vivweb01blog

  Recent events in China have confirmed that chairman Xi’s decision to go for ‘Zero Covid or bust’ was the wrong one, as suggested in my blog ‘ China and Covid’ back in March.  The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA-n variants are now virtually unstoppable, due to their extreme infectiousness, and any attempt to eradicate the virus entirely from a population was always doomed to failure. If there were any remaining question in the minds of our epidemiologists about the impossibility of eradicating a coronavirus with this degree of infectiousness, China’s 3-year 'experiment' has now effectively proven the case beyond reasonable doubt.... The widespread prediction earlier this year that the Chinese population would eventually rebel against perpetual lockdowns is already coming to pass – the only question is how far the population will be prepared to go to achieve its aims - and how nasty it will get. This will be determined largely by how the CCP attempts to deal with it. One thing is c...

  Pondering last week’s story about the closedown of the world’s largest online eBook library  by the US authorities led me back to the question asked increasingly often nowadays:   “Where has all our common sense gone ?” This might be a good opportunity to take a light-hearted 'tongue-in cheek' look at the logic (or lack of it) underlying human behaviour. What is it ? First of all, what is ‘common sense’ – and how do we define it ? To start with, here's a bit of personal history to put things in context. I can well remember from my early childhood the frequent exhortations I received from my parents in response to what I thought was perfectly reasonable behaviour: ‘…for goodness sake lad, just use your common sense for change...’. And I'm sure plenty of my contemporaries will have experienced the same thing. At the time, I really had no idea what this strange commodity might be, whether I actually had any, or if not, where I might be able to get some. Which w...

  Our brand  new chancellor has now delivered his much-heralded 'mini-budget'....how do his tax changes really look,  now that the market has responded and the dust has started to settle ? Although advancing the planned 1% reduction in the basic rate to 19% to April 2023 is of course welcome, it only represents an annual increase in take home pay of a maximum of £375 for someone earning £50,000, and proportionally less for those lower down the earnings scale. It comes against a backdrop of spiralling inflation, which is likely to undo all its potential gains before it even kicks in.  The reversal of Sunak's ill-judged  NI increase will help some of the working population, but will mainly benefit the better-off earners. Anyone  earning below £12.5k will get nothing out of either change; pensioners of course won't get any benefit from the NI change - they have already paid for their state pension and healthcare during their working lifetimes, and quite rightl...

  In the past few weeks the UK supermarket  ‘majors’ have finally started to take stock of consumer responses to the cost of living crisis. ASDA were one of the first to act on their budget ranges earlier this summer, largely in response to their ‘shaming’ by campaigner Jack Munro, whose efforts earlier this year  effectively exposed their policy of only offering their full ‘Smartprice’ range in their biggest superstores. ASDA, I suspect fearing a social media ‘storm’ in response to Jack's revelations, quickly extended most of their ranges to their medium-sized stores at the time, and (so far) seem to have maintained reasonable stock levels on most of these items. Other majors are now following their lead with scale-ups of their own budget ranges, increasing both availability and restocking levels to cater for projected demand for lower priced items. The latest twist in this tale is that ASDA have now started limiting their budget ranges to 3 items per person.  Thi...

  The Polio virus is back – at least in our sewage system.  Does this mean we’re in for yet another another viral epidemic ? It could do, if we take no action – how then can we prevent it happening ? The reasons why polio virus has suddenly started to appear in our sewage system are not completely clear, given that no cases of active disease have been reported in UK so far. The most prevalent view amongst epidemiologists at present is that it has been imported by vaccinated individuals from areas of the world where vaccination is via the old-style oral attenuated live virus vaccine. This vaccine continues to be used in 3rd world countries because it is a) cheap and easy to administer and b) gives very good immune responses over a short period. It is the ideal rapid immunisation strategy in the few remaining areas of the world where the live virus is still endemic due to religious antipathy to vaccination (Afghanistan and Pakistan). It is also used as a rapid response t...

  On present evidence, yes….. Those of us old enough to remember the excesses of the 1970s will recall one of the most notable of its meteorological ones - the ‘great drought’ of ’76. Contrary to popular belief, this was more extensive and prolonged than the current one, with both a dry autumn and winter in 1975 and a dry spring in 1976 contributing.   In June 1976 there was actually a period of two weeks where maximum temperatures in southern England never fell below 32oC. The prolonged nature of this heatwave, and the following dry, hot period which continued until early August, resulted in severe consequences for crops and domestic  water supplies, with taps in some areas actually running dry. This culminated in the Drought Act being rushed through parliament on 5 th August. This legislation   included more draconian water restrictions, installation of standpipes, water bowsers, etc. ….and the appointment of Dennis Howells as ‘Minister for Drought’ by the th...

  F or many of us at this time of the summer our thoughts turn to tennis…. The trigger for this is of course the annual spectacle of Wimbledon, renowned the world over as one of the premier tournament venues for World Class tennis.  I suspect I may not be alone, however, in feeling that this 2-week ‘tennis-fest’ is becoming a little less interesting each year, with the same top players winning year after year, particularly in the singles tournaments. This isn’t a new phenomenon, of course - Djokovich and Nadal have monopolised the limelight for some years now in the mens’ tournament and the Williams sisters have managed between them to engineer a virtual 'closed shop' in the womens’ version for over a decade. Inevitably their collective advancing ages and accumulated bodily wear and tear will eventually put a stop to their monopolies, but this could take a few years yet. Why is this a concern ? As for any sport, ‘new blood’ is key to its advancement, and talented would-b...

 I n a recent post on this subject which I authored back in March,  I mentioned that Putin had recently agreed a pact with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. This was much heralded by both governments at the time as a mutually beneficial arrangement in the face of increased ‘aggression’ by NATO and the West, and was clearly intended to present a counter to Western influence prior to the start of the Ukraine invasion. It appeared at the time that Putin had been the main architect of the pact, and many speculated that Xi had agreed to it only on the basis of Putin’s ‘guarantee’ that he would quickly achieve his objective of subjugating Ukraine without much resistance from the Western alliance.  As the war progressed, some reports in the media suggested that the Chinese leadership were becoming restive in the face of the marked lack of progress by the Russian military and its failure to achieve its objective in bringing Ukraine quickly back into the Russian empire, suggest...