Trinnydad

It seems to be "Deutschland ?ber alles" once again as far as EU solidarity on vaccine procurement is concerned. It has been disclosed that Berlin ordered 30M doses on the quiet back in September in contravention of the EU procurement strategy. If the 27 EU members can't trust each other to adhere to an agreement what does this say for the Brexit agreement going forward?

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Sephiroth Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Ah bless. Those who don?t know their history are > doomed to repeat it > > It was a phrase made famous by John Major. Who > last time I checked was tory prime minister at the > time Not accurate. It was Churchill who said that when he plagiarised George Santayana's original quotation. Santayana also said :- "" Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual."" This ought to be memorised by the embittered and intolerant infants of the Left who don't seem to realise that Marxism/Leninism is but a failed philosophy.

Sephiroth Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Trinny is just part of a wider Leave bloc* - from > Farage, to Redwood and all of the Tory "bastards", > they will never ever be happy. It's not enough to > be out of the EU - they want it destroyed > The EU will self-destruct with time. I can wait. You refer to Tory "bastards". That is a clear indication of your tribal intolerance of opposing views. A malaise often found in left-wing activist cliques akin to Momentum and Militant Tendency. They all were marginalised in the end.

If you are talking 'good' pandemic, then check out today's headline in The Times" EU?s coronavirus vaccination strategy in chaos as supplies run short https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eus-coronavirus-vaccination-strategy-in-chaos-as-supplies-run-short-9kfd593w0

JohnL Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hancock seemed reinvigorated this morning. > I have real sympathy for the chap. He must be working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week without respite. Constant exposure to the media, parliament, No10 etc etc. And whatever he decides will be challenged by voices from every corner eg businesses, teachers union, medical experts, SNP, Labour, mayors etc, etc. All his critics jump on any issue they can think up - like the city mayors (Burnham et al) who were against lockdowns and they are now demanding them. They change direction on a daily basis. I just can't imagine anyone who would like his job. Cut him a bit of slack FGS.

From behind the DT paywall today .... EU didn't order enough vaccine, say German scientists behind Pfizer/BioNTech jab 'I was amazed' says Prof Ugur Sahin as EU faces shortage of vaccine developed in Germany The German couple behind the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine have criticised the European Union for failing to order enough doses. ?The process in Europe was not as quick and straightforward as it was in other countries,? Prof Ugur Sahin, the billionaire scientist and CEO of BioNTech, told Spiegel magazine. ?There was an assumption that many other companies would come with vaccines. Obviously the thinking which prevailed was: we'll get enough, it won't be so bad, and we have it under control. I was amazed.? Pfizer-BioNTech?s is the only vaccine to win EU approval so far, but the bloc had only ordered 200m doses until last week, when it ordered a further 100m. That is still not enough to provide the EU?s population of 446m with a single shot, let alone the two required for the vaccine to be effective. By comparison, the UK has ordered 30m doses as well as 100m doses of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine, which is also approved for use in Britain ? enough to immunise the entire population. ?It?s also because the EU is not directly authorized, but the member states have a say. In a situation where a quick decision is required, this can cost time,? Prof Sahin said in an extensive interview with Spiegel.

@ Blah Blah From the FT today.... EU leaders have rushed to quell mounting disquiet over the slow pace of national vaccination campaigns, promising that everyone who wants to be inoculated will be. Meanwhile the founder of BioNTech, the German company that pioneered the first vaccine to be approved in Europe, said the EU had been too slow to secure stocks of the jab, and warned of possible bottlenecks with supplies amid surging global demand. France has been under the most pressure to accelerate its immunisation campaign, with only a few hundred doses administered so far, compared to tens of thousands in Germany and nearly a million in the UK. It takes two shots of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine for an individual to be fully protected.

@ Trousaprezz What you say matches exactly with the facts. Letter volumes have been in steady decline during the last 15 years and now RM's revenue from letters now exceeds that of parcels and that trend will continue. Inevitably, RM has to undertake a massive rebalancing and create new depots for distribution of parcels on an automated basis. Forget manual sorting. That is labour intensive and error prone. The courier companies already are fully automated and they achieve tis by having the sender apply a label with a barcode. It is inevitable that RM will have to go over to using printed labels.

Blah Blah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Oh do grow up. It is quite clear I am now your > no.1 target for whiny trolling. Pathetic. Some habits are difficult to give up, I see.

Blah Blah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Trinnydad Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > > @BB. It may help your credibility if you > resisted > > such dismissive and insulting responses to DF's > > post. Such a response is obviously designed to > > deter formites from making inputs that conflict > > with your views. > > I can go into great detail as to why DF's post was > nonsense, but felt it was blatantly obvious and > needed no further explanation. The question around > sovereignty has been done to death and the leavers > have never won that argument sadly. OK, if you can go into detail to refute Foxy's view then please do so. But why use your default judgemental tactic of dismissive put-downs? Are you aspiring to be the lead member of a self-appointed forum mafia intent on suppressing views that don't align with yours?

We all know that one's age has a strong influence on one's views on Brexit with the 60+ years demographic being most likely to be a "Leaver" largely because they are more familiar with the progression from the Treaty of Rome through to Lisbon. There was an interesting article by IDS in the DT yesterday. I have reproduced a snippet taken from behind the pay wall _______________________________ ""I recall how we were assured this huge market on our doorstep would boost the economy, protect us from the extremes of Union power and end poor productivity. Yet by the time I was elected in 1992, those assurances rang hollow. For in the preceding two decades prior to the referendum, the UK economy actually grew at 3.4pc, even running a surplus with our EEC neighbours. Yet in the following two decades, our growth rate fell to an annual 1.76pc. Worse, our original surplus with the EU has become a trade deficit of ?100bn a year. The Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty ? designed carefully, and hidden under the veneer of the market place ? were a powerful political power grab. In this, one-time Italian Communist Altiero Spinelli succeeded. The passage of the Maastricht treaty assured, through the massive increase in qualified majority voting, the huge push towards a genuine federal state. How ironic then that the UK government should claim that Maastricht was the high water mark of European federalism, when it was followed by the even greater advances of EU power through the Treaties of Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon. I learned early on not to trust what British governments claimed they achieved in negotiations with the EU; from the game set and match of John Major to Tony Blair?s so called exemption from the Charter of Fundamental Rights, they never stood up to examination. And, as the next phase of the fight moved to the creation of the single currency and the prospect of our entry, many in the establishment claimed we had to join the currency or we would be left behind."" ____________________________

Blah Blah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What absolute nonsense DF. @BB. It may help your credibility if you resisted such dismissive and insulting responses to DF's post. Such a response is obviously designed to deter formites from making inputs that conflict with your views.

Sue Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I have a dunnock who comes to my garden. The > sparrows do feed from my feeders, though! > > Dunnocks have a different bill (beak?) to sparrows > - longer and thinner. Also they don't go around in > groups. > > "Mine" hides at the side of the garden, then darts > out to feed, then hides somewhere else, sometimes > on the ground in the "undergrowth" :) > > I can't remember if it feeds from the feeders, > though I think so. > Our two dunnocks come to the feeder but what I'd give to have a squabbling family of regular sparrows.

nxjen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Details re EU vaccination programme can be found > at > https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail > /en/qanda_20_2467 including: > That EU press release goes big on the quantities ordered but fails to mention that they were ordered late and the vast bulk will not arrive until late 2021. Here's the Guardians take on it https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/27/vaccination-rolls-out-across-europe-but-anger-remains-over-late-start