Still a bit odd though - "I travelled 600 miles because I was allowed, you did a 260 miles each way trip which wasn't" still sounds like trying to take political advantage. Anyway, I still don't like the man and I just wish he'd stay permanently on Skye.....
Monday, 25 May 2020
Changing the message
"Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives" worked well in terms of affecting the behaviour of the bulk of the population. But has it been too successful? It certainly seems to have put the fear of God into a lot of people. It has accentuated the public's notorious inability to understand and balance risks and benefits. And it isn't going to be easy to evolve, as shown by the reluctance of some teachers to get back to work, even though most of them and their charges are in very low risk groups. It's entirely possible that they will be at more risk travelling to work than once they get there. And of course, the risk to the teacher is being weighed against the benefit to the pupils.
Messages are difficult to change but easy to undermine as the Dominic Cummings saga shows, whatever the rights and wrongs what actually occurred.
All of this and much more is well summed up by Libby Purves in The Times today who says:
"Another week on the road to financial misery and social dissolution. Over half the nation freezes in cautious immobility while the rest carry us on their backs. As the tenth week of lockdown begins, ever more intense is the shame of cowering behind a thin red line of gallant weary workers who are poorer and face more danger.
On the safe side are the comfier pensioners and the still-earning professional classes — executives, lawyers, journalists, academics — working from home with a garden or park, shopping online, moaning humorously about haircuts. Out on the front line “key workers” keep us all going. Not only NHS and care staff but a host of others: police, binmen, security guards, bus drivers, shelf-stackers, shopworkers, warehouse and postal workers, ships’ crews, delivery drivers roaring along the motorways in HGVs or piloting battered vans from local pick-up centres so that Amazon and Etsy can serve our whimsies...
Most of those working hardest are lower paid.... It forcibly reminds us of widening social inequality irrespective of value.... as we boredly seek entertainment....
Saying that, personally, she tends towards Lord Sumption’s view on leaving things to individual common sense and judgment, she continues:
Messages are difficult to change but easy to undermine as the Dominic Cummings saga shows, whatever the rights and wrongs what actually occurred.
All of this and much more is well summed up by Libby Purves in The Times today who says:
"Another week on the road to financial misery and social dissolution. Over half the nation freezes in cautious immobility while the rest carry us on their backs. As the tenth week of lockdown begins, ever more intense is the shame of cowering behind a thin red line of gallant weary workers who are poorer and face more danger.
On the safe side are the comfier pensioners and the still-earning professional classes — executives, lawyers, journalists, academics — working from home with a garden or park, shopping online, moaning humorously about haircuts. Out on the front line “key workers” keep us all going. Not only NHS and care staff but a host of others: police, binmen, security guards, bus drivers, shelf-stackers, shopworkers, warehouse and postal workers, ships’ crews, delivery drivers roaring along the motorways in HGVs or piloting battered vans from local pick-up centres so that Amazon and Etsy can serve our whimsies...
Most of those working hardest are lower paid.... It forcibly reminds us of widening social inequality irrespective of value.... as we boredly seek entertainment....
..when
government advisers shrug off their own warnings and break the rules, the fury
is national and dangerous. It doesn’t help that, like most of the rural
cottage-creepers (i.e second home owners) they probably did no actual harm.
They just weighed the risks, as Swedes were allowed to and we weren’t. But in a
democracy rules are made for all..... So the privileged owe respect to the
obedience of poorer citizens."
"At
first there was a logic in the lockdown, to protect an NHS that had, by world
standards, been left with far too few intensive care beds. It needed time to
reconfigure and build. But it has done that with astonishing energy and now
there are vacant beds, unused Nightingale hospitals, A&E departments open
and tentative moves towards routine surgery.
So, for several weeks now, government restrictions have been built
entirely around the mystical “R” number and political nervousness. It is,
admittedly, tricky. Leaders told us daily that every inessential step outdoors
would kill someone’s granny and make a tired nurse cry: an idea backed with
ghoulish, shroud-waving sentiment by, in particular, the BBC bedtime news. So
it will take nerve to ease up and say, “Nobody is ever entirely safe but keep
calm, keep distanced, wash your hands and carry on.”
One of the most useful risk comparisons I've seen during
lockdown is that the average risk from covid-19 roughly doubles an individual's
annual risk of death from all causes, whatever age the individual. This
wouldn't hold for people with particular vulnerability. The government now
needs to get that perspective across. The message that life isn't risk free is
completely obvious and yet very hard to communicate effectively. Purves has
made a pretty good stab at it. Shame Dominic Cummings is probably a bit
preoccupied to read it at the moment.
Lockdown is exposing some stark social divides. Libby Purves, The Times, 25 May
Sunday, 24 May 2020
It's on his head
I last wrote about Prof Neil Ferguson (the Imperial College modelling dude) back in April (see University Challenged - it's all in his head, 8 April) when I expressed shock that the computer model he used to influence government policy is entirely undocumented. Since then Ferguson has resigned from the the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) after, as some newspapers put it, he "broke his own lockdown rules" having a lady friend round to his house. (Perhaps I should have ended that sentence before "at his house"). His work prompted the lockdown by modelling options rather than setting the rules but never mind as said lady friend, Antonia Staats, added to the amusement value by telling the Guardian that she did not believe their actions to be hypocritical as she regards their households "to be one". The Staats have two children and an open marriage. According to the Sun at the time of her second visit to Ferguson she suspected her husband had symptoms of coronavirus.
Rather belatedly a number of journalists including Vanessa Chalmers and Matthew Syed have joined me in questioning Ferguson's flaky software. They both report a flurry of criticism against Ferguson's modelling which predicted up to half a million deaths if the UK didn't change track. (Actually I think he predicted half a million in a "do nothing" scenario and a quarter of a million if the government maintained the mid March social distancing protocols without further measures).
What's happened since I inferred that Ferguson's code was crap because he couldn't be arsed to document it properly is that he's published it and others have now decided that it is indeed crap, or at least "unreliable". The program has been called a 13 year old "buggy mess". A group at Edinburgh Uni found that the model could give different outputs when fed the same inputs and gave different results when run on different computers, both of which are absolutely standard checks for software integrity. One source said that this quality of work would have got Ferguson sacked in private sector, which was broadly what I was implying in my article of 8 April. (Yes, of course I am also implying that it's taken the country's journalists only 4 to 6 weeks to catch up with me).
But wow. What if Ferguson's modelling really isn't fit for purpose? While the UK government had signposted that it might move to stricter restrictions, and potentially lockdown, there was an almost audible crashing of gears when Ferguson's body count forecasts were released. What if they were overstated? I wouldn't put it past Ferguson to have tweaked his inputs to get the biggest numbers, as he does seem to be an attention seeker. So was lockdown an over-reaction? After all some countries have never gone for a full lockdown, notably Sweden and South Korea.
The costs are already coming through - borrowing at the highest monthly figure on record in April and all those deferred operations and treatments storing up health impacts for starters. And not just at hospitals - a relative of ours can't get an essential B12 injection because the GP's aren't providing the service and is having to pay for less effective prescription for an oral alternative. Multiply such things by millions of people and thee will be plenty of non-covid health effects from the lockdown. Plus jobs destroyed and schools closed. And all that mental health anguish for families unable to see each other and, of course, the fans of Liverpool FC.......
With regard to schooling, I'm sure the children from middle class backgrounds will soon catch up and might even get some benefit from the change in routine. But the reason the government is desperate to get year 1 and year 6 children back is obvious: so many studies show that children from deprived backgrounds suffer disproportionately. The start they get off to matters (hence the need to get year 1 back) and the start 11 year olds make at high school on completion of their final primary year 6 can also have a huge effect. I think the government already has its eyes on the next election and is worried that the current school closure, along with the inevitable economic hardship for vulnerable communities, could be damaging enough to increase inequality by 2024, fatally impacting its levelling up agenda and aspirations to keep the red wall flat. It may be self interest but who says these things don't matter to Tory governments? They obviously do to this one.
Matthew Syed makes the interesting assertion that the government and its advisers have been guilty of groupthink and attention blindness. He has ploughed through the minutes from scientific advisory groups which were rather belatedly published recently. He notes the documents are impressive and most folk would conclude are underpinned by cutting edge science. It's only when you look at it in the round that you notice something he calls "curious". They are all specifically about flu.
There is the "scientific pandemic influenza group on modelling". The key planning document that has informed government policy for a decade is called the "UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Survey". The review of whether to close educational facilities is called the "Impact of School Closures on on an Influenza Pandemic". There is a paper called "Impact of Mass Gatherings on an Influenza Pandemic".
OK, they couldn't look in detail at coronavirus in advance, SARS-COV-2 didn't exist - though you might think they would have at least considered whether the experience with SARS and MERS - and indeed ebola - was relevant and different. There is a reason this is important, indeed critical: flu has long been considered impractical to contain, it spreads too efficiently. But covid-19 can be contained: it has been in South Korea, for example, where there hasn't been a single day with deaths in double figures even though it has kept offices, restaurants and shops open.
The logic of the UK's "contain, delay, research, mitigate" strategy is based on flu. Syed suggests it was the mindset of flu, not experience emerging from Asia that led our Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty to assert on 12 March that containment was pointless. (Actually by then I suspect he was right, but not a couple of weeks earlier). Perhaps it was also why his deputy, Jenny Harries - admired in our household for her performances at the Downing Street briefings - said on the same day that "community testing was not appropriate". (Though maybe it was not appropriate because it was not feasible with the capacity then available, which I don't myself think is blameworthy though we might otherwise have started to push for more capacity sooner).
Syed thinks the government is not culpable for following the advice of its experts during this period. Ministers aren't modellers or health experts and can't be expected to second guess the scientists they have decided to trust. But if the scientific papers had been published sooner the blind spot might have been spotted. There was no downside to publishing earlier: the government was following the advice and and, as Jeremy Hunt has said, it's not as if transparency would have handed our enemy, the virus, some secret information it could use against us. If there was groupthink it was encouraged by the fact that SAGE is full of modellers and clinical academics but has no experts with an explicitly public health or infectious diseases background.
The Imperial College model was, of course, built for flu. And it is possible that not only the UK has been fighting the wrong war: the policies of the US, French and German governments were also influenced by Ferguson's work.
You might by now be thinking that I've got it in for Ferguson. Not particularly, but here comes the cheap shot. He's got form. His work has advised the actions of five prime ministers, on foot and mouth (2001), SARS (2003), swine flu (2011), MERS (2012) and ebola and zika (2014). In the foot and mouth outbreak nearly 6 million cattle, sheep and pigs were culled, partly because Ferguson's modelling had suggested animals on farms neighbouring an outbreak should be included even if there was no evidence of infection. The Times says that "experts later claimed the work was seriously flawed". In 2005 he said that up to 200 million people could be killed by bird flu. Now he did say "up to" but by 2009 the toll was 282. (I remember my company buying a huge job lot of tissues and hand sanitiser, see my post of 15 April). In 2009 a government estimate based on Ferguson's advice said that a "reasonable worst case scenario" was that swine flu would lead to 65,000 UK deaths. OK "worst case" but the total was actually 457.
Maybe Ferguson is like one of those doomsters who can say they correctly predicted the latest stock market crash, having predicted one every year for the last 20 years......
I don't know Ferguson's politics but as he is 1) an academic and 2) his floozy is a left wing campaigner I'll bet he reads the Guardian and not the Telegraph. Which is just as well as as the Telegraph ran a piece entitled "Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time", quoting a the boss of a software firm asking why the government failed to get a second opinion.
Advisers advise, ministers decide. But first the ministers have decided which advisers to appoint. I said on 8 April that I hoped they had chosen the right ones. I'm not convinced there is evidence that they have had "lucky generals" in this war.
I am not (yet) claiming that lockdown in the UK was unnecessary. After all, the loading on intensive care facilities was ramping up alarmingly until it mercifully peaked leaving some spare capacity, much of it created by repurposing NHS facilities in great haste. Indeed I suspect the news coverage from Italy was as important as Ferguson's suspiciously round numbers of a quarter and half a million. Which is why I suspect he frigged the input data, though by the sound of it he could have just re-run the model time after time with the same data until it randomly gave him the large enough numbers he was seeking. But I am wondering why the curve appears to be slowly flattening everywhere despite differences in policies between countries. David Smith noted a possible explanation given in a paper published by Prof David Miles and Oscar Dimdore-Miles. Yes, related, father and son. David is a professor of financial economics and was once a member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee. His son is an "Oxford scientist". I looked him up and he's a graduate physics student specialising in environmental science so I'm not sure how qualified this makes them to use a so-called SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered) disease spreading model, which they coupled with actual data on numbers of cases and presumably parameterisation (otherwise known as guesswork) on how many asymptomatic cases there might be.
I looked up the Miles duo's paper. It is pretty technical with lots of equations I might once have understood better than the words. It outlines a 'simple' method for estimating the spread of covid-19 in the absence of large scale random testing.They applied the model to the UK and other countries and found that, to get the results to match actual data on daily new cases of the virus, they needed to have high numbers of infected, asymptomatic people. The results were very sensitive to whether the transmission rate of the virus is different for symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, which is uncertain. Nevertheless they postulate that the infection may have spread far enough to mean that the trajectory of falling new cases could be maintained with some easing of restrictions. In other words there may have already been enough people infected for herd immunity to be a factor, which implies a very much higher number of people infected than most experts think.
Now I think that sounds most unlikely. And yet the virus seems to have peaked and be tailing off just about everywhere, independent of the specific policies adopted by individual governments (though I have seen that there has been an uptick in cases in Florida since policies were relaxed). But if that was the case it would also mean that the precise distancing and lockdown strategies didn't matter that much. So we could have stayed with something like the pre-lockdown social distancing exhortations, or gone for a shorter lockdown, with more people working. This would have avoided the restart issues we now have with the population's poor instinctive grasp of risk causing much concern. If so we've just caused enormous health, financial and emotional damage to the country mainly because of one man and his dodgy model.
I said Ferguson's problem was that it was all in his head. But it might be on his head as well.
Sources included:
Neil Ferguson: UK coronavirus adviser resigns after breaking lockdown rules, The Guardian 5 May 2020 included the Antonia Staats comment about "same household" .
Vanessa Chalmers Mail Online 17 May https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327641/Coronavirus-modelling-Professor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html
Matthew Syed, Fixated on the flu and shrouded in secrecy, Britain's scientists picked the wrong remedy. Sunday Times 17 May
Neil Ferguson profile: the professor who turned the UK's coronavirus response, The Times 6 May
David Smith's Economic Outlook column in the Sunday Times, 17 May.
Assessing the spread of the novel coronavirus in the absence of mass testing. Oscar Dimdore-Miles and David Miles. Covid Economics: vetted and real time papers. Issue 16, 11 May 2020, page 161. Centre for Economic Policy Research, CEPR Press.
Rather belatedly a number of journalists including Vanessa Chalmers and Matthew Syed have joined me in questioning Ferguson's flaky software. They both report a flurry of criticism against Ferguson's modelling which predicted up to half a million deaths if the UK didn't change track. (Actually I think he predicted half a million in a "do nothing" scenario and a quarter of a million if the government maintained the mid March social distancing protocols without further measures).
What's happened since I inferred that Ferguson's code was crap because he couldn't be arsed to document it properly is that he's published it and others have now decided that it is indeed crap, or at least "unreliable". The program has been called a 13 year old "buggy mess". A group at Edinburgh Uni found that the model could give different outputs when fed the same inputs and gave different results when run on different computers, both of which are absolutely standard checks for software integrity. One source said that this quality of work would have got Ferguson sacked in private sector, which was broadly what I was implying in my article of 8 April. (Yes, of course I am also implying that it's taken the country's journalists only 4 to 6 weeks to catch up with me).
But wow. What if Ferguson's modelling really isn't fit for purpose? While the UK government had signposted that it might move to stricter restrictions, and potentially lockdown, there was an almost audible crashing of gears when Ferguson's body count forecasts were released. What if they were overstated? I wouldn't put it past Ferguson to have tweaked his inputs to get the biggest numbers, as he does seem to be an attention seeker. So was lockdown an over-reaction? After all some countries have never gone for a full lockdown, notably Sweden and South Korea.
The costs are already coming through - borrowing at the highest monthly figure on record in April and all those deferred operations and treatments storing up health impacts for starters. And not just at hospitals - a relative of ours can't get an essential B12 injection because the GP's aren't providing the service and is having to pay for less effective prescription for an oral alternative. Multiply such things by millions of people and thee will be plenty of non-covid health effects from the lockdown. Plus jobs destroyed and schools closed. And all that mental health anguish for families unable to see each other and, of course, the fans of Liverpool FC.......
With regard to schooling, I'm sure the children from middle class backgrounds will soon catch up and might even get some benefit from the change in routine. But the reason the government is desperate to get year 1 and year 6 children back is obvious: so many studies show that children from deprived backgrounds suffer disproportionately. The start they get off to matters (hence the need to get year 1 back) and the start 11 year olds make at high school on completion of their final primary year 6 can also have a huge effect. I think the government already has its eyes on the next election and is worried that the current school closure, along with the inevitable economic hardship for vulnerable communities, could be damaging enough to increase inequality by 2024, fatally impacting its levelling up agenda and aspirations to keep the red wall flat. It may be self interest but who says these things don't matter to Tory governments? They obviously do to this one.
Matthew Syed makes the interesting assertion that the government and its advisers have been guilty of groupthink and attention blindness. He has ploughed through the minutes from scientific advisory groups which were rather belatedly published recently. He notes the documents are impressive and most folk would conclude are underpinned by cutting edge science. It's only when you look at it in the round that you notice something he calls "curious". They are all specifically about flu.
There is the "scientific pandemic influenza group on modelling". The key planning document that has informed government policy for a decade is called the "UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Survey". The review of whether to close educational facilities is called the "Impact of School Closures on on an Influenza Pandemic". There is a paper called "Impact of Mass Gatherings on an Influenza Pandemic".
OK, they couldn't look in detail at coronavirus in advance, SARS-COV-2 didn't exist - though you might think they would have at least considered whether the experience with SARS and MERS - and indeed ebola - was relevant and different. There is a reason this is important, indeed critical: flu has long been considered impractical to contain, it spreads too efficiently. But covid-19 can be contained: it has been in South Korea, for example, where there hasn't been a single day with deaths in double figures even though it has kept offices, restaurants and shops open.
The logic of the UK's "contain, delay, research, mitigate" strategy is based on flu. Syed suggests it was the mindset of flu, not experience emerging from Asia that led our Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty to assert on 12 March that containment was pointless. (Actually by then I suspect he was right, but not a couple of weeks earlier). Perhaps it was also why his deputy, Jenny Harries - admired in our household for her performances at the Downing Street briefings - said on the same day that "community testing was not appropriate". (Though maybe it was not appropriate because it was not feasible with the capacity then available, which I don't myself think is blameworthy though we might otherwise have started to push for more capacity sooner).
Syed thinks the government is not culpable for following the advice of its experts during this period. Ministers aren't modellers or health experts and can't be expected to second guess the scientists they have decided to trust. But if the scientific papers had been published sooner the blind spot might have been spotted. There was no downside to publishing earlier: the government was following the advice and and, as Jeremy Hunt has said, it's not as if transparency would have handed our enemy, the virus, some secret information it could use against us. If there was groupthink it was encouraged by the fact that SAGE is full of modellers and clinical academics but has no experts with an explicitly public health or infectious diseases background.
The Imperial College model was, of course, built for flu. And it is possible that not only the UK has been fighting the wrong war: the policies of the US, French and German governments were also influenced by Ferguson's work.
You might by now be thinking that I've got it in for Ferguson. Not particularly, but here comes the cheap shot. He's got form. His work has advised the actions of five prime ministers, on foot and mouth (2001), SARS (2003), swine flu (2011), MERS (2012) and ebola and zika (2014). In the foot and mouth outbreak nearly 6 million cattle, sheep and pigs were culled, partly because Ferguson's modelling had suggested animals on farms neighbouring an outbreak should be included even if there was no evidence of infection. The Times says that "experts later claimed the work was seriously flawed". In 2005 he said that up to 200 million people could be killed by bird flu. Now he did say "up to" but by 2009 the toll was 282. (I remember my company buying a huge job lot of tissues and hand sanitiser, see my post of 15 April). In 2009 a government estimate based on Ferguson's advice said that a "reasonable worst case scenario" was that swine flu would lead to 65,000 UK deaths. OK "worst case" but the total was actually 457.
Maybe Ferguson is like one of those doomsters who can say they correctly predicted the latest stock market crash, having predicted one every year for the last 20 years......
I don't know Ferguson's politics but as he is 1) an academic and 2) his floozy is a left wing campaigner I'll bet he reads the Guardian and not the Telegraph. Which is just as well as as the Telegraph ran a piece entitled "Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time", quoting a the boss of a software firm asking why the government failed to get a second opinion.
Advisers advise, ministers decide. But first the ministers have decided which advisers to appoint. I said on 8 April that I hoped they had chosen the right ones. I'm not convinced there is evidence that they have had "lucky generals" in this war.
I am not (yet) claiming that lockdown in the UK was unnecessary. After all, the loading on intensive care facilities was ramping up alarmingly until it mercifully peaked leaving some spare capacity, much of it created by repurposing NHS facilities in great haste. Indeed I suspect the news coverage from Italy was as important as Ferguson's suspiciously round numbers of a quarter and half a million. Which is why I suspect he frigged the input data, though by the sound of it he could have just re-run the model time after time with the same data until it randomly gave him the large enough numbers he was seeking. But I am wondering why the curve appears to be slowly flattening everywhere despite differences in policies between countries. David Smith noted a possible explanation given in a paper published by Prof David Miles and Oscar Dimdore-Miles. Yes, related, father and son. David is a professor of financial economics and was once a member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee. His son is an "Oxford scientist". I looked him up and he's a graduate physics student specialising in environmental science so I'm not sure how qualified this makes them to use a so-called SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered) disease spreading model, which they coupled with actual data on numbers of cases and presumably parameterisation (otherwise known as guesswork) on how many asymptomatic cases there might be.
I looked up the Miles duo's paper. It is pretty technical with lots of equations I might once have understood better than the words. It outlines a 'simple' method for estimating the spread of covid-19 in the absence of large scale random testing.They applied the model to the UK and other countries and found that, to get the results to match actual data on daily new cases of the virus, they needed to have high numbers of infected, asymptomatic people. The results were very sensitive to whether the transmission rate of the virus is different for symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, which is uncertain. Nevertheless they postulate that the infection may have spread far enough to mean that the trajectory of falling new cases could be maintained with some easing of restrictions. In other words there may have already been enough people infected for herd immunity to be a factor, which implies a very much higher number of people infected than most experts think.
Now I think that sounds most unlikely. And yet the virus seems to have peaked and be tailing off just about everywhere, independent of the specific policies adopted by individual governments (though I have seen that there has been an uptick in cases in Florida since policies were relaxed). But if that was the case it would also mean that the precise distancing and lockdown strategies didn't matter that much. So we could have stayed with something like the pre-lockdown social distancing exhortations, or gone for a shorter lockdown, with more people working. This would have avoided the restart issues we now have with the population's poor instinctive grasp of risk causing much concern. If so we've just caused enormous health, financial and emotional damage to the country mainly because of one man and his dodgy model.
I said Ferguson's problem was that it was all in his head. But it might be on his head as well.
Sources included:
Neil Ferguson: UK coronavirus adviser resigns after breaking lockdown rules, The Guardian 5 May 2020 included the Antonia Staats comment about "same household" .
Vanessa Chalmers Mail Online 17 May https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327641/Coronavirus-modelling-Professor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html
Matthew Syed, Fixated on the flu and shrouded in secrecy, Britain's scientists picked the wrong remedy. Sunday Times 17 May
Neil Ferguson profile: the professor who turned the UK's coronavirus response, The Times 6 May
David Smith's Economic Outlook column in the Sunday Times, 17 May.
Assessing the spread of the novel coronavirus in the absence of mass testing. Oscar Dimdore-Miles and David Miles. Covid Economics: vetted and real time papers. Issue 16, 11 May 2020, page 161. Centre for Economic Policy Research, CEPR Press.
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