Fuzzy Afro

Plus it’s on a week day. No one is booking the day off work for this.

I’m not sure what’s worse here. The fact that we’ve got the exact same headliner and sub as last year, or the fact that 60% of all community festivals in history have been headlined by the same band. Lazy is the understatement of the year.

He won’t be at BST, not because he’s not big enough for Hyde park (he is) but because BST is for acts that are much older.

He won’t be doing BST. If there’s a big London gig it’ll be APE or Community.

Yungblud could get a prominent slot but he won’t be headlining. In the old days he’d be a perfect R1 headliner against a rock act headlining the MS

39 acts on the two main stages over the weekend this year compared to 61 between the main and R1 in 2019. Not to mention that merging the FR stage and the pit has taken another 30ish acts off the bill over the weekend. The new format is nothing but a cost saving measure.

In terms of American rock acts, are any of RHCP, PATD, Kings of Leon or any of the hella mega bands likely to be in play?

To be fair, Rodrigo was 3rd down on the other stage at Glastonbury and Fender subbed the pyramid. He also played an arena tour in spring whilst Olivia was in academies. What I would say is that Rodrigo is ascending whereas Sam is probably already at his peak. Wouldn’t shock me at all if both are MSW headliners next year but if they are on the same day, Fender will get a more prestigious slot.

Interestingly I would have assumed that the former group are largely on all weekend camping tickets and the latter mainly stick to day tickets but I got the train from Oxford on Saturday and it was absolutely rammed with teenagers.

2023 guesses: Friday: George Ezra/Dua Lipa Saturday: Paramore/Twenty One Pilots Sunday: Sam Fender/MCR

Rumours going around that fake SAGE are about to disband.

Getting rid of testing is absolutely the correct decision.

Not sure this argument really applies anymore. England first removed face nappies almost 7 months ago (albeit they did get reinstated for a couple of months within that). Scotland has NEVER removed them.

It’s not the job of the JCVI to make decisions in order to make it easier for international travel. The 2 things for them to consider: 1. Does the evidence show that the protection offered against covid outweighs the risk of severe side effects that the vaccine occasionally causes? (bearing in mind the incredibly low risk kids are at from covid) 2. If yes, does it do so significantly enough to indicate that the benefit is strong enough to justify the enormous costs of a widespread vaccination programme. If the first answer is No, don’t vaccinate kids. If Yes/Yes, vaccinate kids. If it’s Yes/No you have a more difficult situation. In this case I’d say don’t bother with an NHS sponsored vaccination programme but allow parents to purchase it privately for travel like you would with any other travel jabs.

Happy freedom day 2.0. May your face nappies be binned and your vaccine passports be unused.

Are you travelling on a specific date? Most likely there is engineering work so the trains are either speed limited or travelling on a different (longer) route. I travel this route twice a month and trains still take anything from 2:06 to to 2:20ish

This makes all the sense in the world with Labour wanting to appear as the government in waiting. Let’s be honest, Boris and his government have handled the pandemic near perfectly for over a year now. The last major fuck up, in my opinion, was sending the schools back for a day in January 2021 only to close them and lock down the country that night. Lockdown 3 came too late and cost thousands of lives. However, since that point: - They designed a roadmap that was perfectly calibrated to the ongoing Alpha wave - When Delta came along and led to high case rates and increasing hospitalisations, they sensibly hit the pause button and pushed freedom day back a month. This was a fair compromise between the hawks who wanted to push ahead with the reopening and the doves who wanted to actually go backwards and lock down again. The one month pause allowed for more jabs and better understanding of Delta. - When it became clear the NHS could cope with Delta they rightly went ahead with freedom day on July 19th. Not only did this restore freedoms and boost the economy, but it allowed us to get the Delta wave out the way before the tricky winter period. - When Omicron came along, they smartly instituted plan B measures as a precaution but resisted the pressure to lock down. Plan B measures look set to be repealed appropriately on the 26th of this month. Labour can’t oppose the government on pandemic strategy at this point because the strategy has been executed perfectly for a year now. Starmer’s strategy should be to support the government but question their competence based on everything that happened in 2020.

“When ill or potentially infectious” doing a lot of heavy lifting there. This idea that East Asians are masked up 24/7 and have been for two decades is a myth.

Looking at the replies to this would indicate fake SAGE are finished

Covid doesn’t really “outcompete” flu in the way that omicron outcompeted delta, or that delta outcompeted alpha etc The reason omicron outcompeted delta is because it spreads through the population very quickly and gives people antibodies that then stop them getting delta a few weeks later, effectively meaning delta is reduced to insignificance. With the flu, there isn’t really that cross-immunity that we have between different variants of covid. So having covid today won’t stop you getting the flu in 2 months time. The reason the flu has been insignificant for the past 2 winters is because of behavioural changes (either mandatory or voluntary) that inhibit flu’s ability to spread. Obviously the lockdown last year was the key driver of this but this year it’s working from home, masks and some people generally choosing to stay apart. With flu you really don’t need much in the way of NPIs to push the R number below 1. Flu is nowhere near as transmissible as covid and in a standard winter season, the R number is just slightly above 1. This means that pretty much any covid measure that’s implemented will be enough to suppress the flu season as well.

Plan B will be gone on the 26th

Isolation going to 5 days

This is another point I disagree on. Hybrid working in practice has meant the city of London being an absolute ghost town Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with most people choosing to attend their offices on Thursdays and/or Tuesdays. This will probably correct itself in time when companies downsize and adopt hot desking, necessitating a rota system on what days people go to the office.

Disagree - mass working from home is very bad for the economy. A few behavioural things I’ve noticed: - In London at least, people spend £6-£10 every day on lunch when they’re in the office. Only a few people are organised enough to meal prep and bring their own lunch, so Pret and their peers make an absolute killing from office workers. People working from home don’t tend to nip out to Pret at lunch time though, they’ll just go to the kitchen and cook something. Economy loses out. - People aren’t going to pubs in the evening with their colleagues. Economy loses out. - People aren’t meeting up with friends who work near them. I live out in Essex and most of my friends live in various Home Counties around London, we often go for drinks in the evenings after we all leave our respective offices in the city at 5pm. With everything working from home, these rendezvous just aren’t happening at all. Economy loses out. I know you work in events and it’s true that uncertainty is the main reason these are being cancelled rather than WFH, but the hospitality sector loses out massively from WFH guidance.

Sturgeon saying she thinks face masks might be mandatory in shops forever. Which devolved leader is a bigger moron? Drakeford or Sturgeon?