vivweb01

If anyone really needed it, and despite the protestations of some analysts, I think the local election results confirm the verdict of the opinion polls that Labour are likely to win the autumn General Election, and probably with a large majority.  Since Hunt's Budget was probably the 'coup de grace' in the Conservatives loss of popularity, I've updated this article to reflect recent developments. If we needed any confirmation that Hunt is still intent on abolishing NI, the recent 'spat' with Rachel Reeves left us in no doubt. Sunak's decision to go for a July poll will probably have little effect on the predicted result, but should at least kick the idea of abolishing NI into the long grass.... -----------------------------  We’re all painfully aware of the current malaise the UK is suffering in the wake of the pandemic, the cost of living crisis, etc., etc., and things don’t seem to be getting any better. Couple this with an obviously exhausted government...

  Calling All DVD & Blu-Ray Fans.... During the past couple of decades I’ve amassed a sizeable collection of DVDs, and more recently some Blu-Ray discs. I’m unlikely to have time to watch all these now, and rather than go through the hassle of trying to sell them individually on eBay (and making next to nothing after eBay fees are deducted !), I’ve decided to be kind to the Environment and recycle them by offering them for sale for virtually nothing to any interested readers using this blog platform and my website (better than seeing them end up in a skip and adding to our landfill woes !). The discs are in various formats ranging from collections of 12 discs of a certain genre (e.g. Sci-Fi, Action, Drama), through double-sided multi-film discs to conventional single-sided discs. I'm happy to sell them with or without boxes - postage will of course be cheaper without. All discs have been checked and are playable, and many are unused, some are even unopened in their original w...

  The short answer to this question is…yes, it already has. First, some background…. World Health Organization (WHO) has been monitoring data from Chinese surveillance systems that have been showing an increase in respiratory illness in children in northern China this autumn. In mid-November, China’s National Health Commission reported a nationwide increase in the incidence of respiratory diseases, predominantly affecting children. They attributed this seasonal increase primarily to the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions and known circulating pathogens such as influenza,  Mycoplasma pneumoniae , respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Also relevant was the continued prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in the Chinese population. Both  Mycoplasma pneumonia  and RSV are known to affect children more than adults. To follow up their report, WHO made an official request to China to provide additional epidemiologic and clinical information, as well as laboratory results from the repo...

  As predicted, SARS-CoV-2 hasn’t finished with us yet…. After a lull in the flow of ‘Variants if Concern’, we now have another Delta to Omicron-style evolutionary jump in the form of BA.2.86. The main concern with this particular variant is that it has lots of spike protein amino-acid mutations. First, just how different is it to past and present variants ? Relative to Omicron BA.2 (its putative ancestor) the BA.2.86 Spike Protein has 34 mutations: 29 substitutions, 4 deletions, 1 insertion. Relative to Omicron XBB.1.5 (more recent strain recommended for vaccine development) it has 36 mutations: 32 substitutions, 3 deletions, 1 insertion. Relative to the early Wuhan-Hu-1, it has a whopping 58 mutations: 52 substitutions, 5 deletions, 1 insertion. The key point here is that the number of spike amino acid mutations in the BA.2.86 variant relative to BA.2 and XBB.1.5 is comparable to the number of mutations in first Omicron strains relative to Wuhan-Hu-1. Although it’s e...

There is little doubt that more and more of us are struggling to keep ourselves and our families fed at present. This unhappy situation has arisen because of a ‘perfect storm’ of adverse circumstances and events that have hit us all over the past couple of years, and which shows little sign of abating.  The pandemic is widely seen as the principal source of our recent decline in fortunes, but in reality our population demographics, Brexit, the Ukraine war, mistaken monetary policies and a decade of austerity introduced by the coalition government after the 2008 financial crisis, have all contributed. Food banks have been a lifeline for some of the least fortunate in society for many years.  Until relatively recently, however, the numbers really needing to use them were relatively small. Over the past year, however, the added financial pressure of sudden-onset and rampant inflation, and the rush by BofE  to raise interest rates in a vain attempt to restrain it, have pu...

Increasing numbers of   our ' celebs' nowadays are publishing their memoirs, sometimes quite early on in their careers.  Perhaps the most noteworthy of these recently was Prince Harry, whose book 'Spare' quickly reached the best seller list and is still going strong. While memoir writing isn't for all of us, anyone contemplating doing this at some stage in their lives needs to ensure they keep a personal diary on a regular basis. This ensures that they have an accurate and detailed record of their lives to call upon when compiling 'The Book'.  Keeping a diary does of course require quite a bit of self-discipline, but has many benefits apart from just generating a life record and is therefore well worth the effort. A couple of lines of text taking maybe 5 minutes a day will usually suffice to cover the key events for that day. It will also help cement our memories and enable us to recap usefully on what we have (or haven't !) done that day. Many of us may...

I’m asking this question as a follow-up to my recent blog on the whys and wherefores of Big Tech software upgrades, and whether they are fair to the consumer.  As a frequent blogger, I regularly check the internal Blogspot tracking system to see how frequently my blogs are being viewed. Although the internal system is useful and has always been reliable, it is by its nature only there to provide basic tracking. It doesn't therefore provide some of the more useful features available via Google Analytics, such as where viewers are located and what screens they have viewed most often. I have a Google Sites website which is connected to Analytics and this does seem to have been effectively tracked over the past couple of years. When I first opened my blogspot account, indexing on Google occurred pretty quickly (unlike the Google Sites website which took them 15 months !) and an Analytics Universal property was created automatically and did start registering some hits. However, al...

  I first put out a blog on this subject in February prior to the latest budget. The aim of this was to put forward the arguments for some radical changes in the tax system which I thought were necessary in order to remove disincentives and stimulate growth. Many of the arguments still stand.   The following is an update describing the effects of the March budget, and the likelihood (or otherwise) that they will have the desired effect. It also reflects changes over the summer. ****** There has been much argument following the recent budget about whether the pension tax changes, which were aimed primarily at retaining senior NHS medical staff, are justified at a time when many other workers and less well-off pensioners are struggling with continued and rapid cost-of-living increases. At first sight it does seem that the Chancellor might have been overly generous to well-off pensioners, and it’s easy to see why many are more sympathetic to the plight of others lower down...

 As I suggested in my blog released in February  , a new upgraded vaccine has emerged in the form of a bivalent Covid19 product developed by Moderna. This has just been approved by MHRA for use in the UK. This is something of a milestone in vaccine development, since it is the first approval anywhere in the world of a vaccine designed specifically to mimic the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants (in this case BA.1). This is not before time – all the current approved vaccines are based on the spike protein of the original Wuhan variant, which was   identified and sequenced by the Chinese way back in early 2020. Many changes have occurred in the structure of the S-Protein since then, making the Omicron variants 'look' quite different to our immune systems, and this has resulted in a considerable reduction in the effectiveness of our vaccines against the virus (although mercifully not so far in their effectiveness against its most serious manifestations). T...