New Fred. It nearly ended in tiers.

[Cismyfatarse]

Sorry. Lost track of what was proposed. Hope this will do.

It does rookie, but it'll happen soon enough. Mr tits is preparing the Paris masterclass next weekend. Im looking forward to it.

£29 is a bloody bargain for sbn quality food

Yeah the rugby. Awesome win go us 💪💪💪👏👏👏👏

Have read of US companies beginning to pay employees to get vaccinated, a couple of hours extra overtime sort of thing.

I think more should be made of this and it would be a good approach which would bypass the conspiracy theory based avoidance. I hope this will be adopted by companies here - more carrot less stick.

ah but in America, they don't have an NHS, so I wondered if the vaccination was free or not?

@jabbathebutt I think they'd have to make it free to even have a hope of enough people taking it

Last food derail promise.

@titsbumfannythelot Oh the Parisian menu looks lush and you're not doing the cooking .

Portions are bigger than the restaurant- I think you're meant to plate up as per the pictures - but I'm not throwing away perfectly good food that took hours to create. In retrospect we could have had three courses one night and three the next, but that's just a suggestion - enjoy.

What's everyone up to today? For me walk with friend in the morning, then walk with another friend in afternoon whilst DS14 does his DOE litter picking with her DS. Off on Monday which is nice.

We shouldn't have to pay people to have the vaccine, and I doubt a small amount of cash is going to incentivise antivaxxers.

Much as it sticks in my craw, I think we just get on with everyone who wants it and then do a second sweep at the end, and maybe some specific campaigns for BAME community.

can someone repost the link to that site that tells you when you might get vaccinated? Does it say first dose or both doses? Does it go by your postcode? How official is it?

Most vaccines are effectively free in US. Just checked and this one is too. They also have more quasi-mandatory arrangements at State level already (albeit with exemptions).

As I hinted at earlier it is a slippery ethical slope to pay people to get vaccinated. Bit like paying for women to freeze their eggs to manage their careers to suit their employer.

@jabbathebutt there you go www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-scotland . Am hoping once the increased rates have kicked in for a fee weeks, that date will pull back for me.

My 50+ cousin and her DH in England have received letters saying they will be vaccinated by end of March, so three months before I'm due to get it in Scotland.

that increases the likelihood of restrictions being lifted in April then.

I don't know whereabouts you are @rookiemere but at the rate they are doing vacs in my area, I'd assume the 50+s in our area would be done by then too.

That calculator says me and DH should be done by October at the latest (both jabs).I'm a wee bitty annoyed though that my GP telt me last year I'm vulnerable (got his original letter) but apparently I'm not actually in the priority groups cause no one is in touch about a jag yet and when I call the receptionist says I'm in the 40+ group.

@BBCONEANDTWO

I'm really hoping that we might go into Tiers at the end of February - anyone else feeling it might happen. I know someone had mentioned pubs opening but serving no alcohol - I don't expect they'll do that in England when they open up only in Scotland - is Nicola Sturgeon tee total she seems to hate alcohol.

We should have a plan for U.K. for this post-vaccine delivery phase, allowing those across the U.K. to be on an even keel about reopening in retail, hospitality etc. This would also enable families to make choices about visiting each other across the UK. There are many areas in the nations that twin for population density and community profiling e.g. look at small towns and villages in North Yorkshire or Devon, profiles with rural Stirlingshire or Perthshire. London is the anomaly, closely followed by the main U.K. cities. Why not have a set of behaviour-based guidance for cities, with amends for small towns and rural locations. Any reason why we can’t have a common purpose going forward?

Jeanne Freeman - we've vaccinated all over 80s!

Well actually, we'd set the target at 80% of over 80s and have actually achieved 93% of all over 80s, which is better than the target, so because we've exceeded our plucked out of thin air target, let's just say that 93% is the same as 100% and hope nobody notices.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-55964150

Good to see on the photo on the BBC story that the Army are now getting in to help out.

Do we not have posters on here with over 80s who've not been done but are able and willing?

Appreciate no one is going to quibble about a few doses out of thousands in terms of measuring but this smacks of fake news.

Glad to see the promised ramp up finally happening though.

@Bytheloch a Uk wide approach would make much more sense. The country is pretty small and interlinked, with relatives all over so it would be much better if it was done like that.

And if we are really having elections, which seems tricksy, it would let parties concentrate more on that.

I really wish the bloody media would stop acting like we will all be back to normal come April or May, like no restrictions at all. We'd all love for that to happen but there's absolutely no chance we will be mask free by then. They are just winding me up.

@jabbathebutt I much prefer that to the “doom! Masks forever!” stuff.

Nadhim Zahawi looks to be attempting to move on the conversation on vaccination this morning. Didn't watch but seen a few clips.

Talking about:

1. availability of vaccine confirmation from GPs for those who need it to travel to countries demanding it.
2. the need for regular vaccination similar to flu.
3. vaccines and not just natural infection as drivers of mutation.
4. highlighting developments in whole virus vaccines like the one Livingston is producing which may be more effective against multiple strains.

Did anyone else watch? Interested to know what I missed or if the overall impression was the same as the curated clips I am seeing.

Taken together this starts to look like quite a significant push back against zero covid advocacy and a step towards moving back to normality.

I don't like masks at all but I hate the false hope.

I hate the false hope thing too.
All it does is stops people looking realistically at the situation they are in. And stops people making decisions based on where they are at.

Those decisions could be big or small, do people move to a house with extra room for an office set up, do people invest in new IT for kids, or new masks (a tenner for a pack could be a lot to some people)
Interesting that the Daily Mail is still running its computer campaign.

Speaking of new masks, it's nice to see that they seem to have dropped the proposed requirement for medical grade masks. I really don't want to have to buy loads of new ones, or use disposable ones.

The false hope is definitely preventing people planning sensibly. We moved out of town in the summer - I was getting enough of a steer from work that wfh would last a while to know we needed more space. But if I'd been basing it on the info we were getting from govt we'd be doing lockdown 2.0 in somewhere a lot smaller. Similarly folk didn't take up school or childcare places cos they thought they could managed for a couple of weeks

Not a fan of false hope either but cynical enough to ignore most of it.

Nutty professor in the Sunday Post today suggesting extending the school day by 2 hours to allow kids to catch up. Even my 2 at Uni cannot cope with 6 hours plus teaching input so this is imv a terrible idea. "Expertise" is becoming a very stretched term. (professor of education policy at Edniburgh Uni apparently).

Also suggests targeting extra time at most deprived. Clearly completely unaware that lots of these pupils already have weekend and after school intervention which would be crowded out by longer standard hours.

A much more practical suggestion would be increased resource for targeted smaller group sessions within the standard school day. Some sort of baseline testing pre August for later secondary to identify knowledge gaps and individualise group tutoring would be another option. Probably more productive than the current envisioned evidence gathering scramble for spurious grading.

www.sundaypost.com/fp/professor-lengthen-the-school-week-to-let-children-catch-up/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Not a teacher so happy to be corrected if I am reading this wrong.

Nutty professor in the Sunday Post today suggesting extending the school day by 2 hours to allow kids to catch up

Just in case they haven't fucking crippled the childcare sector enough eh... most kids could not handle this

And especially the kids most likely to have struggled wouldn't handle their routine being changed yet again and school day extended - they'll feel as though they're being punished. Think on professor!

We've said this before but I don't think there's a one size fits all catch up plan,
We need a series of plans/options.