Westminstenders: What the winds bring

[RedToothBrush]

The next few weeks are crucial. Eu talks, covid handling, the US election and any other unexpected events (its nearly November, lets face it will probably be the weather).

It feels a little like the car crash in slow motion is about to hit the wall of reality. I guess that just means all there is left to do is to brace for impact.

DrBlackbird - Maybe if Dido just trained enough dogs that would solve our testing issues?

I assume there’s no profit in it for cronies. But isn’t this something local authorities could do with the help of whoever trains police dogs?

KonTikki,

My reading of things is that Biden is a Democrat with Irish roots. Anything that affects the Good Friday Agreement negatively will not go down well. Just saying. President Clinton was instrumental in negotiating the GFA.

Trump doesn't give a hoot about all that EU/GFA stuff, but Congress does.

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/brexit/congressmen-say-no-free-trade-deal-if-uk-breaks-good-friday-agreement-for-brexit-39535198.html

The GFA is a deal breaker for the USA
if Johnson messes with it, nobody in the White House will give him the time of day.
I'm not sure why he's not realised this.

From a friend stateside (in CA)

@ListeningQuietly

The GFA is a deal breaker for the USA if Johnson messes with it, nobody in the White House will give him the time of day. I'm not sure why he's not realised this.

Maybe he has. But even then, he also has to somehow relay that back to his ERG nutters who simply won't believe him. And why should they ? After all, liars gonna lie.

DrBlackbird - Maybe if Dido just trained enough dogs that would solve our testing issues?

There already is a UK project for training Covid sniffer dogs - Medical Detection Dogs.

Hope it’s just a coincidence that Mrs IDS is a trustee (I think it is, it’s a charity that’s been training support dogs for a long time).

There already is a UK project for training Covid sniffer dogs - Medical Detection Dogs.

www.npr.org/2017/11/20/563889510/preventing-police-bias-when-handling-dogs-that-bite

I'd want a fucktonne of double blind testing before I was introducing canine testing as a serious proposal.

I'd want a fucktonne of double blind testing before I was introducing canine testing as a serious proposal.

Dogs are already being used as aid dogs for diabetics, people with epilepsy etc. They can detect changes in hormones, sweat and so on the indicate someone is low in sugar, about to have a epileptic episode etc. I read somewhere about research in them detecting cancers too.

LQ

*Pretending that everybody will return to 5 days a week in city centre offices is deluded.
Chances are it will NEVER go back to how it was.
Those properties should be vacated and then new businesses move in at a later date.
.....Airlines and airport retail franchises - ditto...

If those employees got their P45s now but received a decent level of UC right away then people could look forwards rather than sitting in limbo*.

Don't worry, plenty of my colleagues in a UK airline have already picked up P45s..

I'm not sure ypou can draw parallels with shops and malls, it takes a lot longer to resurrect/start an airline than to open a retail outlet due to all the regulatory hurdles and the time it takes to build the training and supervisory side of an airline operation (both on the ground side and the flight crew/cabin crew side of things).

I suspect if HMG simply writes off the UK airline sector then it'll be gone for good and the likes of the surviving American majors, the European carriers and the Middle East 3 happily fill the void (If that happens everybody had better be comfortable with transiting the likes of Doha on their way to the Far East or Australia).

TBH though I suspect some at Westminster would actually quite happy with the idea of effectively outsourcing the industry - gets the voters flying again at some point but also gets the emissions off the UK's books....

There is a “fuck tonne” load of research going on , and it’s already established that dogs can detect patients with conditions such as cancer, low blood sugar, malaria etc.

Research is showing that dogs can identify COVID with a high level of accuracy.

It’s being trialled as a screening method for use at transport hubs to identify people for testing. Finnish results already suggest that the dogs can detect COVID several days before a PCR test can pick it up.

@OchonAgusOchonO

I'd want a fucktonne of double blind testing before I was introducing canine testing as a serious proposal.

Dogs are already being used as aid dogs for diabetics, people with epilepsy etc. They can detect changes in hormones, sweat and so on the indicate someone is low in sugar, about to have a epileptic episode etc. I read somewhere about research in them detecting cancers too.

Oh, I know there are a lot of reasons why it should work, and a lot of instances where it's been reported.

However, I'm sure you'll understand my reticence to dive in with both feet, given it's also a scamsters paradise. And that would have been even before the current crony shenanigans.

Remember that "bomb detector" that managed to get all sorts of plaudits until right up to the court case ?

Whatever your opinion of the Government and their Covid management strategies this talk by Lord Sumption on the process surrounding the Coronavirus Act 2020 coming into force and all that it entails is worth a watch.

I know someone who has been involved in the medical detection dogs, and I was involved in a fundraising event for them. They are not fly by nighters abs have been very successful in training assistant dogs for kids (and adults ) with unstable diabetes. Absolutely life changing for those families lucky enough to get one. So they seriously know what they are doing. It's just they will be limited as to what they can do as they are quite a small charity.....

I've done events with "assistance dogs"
anybody who underestimates their skills is a wazzock

• a 4 minute warning of a major epileptic fit is a life changer

University of Durham, University of Helsinki, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University College Hospital ... those well known scamsters.

@ListeningQuietly - thank you for adding a new word to my vocabulary. Wazzock has a lot of potential.

I spent 30 mins in the tearooms at Chillingham Castle at the end of our visit today (5m from home).
Lord Wakefield came over and chatted to ds about a gun he'd notoced he'd been interested in as we looked around. Talked to me about a painting. To dd about some elephant armour. He was fascinating, and really charming. Towards the end he said: 'it's a bit like modern politicians, really NO grasp of the issues of the common herd, one wonders who advises them?'
I gaped at him and wondered if he was pulling my chain?
(I suspect not, as a tea lady was showing him 'how to Google' on her phone and he seemed astonished!).

Another oops. Wrong thread.

I have much more faith in a trained dog's ability to detect disease than I do with any test that Dido Harding could be involved with.

I’d have more faith in a trained dog’s ability to be Leader of the Free World or Prime Minister of the UK than either Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. But hey ho.

Ochon
Wazzock has been one of my favourite words since my days on the Ebay boards where one was not allowed to swear
so gadzooks we were capable of expressing carp opinions in highly creative ways ROTFMLAOPMPL

What's the word on driving lessons?

Pass

Friend of mine is involved with socialising puppies for Medical Detection dogs. They are amazing. Her first dog now supports a man with brittle diabetes and Addisons His dog's alerts have avoided 8 ambulance callouts to date. A dog's sense of smell is amazing. Their noses are 100 million times more sensitive than ours. 100 million!

www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/new-sense-discovered-dog-noses-ability-detect-heat