IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 7, 2020 23:29:45 GMT
For the avoidance of doubt I do not give permission for my comments to be used in an uncivil way.
I'm now aware of the 3 applications made at the hearing today. The hearing was between the borrower in the Unbolted case ("claimant") and an unrelated specialist loan and mortgage lender ("defendant")
I understand the total of the loan involved is £90k and the amount of the claim is circa £20k. The judge appeared to be shocked at the “extraordinary amount of money” which comprised the “wholly disproportionate” costs proposed by the claimant which were circa £1m.
The defendant pleaded that as the claimant had instructed his own firm to represent him that this allowed him the “unhindered ability to claim costs” under a “grossly inflated” budget.
The claimant has been seriously ill recently with Covid-19. I understand being obese is a risk factor.
Costs were eventually agreed upon at £42,500.The claimant had to pay 33% of costs of today's hearing due to unreasonable behaviour in the run up to the hearing. The judge allowed an application to stay the proceedings until July ’20 to allow parties to settle.The claimant has threatened to apply for a Group Litigation Order against the defendant if they don’t settle. Time estimate of the case is 3 days to be heard between 1st Dec ‘20 – Feb ’21. De ja vu anyone? Is it looking like his MO is to take up borderline vexatious claims, incur enormous legal costs, and thereby scare defendants into settling and paying some of his costs so that he ends up in profit? Since his costs are imaginary and limitless (it is just his own time) whereas the defendants actually have to pay theirs.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 7, 2020 13:22:08 GMT
Apologies, should have stated it was just my own personal opinion, (common sense) but did hear some expert state: "Travel in a aluminium tube with lots of other people, be it a train, bus or aeroplane is just not a good idea, as social distancing is almost impossible to achieve" There will always be nitpickers who refuse to read between the lines, preferring to forensically examine every single word, as if you are in a court of law. Most readers are capable of understanding "everyone on board" probably implies a "proportion on board", and "likely to catch" does not equal "will catch". They must be such a joy to sit with in the pub (assuming those days will ever return ). Don't mention the pub! Boy am I missing them.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 7, 2020 8:48:59 GMT
Are you sure? I understood the law bans gatherings of more than two people - not the case here - and even that refers to public gatherings - again not the case here. EDIT: I have just re-read the original and amended regulations. There is nothing about being not allowed to associate in private with people who are not part of your household. Have a read of the regulations and tell me which part of the law you think he broke and should have been fined for. www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/made/data.pdfwww.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/447/made/data.pdfSo it's fine to have a load of friends around for a private party? The law doesn't ban that per se - it would however ban people being out of the place they are living for that purpose. Not that we are talking about parties - we are talking about two people. And we are not talking about what is "fine" - the law doesn't mandate handwashing but it is not at all fine to leave your hands unwashed. As I said - I am challenging your assumption that he could have been fined, and I am asking for what. I quite agree she could have been fined.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 22:23:01 GMT
But he didn't leave his house, so how could he have breached 6? The suggestion was that he should be fined, not her. Sorry, wasn't disagreeing with that, just highlighting where the issue lies. Should have been more specific that he shouldn't have been fined as he hadn't breached rules but obviously had to resign for encouraging/not preventing someone else from doing so don't disagree he had to resign in current climate - I do though regret that an expert scientist offering unpaid advice and who is not a politician standing on any particular platform should be stalked by the media and have their personal life raked over in this way - it will undoubtedly deter other experts from getting involved in future. EDIT: and particularly when the health secretary then gets involved in a very unpleasant tone (I choose that word carefully) and erroneously suggests the police should consider action against the expert helping his government. Who would want to get involved with that lot?
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 22:07:28 GMT
Are you sure? I understood the law bans gatherings of more than two people - not the case here - and even that refers to public gatherings - again not the case here. EDIT: I have just re-read the original and amended regulations. There is nothing about being not allowed to associate in private with people who are not part of your household. Have a read of the regulations and tell me which part of the law you think he broke and should have been fined for. www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/made/data.pdfwww.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/447/made/data.pdfI would suggest no 6 is the issue not no7 … unless we are classifying alleged/assumed horizontal jogging as a legitimate form of exercise. While he didn't break the rule, I would assume she didn't just turn up uninvited nor did he tell her that she was breaching the rules and to go home. But he didn't leave his house, so how could he have breached 6? The suggestion was that he should be fined, not her.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 21:47:46 GMT
The rules say that you are not allowed to associate with people outside of your household. From what I've read, if you refuse to take police advice you can be issued a £60 on-the-spot fine. No police advice was given to Professor Neil Ferguson because the police were unaware of this at the time. Indeed, it's nearly a month ago that the two transgressions occurred. That's if you leave or are out of the place you are staying without a reasonable excuse or in breach of other guidance (e.g. gatherings). He wasn't out of the house. There is no lockdown law about what you can do in the privacy of your own house (thankfully). We aren't discussing Ms Staat, but she may well have breached the law, on the basis that travelling across London for nookie-exercise is probably stretching things (though it is a very good form of exercise ).
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 21:29:09 GMT
Under what powers are you implying he might have been fined? He didn't break any lockdown laws (which are about leaving the house, which he didn't do as far as I understand). She may have mind you. The rules say that you are not allowed to associate with people outside of your household. Are you sure? I understood the law bans gatherings of more than two people - not the case here - and even that refers to public gatherings - again not the case here. EDIT: I have just re-read the original and amended regulations. There is nothing about being not allowed to associate in private with people who are not part of your household. Have a read of the regulations and tell me which part of the law you think he broke and should have been fined for. www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/made/data.pdfwww.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/447/made/data.pdf
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 17:01:12 GMT
The issue of why aren't we quarantining arrivals seems fairly obvious - there would be no benefit. We have millions of cases here, on some measures the highest number in Europe, and we want to quarantine people from outside where they have a lesser problem? If any quarantining needs to be done it is on the people already here - incomers are if any thing much less likely to have a problem. And if our current lockdown laws are enough for those of us here, they are enough for those coming in. The issue of whether we should have quarantined arrivals - it might have been possible if done early (and I suspect the window was very short if at all possible without benefit of hindsight) but you have to think how it would have been done and accept that London is one of the if not the largest European hubs so that would be a massive logistic ask (let alone the other cities in the UK). The issue of whether we should quarantine arrivals in future - probably would be of some benefit once the numbers are low enough, and done alongside track and trace - but again, how we do it with potentially tens of millions of arrivals and returns over the summer would need a lot of thought. It really isn't the same as New Zealand. The issue of physical distancing is a separate one - airports could and should do it, but if you want physically distant flights it will cost you triple. Probably better to do like trains/tube - limit journeys unless necessary to travel, use masks if you can't keep the physical distance and frequent hand washing (sanitiser in every seat?). Yes, we have millions of cases here NOW. But perhaps not if we'd treated it more seriously at the outset? The Telegraph article sounds quite plausible to me and questions need to be asked. Does anybody here really feel we've met the challenge well? The care home situation alone is a national disgrace. (Ignore me, I'm probably looking for answers as to why my dad's brother was taken early and perhaps allowing that to colour my judgement). Condolences again Berny. The care home situation is a disgrace everywhere - but especially here as, regardless of anything else we may discuss, all policies before and after the Imperial paper all involved protecting the elderly - and we didn't.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 15:48:22 GMT
The tenor of the article is all about presenting terrifying and alarming numbers, which for the period they give mean nothing, did 50% or 99% arrive in January or early February when there was no real reason for preventing people travelling? You're right. Obviously the 18 million all arrived in January. The Madrid fans were a myth. Nobody is arriving today. John 11:35 The issue of why aren't we quarantining arrivals seems fairly obvious - there would be no benefit. We have millions of cases here, on some measures the highest number in Europe, and we want to quarantine people from outside where they have a lesser problem? If any quarantining needs to be done it is on the people already here - incomers are if any thing much less likely to have a problem. And if our current lockdown laws are enough for those of us here, they are enough for those coming in. The issue of whether we should have quarantined arrivals - it might have been possible if done early (and I suspect the window was very short if at all possible without benefit of hindsight) but you have to think how it would have been done and accept that London is one of the if not the largest European hubs so that would be a massive logistic ask (let alone the other cities in the UK). The issue of whether we should quarantine arrivals in future - probably would be of some benefit once the numbers are low enough, and done alongside track and trace - but again, how we do it with potentially tens of millions of arrivals and returns over the summer would need a lot of thought. It really isn't the same as New Zealand. The issue of physical distancing is a separate one - airports could and should do it, but if you want physically distant flights it will cost you triple. Probably better to do like trains/tube - limit journeys unless necessary to travel, use masks if you can't keep the physical distance and frequent hand washing (sanitiser in every seat?).
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 15:19:40 GMT
He was a member of SAGE, and he's been having his married mistress visit him on a regular basis.
You couldn't make it up.
Scotland Yard have decided to take no further action, so he doesn't get the £60 fine that lots of other lockdown miscreants have received Under what powers are you implying he might have been fined? He didn't break any lockdown laws (which are about leaving the house, which he didn't do as far as I understand). She may have mind you.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 15:10:36 GMT
0.0000000000000000000980000000000000595795 I've just looked it up. Wikipedia tells be the prefixes stop at 10-24 (yocto). This is actually 10-40 pounds. What is the point, it's going to add up to the lifetime of several universes before these have any relevance wouldn't it
It's actually ~10 -19, but point taken. At 100% interest per year it would take 100 million billion years to earn 1p. by which time inflation will mean that 1 p is worth 10 -18 p in real terms
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 8:38:11 GMT
Depends on your definition of mass death, the time frame of those deaths, and the underlying infection fatality rate for a given population. At a low IFR, 60% infection of the fit younger population over several months ought not to overwhelm the health service. But the point of herd immunity is that if you get it you protect the non-immune - so an immune younger population prevents spreading to the vulnerable non-immune elderly when you let them out again.
I understand, but my point is that you might split the population into 2 herds.
Herd immunity is not some magic thing that happens to everyone when the infection rate of the population hits a certain number. It's simply that there aren't enough infectable people left to keep the transmission ratio above 1. Non-immune people will still get ill, and pass it on, but not enough of them to keep the virus going for long. I suggest that you can have a herd of herd-immune younger people, but as soon as the virus gets into the older herd then it will transmit through that herd unabated.
I see it as a bit like damming a river. If you built a reasonably effective dam, it can still work to stop most of the flow even if it has some holes in it. But if you create a branch from the river up-stream of the dam and route it around the dam, then all the water that takes that branch will flow just as fast as if the dam had not been there.
Sure - I see your point - if you keep the elderly separate (eg in care homes) then if they get infected it will spread quickly. Herd immunity is supposed to mean the chances of them getting infected in the first place are tiny as the people who might infect them are immune. But a) it's not an absolute all-or-nothing thing (so we do still get occasional outbreaks of eg measles even with herd immunity from vaccination) and b) the higher the immunity in the herd, the lower the chances of those outbreaks.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 6, 2020 7:53:41 GMT
Rates of antibodies from population studies there, the rate the infection is spreading, and the models used by the Swedish epidemiologists studying it. Probably not peer reviewed (though very little is at the moment) and I haven't seen the data myself though. And it might be wrong as it is a prediction. The Stockholmians (if that's the word) will know by June I guess.
Interesting, if true. But it seems contrary to what is happening in other places. Herd immunity requires mass infection, and places with anything remotely approaching mass infection have consequently experienced overwhelmed health services and mass deaths. How is one place achieving mass infection without mass death?
I don't know what they are doing in Sweden. With the age-dependent mortality rates as they are, I just can't see how you can get the minimum 60% infection rate without incurring a far higher death toll. Are they keeping oldies locked away, and letting the young run free? If so, they might reach some theoretical level of herd immunity, only to find that it has not worked because they have created 2 distinct herds: young people (who tend to associate with young people), and old people (who tend to associate with old people). Then when you eventually let the old people out, you find their herd has no immunity, the disease rips through it, and all you've managed is to delay the catastrophic peak.
Depends on your definition of mass death, the time frame of those deaths, and the underlying infection fatality rate for a given population. At a low IFR, 60% infection of the fit younger population over several months ought not to overwhelm the health service. But the point of herd immunity is that if you get it you protect the non-immune - so an immune younger population prevents spreading to the vulnerable non-immune elderly when you let them out again.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 5, 2020 22:06:53 GMT
Predictions are Stockholm will have herd immunity by end of May. evidence? Rates of antibodies from population studies there, the rate the infection is spreading, and the models used by the Swedish epidemiologists studying it. Probably not peer reviewed (though very little is at the moment) and I haven't seen the data myself though. And it might be wrong as it is a prediction. The Stockholmians (if that's the word) will know by June I guess.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 5, 2020 21:42:33 GMT
He was a member of SAGE, and he's been having his married mistress visit him on a regular basis.
You couldn't make it up.
Press loves such stories, they are breadwinners for tabloids... I liked this quote - "I acted in the belief that I was immune", whilst the virus hasn't been around for long enough to know how long immunity lasts. immune both physiologically and metaphorically, it would seem.
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