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Post by garry on May 1, 2020 11:57:32 GMT
Struggle to see how the situation will help e cars, but don’t see it as any more or less difficult than for higher end automotive in general - it’s going to be tricky to convince customers to spend on any large discretionary item for a while.
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Post by garry on May 1, 2020 10:51:31 GMT
My 991.1 has a manual box. I love it and wouldn’t want to change it. I looked at a 992 and one thing that put me off was no manual option at the time. There’s nothing like that feeling of getting it ‘right’ on a good country road. I completely accept that Pdk is quicker. As for road noise, my car is very refined (for a sports car). I’ve got the sports exhaust and panoramic roof. The engine noise above 5k is thrilling and is the stand out noise. On a gentle drive, roof closed, sports exhaust off, it’s a completely comfy place to be. The 992 I drove was more refined ( perhaps a little too gt for my tastes). If I needed to do a 200 mile motorway run I wouldn’t choose the 911, but it wouldn’t be a remotely unpleasant car to use for that type of journey. I could easily live with a 911 as my only car if I only needed two seats.
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Post by garry on Apr 24, 2020 9:19:54 GMT
Do we know that the presence of antibodies gives immunity? I thought the experts were still unsure of this? As I understand it antibodies give immunity, but they don’t always stay in your system. So a positive result doesn’t guarantee lifetime immunity. This isn’t a coronavirus thing, it’s how antibodies work (my understanding. I could be completely wrong)
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Post by garry on Apr 24, 2020 8:27:43 GMT
My frustration about what we’re being told in the uk grows. Yesterday there was news from New York. 3000 people tested for antibodies in a study conducted by New York State. They were randomly selected while out shopping in grocery stores, The study found 22% of the cohort in New York City tested positive for antibodies. That means that they had coronavirus, recovered and developed immunity - a process which takes time so this study gives us a snapshot of the spread of the virus two weeks ago. I understand this to be a small sample, but it’s real data - something we’re woefully short of. Maybe I’m just impatient, but the uk press isn’t talking about this bar the Express who bizarrely paint a bad news story of something like ‘3 million in nyc have the death bug’. All we get is more pictures of nhs staff who’ve died,
For what it’s worth, my take on this study if it anywhere near translates to the general population in nyc is:
Coronavirus is hugely contagious. NYC had 4 cases on March 1st. There are 10 times more infections than thought. New York State reports circa 250k cases, this data suggests a number closer to 3 million. Coronavirus is a killer, but closer to flu than Ebola, Flu kills at about 0.1%, coronavirus maybe 0.5%. This will likely drop closer to flu as we align the data I.e. the 0.5% figure takes current deaths and two week old data on antibodies. It’s likely more of the population have developed antibodies in that time. Lockdown was a waste of time - if there was a 20% prevalence at the start of lockdown then the probability of being locked down with someone with it was high. Given how contagious it is, the chances of not getting it from someone you’re locked down with was low.
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Post by garry on Apr 23, 2020 6:32:50 GMT
I think that site is pretty good. The media is acting like cheerleaders for the government strategy and not doing the job of probing and testing. They are fuelling the hype and building a sense of fear that’s out of sync with the facts and we need sites like this to give more perspective. As an example, one of my nieces is a nurse. My mum called me in tears, incredibly worried that said niece was going to die (because we’re fed this narrative that working in a hospital presents a similar risk of death as being a ww2 fighter pilot). If you step back and look at the evidence it’s clear that nhs staff deaths are broadly in line with the general population on coronavirus I.e if you think of it in terms of odds then it’s a 5000:1 shot generally, with much lower risk if you’re fit and under 50.
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Post by garry on Apr 21, 2020 13:08:34 GMT
Anyone else see the demonstrations in the US yesterday? Un-bloody-believable. Hospital workers and red necks having standoffs on the street and Trump seems to be encouraging this behavior. Utter madness and of course as soon as this behavior becomes acceptable all those self isolating will just think whats the point as carry on as normal. I think it’s as expected. You’ve got a country that puts personal liberty before country, that doesn’t offer much support to the individual financially and that’s taken away the ability to earn money. They’ll start shooting each other soon enough
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Trump.
Apr 20, 2020 8:30:09 GMT
Post by garry on Apr 20, 2020 8:30:09 GMT
Trump is a genius when it comes to building and driving a narrative. Make America Great Again, Drain the swamp, the crooked media.....
He makes his narrative the only talking point because he pushes them to the edge of credibility ( ok, over the edge). The result:
1. His supporters agree and they start to chant the phrases in agreement 2. His opponents are so outraged or perplexed that they start to challenge them in disagreement
And the whole conversation centres on his narrative,
Love him or hate him, he’s incredible at driving the conversation.
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Post by garry on Apr 19, 2020 9:26:57 GMT
Gary, you can't get an ESTA to fly into the USA for the foreseeable future. This should be sufficient evidence for you to be entitled to a full refund of deposit. Having bought such an expensive trip, I hope you took out travel insurance at the time of booking, so won't your insurers help? esta.cbp.dhs.govAs Alex says, they're working on a 30 day basis so nothing is cancelled as yet. The issue is that I'd need to pay today and then be able to reclaim if the trip didn't happen. But who knows what the situation will be in three months. Perhaps they could fly us there, but theme parks will be closed or maybe we'd all have to spend a holiday in face masks. Perhaps Virgin holidays will go bust between me paying and the holiday. My decision is that it's better top walk away from £1200 than gamble with the rest of the money.
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Post by garry on Apr 19, 2020 9:06:08 GMT
Agree with much of that. The 510,000 figure in that link was from Neil Ferguson, who has a track record in hyperbole. (Foot and Mouth, SARS, MERS) and even he didn't claim this was additional deaths. But I guess a headline of "500,000 people to die, just like last year" wouldn't have people wetting their knickers quite as much. The other piece of research that's starting to gather momentum is that every antibody test is showing a significant higher proportion of the population have already has coronavirus that predicted. They are pointing to an under count of circa x85 in studies by Stanford, Dutch and Danish governments, etc. I think we'll start to see data emerge that shows the lockdown to be mostly a pointless exercise, but a media play that portrays the world as being saved by end this action.
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Post by garry on Apr 19, 2020 6:58:28 GMT
A lot of travel and hospitality companies will fail after lockdown and the end of govt backed furlough payments because of the way they’ve retained customer money. Customers will swap travel company and / or hotel for next summer’s holiday just to spite them. This really resonates. We had a family holiday booked to Disneyland this summer. We’d paid a 10% deposit with the rest being due this week for a mid July departure. I called and asked if there was anything they could do - I wasn’t comfortable paying the rest of the money until the situation was a bit clearer. The options were 1. Cancel and lose the deposit. 2. Pay another £2k to change booking to next year. I feel like Virgin have nicked £1200 from me and they ain’t getting any more of my cash ever. There are also good example of how to retain customers. My kids go to a Judo club that’s paid by monthly subscription on a 6 month contract. Right at the start of the crisis the club owner sent a message saying he’d love to retain everyone, but he understood times might be tough for some so if they needed to stop paying for some months he’d fully understand and they’d be welcome back with open arms when things improved. He also started online classes and one-on-one virtual sessions in a bid to keep offering something to club members, even to those who couldn’t continue with monthly subscriptions. I’ve kept up the monthly subscriptions and I hope we see his business thrive post crisis.
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Post by garry on Apr 17, 2020 10:08:50 GMT
On the subject of the validity of lock down. Most people are going to get this at some point because it will only burn out if everyone is locked in their homes and every single shop or business is permanently shut. We could also do this until a vaccine is found and deployed – but that is 18 months to “ never going to happen “. All you can ever hope to achieve with lock down such as ours is to slow the transmission in order to buy time to ramp up hospital capacity. Then, as soon as the capacity is delivered (which it has been – Nightingale and the other 16 or so temp facilities are now ready and (crucially) empty) – the lockdown should start to be lifted with the necessary precautions (observe social distancing with at risk individuals remaining in a lock down scenario). It’s clear that those without underlying health concerns and who are healthy have very low risk from dying and low risk of being hospitalised. So – in light of the above, consider this : • Even under a lock down, at least 1 member of every household has to go to a supermarket at least once a week – so is it a reality that the lock down is slashing the risk of transmission ? Also – look at the shit show that is central London public transportation. • Sweden hasn’t locked down, they’ve just been sensible and they are in no worse position than anyone else who hasn’t locked down. • What’s going to happen to our precious health service and all of those who rely on it when the economy is smashed to pieces ? Has anyone modelled the unnecessary death scenarios in that instance ? Of course – it’s easy to throw grenades when you are not at the sharp end having to make these decisions, but are you confident that the decisions being taken are completely apolitical and driven by data to ensure that balance between “ death deferral “ and not totally nixing the world as we know it is successfully maintained. Finally - I assume those in the know have realised that the minute you end furlough payments, at least a 3rd of those poor buggers on furlough will just be dismissed. I agree with all of this. I was talking to a ceo of a midsized company a couple of days back. He said he’d furloughed many people because it “at least got them some money for a couple more months before the inevitable happens”. I think there’s a lack of clarity in the public mindset about what the lockdown does and what risks we truly face. Too many seem to think that the lockdown will stop the virus and coronavirus is a death sentence. The reality is we were only ever trying to flatten the curve. The curve has been flattened from an nhs perspective and the virus is not high risk to the general population. The media play out the awful edge-cases every day, but the number of deaths are circa half of the great flu pandemic of 2015 (remember that? Thought not, but it was a bad year for flu and there were about 28,000 additional deaths in the uk because of it).
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Post by garry on Apr 17, 2020 8:52:18 GMT
Older MX-5s are just fabulous. Ours was cheap to run and I could even do stuff myself, like changing belts and things, with little time or effort. Yep. I had a green mk1 a few years back. Put a smile on my face every day. It cost nothing to run. I wish I’d kept it.
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Post by garry on Apr 17, 2020 8:52:02 GMT
Older MX-5s are just fabulous. Ours was cheap to run and I could even do stuff myself, like changing belts and things, with little time or effort. Yep. I had a green mk1 a few years back. Put a smile on my face every day. It cost nothing to run. I wish I’d kept it.
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Post by garry on Apr 17, 2020 6:30:33 GMT
I assure you that I won't blame the government for my death or that of anyone close to me.... there's a risk associated with almost everything we do - could get run over by an errant speeding car when I go out to post a letter. In fact 2 of the people I feel most sorry for are the couple who own Hays Travel. Having tried hard to rescue the staff of Thomas Cook, they are now faced with the prospect of almost zero customers for the foreseeable future. It the virus is only passed on by "transfer of body fluids", so long as we all wear face masks to stop us sneezing or coughing on anyone else, and don't touch each other (avoid shaking hands etc) then surely the lockdown can be relaxed significantly with zero, or minimal risk? Chris, Read this article on the new guidelines issued to police www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-52312560You can, for example, drive a to a place to take a long walk and stop to eat lunch on that walk. Surely you can find a happy few hours and still stay within those rules? All you can do is take control of aspects of life that you can control. Kicking against the system ain’t going to help you or change the situation.
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Post by garry on Apr 16, 2020 8:00:19 GMT
I think the only thing we can be confident on is that it will be tough. We're seeing a massive global disruption that will result in winners and losers at every level. The winners will be those better placed to address the new world or be able to quickly adapt to it. I'd place a bet on the UK being much more capable of adapting than the EU - there's a political window because of our recent election that means Boris has a couple of years to get things done that will hopefully deliver benefit before the next election and brexit gives more freedom. The EU is going to have to work out if/how it bails out two countries that entered this crisis in very bad shape and exit it almost bankrupt.
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Post by garry on Apr 14, 2020 10:44:40 GMT
I know, the stats on domestic violence are horrific but I guess expected.
On the positive side I wonder if there’s been a noticeable drop in other crime and accidents. Car accidents must be lower, and it would be a difficult time to be a mugger! I suspect drug dealing is a little tricker in an empty street.
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Post by garry on Apr 14, 2020 9:05:30 GMT
My sister called over the weekend. Told me that one of her friends has found out her husband is a bigamist! Lockdown has basically blown his cover. Then my partner got a call (from a near neighbour!) to say she'd found her fella in womens clothing. Apparently he's done it for years. Got me thinking that lockdown will cause all sorts of problems for those with little secrets!
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Post by garry on Apr 12, 2020 7:30:42 GMT
I don’t know if I’m missing much. I don’t live near my family so I don’t physically see them that often, but we’re talking more and use zoom so we see each other more. The nice weather has meant lots of time in the garden (I feel sorry for those stuck in flats) and lots of walks with the dogs. We had a bbq yesterday and it was lovely. I think because we live in the countryside isolation is normal anyway. To some extent it feels like the Pandemic is happening somewhere else.
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Post by garry on Apr 10, 2020 6:36:27 GMT
I was talking to a couple of work mates last night based over in the States. I think Coronavirus could cripple North America. it’s a country that’s structured around the individual, not the collective. An indiscriminate disease is going to test that model to breaking point. You’ve essentially got a country where access to healthcare is based on wealth, job security is almost non-existent and government safety nets are minimal. Add in to that the fact that a significant proportion of the population are pretty unhealthy and they have a president not renowned for his empathy.
They’re going to end up with people not wanting to be tested for fear of the impact on their health insurance, people with no insurance falling through the net, people working with symptoms for fear of losing their job, and a leader who is so short-term and right-wing he won’t have the vision or the desire to deal with this.
Anyone who has spent time in the States over recent years will know that the American dream has been broken in some cities and regions for a while now. Coronavirus has the capacity to make Detroit look like the model city.
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Post by garry on Apr 10, 2020 5:48:24 GMT
A pool is different to an endless pool. Think of an endless pool as a fancy hot tub. Yes, I get that. Don't hot tubs cost £50+ a month to run? Stop spoiling my plan with facts!
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Post by garry on Apr 9, 2020 15:52:41 GMT
I've only known one person who had a pool in their house and in the end they moved because they weren't using it anymore, it cost a lot to heat and they couldn't be bothered with testing the water and then working out what chemicals needed to go in. They were very excited when they got the house and used the pool a good bit in the early days but then it fell away. You could probably pay gym membership for the rest of your life and be better off. My parents neighbours had an indoor pool as part of their house build and they did use it a lot, but when they downsized and sold the house, it was worth less because of the cost of maintaining it, which also made the market a lot smaller. A pool is different to an endless pool. Think of an endless pool as a fancy hot tub.
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Post by garry on Apr 9, 2020 15:42:03 GMT
I like the Orbea M20. Shame it's Spanish... I think Orbea and ribble share the same motor? And Ribble are based in sunny Preston!
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Post by garry on Apr 9, 2020 15:29:29 GMT
How much is an endless pool? I'm missing it, but suspect I'd not be prepared to shell out enough for that solution. There may be cheaper options, but a local garden centre has them and the ones they sell start at around the £10-12k mark (iirc, might have been more), the more expensive ones have a jacuzzi at the end. I think the prices went up from there, to at least £60k I'm at the lower end of that budget! Still doesn't make much economic sense vs gym membership but I think I'd get alot from it. My man maths logic is that I was spending a stupid amount of money taking all the kids to Florida this summer. With that cancelled I can spend that money in an equally wasteful way!
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Post by garry on Apr 9, 2020 13:51:52 GMT
I think my work life will change significantly post isolation. I imagine that virtual training will become much more accepted and remote consultancy too. That should mean less time on the road, more nights at home. I'm really enjoying the daily bike ride but missing a swim. I'm going to look into an endless pool after this and I'll improve the garage gym. I've got a three car garage but only use one of them so I'm wondering what sort of gym/pool combo I'd get in a two car garage space. All based on the premise that I'll have any money at the end of this crisis!
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Post by garry on Apr 7, 2020 8:06:58 GMT
Indeed. I share Simon's frustration about the number of additional walkers, but these are public places after all. And it's better than the going nuts. When a minister recently said about the possibility of barring people from taking outdoor exercise if the rules weren't obeyed, I wondered whether I would comply though. Quite possibly not. The rules seem to be interpreted as “if it’s fun, it’s banned”. There are some big beaches near where I live. Lots of people enjoy walking their dogs there. Social distancing is really easy because of the size of the beaches. But the police were out there stopping dog walkers over the weekend, I guess forcing them to take walks on pavements near their homes. Seems nuts to me. We went for a bike ride along the canal on Sunday, took some cheese, bread and wine for a picnic. It was a lovely few hours and we followed social distancing rules, but I’m sure the fun police would have seen it differently.
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Post by garry on Apr 6, 2020 10:32:16 GMT
Looks like he’s had a clear out of some of the hard left too. As a life long conservative voter I’m happy to see a more challenging opposition. Competition forces everyone to up their game and I think he gives Labour the best chance of being a real political threat.
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Post by garry on Apr 2, 2020 10:37:22 GMT
My lock down activities:
- I've taught my dog to play dead when I pretend to shoot him
- I've reacquainted myself with A-level maths in my new role as daddy maths teacher
- I've recreated a close approximation of a five guys burger and chocolate milkshake
Skills that I hope become highly prized in the new-world economy that follows the lockdown
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Post by garry on Apr 2, 2020 10:23:55 GMT
Exercise bike being used in lieu of swimming. God, it's boring... I cant do more than 10 mins on an exercise bike! I bought this fancy watt bike a few years back for winter training and it just gathered dust
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Post by garry on Apr 2, 2020 10:07:14 GMT
There is a guy passes the office most days on a e-bike and I am amazed at the speed he goes. When the traffic is doing about 30mph he is pretty well keeping up. Do they all cut off at 15mph or do some keep powering on demand? This guy is as fast as some of the serious lycra brigade who are giving it everything. The husband of our next door neighbours is very much into electric but not pedal bikes. He has a BMW electric scooter which he uses to go to work most days and he also has an electric skateboard which he uses to go to work in the summer or just out for some fun. He loves them. There is a limit that keeps them to 15mph, but this can be hacked. In the states the limit is 25mph i think. Even with the 15mph limit you need to be a pretty good cyclist to stay in touch with an e bike. They pick up speed easily.
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Post by garry on Apr 2, 2020 10:02:54 GMT
I think they're cool. Have a mixed reputation though.
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