Author: johnredwood

Will Santa come for me?

December 24, 2021 64 Comments

Will Santa come for me?

May you all feel the excitement of Christmas.

 

WILL SANTA COME TONIGHT?

“Will Santa come? Will Santa come tonight?”

“He might. He might.

If you are good, he might.”

“Can I stay up and see?”

“No. He will not come for you or me

if we do not sleep . He’s too busy to meet us all.”

“And will he come for us?

Yes if you  sleep – he does not like fuss.”

Tonight, by the lights of the tree,

there is, at last, some grown up time for me.

The cake is iced. The wine is spiced .The carrots diced.

The pudding’s steamed. The brandy butter creamed.

The turkey prepared awaits. And yes, I did clean the plates.

The tree is up, the table laid,

the cards are out , though the credit card’s unpaid!

So shall I soon with gifts a plenty mount the stairs to deliver twenty?

Do I dare to tread the stair?

And will it creak? And will it creak? When can I take a peek?

I need to know if they slumber before I arrive with my lumber.

If they are still awake what dreams will go? What heart might break?

Or do they know? And is their belief just all for show?

So tonight by the magic tree there is need of time just for me.

I will wait – and struggle to keep open my eyes

And wrestle with the morality of eating Santa’s mince pies.

My adult mind is full of Christmas chores

The cooking times, and the cards through neighbours’ doors

The parties on zoom with friends we cannot meet

Those little things that for loved ones are a treat

 

I was once a child too excited to sleep

with a torrent of thoughts about what I might be given

Hoping that it was a toy beneath the wrapping – should I look? –

Not more socks or hankies, preferably something to be driven

So could Santa still come for me? Drowsily I dream as if I were eight

Hoping that Santa would not be late

Like every little boy there is of course a much wanted toy

So will Santa come tonight? He might, He might.

If you sleep well and if you believe

Only if you believe.

And only if in your family Love fills the hours you will be spending.

It could be the true Santa on the stair

Or it could be someone from an empty chair.

So will Santa come? He will. He will.

 

DECEMBER 24, 2021
An updated version of my Christmas Eve poem

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Are government and the media waking up to the energy shortage?

December 24, 2021 86 Comments

Yesterday there was some comment on the way energy bills will leap up in April when the price cap gets revised.

I want the government to get to work on allowing more domestic energy supply as I have been arguing for well in advance of the predictable crunch.

We will otherwise pay an increasingly heavy price for relying on imports from an energy short Europe increasingly reliant on Mr Putin’s  goodwill.

Covid 19 Vaccine Update from the Health Secretary

December 23, 2021 8 Comments

I have received the enclosed letter from the Health Secretary regarding on the latest Covid 19 vaccine update:

COVID-19 Vaccine Update – Children and Young People

I am writing to you to update you on the latest developments on our deployment of COVID-19 vaccines.

The national COVID-19 vaccination programme has been a great success with 126 million COVID-19 vaccines administered to date. The programme has prevented 127,500 deaths and 24,144,000 infections as of 24 September 2021.

The advice provided by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to the Government during the COVID-19 pandemic has been invaluable in ensuring a safe, effective, and successful vaccination programme in the UK.

As you will be aware, in response to the emergence of the Omicron variant in the UK, I accepted advice from the JCVI on 29 November 2021 that all children and young people aged 12 to 15 years should be offered a second dose COVID-19 vaccine at a minimum of 12 weeks from the first dose. In this advice, it was noted that no vaccine was at the time authorised in the UK for use in children aged 5 to 11 years.

Following a careful review of the relative balance of risks and benefits of vaccination, the JCVI have updated their advice on children and young people issued 29 November 2021.

The JCVI now advise that children aged five to 11 years in a clinical risk group or who are a household contact of someone who is immunosuppressed (both as defined in the UK Health Security Agency Green Book), should be offered two 10 micrograms doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine with an interval of eight weeks between the first and second doses. The minimum interval between any vaccine dose and recent COVID-19 infection should be four weeks.

A new paediatric formulation of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for use in children aged 5 to 11 years old has been approved for use in the UK today (22 December) by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) after finding that it is safe and effective.
This approval was given following a robust review of safety data that shows a positive benefit-risk profile for this vaccine to be used in this age group. The JCVI will issue further advice regarding COVID-19 vaccination for other five- to 11-year-olds in due course following consideration of additional data.

Moreover, the JCVI now advises an expansion of the booster programme to include:

• All children and young people aged 16 to 17 years;
• Children and young people aged 12 to 15 who are in a clinical risk group or who are a household contact of someone who is immunosuppressed, and
• Children and young people aged 12 to 15 years who are severely immunosuppressed and who have had a third primary dose.

The JCVI advise that these groups should be offered a booster dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine no sooner than 3 months after completion of their primary course. Prioritisation of booster vaccination within eligible cohorts will generally be in the order of descending age groups, or clinical risk, whichever is more expedient. The JCVI will continue to review new data and consider whether to recommend further vaccination of under-16s without underlying health conditions in a timely manner.

In accepting this most recent JCVI advice, I pay tribute to the tireless work of the Committee in negotiating the emerging science and data and making recommendations that are in the clinical best interest of patients.

I have directed the NHS to plan for operationalising this advice in the new year, as our immediate focus continues to be the national mission to offer COVID-19 booster vaccinations to all adults by the end of this year.

As with all groups that have been offered the vaccine, the considerations of risks from COVID-19 have been assessed against vaccination. This means that the parents and guardians of those called to receive the vaccine can be confident the decision made by them is the right one for their child.

It is essential that we and our constituents continue to play our part in the UK’s COVID-19 response and protect the country from the virus by coming forward for vaccination when contacted by the NHS. I would like to thank you all for your efforts to encourage your constituents to be vaccinated. I wish to conclude by once again encouraging all in the UK, when eligible, to get their jab.

Yours

SAJID JAVID MP

We do make some progress

December 23, 2021 28 Comments

I have throughout the pandemic pressed for more drug trials to improve treatments. We are now seeing some good progress.

 

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will list the drugs the NHS can use to treat covid-19 patients. (91820)

Tabled on: 13 December 2021

Answer:
Maggie Throup:

The following therapeutics are available to patients hospitalised with COVID-19 and in the community setting:

– Dexamethasone;

– Tocilizumab;

– Ronapreve; and

– Sotrovimab.

The following antivirals are available to patients in both hospital and community settings:

– Remdesivir;

– Molnupiravir; and

– PF-07321332

The answer was submitted on 23 Dec 2021 at 10:47.

Christmas message

December 23, 2021 142 Comments

 

 

         I am writing to wish you a happy Christmas and to look forward to a better new year. I have been keen to support those in government determined to avoid any ban on family get togethers and visits to local restaurants and cafes over Christmas in contrast to 2020.  It looks as if we will enjoy some  of our traditional freedoms.

 

      I have not taken this view without considering very carefully the evidence of how we can best control the pandemic. Reliance on vaccines is our first line of defence and they seem to be working well. The gradual introduction of better drug treatments also helps cut serious case rates. I have been urging completion of more drug trials and more work on better air extraction and UV cleaning of circulating air to cut the risk of the virus in indoor public spaces.The government promise me they are pressing ahead with this. The early evidence on Omicron suggests this is for most  a milder version with less infection of the lungs which has been the danger in other variants. 

 

       We are going to have to live with strains of this virus for some years to come, just as we do with flu which can also be a nasty killer for some. The U.K. government did well to back and support one of the first successful vaccines and then to roll out a large and early vaccination programme to greatly reduce the risks of death for many people. Armed with  other improvements we should  now let people make more of their own judgements about how to cut the  risks of the disease themselves.

 

         I am pressing the government to get on with measures to promote more prosperity, more and better paid jobs, and more U.K. self reliance in everything from energy to food. I am proposing how to cut supply shortages which lead to inflation and how to reduce the  cost of living squeeze which will be bad in April without further changes of approach. 

 

          There is some disquiet about the apparent breaching of covid rules by senior officials in government. The PM is right to commission a proper enquiry and will then need to take disciplinary action if offences occurred. 

 

         

The long shadow of Project Fear

December 22, 2021 273 Comments

I am all in favour of experts. I read a lot of expert opinion. Daily I learn something new from reading someone’s research findings about issues of public interest.

Reading plenty of experts has taught me several things. It has taught me that some so called experts are not up to the title, producing ill thought through material with insufficient proof.  The BBC is specially good at mistaking establishment propagandists for experts. It has reminded me that in many difficult areas the experts disagree amongst themselves, which is often a welcome  way of moving towards a greater understanding of the issue. I have also discovered in fields I study that there can often develop an expert consensus, held by many for fear of getting out of line. This can result in a catastrophic establishment failure because most of the tenured individuals dare not disagree. In economics the Exchange Rate Mechanism  boom and bust  and the banking crash great recession are two  examples of groupthink gone wrong.

The worst feature of recent years has been when the establishment consensus allies itself with political forces and tries to dominate the democratic debate about a topic. The Treasury and Bank of England forecasts prior to the referendum we now know were wildly wrong and were clearly designed to help the Remain campaign. They forecast a fall in house prices, a fall in employment, a rise in interest rates and a fall in the pound if we left. Instead in the early months after we finally left the reverse of all those forecasts occurred. In the year immediately after the vote as well house prices rose, employment went up and interest rates went down. This poor forecasting undermines public confidence in official forecasts. It also angers the majority who disagreed with the establishment political view on the underlying question.

Today expert epidemiologists need to grasp that their forecasts will be carefully scrutinised  and subjected to commonsense checks because of past forecasting errors by government advisers. Net zero advisers keen to speed the transition will need to ask why the public does not rush to transform their lives in the recommended ways. They will find they need to overcome scepticism about some of their claims.

Democracy places non experts in positions of power to take advice, to consider conflicting expert claims and to apply some commonsense to recommendations. It remains the best way of proceeding in a world where the future is always uncertain. For a democracy to thrive we need to debate the cosy and sometimes horribly wrong consensus views of a self selecting group of experts in any given area. No one peddling views gets a ride free from criticism in a thriving democracy.

What a recovery package would look like

December 21, 2021 145 Comments

We soon will need to put the worst of the pandemic measures behind us and concentrate on the promotion of prosperity for the many. Controlling the disease should rest on the offer of vaccinations, better treatments, individual decisions about reducing the risk of infection and better air extraction and cleaning in public buildings.

The Treasury needs to acknowledge that its policy is going to squeeze the economy too much in the first half of next year. If they persist with their raft of tax rises in April, hitting just when energy prices rocket with the shifting of the price caps, we will see an unwelcome relapse in confidence, incomes and output.

The Treasury should announce now that it will not impose the hike in national Insurance, a tax on jobs and on take home pay, at the peak of the cost of living troubles. It should remove VAT on domestic fuel to ease the large rise in energy costs for consumers.

The Treasury should work with the Business department to increase the supply of domestic energy. Gas is a so called transition fuel which will be much needed this decade before new nuclear and other reliable carbon free electricity comes on stream. Gas also remains the dominant way of heating homes, as people are not yet ready to adopt electric and heat pumps based home heating. The government should give the go ahead of additional UK gas production, starting with the Jackdaw field and other projects ready to go. The government should also commission more gas storage capacity to help smooth wild fluctuations in  spot market prices of gas.

The government should procure more reliable electricity supply from domestic sources as we are too dependent on imports when there is little wind.The Treasury should work with the Environment Department to fashion support schemes to promote more food production at home instead of offering money to prevent farming here, supporting imports.

All the time government advisers tell us to avoid social contact the Treasury needs to offer help to social contact service businesses.It needs at least to continue  business rates relief and lower VAT, and should offer direct assistance for cash flow problems of otherwise solvent businesses.

NHS Ministers/planners do not trust the scientific forecasts of more Omicron cases to plan capacity

December 20, 2021 54 Comments

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the number of hospital beds that will be needed for cases of the Omicron variant of covid-19 in January based on the latest forecasts. (91819)

Tabled on: 13 December 2021

Answer:
Maggie Throup:

In the absence of any data on disease severity or the likely transmission rates in the community, it is not possible to make any reliable estimates of predicted future hospitalisation rates or the number of hospital beds required for cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant. As data on transmission rates becomes clearer over time and the initial hospitalisations allow assessment of severity and care needs, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) will be able to generate projections of predicted future hospitalisation rates. The UKHSA and NHS England and NHS Improvement are working together to collate this data as quickly as possible.