only2garners

It's not just shortage of vaccines though. I was repeating the report on Today this morning by a vaccine specialist from Bath University who said there were problems with the supply chain as well as a shortage of vaccine

There are a couple of realities here. Firstly it's clear that delivery has been patchy and I presume that some centres have been more efficient than others, which has meant that some areas have dealt with all over 80s and care homes, whilst others still have many to do. Secondly, the supply of vaccines is not as good as was hoped. Much of that is that we are not getting as many vaccines as we could handle but some is also the logistics of getting the vaccines out, many of which needs specialist vehicles. My wife's surgery in Bamber Bridge had their first batch of 1,000 Pfizer vaccines on

And what is forecast today and tomorrow are very similar conditions to that day.

As far as I'm aware. apart from the two who were vaccinated on the first day and had a reaction (although they were both susceptible) I haven't seen any media stories about anyone having a reaction. I assume therefore that it is vanishingly rare and/or the effects are minor. I had whooping cough as a young kid - bloody horrible.

God knows I can find plenty of things to complain about Johnson but I'm not sure this is one. It's not at all clear to me that going 7 miles for a bike ride is against any guidelines - if it is I've been breaking them as well. If you're allowed to go out on a bike then it must be OK to say ride for an hour and even an overweight 68 year old me can do 14 miles in an hour. Given I ride by myself so don't come anywhere near anyone else on my ride I can't see how that's risking anything. If what he did was get driven to the Olympic Park for a bike ride then maybe that's against the rules, but

Really Tom? I know I'm in Penwortham but it can't be much different to Blackburn. It's been raining solidly here since last night and is scheduled to carry on until tomorrow night. Already our front garden is completely under water and it hasn't done that before in the 35 years we've been here.

Whilst i think we can rightly complain about the state of the pitch I think the game would have been off anyway - it's been raining steadily all night and is not scheduled to stop until tomorrow night. If we had a bowling green for a pitch playing on it tonight would have ruined it.

So, I've now heard a discussion on the £500 lump sum on PM with the admirable Thorsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation. His first word was that this was a turkey of a policy. He pointed out that only people who were receiving Universal Credit on one given day would get it, so someone who got a job the day after would have a "free" £500 and conversely someone who had to apply for UC on the day after would get nothing. Giving a lump sum as well finishes the debate about the extra money, as it won't be renewed and will effectively run out in September. A classic Tory policy.

I've not seen the report of the £500 one-off payment but I can work out it will only last for 25 weeks. I suspect 4 weeks is pretty short notice if you're sat there wondering where you're going to find another £20 a week from.

Because waiting until 4 weeks before the extra money stops on the basis that the Chancellor "might" do something about it at the last minute in his budget is no way to run a sensible economy?

That's not what 47er is saying Tyrone. His argument is that the Guardian advised readers at the General election to vote Lib Dem, presumably based on their manifesto. When there was no clear winner they joined a coalition with the Tories and therefore by default opted austerity - that wasn't in their manifesto. I think it's fairly clear that the Guardian would not have recommended support for the policies that the coalition delivered. Anyway, what's not in doubt is that historically the Guardian, going back to it's Manchester days, was always a Liberal paper. It's only relatively recently

I know. I was trying to avoid the thread being diverted down the covid route given there was already a discussion on that elsewhere.

Your question wasn't about season tickets though.

I'm not quite sure how I can say this again Gav, but the whole plan is the responsibility of the NHS under Simon Stevens. I've no doubt there has been some ministerial and Civil Service involvement but Stevens is running it.

There's a discussion on this on the Coronavirus thread Rigger.