Well, I got laid off in 2016 from the oil industry which never fully recovered anyway and I was kind of sick of the lifestyle.

I wouldn’t say it was a good thing for me and it wasn’t a bad thing either.

I haven’t fully righted by ship yet and got a new career, although hopefully, I can find a PhD later this year to do. If I can do that I’ll feel like I’m back in a good place doing something positive.

I was fortunate that I was financially in good shape by 2016 and didn’t have kids or a massive mortgage. In terms of identity and feeling of self-worth – which a lot of people source from their job – that wasn’t a problem for me because after 14 years in the oilfield I had moved past that naivety and was just seeing it as a means to an end.

Some people might enjoy being slammed by Phillip Scholfield :D

Prescriptive regulations don’t tend to work too well because they can’t account for all the complexities and vagaries of all types of businesses, hence why they have in the last few years been replaced with more outcome-based regulations. Lots of HSE is like that and also buildings regs. ‘Fire regs’ as a family of regulations and laws will move even further in that direction soon.

Maybe put a step in it if it’s on a slope? How steep is it? Don’t forget if >30 cm higher than ground will need planning permission and that’s very likely on the down slope end.

Yeah +1 to make sure you don’t need planning permission.

This has a guide:

linky

I’m all in favour of improving our transport infrastructure. I’ve just never been convinced HS2 was the most cost effective way of doing it.

What is?

I think there are definitely better ways of increasing existing rail capacity and creating a more holistic, healthy and environmentally friendly transport system.

That may be true but otoh could be an uninformed opinion. Do you have a link to any studies?

It’s a capacity issue. There was a report about how it would free up even regional lines for more traffic but I can’t be bothered to find it. High-speed rail is about much more than it’s headline journey saving time.

A net emission of one gram of carbon over the next hundred years makes it a net carbon contributor. That not a very useful metric. If that was our criteria to do anything then we wouldn’t build a single home.

What would be rational is for opponents of HS2 to formally articulate their own transport strategy and why it shouldn’t involve high-speed rail. That might put to bed suspicions of NIMBYism.

I don’t understand the antipathy to HS2. It’s weird and irrational like people get off on just opposing for the sake of it. Similar to people getting apoplectic that a protected cycle lane has been constructed in their area.

It’s just a rail line and significantly less impactful vs a new motorway for example. We have a lot of rail lines in this country so why not one more to help us catch up with other countries?

recall a Dutch colleague saying this leads to the younger members of the population riding recklessly as they know the car etc has to yield and they take risks.

If you are going to drive around in 2 tons of SUV the risk should be on your head is my policy. The risks to pedestrians and cyclists are because of cars and not the other way around. Drivers are the new smokers.

I’ve seen some scattered improvements around South Manchester but it’s a long way from being a complete network or ‘joined up’ if that makes sense. I’m very fortunate to be able to take the TPT from almost my door into Manchester via the cycle path on the Bridgewater canal. That’s pure luck of geography. I absolutely hate riding on the roads in Cheshire/Manchester. I just don’t feel safe.

UK compared to Holland and also major cities in Australia (where I have spent time) is night and day. We’re 40 years behind.

E-bikes and e-scooters are a game changer I think too and should help incentivise people to cycle more, you get a critical mass and coupled with infrastructure should see more people cycling and it being seen as socially normal unlike now.

For example, the ride into Manchester is 15 miles for me and from Altrincham is 10 miles. For casuals, that’s quite intimidating to do every day but on an e-bike it’s basically half the distance.

I don’t ride e-bikes myself but concede that they basically increase the radius around a city from where cycle commuting is realistic. I didn’t see them like that for quite a while and assumed they were for fat people :D.

There is a big Daily Mail reactionary element in this country who see anything cycling related as some sort of personal affront and threat to themselves. Miserable mean spirited sacks of shit.

I’ve always thought that a lot of roads should be made into cycling lanes on one side and the other side turned into a one-way. We have a lot of narrow roads in the UK and this is really the only way to put alot of cycling infrastructure in.

The Gov gave some signals a few days ago that the lockdown in the strict sense would end early next week, hence people have now decided that it’s ended already.

R will surely go >1 soon and Covid isn’t going anywhere. You won’t catch me socialising.

If I read the Guardian I also try and read the Daily Mail. Both can have good journalism, but both can also be echo chambers full of opinion and biased frames of reference.

All this can be sorted in court after the event.

And any idiot can do what they are told, but one also needs to learn to think for one’s self.

So all those teens/20-somethings abusing the PCSO were masters in critical thinking?

Most people do think for themselves and choose quite reasonably to follow the law and cautiously respect the police.

A lot of the critical ideas from left were right to question the police but otoh at some point, it just becomes destructive of the ability to actually govern a society. Only in the humanities faculty can it be contemplated that a society with no power imbalance is possible, or if you knock over all western institutions then something utopian will magically replace them.

These people demanding that the police earn their respect I despair at. Who do they think they are? A king? No, you are just another citizen like any other. A default position of refusal-defiance is neither adult nor reasonable. The police should be trusted but on the condition of being subject to scrutiny and accountability or our society will go down the shitter. Any idiot can be anti-authority but one needs to also learn to obey.

I don’t believe Caucasians really need to actively seek sunlight to get enough Vit D. From what I’ve read you don’t need more than 15-30 mins or so. You defiantly don’t need to tan in the sun and I use loads of sub-block.

Is there a more chavvy and squalid activity than disposable BBQ’s in public places? I just don’t understand it. Same with BBQ’s in general IMHO and the British obsession with sun. Having worked in the Middle East and Africa I don’t see the sun as my friend and stay out of it.

Is that because the hospitals are saving lives or because putting people on vents delays their deaths and flattens the death curve if you like?

I’m sure that it’s possible to flag users who keeping spamming positives and exclude their updates.

Bottom line is if you’re at home and think you are dying of covid don’t go to a UK hospital because you’re statistically more likely to die!

The roads are becoming increasingly busy near me, almost as if people are ignoring the lockdown now.

I’d like to see staged returns to normal fairly soon, but with caution. I’ve no wish to see that ****t Tim Martin open his horrible pubs up soon so pubs can go to the back of the queue. :D

Behaviors will save us. Technology will help with behaviors. One sees this all the time at work where there is a general (mis)belief that systems are needed for disciplined and regulated activities. They help, but it is the actions of individuals that matter not the systems in place.

Discipling technologies are all around us just we take them for granted and don’t notice them.

Panopticon

On a lighter side note I watched Outbreak (1995) on Netflix a couple of days ago.

I probably last watched that in 1996 or 1997 and it seemed like quite a serious film to an impressionable younger me, but now seems like utter nonsense. Sure it’s not boring ‘cos the pace is so fast, but the science is hard to suspend belief for same as the helicopter flying. Let’s fly in the fog on a chopper and dead reckon our way to a moving ship based on it’s last known position right?

Graham1980 if you were forced to pass within proximity of an infected person would you not wear a mask if given the choice?

You misunderstand.

Medical knowledge may help to maximise the effectiveness of PPE but that doesn’t mean that PPE doesn’t reduce the risk for laymen.

It isn’t either/or.

I’m just off for a drive without my seatbelt on :D

Seatbelts give your are a false sense of security and I’d rather be thrown clear in the event of a crash :D

The bbc presenter was technically correct though.
It is unlikely to prevent you catching corona unless it is a full face fit ffp3.

I’m assuming you can cite a peer-reviewed research paper for that? :D

Bear in mind that Daz going about his business in Asda wearing a mask isn’t the same as a nurse or doctor breathing in lots of aerosolised viruses in a hospital.

I’ve been puzzled at some of the stuff I’ve seen on the news and social media about PPE. Someone claiming to be a doctor was saying not to wear gloves unless you are medically trained. By that logic, you shouldn’t wear a mask also. Perhaps I shouldn’t wear safety glasses when using an angle grinder unless I’ve got a medical degree too? Or maybe a degree in metallurgy?

I’ve no doubt that to maximise the benefits of PPE then a fancy education is a help, but I find it hard to believe that PPE doesn’t offer a fairly easy win reduction in risk.

Re NZ. Time is not the key point, timing is the key point, they did it earlier and harder.

NZ doesn’t have anything like the population density of England or the same number of air passengers travelling into or through it. It’s very easy to cherry-pick NZ as an exemplar when the fact is there are other reasons they have fared so well this (first) wave.

Do you know much about the methodology for how influenza deaths are calculated each year, or how the same was done for swine flu?

I think Shipman was convicted on the hard evidence but his patients’ death rates were compared to historic controls to derive what is considered a fairly reliable estimation of his number of victims. IIRC a disproportionate number of deaths under his watch had the afternoon as the time of death on the death certificate which fitted his MO of injecting his victims with morphine in the afternoon.

How many do you estimate will die in total TiRed? I mean before herd immunity is acquired? Or is that not something you can do yet?

There are degrees of objectivity just like degrees of impartiality. Was Cummings impartial enough is the question. If he’s in effect the lone gatekeeper between scientific advice and the government that strikes me as a problem in essence anyway.

IMHO Doctors telling us how and when to transit out of lockdown are stepping outside of their professional justification. Medicine is their expertise not ethics.

What do you want the Russia report to say? That a few facebook trolls were able to brainwash a nation?