#but then the labour gov has been kind of ????

[defenestratte]

This situation is sodapressing that i might as well be dispensing soft drinks at a fast food restaurant rn

[fumblingmusings]

why do you say kiku is part of the problem in your end note of the chapter? is he knowingly or unknowingly being manipulated by alfred or something regarding putting evelyn in her "cage"? sorry i dont really understand why she's in a cage too post-war (at least not anymore than other nations also subject to the international order, alliances and power hierarchies).

These two asks are kind of related so forgive me pinning them together! This is long and rambling, so please forgive me if it's not particularly coherent and is obtuse. I wanted the ending to be a bit off. Like things are better, but there's still a lot of the same old problems that remain.

But yes, Evie has in many ways done a full circle. The people dictating what she can and cannot do have shifted from the Cromwells and Naval Officers and Prime Ministers to simply Alfred.

This is fine by her, as one is much more benevolent than the others. She had been wanting it for a long time anyway.

She is fine it because she is genuinely in a better place after the war, Alfred genuinely cares for her and wants to help her, but. You know. America's poodle and all that. Especially tossed England's way under that Blair Labour Gov and anytime she disagrees with Europe.

Regardless of the truth of such a label, I wanted to - in the fic - show just how there is no easy and correct path for these guys to walk, because despite all the love they have for each other, international relations is going to keep butting them in the head. Everyone in the story lacks autonomy one way or another, the trouble is trying to work out a system that they are either happy or functional within it.

Alfred began wanting to break out of that construct - he ends the story as perhaps its biggest enforcer.

History rarely repeats, but it sure does rhyme. Eva has a decent relationship with the kids and is entering a romantic relationship. There's also progression: she is going to confront and look at how she failed people, with the knowledge that maybe she can't fix it, but she still needs to try regardless.

However, for all that progress, her and Kiku know, if Alfred had said 'no' to them reuniting, their conversation wouldn’t have happened. England and Japan rarely do anything together on an international level without America giving its backing.

Yes Alfred loves her dearly, but she is very clearly the junior player in that relationship now. Her ability to intentionally or incidentally cause harm to others has been greatly reduced, and with that comes the need and chance for her to seriously look at what she did(n't) do. She feels more free because she is more free, but she is also very dependent on Alfred maintaining that.

Alfred's last line: 'we're all together, just like I promised.'

He never promised that. Evelyn did. Alfred internalised it and sort of went: 'only on my terms'. Evelyn accepted this before she got him to shoot her last chapter, saying essentially: 'fine, do whatever you want with me, but you need to protect me if so'. She had been trying to make that transfer for years. Wanting Alfred to be the world’s major player has always been her in some ways trying to exercise autonomy... by signing over autonomy. Maybe that's a really cynical way of looking at it though.

This makes Alfred sound incredibly cruel and Eva a poor victim, but that's really, really not my intention. She never held power in her own right, always propped up by sucking the life out of others. She had to have it ripped away for everyone's sake. Her status required exploitation. She trusts Alfred to do the right thing. Should she? How different is Alfred from her really? Has the dynamic just flipped? Ehhhhh... Open ended I think.

[nobbin0]

It’s been over a year since the 35 labourers who were engaged in constructing Beni Hospital building returned empty-handed, without receiving the wage promised to them. Eighteen other labourers engaged in the Darbang-Bim Rural Road project were also forced to work for free. Construction companies in Myagdi have accrued profit from projects like this. The government has achieved its ‘developmental goal’. But the labourers who built the projects haven’t received their wage.

"What kind of development is this, achieved without paying the poorest?” Santabir Lama, who was engaged in building Beni Hospital, says.

According to the workers, the joint venture of Khimti, Galwa and Raffina construction companies, which was contracted to build Beni Hospital, didn’t pay them the Rs. 175,000 due wage, so they filed a complaint at the District Administration Office in Bhadra last year.

The office then corresponded with the Saghan Urban and Building Construction Project including the labourer’s memo to ‘make the necessary arrangement’ on Bhadra 26. The project then wrote a letter to the contractor on Asoj 1, 2080 BS. Ten days later, the construction entrepreneur Rabin Joshi and a labour supplier paid Rs. 10,000 to Santabir Lama, on whose name the complaint was filed, through a representative Durga Karki. The other labourers were forced to leave empty-handed. Santabir, however, threatened them that he’d kill himself and was paid Rs. 10,000 as bus fare.

The festival Dashain was near and the unpaid labourers left for their homes empty-handed.

"We had started working here since Asar 7, and I have to receive Rs. 35,000 due wage,” Santabir, who hails from Timal in Kavre, had said in Asoj last year. “Everyone has returned home, and since I don’t have enough money to return home, I am still here.”

Continue reading

Who needs enemies when you have the gov of nepal

[crimechannels]

By • Olalekan Fagbade Labour Party Guber candidate boasts of victory in spite of leaders decamping from Party The Labour Party (LP) candidate for Saturday’s governorship election in Bayelsa, Mr Udengs Eradiri, says he is confident of victory during the poll despite the decamping of some of the leaders of his party to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He said he was not worried that chairmen of Labour Party in six local government area of the state had yesterday defected to PDP and declared their supports to the re-election of Gov Douye Diri. Speaking with newsmen on Friday, Eradiri described the defected Labour Party chieftain as betrayers, who could trade anything for parochial gains. The governorship candidate said he was in the race to solve Bayelsa problems and not party problems. He said: “Well, there is no reaction about the APC leaders that defected, it was expected, they are just looking for ways to deceive Douye Diri, you know he is not on ground. “So, anybody who wants to make money from him should go and deceive him; don’t forget that I gathered the Labour Party people and when they started this appointment thing, I told them to go and collect, because I’m here for Bayelsa problems, I’m not here for the party. “This party members, I made them, they are surrogate of government, they have betrayed Obi, is it me that they will not betray? “These people will sell their mother for anything; I was expecting it, it even came at approximate time because this is the selling period. “It’s the last day of campaign, I don’t do politics of decamping, if I go to any community, people come to me that they want to decamp, I will say please I don’t do this kind of politics, stay where you are and vote for me. “I don’t know how to do party politics, it is so unfortunate that Bayelsa is in this state; the level of incompetence the governor is expressing is the reason any two or three person can gather to get money from him. “I heard again that another group has gathered this morning, saying that they are Obi supporters group and collected N30 million. “I am not a violent person, in this election, no violence has been recorded over my activities. I have been consistent about the non-violent process, I didn’t participate in signing peace accord because I didn’t miss anything, I was not informed on time. “There is no drinking water in any part of Bayelsa, rain is falling in public secondary and primary schools. I’m prepared for tomorrow’s election, so that Bayelsans will have the needed leadership,” he said. (NAN)

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Biden Effort to Combat Hunger Marks ‘a Profound Change’ (NYT) With more than one in 10 households reporting that they lack enough to eat, the Biden administration is accelerating a vast campaign of hunger relief that will temporarily increase assistance by tens of billions of dollars and set the stage for what officials envision as lasting expansions of aid. The effort to rush more food assistance to more people is notable both for the scale of its ambition and the variety of its legislative and administrative actions. The campaign has increased food stamps by more than $1 billion a month, provided needy children a dollar a day for snacks, expanded a produce allowance for pregnant women and children, and authorized the largest children’s summer feeding program in history. “We haven’t seen an expansion of food assistance of this magnitude since the founding of the modern food stamp program in 1977,” said James P. Ziliak, an economist at the University of Kentucky who studies nutrition programs. “It’s a profound change.”

Police, communities across U.S. fight back against anti-Asian hate crimes (Reuters) More than a dozen San Jose, California, police officers walked through the white arches of the Grand Century Mall in “Little Saigon” to reassure a Vietnamese-American community fearful over the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States. Across the United States, law enforcement agencies are scrambling to better protect Asian communities amid a wave of violence targeting them since lockdowns to cope with the coronavirus pandemic began about a year ago. A recent report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, showed that while hate crimes overall in the United States had fallen slightly in 2020, crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) had jumped by 145%. A vicious assault last week in which a man kicked a 65-year-old immigrant from the Philippines in New York City multiple times was captured on video and went viral, further stoking fears about anti-Asian hate crimes. New York City has deployed a team of undercover Asian police officers. Other major cities, from San Jose to Chicago, have boosted patrols in Asian neighborhoods and sought to forge closer ties with communities, some of which have sought to fill gaps the police can’t fill.

Florida works to avoid ‘catastrophic’ pond collapse (AP) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that crews are working to prevent the collapse of a large wastewater pond in the Tampa Bay area while evacuating the area to avoid a “catastrophic flood.” Manatee County officials say the latest models show that a breach at the old phosphate plant reservoir has the potential to gush out 340 million gallons of water in a matter of minutes, risking a 20-foot-high (about 6.1-meter-high) wall of water. Authorities have closed off portions of the U.S. Highway 41 and ordered evacuations of 316 homes. Some families were placed in local hotels. Crews have been discharging water since the pond began leaking in March. On Friday, a significant leak that was detected escalated the response and prompted the first evacuations and a declaration of a state of emergency on Saturday. A portion of the containment wall in the reservoir shifted, leading officials to think a collapse could occur at any time.

Demonstrators protest a policing bill in England and Wales (Vox) Thousands of demonstrators marched across Britain on Saturday in protest of a massive new policing bill that would create new restrictions on protest in England and Wales and impose hefty fines for not following police instructions. The bill, officially known as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, was introduced in early March and has been met with widespread pushback in England and Wales since then. It also includes sentencing and court reforms, among other changes, but protesters are specifically incensed by proposed new police powers concerning protests. According to the BBC’s Dominic Casciani, the bill would criminalize violating restrictions that protesters “‘ought’ to have known about, even if they have not received a direct order from an officer,” and “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance.” This weekend’s “kill the bill” marches aren’t the first. According to the Guardian, Bristol, in southwest England, has been the site of at least five protests over the last two weeks, including one that turned violent and saw at least two police vehicles set on fire earlier in March.

Marine Le Pen’s growing support (Financial Times) It would be a political earthquake as disruptive as the UK referendum vote for Brexit in 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as US president later that year. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s extreme right Rassemblement National party, is doing so well in the polls that she threatens to foil Emmanuel Macron’s re-election bid and could win next year’s presidential vote to become the country’s first far-right leader since the second world war. Only last week, she likened herself to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the UK’s Brexiters—and by implication former US president Trump—as a politician who could triumph with the support of all kinds of voters. “There’s no more split between left and right, there’s a split between the globalists and the nationalists,” she said.

Polish hospitals struggle with surge of virus patients (AP) Polish hospitals struggled over the Easter weekend with a massive number of people infected with COVID-19 following a huge surge in infections across Central and Eastern Europe in recent weeks. Tougher new pandemic restrictions were ordered in Poland for a two-week period surrounding Easter in order to slow down the infection rate. The country hit new records of over 35,000 daily infections on two recent days, and deaths have been in the hundreds each day. The aim of the new restrictions was to prevent large gatherings over the long weekend culminating with Easter Monday. Meanwhile, the government is also trying to speed up the country’s vaccine rollout, but the pressure on the country’s hospitals is still relentless.

Maoist Insurgents Kill 23 Indian Forces in Ambush, Officials Say (NYT) At least 23 Indian security forces were killed in an ambush by Maoist militants in the central state of Chattisgarh, officials said on Sunday, reviving concerns around a decades-old insurgency that appeared to have been largely contained in recent years. A large force of Indian security personnel had been carrying out a clearance operation in a densely forested area on the edges of the Bijapur district when they were ambushed by the insurgents on Saturday in a firefight that lasted four hours. Avinash Mishra, the deputy superintendent of police in Bijapur, said an additional 31 security personnel were wounded in the attack. The insurgents, who trace their roots to communist politics in the 1960s, use violence against the state in the name of championing the cause of India’s poor and marginalized. Their reach was once so widespread, and their attacks so frequent, that in 2006, India’s prime minister declared them the country’s “single biggest internal-security challenge.”

China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline (The Economist) Its gaze fixed on the prize of becoming rich and strong, China has spent the past 40 years as a risk-averse bully. Quick to inflict pain on smaller powers, it has been more cautious around any country capable of punching back. Recently, however, China’s risk calculations have seemed to change. First Yang Jiechi, the Communist Party’s foreign-policy chief, lectured American diplomats at a bilateral meeting in Alaska, pointing out the failings of American democracy. That earned him hero status back home. Then China imposed sanctions on British, Canadian and European Union politicians, diplomats, academics, lawyers and democracy campaigners. Those sweeping curbs were in retaliation for narrower Western sanctions targeting officials accused of repressing Muslims in the north-western region of Xinjiang.      China’s foreign ministry declares that horrors such as the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and the Holocaust, as well as the deaths of so many Americans and Europeans from covid-19, should make Western governments ashamed to question China’s record on human rights. Most recently Chinese diplomats and propagandists have denounced as “lies and disinformation” reports that coerced labour is used to pick or process cotton in Xinjiang. They have praised fellow citizens for boycotting foreign brands that decline to use cotton from that region. Still others have sought to prove their zeal by hurling Maoist-era abuse. A Chinese consul-general tweeted that Canada’s prime minister was “a running dog of the us”.      Such performance-nationalism is watched by Western diplomats in Beijing with dismay. Envoys have been summoned for late-night scoldings by Chinese officials, to be informed that this is not the China of 120 years ago when foreign armies and gunboats forced the country’s last, tottering imperial dynasty to open the country wider to outsiders. Some diplomats talk of living through a turning-point in Chinese foreign policy. History buffs debate whether the moment more closely resembles the rise of an angry, revisionist Japan in the 1930s, or that of Germany when steely ambition led it to war in 1914. A veteran diplomat bleakly suggests that China’s rulers view the West as ill-disciplined, weak and venal, and are seeking to bring it to heel, like a dog.

Minorities in Myanmar borderlands face fresh fear since coup (AP) Before each rainy season Lu Lu Aung and other farmers living in a camp for internally displaced people in Myanmar’s far northern Kachin state would return to the village they fled and plant crops that would help keep them fed for the coming year. But this year in the wake of February’s military coup, with the rains not far off, the farmers rarely step out of their makeshift homes and don’t dare leave their camp. They say it is simply too dangerous to risk running into soldiers from Myanmar’s army or their aligned militias. “We can’t go anywhere and can’t do anything since the coup,” Lu Lu Aung said. “Every night, we hear the sounds of jet fighters flying so close above our camp.” The military’s lethal crackdown on protesters in large central cities such as Yangon and Mandalay has received much of the attention since the coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government. But far away in Myanmar’s borderlands, Lu Lu Aung and millions of others who hail from Myanmar’s minority ethnic groups are facing increasing uncertainty and waning security as longstanding conflicts between the military and minority guerrilla armies flare anew.

Tropical cyclone kills at least 97 in Indonesia, East Timor (Reuters) Floods and landslides triggered by tropical cyclone Seroja in a cluster of islands in southeast Indonesia and East Timor have killed 97 people, with many still unaccounted for and thousands displaced, officials said on Monday. At least 70 deaths were reported in several islands in Indonesia’s West and East Nusa Tenggara provinces, while 70 others were missing, after the cyclone brought flash floods, landslides and strong winds amid heavy rain over the weekend, disaster agency BNPB said.

Lawyer says mediation resolves feud among Jordan royals (AP) Mediation between Jordan’s King Abdullah II and his outspoken half brother, Prince Hamzah, successfully de-escalated one of the most serious political crises in the kingdom in decades, the palace and a confidant of the prince said Monday. The apparent resolution of the unprecedented public feud capped a weekend of palace drama during which the king had placed Hamzah under house arrest for allegedly plotting with foreign supporters to destabilize Jordan, a key Western ally. The announcement of the successful mediation came after Abdullah’s paternal uncle, Hassan, met with Hamzah on Monday. Hamzah was joined by his brother Hashem and three of their cousins. “In light of the developments of the past two days, I put myself at the disposal of His Majesty the King,” said the statement signed by Hamzah. He said he would remain loyal to the king and to Jordan’s constitution. Malik R. Dahlan, a professional mediator and a friend of the family, then issued a separate statement, saying the mediation has “been successful and I expect a resolution shortly.” He said that “this regrettable incident was the result of the clumsy actions of a senior security official and misrepresentation by a government official,” adding that “it should have remained a family matter.”

Netanyahu’s favours were ‘currency’, prosecutor says as corruption trial starts (Reuters) Israeli prosecutors accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of treating favours as “currency” on Monday at the opening of a corruption trial which, along with an inconclusive election, has clouded his prospects of remaining in office. Netanyahu, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud, came to Jerusalem District Court in a dark suit and black protective mask, conferring quietly with lawyers as his supporters and critics held raucous demonstrations outside. Meanwhile, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin began consulting with party heads on who might form the next coalition government—a toss-up after the March 23 election, the fourth in two years, gave neither Netanyahu nor his rivals a clear mandate.

Pandemic Spreads Isolation (WSJ) A year ago when Japan was under a pandemic state of emergency, Seiji Saejima called his ex-wife for the first time since they divorced a few years earlier. He said she told him she was about to remarry and asked him not to call again. It was an unwelcome reminder of the isolation he was feeling. “I did not have many friends to contact even before,” said the 34-year-old, who works at a city government office near Tokyo. Then the pandemic forced reductions in activities that kept him connected, like going to singles’ mixers. “The coronavirus has made me realize I’m lonely,” he said. Recent data suggest many more people are having the same experience, and that is changing the thinking of some governments. Japan recently named a loneliness and isolation minister, following the U.K.’s example from three years ago. The U.K. named a minister after recognizing the impact of isolation on people’s health and its economy. One study linked deficiencies in social relationships to a 29% increase in heart disease. Another estimated that a chronically lonely person could cost the government, on average, the equivalent of an extra $16,600 over 15 years, owing to higher medical and other costs. “The magnitude of effect of social connection on mortality risk is comparable, and in many cases, exceeds that of other well-accepted risk factors, including smoking up to 15 cigarettes per day, obesity and air pollution,” said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a Brigham Young University professor of psychology and neuroscience, in 2017 U.S. Senate testimony.

[the50-person]

HONG KONG UPDATE 9 DEC 2019

0600: Tsuen Wan. No one out despite 6am call time for a loosely planned Dawn Movement. Ppl chiding one another on Telegram for not showing up. A few police cars roaming arnd.

0800: Telegram groups favoured by hardliners are pushing for “blossom everywhere” commuter disruption, but so far not much sign of it beyond reports of a few objects on overland lines causing some delays. Tbh it’s winter, and everyone just had a rally on 8 Dec, so that might be a reason. Also ppl are saying that a resumption of the tactics of Oct and Nov might backfire due to the great scale of disruption and the eventual university sieges that occurred. There is much talk about looking into new options like labour action through formation of unions.

0823: Alr at least 7 arrests reported around HK, all of young ppl, incl a young girl videographed on a police van. She is not yet 16 and was taken to number plate AM6881.

0915-0930: Lam Tin. Riot police arrested at least one person (a man) after some masked ppl blocked both directions of Kai Tin Rd outside Kai Tin Shopping Centre. Stand News reported that roadblocks were cleared at 9:15am and most police departed, but they suddenly came back to tackle a white-shirted man onto the ground 15 minutes later.

1043: Wanchai. In light of ppl calling for general strike online, groups of heavily armed HK police patrol around Wanchai during morning school hours. Young students (lower primary students) look visibly scared by their presence. Next day after massive approx 1 million march,  HK police threaten young school kids with live machine guns. This is the gov’s and police’s response. Then again, Chief Exec Carrie Lam’s response last night was essentially a non-response: 1. Condemn any damage caused 2. Police did not do anything wrong

1315: Citizens organised roadblocks to halt traffic at 10 different districts in the morning in anger after the HK gov gave little response to 8 Dec’s massive march other than saying it “proved HKers still had the freedom of assembly” (which is literal BS). Minor road disruptions were reported in areas such as Tsuen Wan, Mong Kok and Lam Tin, with reports that some objects were thrown onto rail tracks near Shatin MTR station. In some areas such as Tsuen Wan, drivers and local residents cleared the roadblocks themselves, while riot police arrived quickly to others.

1347: Shatin. Riot police stopping and searching young ppl during lunch hours.

Posted 1606: Hundreds of pro-democracy lawmakers and district councillors have urged HK gov to scrap a proposed pay rise for the police. HK gov denies the request without explaining how the request is a violation of any rules and laws. Police have requested that their pay raise be separated from other items as they should receive a higher hike in salary. They asked for a minimum of 7% pay rise, higher than the gov pay raise of 5.26% for civil servants in the lower and middle salary bands. Ridiculous. Firstly, police have not been policing properly, they have engaged in severe and horrendous human rights abuses of all kinds (m*urder, r*ape, framing, sending ppl to China to be locked for literally eternity, tor*ture); their rating is the lowest out of all disciplinary forces with 40% respondents giving 0 marks. Secondly, civil servants in lower and middle salary bands are diploma or fresh grads, who ought to properly receive a higher salary due to qualifications. Police are the lowest educated with their Yijin diploma, which means that they do not qualify for such a high salary according to the tiers used in human resources. This has nothing to do with elitism or anything. This is what we call fair treatment - the pay you have should fairly reflect the qualification you possess and the efforts you have put in all these years to gain them. You tell me someone who works their ass off and pays so much tuition fees to attain their degree should get worse treatment than someone who passes the easy-as-hell Yijin diploma? You know how easy Yijin is? It’s literally a no-brainer like omg, police are ridiculous and unfair and they are getting greedier every single day.

1719: At Monday afternoon's police press conference, police also said they arrested 12 people in Sheung Shui in the morning for alleged possession of tools that officers suspected they would use to puncture vehicle tyres. Police public relations chief superintendent Kwok Ka-chuen added that officers had been deployed to 24 MTR stations and 25 other locations across HK from 4am onwards, in anticipation of the well-publicised morning roadblocks.

1735: Cases of those arrested late Saturday 7 Dec night — after police raided addresses in Tsuen Wan and Tin Hau, allegedly finding fireworks and a pistol — are being heard at the Eastern Magistracy on Monday afternoon. The court will only decide whether to grant bail. Only two of the five arrestees from police raids in Tsuen Wan and Tin Hau were granted bail at a heavily-guarded Eastern Magistrates' Court on Monday afternoon, with the other three remanded until another court decision - perhaps until trial. The first defendant's lawyer told the court that during the raid, police shut off the lights, beat him and forced him to unlock his phone. Those seated in court reported the prosecution then presented the first defendant's phone messages as evidence to the court.  Lmao are police trying to create the classic Yue Fei maligned case of “perhaps there was a crime”

2331: Mongkok. Police are stopping and searching young people in Mong Kok on Monday night, after makeshift roadblocks were reported on Shantung Street earlier in the evening.

10 Dec 2019 0009: Mongkok. Riot police remove roadblocks after they are intermittently placed onto the streets of Mong Kok. At least one arrest has been reported on Monday night after stop-and-searches of young people.

0130: Mongkok. A man lies injured in Mong Kok at 1:30am. Bystanders say he was being stopped and searched by riot police, when due to a dispute, they suddenly shot him with a pepper ball in the head from point-blank range, reportedly hitting the eye. The seriousness of the man reportedly shot with a police projectile in the head or eye on Mong Kok's Shantung Street junction remains unclear.

0140: Mongkok. An ambulance arrived at the Mong Kok location 10 minutes later, but the man remains closely guarded by riot police. Another man was pepper-sprayed in the face after leaving the police cordon too slowly.

0151: Mongkok. The second man pepper-sprayed by riot police in Mong Kok is being treated by first-aid personnel.

At least 7 ppl arrested in Mongkok in the night, several others in other locations.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/the-latest-midwest-hospitals-raise-alarms-on-bed-capacity-national-news/

The Latest: Midwest hospitals raise alarms on bed capacity | National News

MISSOURI — Missouri hospital leaders are raising alarms about bed capacity as coronavirus cases continue to spike, with some urging Gov. Mike Parson to issue a statewide mask mandate.

Meanwhile, an eastern Missouri eighth-grader died days after his COVID-19 diagnosis, the state’s first child under age 14 to die since the onset of the pandemic. Washington School District Superintendent Lori VanLeer said in a statement that 13-year-old Peyton Baumgarth died over the weekend, less than two weeks after he last attended classes.

The National Center for Health Statistics report for Oct. 28 cited just 80 deaths nationwide among children ages 14 or younger.

Missouri, like many Midwestern states, is seeing a big rise on COVID-19 cases, and many of the illnesses are severe enough to require hospitalization. The state health department on Monday cited 1,659 hospitalizations statewide, eclipsing by 10 the previous record set a day earlier. The state also cited 2,651 more confirmed cases and five additional deaths. All told, Missouri has reported 188,186 confirmed cases and 3,031 deaths from the virus.

———

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— America stands at a crossroads the day before Election Day, facing a stark choice between candidates in the midst of historic pandemic

— U.S. hospitals are scrambling to hire more nurses as the coronavirus pandemic surges, leading to stiff competition and increased costs.

— Germany kicks off a partial lockdown, as several European countries tighten restrictions this week

— Police in Spain are on curfew patrol, wrangling groups of young people who are drinking outside as the country battles a surge in coronavirus infections

— The BBC says Britain’s Prince William had the virus in April, around the same time as his father Prince Charles

———

— Follow AP’s coronavirus pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

———

HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

LANSING, Mich. — Meals at Michigan restaurants came with a new side dish Monday: What’s your name and phone number?

Restaurants must be able to contact customers if there’s a virus case linked to the business, according to the latest order from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s health department.

Michigan’s coronavirus cases have risen significantly, setting a new daily high Saturday at 3,792, the health department said.

The Michigan Restaurants & Lodging Association insists COVID-19 transmission doesn’t occur much at restaurants. The group predicts job losses and more financial strife because of the requirement.

“You have guests that feel it’s intruding on their personal liberties and freedoms, and now we’ve got to be the arbitrator of that,” said Jeff Lobdell, president of Restaurant Partners Management, which operates 12 eateries in western Michigan.

Restaurants, bars and other venues must seat no more than six people at a table. The state said indoor settings are much more likely to drive COVID-19 outbreaks than outdoor settings.

———

ROME — Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte has announced new national restrictions aimed at halting the increase of coronavirus cases, including closing shopping malls on the weekends, shuttering museums and limiting movements between regions.

Conte outlined the new measures to lawmakers Monday, ahead of a new decree expected soon. He said shopping malls will be closed on weekends, except for food stores, newsstands, drugstores and tobacco shops located inside. He also announced the closure of gambling parlors and video game arcades.

He added that there will be a “late evening” curfew, but without providing a time. Currently only some regions, including Lazio where Rome is located, have a curfew.

He also said high schools, which are currently on ¾ distance learning, can go on full-time distance learning in a bid to help alleviate pressure on public transport.

Conte told lawmakers on that one big difference this time – compared to measures during the virus’s last peak in March – is that some measures will vary by region, depending on how critical the virus’ spread is and pressure on hospitals.

Italy’s new cases count eased slightly in the last 24 hours, adding 22,253 new cases to bring the pandemic total to 731,588. Nearly one-quarter of the cases are in hard-hit Lombardy, the epicenter of both virus surges.

———

LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday defended his decision to impose a second national lockdown, ignoring criticism that weeks of delay have meant thousands more infections and hundreds of needless deaths.

The comments came as Johnson gave the House of Commons details of the proposed four-week lockdown in England that is set to begin Thursday. The plan was hurriedly announced Saturday after updated projections showed that rapidly rising infection rates risked swamping hospitals in a matter of weeks.

The new policy comes three weeks after Johnson announced plans for a three-tiered regional approach to combatting the virus, with tighter restrictions imposed on areas with higher infection rates. The government chose that strategy in an effort to reduce the economic and social impact of new restrictions, even though a committee of scientific advisers on Sept. 21 recommended a short lockdown as a “circuit breaker” to slow the spread of COVID-19.

But that approach became untenable after new analysis showed COVID-19 was spreading so rapidly that the number of deaths this winter could more than double those recorded earlier this year.

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said the cost of delaying a lockdown 40 days after scientific advisers recommended such a move was recorded in statistics of the pandemic. On Sept. 21 the U.K. recorded 11 deaths from COVID-19 and about 4,000 new infections. Forty days later, there were 326 deaths and more than 22,000 cases.

———

BERLIN — A four-week partial shutdown has started in Germany, with restaurants, bars, theaters, cinemas and other leisure facilities closing down until the end of the month.

The restrictions that took effect Monday are milder than the ones Germany imposed in the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic in March and April. This time around, schools, kindergartens, non-essential shops and hairdressers are to remain open.

But leading officials decided last week that a “lockdown light” was necessary in light of a sharp rise in new infections that has prompted many other European countries to impose more or less drastic restrictions.

On Saturday, the national disease control center reported the highest number of infections in one day — 19,059 — since the pandemic began. Figures at the beginning of the week tend to be lower, and the center reported 12,097 cases Monday. But that compared with 8,685 a week earlier, underlining the upward trend. Germany has reported over 100 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past week.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and state governors are to review the situation after two weeks.

———

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovakia tested over 3.5 million of its population over the weekend in a national rapid-testing program with about 1% testing positive for the coronavirus.

Prime Minister Igor Matovic says 3.625 million were tested across the country in the two days in the optional tests that looked for antigens. The plan was to test almost everyone older than 10 in the nation of 5.4 million. The results of the free tests were available for people in several minutes.

Thanking anyone who participated, he says the unprecedented program was conducted in efforts to avoid the country’s lockdown amid a surge of coronavirus infections. Those testing negative won’t have to abide by strict limits on movement imposed on citizens.

———

MADRID — A senior Spanish official is blaming pandemic fatigue for a spate of violent weekend protests in a dozen cities against a national night-time curfew.

The mostly young protesters set fire to vehicles and trash cans, blocked roads and threw objects at riot police.

Spain’s Minister for Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá told Antena 3 television Monday that “this kind of behavior is to be expected” as people grow weary of restrictions against the spread of COVID-19.

———

BRUSSELS — Belgium, which is proportionally the worst-hit nation in Europe when it comes to coronavirus cases, announced Monday that it is finally starting to see “some points of light” amid the dark, dire statistics of the past weeks.

Some critical statistical curves are starting to ease their upward rise, increasing hopes that measures taken in parts of the country last month are beginning to pay off.

“The number of infections and hospital admissions continue to rise but not as fast anymore,” said virologist Steven Van Gucht of the Sciensano government health group. “The high-speed train is somewhat easing up, even if it still rages on.”

Belgium has the highest proportional incidence of cases in the European Union with 1,781 per 100,000 people, while countries like Spain, Britain and Italy have less than a third of that concentration.

Despite such numbers, Van Gucht said that cases now rose at an adjusted 29 percent, “which is considerably lower than the past weeks, when increases were 100 percent on a weekly basis.”

———

ZAGREB, Croatia — Croatia has reported the highest daily death toll since the start of the new coronavirus outbreak with 32 deaths in the past 24 hours.

Authorities on Monday confirmed 1,165 new infections in the country of 4.2 million that has seen soaring numbers in the past several weeks.

Most of the infections have been recorded in the Croatian capital Zagreb. Croatia has evaded lockdown despite surging numbers but has limited gatherings and working hours of bars and restaurants.

———

LISBON, Portugal — Portugal’s president has marked a day of national mourning for COVID-19 victims with a ceremony outside his riverside “pink palace.”

A military band played the national anthem and the Portuguese flag was lowered to half-staff before President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and other high-ranking state officials, all wearing masks, observed a minute’s silence Monday.

Just over 2,500 have died from the coronavirus in Portugal. The country is introducing new restrictions from Wednesday that will affect some 7 million people — around 70% of the population. The measures include mandatory working from home for those able to do so and a “civic duty” to stay at home as much as possible.

Tighter limits, such as curfews or lockdowns, constitutionally require a state of emergency to be declared first. The president, who is the only one who can decree a state of emergency, is due to discuss the possibility with the prime minister later in the day.

——

PRISTINA, Kosovo – Kosovo has launched new restrictive measures to prevent a collapse of its hospitals’ capacities following a resurgence of virus cases in the past two weeks.

The government ordered a curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. (2000-0400 GMT) for all restaurants and cafes. No more than five people are allowed to socialize, and no mass gatherings, weddings, funerals or other events may be held. Concerts, cultural and sporting events may be held if seating is limited.

Elderly people are allowed out only at certain times, and masks are mandatory outdoors.

The National Institute of Public Health said last week that daily confirmed cases were seven to eight times higher than two weeks ago.

Daily infections have increased to 182 per 100,000 residents compared to 50-60 two weeks ago, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Local health authorities reported 20,179 confirmed cases and 688 deaths as of Monday.

———

GENEVA — The head of the World Health Organization says he has been identified as a contact of a person who tested positive for COVID-19 and will self-quarantine.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on Twitter late Sunday that he is “well and without symptoms” but will self-quarantine in “coming days, in line with WHO protocols, and work from home.”

The WHO director-general has been at the forefront of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected at least 46.5 million people and led to more than 1.2 million deaths, according to a count of confirmed cases by Johns Hopkins University.

Tedros’ tweet came the same day as authorities in Geneva, where the U.N. health agency is based, announced a tightening of restrictions aimed to curb the spread of the virus. A recent spike has more than 1,000 new cases recorded each day recently in an area of about 500,000 people.

———

NEW DELHI — India has added 45,230 new coronavirus infections, continuing a downturn.

The Health Ministry also Monday reported 496 more fatalities, raising the death toll to 122,607.

With 8.2 million cases, India is the second worst-hit country behind the U.S.

But the number of new cases being diagnosed each day is falling steadily even though testing is not declining. In the last week, there have been fewer than 50,000 new cases every day.

Many states have been easing restrictions on schooling and commercial activities to spur the economy, but experts fear a resurgence in the winter, particularly as people socialize in the festive season.

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Derek Mackay - the Jimmy Savile of the SNP..?

Or is that Salmond? Or of the multiple other number of SNP Sex-pests..?

Of course, the thing that links all the SNP cover-ups and sex-pests together is their Cult - and the Cult leader’s insistence on keeping things under wraps, out of the public eye, and covered up - for as long as possible.

Viz - secret one-on-one meetings with Salmond after his predatory antics became no-longer concealable.  Meetings that were not minuted and - for all we know - could have had the intention to pervert the course of justice..?  

This assumption might seem rash except for two revelations that have followed on from the collapse of the Derek Mackay ‘Future of the Party, Rising Star’ facade - 

1) the SNP used its position in government (sending out offending emails from scot gov email addresses) to prevent or frustrate publication by the Sun of the information it had about sex pestering by Mackay of a 16 year old schoolboy. 

“Given you yourself state that there is nothing illegal or unlawful in the messages, can you advise on your justification for publication, given the intrusion into private and family life, and correspondence including digital communication.” 

Text of an email from the ‘Scottish Government’ to the Sun, which the paper saw as part of a concerted effort to silence it and prevent publication

The shameful conduct went so far as to have lawyers insist that the identity of the ‘accuser’ - i.e. victim - would have to be revealed (which the Sun rightly refused - its not as if they couldn’t have asked Derek..!). What kind of morality informs that political judgement?

2) It has now also emerged that such was Mackay’s ‘problematic behavior’ that Sturgeon banned him from late night drinking and partying at SNP conferences.

So her later assertions of ignorance ring decidedly hollow.

Moreover - its not the first time Derek Mackay has pestered - we now know!  Making a ‘beeline’ for a young party member Mackay repeatedly propositioned him despite being fended off.  Actions that started at a party event and continued for years.  Yet no one acted to reign him in - and any reports of this predation were never made public.  Using his weight at the center of the SNP Cult to lean on a young member is classic predator behavior. He should have been stopped - but was permitted to carry on - as the party’s ‘Rising Star’...

STILL not sacked..!

After extensive fore-knowledge of this predator’s proclivities and a failed attempt at blocking the publication of the latests of these facts - does Sturgeon sack Mackay - no.  She waits and permits him an orchestrated resignation.  (The Cult prefers it done that way.  A section would set the wrong precedent among Cultists).  This also allows him to draw on pension and pay-out monies, to the tune of £Thousands!  In fact it is reported that the parents of the victim approached Sturgeon’s office a week before going to the press - and received the brush off.  If true then this constituted a deeper worrying aspect to this sexual pestering scandal.

Then there is her form.  At his Edinburgh Fringe show Salmond makes completely overt and public remarks of a sexual nature about female opponents and... Sturgeon is right there defending him..! Alex Salmond is “no sexist” she declared.  

We make NO COMMENT on these - as they are Charges in a Criminal Case currently going before the Scottish Courts...!

Salmond is not the first - merely perhaps the worst sexual predator in that party.  Remember the Minister who quit his post but would not quit his seat?  

He was ‘suspended’ from the SNP but continued to sit as an independent SNP MSP.  In fact after his sexual misconducts exposed a spokesman for the First Minister said: "Mark has taken the right action in apologising and recognising that in his current role it would be inappropriate for him to remain in government. He will continue to make a valuable contribution to parliament as the MSP for Aberdeen Donside” ..!

Then there are the MPs caught out using expenses for hotels to bang journalists or who are caught bedding 2 teenage girls (did we mention MARRIED MPs?). No lasting party sanction there, you’ll recall.

And there are sundry other sexual accusations swirling around MSPs, MPs, Councillors and party activists.

Just another sexual SNP scandal... Nothing to report or see here - move along.

And its not just elected or prominent members of the ZSNP that seem to wallow in sexist filth.  One senior former labour MP - who was housed by rabid SNatsi Cult members throughout her time as an MP and especially during elections, took to print to expose Scotland’s Nast Party.  Yet STILL nothing changed - especially not the enabling and apologist leadership tone.

#NippyKnew - again and again it seems...

It seems that for anyone leading such a filthy party - rotten with allegations of sexual bullying, rape, assaults, harassment - caution and transparency would be watchwords.  And swift actions taken to end any such actions (and the careers of the perpetrators).  But if the message from on high is that ‘the Cult defends its own’ - at least until it has to give up and let go - then small wonder that this problem seems to keep recurring.  It appears to be in the SNP DNA - so the somber-faced mask of an enabling First minister claiming she “knew nothing - is an act that will not wash..!

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For extra info concerning The Law Society of Ontario’s rules, please click on right here. In 2013, Sen. Cruz proposed amendments to the “Gang of 8” invoice that may strengthen border safety, broaden inexperienced card alternatives, enhance excessive-expert “H1B” visas, forestall unlawful aliens from receiving welfare advantages, and implement the rule of regulation. The seat opened this yr with the dying of Sen. This contains at the very least 1 12 months of supervised work expertise in Canada. There are a minimum of 3,000 different Christian Indonesians within the United States with severe immigration issues. Canada immigration lawyers With polls narrowing, Democrats and different Booker allies are sending in monetary reinforcements. He has lodged assaults in opposition to Mr. Booker for spending time at out-of-state fundraisers, his ties to President Obama, and even a quick foray to criticize the Newark mayor for the immigration coverage. Should Speaker Boehner have supplied the president a brief-time period debt enhance deal? The worst place to deal with irregular migration is at our personal border. In observe, well being-associated enforcement regimes can strain well being employees to act as immigration management brokers. On Wednesday, Kaper-Dale and two church leaders met in Washington, D.C., with Gary Mead, who heads ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations unit, and different immigration officials.

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Building Back Better: Creating Resilience in Critical Supply Chains While Supporting Global Development

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New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/building-back-better-creating-resilience-in-critical-supply-chains-while-supporting-global-development/

Building Back Better: Creating Resilience in Critical Supply Chains While Supporting Global Development

In April, Governor Andrew Cuomo made a common complaint about the global search for personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers in New York: “We are all shopping China to try to get these materials and we're all competing against each other." A month later, the BBC warned of a global shortage of food, quoting the National Union of Farmers in Wales’s call for “safeguarding domestic food security” and suggesting that food supply chains “need a rethink.” COVID-19 has helped to elevate the structure and performance of global supply chains, from a relatively niche status to a matter of public debate and intense political interest. This is underscored by the fact that a Presidential candidate has made a supply chain plan part of his campaign. Many countries have faced difficulties in securing essential goods at various stages of the pandemic, and this has made the development of resilient and reliable supply chains for goods with national security implications a central policymaking concern, likely to feature in the UK’s Integrated Review and the subject of congressional hearings in the US. Political leaders around the world have made calls for “national” supply chains with the intent to force companies to re-think their global production networks and bring them on shore. Policy forged at pace and during extreme circumstances will often leave something wanting. We want more resilient supply chains, but we shouldn’t sacrifice the benefits that existing supply chains have created, nor should we needlessly penalize developing countries in the race for resilience. In addition to stockpiling and regulation we propose the deployment of development capital to build global excess capacity in the production of essential items as preferable routes to resilience.

How resilient? To what? And at what (efficiency?) cost?

The concept of resilience is not new to supply chains. A core element of supply chain success has always been its ability to successfully confront unforeseen disruptions.  However, it’s difficult to assess resilience until stress is applied. COVID-19 has brought enormous stress to bear on supply chains of both essential (e.g. PPE) and non-essential (e.g. haircuts) goods and services; hence nurses without visors, and the epidemic of “lockdown hair.” It has also brought the spectre of even more costly shortages: of glass vials for vaccines or soap bark tree for medicine production. These three examples illustrate three kinds of desirable resilience:

Resilience to production disruption: haircuts have been difficult to obtain because the model for the production of haircuts took a long time to respond and adapt to the requirements of the virus. More generally, as some countries went into lockdown, products that play a key role in making became more difficult to source. Key pharmaceutical ingredients produced in China and India is one example.

Resilience to sudden demand spikes (production capacity): PPE is being produced in vast quantities. The problem is that the pace at which demand has increased has far outpaced the ability of existing suppliers and supply chains to make it.

Resilience to sourcing scarce raw material: If and when a vaccine for COVID-19 is developed, we may be limited by the available quantity of natural resources—the bark of soap bark tree for example. Without alternatives, demand may outstrip the supply response, resulting in either price rises or rationing—both of which will likely lead to inequitable outcomes.

It is possible to take action to increase resilience on all three of these dimensions, at a cost. Firms could invest in excess manufacturing capacity; or in supply chain redundancy to try and diversify production sources in a way that is uncorrelated to risk; and they may invest in research and development to find alternatives to scarce sources. However, they have not done so sufficiently to date. Understanding why is necessary before we can develop a policy response.

Efficiency is king: the evolution of supply chains to date

If resilience is so clearly a good thing, why is it not a default feature of production arrangements? Some companies and products do individually plan for some aspects of resilience in their business model: Pepsico sources coconut water from multiple suppliers, and builds in excess capacity to protect against the risk of disruptive typhoons, common in some coconut growing regions. Consumer electronics firms such as Apple also routinely build such supply redundancy in their supplier networks. They do this because the return to reliability exceeds the efficiency cost of maintaining redundant supplier contracts. These counter-examples suggest one reason why most firms don’t do this: most lack either the market power or a clientele with the willingness to pay for private investments in substantial supply chain resilience. As a result, their incentive is to pursue maximum efficiency in production in normal times even if this comes at the cost of resilience to end-times. The pursuit of efficiency naturally leads to concentration—not simply because of labour costs (there are many places in the world with cheap labour)—but because of talent, know-how, and capital, all of which are costly to establish and confer a cost-advantage to early movers, thereby making it difficult to establish competing clusters. It may be the case that powerful consumers, with some level of monopsony power, can compel investments in resilience, and share the costs with the firm. This could be the case when governments centrally purchase PPE from a few providers (and it is a traditional argument for divvying up large contracts in the US defense industry). However, resilience is a public good across all consumers, and individual purchasers in a more competitive market are likely to be unwilling to pay more for resilient supply without a mechanism ensuring they will disproportionately reap the benefits of resilience. Again, resilience is a form of insurance, and individuals and institutions often under-invest in insurance without additional incentives. A similar problem arises when it comes to finding alternatives to scarce resources/input materials for products with highly uncertain demand. Investing in research to create a product that may only be in demand in rare and unpredictable circumstances is not an attractive proposition, especially because any patent protections might well be ignored or weakened on the grounds of the emergency situation. As a result, there will be systematic underinvestment in such research.

What can governments do?

Building resilience, then, has many of the hallmarks of a classic public good/positive externality problem. Resilience is costly, and the benefits to building resilience are imperfectly captured by any single firm or investor. A number of approaches can be taken to resolve this issue, but all have costs. We argue, however, that some of the costs are better-borne than others.

Reshoring

Reshoring production has been a popular proposal to counter supply-chain breakdowns. The logic of the proposal is that ‘if a product is produced in my country, I can institute an export ban when necessary, and guarantee my supply—to the extent that an export ban doesn’t disincentivize production.’ We argue that this is a loser on three grounds:

First, by reshoring, we lose all the benefits in terms of cost that firms have accrued by locating production in places with cheaper labour and better production networks. And while we’ll make production more expensive, we won’t make it shock-proof. The reason New York faced shortages was that demand spiked. Imagine if Gov. Cuomo had built a bunch of factories outside Albany to produce enough PPE for New York’s usual needs. It would have produced more expensive PPE in normal times because labour, factory space, and the like cost more in Albany than Albania; and the state still would have faced shortages, because its needs increased far above that usual level. And note that demand for the components needed to make PPE also spiked worldwide. So, unless New York State invested in production capacity far outstripping normal demand all the way back through the supply chain to raw materials, the state would still have faced PPE shortages, despite higher prices in non-crisis times.

Second, by reshoring, we correlate the risks we face: if an outbreak of a disease in the US or UK increases demand for medical equipment that is produced in the same country, it is likely that production will be disrupted. Again, the Welsh National Union of Farmers may think COVID-19 is a good reason to reshore agricultural production, but COVID-19 suggested why this can increase our vulnerability: UK farming relies on migrant labor that has been kept out of the country during the crisis. And attempts to get UK citizens to replace those workers were an utter flop. Thank goodness for food imports. The diverse production and supply chains of globalized trade are part of a risk reduction strategy.

Thirdly, reshoring works against development, by penalizing poorer countries’ economies, when better policies (from a developed country perspective) can protect or bolster them.

Accelerating the pace of automation via R&D is another approach that has been explored. This has often been connected to reshoring, but needn’t be. But automation addresses only one kind of risk: the risk to production processes that are dependent on population-dense production facilities (think garment workshops, meat-packing plants). It does nothing about shortages of key inputs, or (in itself) capacity to scale up production; and in the extreme, wherever the automated factory is located it may still find itself unable to move products to meet consumers depending on the transport and movement restrictions in place there.

Stockpiles

Perhaps the simplest response to concerns over shortages is to stockpile supplies. The US has a Strategic National Stockpile, sadly run down in advance of the COVIC-19 epidemic, which had stores of PPE amongst other medical supplies. Similarly, the country has a strategic petroleum reserve. Well managed, stockpiling can be a reasonably low-cost mechanism to build slack into tight supply chains and allow rapid response to surging demand or dips in supply, although costs and complexity increase with supplies that have a short usable lifetime. The purchasing power created by a stockpile mechanism would also give governments the influence to demand more resilient supply as part of purchase agreements. This may also be an area for international cooperation: the UN Humanitarian Response Depot stockpiles emergency relief items, so perhaps an expanded set of well-managed global and regional stockpiles could ensure a greater range of supplies.

Regulation and monitoring

An additional option is to place key supply chains under regulation and monitoring for resilience. Certain regulated products, given “essential” designation might carry the requirement that they were sourced from suppliers who maintain excess capacity, or source each input of production from multiple, geographically dispersed suppliers. Potentially, there could be coordinated global agreement on these regulations which could be monitored by an international body to assess and score the resilience of key products. These proposals come with two major drawbacks. First, regulatory requirements to keep excess capacity and redundancy in the supply chain at the level of the individual firm will be anti-competitive. They will increase the fixed costs of production, and build into the market structure an incumbency advantage, with firms sitting on excess capacity that can be deployed to temporarily lower the price of products under threat of entry by new firms. This means that the cost of regulatory-induced resilience will be slightly higher prices most of the time. The second drawback is the ability to genuinely measure resilience. While academic scholars have highlighted how such supply chain “stress tests” could be conducted, there is limited empirical evidence that they would work in practice. One striking feature of the current pandemic is how countries that scored exceptionally well on measures of pandemic preparedness do not appear to have performed better in terms of controlling COVID-19. This is a widespread problem with measures of regulatory quality: take for example the weakness of the World Bank’s Doing Business Survey in measuring actual, rather than stated, practices.

Concessional investment to build resilience

An additional approach to address both geographical and production risk would be to use development finance institutions (DFIs) such as the UK’s CDC, the International Finance Corporation, and the US Development Finance Corporation. As colleagues have argued, they could invest in production capacity for (inputs to) essential items in places where there is currently little such production to diversify and expand sourcing. Concessional investment and patient capital will be necessary: even with cheap labour, a great deal of investment will be necessary to build the requisite knowledge networks and infrastructure for adequate production, and it is highly likely that efficiency in producing required-standard products will be lower to begin with. Such investments could create jobs, building new production capacities and knowledge, and allow countries to enter new parts of the product space, with likely knock on benefits for economic development. These will be pioneer firms, of the type that DFIs are meant to support. Finally, it is worth noting that the best way to limit shortages is to control crises before they escalate. Countries that rapidly put in place distancing, masking, testing and tracing have not seen ventilator shortages or medical PPE shortages—because their hospitals have not been overwhelmed. Blaming global value chains may be a useful political strategy to shift blame and attention, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problem—and will make future crises even worse.  Again, autarky is a worse-than-useless tool to reduce vulnerability to shocks. We should build in better resilience, however. That is likely to be difficult; and there will need to be multiple strategies pursued. But aid can both contribute to the strengthening of global supply chains and the development of poorer countries. It’s time to start. The order of authors on this blog post was randomized by a list randomizer tool.

[taxolawgy]

A Complete Guide on Starting a Startup Business in India

It is about creating prosperity in India. Many people who dream of starting their own businesses lack the resources to do so. As a result, their ideas, talent and capabilities remain untapped. What’s the end result? – the country loses out on wealth creation, economic growth and employment. This write-up which is a guide for startups in India will get you to think why you should start one or if you have already floated one, why you should keep it afloat!

Startup India can boost entrepreneurship, economic growth and employment across the country.

So, what is in this guide for startups in India?

Self-Certification for Compliances

A handful of Tax Benefits and relaxations

Choose your investor

Online Hub for Like-Minded Folks

Easy Entry and Exit

Union Budget 2019 Takeaways

Registration on a Mobile App

State Government to the Rescue

Register with Ease!

To get the “Startup” recognition under Startup India, you just have to follow these 7 steps:

Incorporate your business

Register with Startup India App

Upload certain documents

Answer whether you would like to avail tax benefits

Self-certify that you comply with the 4 conditions listed below*

Immediately get a registration number

Other areas of interest – patents, funding etc.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry brought out a notification wherein an entity would continue to be called a ‘Start-Up’ if (Conditions)

It has only been 10 years or less since the date of incorporation

Incorporated as a private limited company, partnership firm or LLP.

Turnover in any of the above financial years, not > 100 Crores

Your organization provides intellectual property or technology-driven products or services and is capable of generating employment.

Your organization should not be one split-up or reconstructed from an existing business.

Self-Certify Labour Compliances!

The government has made the process of conducting inspection more meaningful and simpler!

The government will now allow startups to self-certify the labour and environmental compliances through the app. They will conduct no inspections for labour laws in the first 3 years.

The govt may inspect startups upon receipt of a credible complaint filed in writing and approved by officer one level senior to the inspecting officer.

The start-ups may self-certify compliance in respect of the following labour laws:

Payment of Gratuity Act 1972

ESI Act 1948

EPF and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1952

Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act 1979

Contract Labour Act 1970

Other Construction Worker’s Act 1996

Socialize and Meet!

An important part of this guide for startups in India is to encourage networking The Startup India Hub is already operational and operates as a single point of contact for the entire startup ecosystem enabling an exchange of knowledge.

Some standout features of this platform are as follows:

Networking Platform – providing users with access to other user profiles, connection & message requests, relevant startup events etc.

Artificial Intelligence – a platform to provide chatbots to automatically collate, update information and deliver a relevant reply to queries.

Location-Based Discovery – to be able to deliver custom recommendations to users about incubators/accelerators depending on their location.

Integrated Learning Development – a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate, how to pitch to investors, useful templates and more.

In addition to above, the govt has taken initiatives to set-up 75 startup support hubs in NIT’s, IIT’s, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) and National Institutes of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPERs).

Get Rebate on Filing Patent Applications!

As discussed earlier, the govt has proposed innovation as the base of any entity for considering a company as a startup. For this purpose, Patents provide an exclusive right to owners to avoid any kind of duplicity and reduce the chances of having someone copy their designs.

Good News! Dual benefits are provided by the Government in this regard:

80% rebate in patent filing fees – this move has helped startups to curb costs in the crucial formative years.

Facilitator fees for filing – to be borne by Government

Statutory Fees (after rebate) – to be borne by the Startup

Fast-track examination of the filing process – this promise was made by the Government with the intent that startups can realize the value of the IPR’s at the earliest.

Other benefits include

–

empanelment of a group of ‘facilitators’ to provide general advisory on different IPR’s, protect and even promote IPR’s in other countries. In general, you can seek the help of these facilitators in filings, hearings and disposal of IP applications.

Tax Reliefs at your reach!

Interesting and enthralling.

Interest, inflation and taxation are words which are synonymous with our country. However, as far as startups are concerned, the govt has provided certain tax reliefs to boost their growth.

Let’s directly dwell on these reliefs:

We have included some relief in this guide for startups in India, these are as follows-

Long-term capital gains from the sale of a residential property (land/building) will be exempted if the individual invests the sale consideration in more than 50% of the equity shares of an ‘eligible company’.

‘Eligible Company’ includes an ‘eligible startup’*

This eligible company with the amount received on the sale of shares to the individual will have to now purchase new assets within one year from date of subscription of shares.

The amount of exemption is worked proportionately to the cost of the new plant and machinery purchased by the eligible company.

The lock-in-period i.e. period for which transfers cannot be made for the equity shares as well as for the new assets purchased shall be 5 years from the respective acquisition dates.

*Eligible Startup:

(a) Incorporated between 1/4/2016 and 31/32021

(b) Total turnover of business <or= 25 Cr

(c) holds a certificate from IMBC (Inter-Ministerial Board of Certification)

Making investments in funds notified by the Government

Long-term capital gains from the sale of a capital asset will be exempted if the individual invests such sale consideration in units of funds notified by the Central Government (funds raised for startups and issued before 31/3/2019)

Maximum investment that can be made (maximum exemption) shall be INR 50 Lakhs and the same shall be made within 6 months from the transfer of the original asset.

The amount of exemption is available to the extent of investment made in such notified funds.

It is quite clear that the main purpose of the above 2 exemptions is to stimulate a larger quantum of investments in startups.

No Tax on Profits for 3 consecutive years – ‘Tax Holiday’

100% of the profits derived by an ‘eligible startup’ for any 3 consecutive years out of 7 years beginning from the year in which the start-up in incorporated is the amount of deduction.

‘Eligible Startup’ has the same meaning as explained in the first exemption stated above.

Entrepreneurs should not form such startup by splitting up or by reconstruction of an already existing business

A startup’s total turnover should not exceed INR 25 Crores in the year in which such deduction is claimed.

Call your investors – ‘Angel Tax’ Exemption

Earlier, if a startup receives consideration from a resident Indian for issuing shares at a premium, then tax was levied on aggregate consideration received over and above the fair market value of those shares.

Recently, the Government, subject to certain conditions after bowing to “sustained pressure” from startups has eased this burden of paying taxes on such premiums received. A big relief!

So, what are these conditions?

There are some conditions for exemption of angel tax as per this guide for startups in India, these are as follows-

Recognized by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

Total amount of paid-up share capital + share premium of the startup after issue does not > 25 Crores*

The startup has not invested in land/building/shares/securities/motor vehicles or aircraft (> 10 lakhs) / jewellery other than held as its stock-in-trade.

*The 25 Crore Aggregate capital condition is not applicable if shares are issued to a:

non-resident Indian;

a venture capital company/fund;

to a company whose shares are frequently traded on a stock exchange having net worth and turnover of INR 100 Crores and INR 250 Crores preceding the year of issue.

Companies Act 2013 Relaxations

Companies should hold a minimum of 4 Board Meetings every year with a gap of not more than 120 days between 2 such meetings.

However, if your startup is a private company, then the requirement is at least one Board Meeting in each 6 calendar months with a gap of not less than 90 days between 2 such meetings.

If your startup is not a partnership firm and has become insolvent, then the facility of a fast track insolvency resolution process is available rather than the usual 180-day corporate insolvency resolution process.

The Ministry has also exempted a startup company from preparing a cash flow statement since mostly funds come in from investors or from Government itself.

Easy Entry Easy Exit!

The legal formalities which are required to be undertaken for entry and exit for startups have been simplified as a part of the latest reforms by the Government.

The Govt has in addition to the ease of entry also taken efforts to make exit trouble-free:

Getting the name struck-off from the register of companies

Earlier, there were more than 80% of startups which collapsed within its first 3 years of starting up. Now, to instil in confidence and courage, the Government have eased the procedures on striking off.

Fast-track Insolvency Resolution

The Govt has now halved the winding-up process from 180 days for companies to just 90 days for others which include startups.

State Government Efforts

In its efforts to build a stronger startup ecosystem in Kerala, the Government has managed to tap into private investment funds to raise INR 1000 crore in corpus funds for budding entrepreneurs.

The Govt will make this available over the next four years.

Recently, the State Government chose investors – Unicorn India Ventures, Exseed Electron Fund, Indian Angel Network and Speciale Incept Fund for the goal.

The pact mandates investing 25 % of the volunteered amount in the next four years and therefore by 2022 the state is guaranteed with a minimum investment of INR 300 crore.

The first leg of the 2017- launched ‘Seeding Kerala’ saw encouraging results, prompting the Government to raise INR 60 Crores.

One of the investors – Exseed, will invest solely in startups based in the fields of space and IT. The state also encourages funds for startups working in the sectors of cancer treatment and disaster management.

The Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM) among other facilities, is offering an incubation facility for startups. You can apply for the KSUM membership if you’re interested. The offices are located in Trivandrum, Calicut, Ernakulam and even in Kozhikode.

Read More..

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‘Uninterpretable’: U.S. COVID-19 testing data causes confusion, experts say

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/uninterpretable-u-s-covid-19-testing-data-causes-confusion-experts-say/

‘Uninterpretable’: U.S. COVID-19 testing data causes confusion, experts say

Elected officials, businesses and others are depending on coronavirus testing and infection-rate data as states reopen so that they will know if a second wave of contagion is coming — and whether another round of stay-at-home orders or closings might be needed.

But states are reporting those figures in different ways, and that can lead to frustration and confusion about what the numbers mean. In some places, there have been data gaps that leave local leaders wondering whether they should loosen or tighten restrictions. In others, officials are accused of spinning the numbers to make their states look better and justify reopening.

In a continuing theme for the outbreak in the United States, a lack of federal leadership persists. Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been lumping together tests that measure different things.

READ MORE: The coronavirus doesn’t spread easily through contaminated surfaces, CDC clarifies

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Such errors render the CDC numbers about how many Americans are infected “uninterpretable,” creating a misleading picture for people trying to make decisions based on the data, said Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute,

“It is incumbent on health departments and the CDC to make sure they’re presenting information that’s accurate. And if they can’t get it, then don’t show the data at all,” Jha said. “Faulty data is much, much worse than no data.”

Officials at the CDC and in multiple states have acknowledged that they combined the results of viral tests, which detect active cases of the virus essentially from the onset of infection, with antibody tests, which check for proteins that develop a week or more after infection and show whether a person has been exposed at some point in the past.

6:39 Coronavirus outbreak: Trump claims high number of cases shows U.S. ‘way ahead’ in testing

Coronavirus outbreak: Trump claims high number of cases shows U.S. ‘way ahead’ in testing

Viral test results should be reported separately, public health experts say. That allows for tracking of how many people have confirmed active infections, the percentage of people testing positive and how those numbers change over time — all crucial for guiding public policy.

Mixing the results makes it difficult to understand how the virus is spreading. It can give the false impression that the rate of positive test results is declining.

[ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ]

The CDC told The Associated Press on Friday that the problem started several weeks ago when the agency began collecting data from states using an electronic reporting system that had been developed for other diseases. At the time, nearly all lab results being reported were from live viral testing. But in the ensuing weeks, antibody tests expanded and CDC officials realized they had a growing number of those mixing in with the viral results, the CDC’s Dr. Daniel Pollock said.

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READ MORE: U.S. officials release CDC guidance on coronavirus reopening — but not for churches

Pollock said officials are working to separate the data, but it is a labour-intensive process that could take another week or two. He acknowledged the agency could have moved to fix the problem sooner.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” he said.

AP found at least nine states are similarly mixing results or have done so at some point. They include Arizona, where Gov. Doug Ducey used a graph showing a declining rate of positive tests earlier this month when he announced that barbers, salons and restaurants could reopen.

Ducey did not disclose during the televised news conference that the figures combined diagnostic and antibody tests. Positive results from diagnostic tests were declining, according to published state data, but adding the antibody tests made the decline look steeper.

1:51 Coronavirus outbreak: Trump says testing will soon reach ‘much more’ than 5M tests per day

Coronavirus outbreak: Trump says testing will soon reach ‘much more’ than 5M tests per day

Some states combined results only briefly and say it was unintentional. Delaware said it has “shifted focus” from reporting antibody tests and toward viral tests as they have become more available following nationwide shortages. Maine, Texas, Vermont and Virginia say they have stopped lumping results together, and Georgia is working on a fix.

But in Mississippi and Pennsylvania, the practice continues.

In Georgia, antibody tests were about 14% of the total, while in Mississippi, officials said they were around 3%.

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It’s not clear to what extent the practice is clouding the national picture. The CDC told AP it knew of nine states that submitted viral and antibody test data together, but the list included some states that say they report those numbers separately, including Alabama and Kansas.

READ MORE: Could the public be to blame for the lack of coronavirus testing in Ontario?

The CDC also gave the AP a list of 18 states it said had reported viral tests only, but that list included Pennsylvania, Virginia and Vermont, all of which have said they mixed the two kinds of tests together.

Jennifer Nuzzo, at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said many of the problems at the state level could be due to the challenges of deploying a disease surveillance system amid the chaos of a pandemic. Health departments often lack current technology and rely on paper forms and other outdated systems.

Maine officials say it’s not possible to release total test numbers more than once a week because the data must be collected from multiple outside labs doing the tests.

Rhode Island stopped updating certain data while it made the transition to a more sophisticated computer system. But the switch happened as the state was easing stay-home restrictions and had one of the highest 14-day rates of new infections per capita in the nation.

5:23 COVID-19 Pandemic: Ask the Expert

COVID-19 Pandemic: Ask the Expert

Some states have made it difficult to understand how cases and deaths are trending.

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Iowa previously posted new positive cases and deaths daily but stopped once the governor changed her focus to reopening the economy. Now the state’s website lists rolling totals. Those who want to identify trends must do the math themselves.

Kansas’s governor used to open media briefings with daily reports on positive test results and deaths but stopped doing that in early May when she began a push to reopen.

Meanwhile, health officials in Georgia, one of the first states to ease restrictions, published a graph showing dates out of chronological order, making a decline appear smoother than it actually was. The state health commissioner vowed to do better.

2:11 Canada lacks cohesive COVID-19 testing protocol

Canada lacks cohesive COVID-19 testing protocol

Other states are not giving out information on how particular sectors of the community are being affected. In Nebraska, officials refuse to confirm how many cases are tied to specific meatpacking plants, sites that have been coronavirus hot spots in several states.

Nuzzo said COVID-19 has become politicized, creating pressure for officials to make their states’ data look good.

“It may feel tempting to want to manipulate the numbers to look rosier than the situation really is,” she said. “But that’s a short-lived strategy. You can’t hide dead bodies.”

__

Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe in New York; Christina A. Cassidy and Ben Nadler in Atlanta; Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas; Lisa Rathke in Montpelier, Vermont; Randall Chase in Dover, Delaware; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; and Grant Schulte in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.

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© 2020 The Canadian Press

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Overcrowding has increased in Britain's prisons, putting the lives of both inmates and prison officers at risk. Is coming in with unbelievable second half and he deserves unless something drastic happens the opportunity to start the season as our No. Members of the Bowling Green State Cheap Fake Yeezys University academic community are invited to contribute completed scholarship for long term preservation and worldwide electronic accessibility. Many contributors to that publication identified the then New Labour government's neoliberal ideology as the key underlying factor negatively impacting on state funded 'public' university level arts education. Can imagine that was a ridiculously ambitious project to undertake, especially by an Australian company, but we found the right engineers to help us do that and worked away at it. 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[phooll123]

New York's Nixon-Cuomo primary 

is shaping up to be a blockbuster

Tabloid gossip queen Cindy Adams' signature signoff is the best on-ramp to these frenzied early days of the New York Democratic gubernatorial primary.

The actress and activist Cynthia Nixon's decision to 

enter the race

, challenging two-term Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has touched off the kind of pitched political battle that many in the state, as recently as a couple of weeks ago, seemed confident belonged exclusively to Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, the perpetually warring liberal leaders.

But the stakes are different and perhaps higher in certain quarters with Cuomo's potential presidential ambitions, along with his current job, on the line. Unlike de Blasio, Nixon has nothing to lose by torching the governor with every breath, especially in the five boroughs, where the troubled subway system -- which is controlled by the state -- is in a rolling crisis.

All of which provided a neat setup for Nixon's campaign kickoff speech Tuesday in Brooklyn, an event to which she was nearly late. Why? Subway trouble, of course. Too on the nose? Not in New York these days, where solidarity, and steaming fulmination, are only a mystery delay away.

Upon arrival at the small event, she briefed the room on her travels. "I got here just in the nick of time. I allowed an hour and a half for what should have been a 30-minute ride," Nixon said, pausing a beat as the audience chuckled, then deadpanning: "Cuomo's MTA."

Nixon's 

campaign website

 also gives the transit mess top billing. There are five links across the front of the homepage, appearing in this order: "Meet Cynthia," "#CuomosMTA," "Why I'm Running," "Volunteer" and "Donate." The MTA, or Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is the agency that runs the subway.

Just below, beneath her first ad, is a declaration sure to delight lefty activists, and not just in the local haunts.

"We need a New York that works for all of us," it reads, "a New York for the many, not just the few." Those last few words -- purposefully or not -- track closely with the rallying cry for Jeremy Corbyn's UK Labour Party, whose 

election slogan

 is, "For the many, not the few."

For those less attuned to (or interested in) such progressive deep tracks, or the latest skirmishes inside the New York Democratic political scene, there has been plenty of more baroque early stage drama. Nixon, of course, is still best known for her role in another Big Apple talker, the long-running HBO series "Sex and the City." The early pushback on her candidacy has focused more on her celebrity, and lack of experience in government, than any broad policy points. When asked weeks ago about rumors Nixon might run (and who, if anyone, might be pushing her to do it), Cuomo offered a cheeky preview of the early criticism.

"It was either the mayor of New York or Vladimir Putin," 

he joked

. "Normally name recognition is relevant when it has some connection to the endeavor. If it's just about name recognition, then I'm hoping Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Billy Joel don't get into the race."

But the laughter has died down a bit over the last couple of days. 

Despite 

early polling

 that shows Cuomo more than tripling Nixon's support and the reality that, even as voters become better acquainted with her pitch, she faces an uphill battle against a popular and accomplished incumbent, Cuomo allies have circled the wagons.

On Tuesday, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand 

endorsed Cuomo

, the word first landing with the New York Daily News, a city tabloid.

"Kirsten is a friend of Governor Cuomo's and supports his campaign," her spokesman, Glen Caplin, told the News. "He's been a leader on issues she cares deeply about like marriage equality, paid family leave and campus sexual assault to name a few."

But the headlines on Tuesday night mostly belonged to former City Council speaker Christine Quinn, who finished third in the 2013 Democratic mayoral primary won by de Blasio. In an interview with the 

New York Post

, Quinn sought to deliver a striking blow -- and she did, though not with the intended results.

"Cynthia Nixon was opposed to having a qualified lesbian become mayor of New York City," she said, speaking of her own run. "Now she wants an unqualified lesbian to be the governor of New York." The second reference there, for the uninitiated, is to Nixon, 

who has identified as bisexual

 and is married to a woman.

Quinn has since apologized for her choice of words, but not the underlying message.

"Cynthia Nixon aggressively opposed my candidacy in New York despite my qualifications for the office and despite my strong progressive credentials," she said 

in a tweet

, the third of four intended to defuse the controversy. "I was attempting to make a comparison between the two of us."

For her part, Nixon has embraced the storm, sending out a fundraising email on Wednesday afternoon with the subject line, "An unqualified lesbian." Quinn isn't named; the words are attributed instead to "one of Andrew Cuomo's top surrogates."

A few hours earlier, Nixon had touted a campaign launch party 

with a tweet

inviting "all qualified and unqualified lesbians and everyone who wants funded schools, affordable housing & working subways."

Nixon's active social media presence has helped grab still more attention. (Not that New York, with its voracious media, was ever going to pass up such a juicy narrative.) On Tuesday evening, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams 

publicly offered

 the new candidate a guided "tour" of a New York City Housing Authority development and an opportunity to "hear directly from #tenants who've lived through years of government neglect, caught in the endless back-and-forth between Albany lawmakers."

Nixon

 accepted

 less than 30 minutes later.

The message was clear enough in context: Cuomo himself recently visited with such tenants up in the Bronx and East Harlem, at the invitation of activists, and with cameras in tow reviewed the crumbling apartment spaces before lashing out at the housing authority and the city and 

pledging emergency assistance

. Now, at Adams' invitation, Nixon will have the opportunity to show up and, as much as any candidate can, match the sitting governor.

If Nixon's appeals to date seem focused on the city, that's because they are a new kind of "southern strategy," you might say. Her path to a primary upset requires that she outperform the progressive law professor Zephyr Teachout -- who challenged Cuomo in 2014 (losing out with 

about a third of the vote

) and is now signed on as her campaign treasurer -- with city voters, especially in minority communities, where the governor has a strong foothold.

The focus on the subway makes sense, then -- it's the working class that struggles most when it fails -- and by centering the state's role in its failure, Nixon could elevate her standing there come September, after what promises to be a long, hot summer of delays. But that's all a long way off. Next up is Thursday: Day 3.

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Britain’s Labour Party is demanding the UK government impose an imperialistic diktat upon the predominantly black citizens of Bermuda for refusing to adhere to the liberal-left’s same-sex marriage demands. Helen Goodman — Labour’s shadow Foreign Office minister — said the devolved, democratic decision taken by Bermuda to repeal gay marriage laws — “turns same-sex couples into second class citizens”, implying force should be used to impose gay marriage laws. “For that to happen anyone in the world would be shameful. For it to happen in a British territory, for the legislation signed by a British governor and permitted by a British foreign secretary makes us complicit in something which this House has repeatedly voted against,” she argued. Apparently imperialism is fine, but only in the pursuit of leftist goals like those of the LGBTQII++ lobby, in a mostly Christian nation. The British government called Bermuda’s decision “disappointing” but resisted getting involved despite the island’s status as a British Overseas Territory. It’s almost as if the Brits retain some knowledge about holding together an empire. If Bermuda were in the European Union, there’d have probably been some kind of sanctions, or perhaps a gay-migrant quota by now. Renowned mastermind (click it) David Lammy MP

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[tweeglitch]

smash the system? through sheer incompetence our oppressors are about to do just that. The revolutionary only needs to sit back and wait. 

Civilisation runs on working code though no one knows what a lot of it does anymore lol. And for many large legacy systems of vital infrastructural importance to the running of governments and economies no one has an overall view of how many of them work at all lol.

Governance of nations and the running of business has been increasingly deferred to the auto-pilot and that machine is made of rules. And of necessity those rules stretch over national borders because so does trade. The idiots are about to take an ax to those rules severing the links between the one and the 27. And they then expect the machine to instantly adjust and carry on working as before in business, banking and finance, supply chains, transport, government and crucially customs.

Because among other things (such as security and revenue collection) HMRC’s customs system is an essential cog in the machine integrated with the systems that schedule and coordinate the flow of goods through every one of the UK’s ports and airports. Clearly these systems will need updating to reflect the immanent change in the UK’s trading arrangements. Pause and ponder… flow of goods… every port. What could possibly go wrong!

These systems cannot be updated in time because there will be no time; it’s not until negotiations are complete that there can be surety and clarity on what the new rules of trade will be. And upon those rules technical specifications can be drawn up and passed to the devs. If those negotiations take zero seconds then there is the entire two year article 50 period to make adjustments. If however they take up that entire two years then there is a remaining zero seconds. I would tend toward the latter. An ambitious deadline for a government IT project.

And particularly ambitious in this case given HMRC are part way through a re-write (alarm bells already) from the existing CHIEF system to CDS so as to implement UCC processes (though not sure how relevant many of them will be post brexit). Re-writes are a huge risk as the existing system has been tested in the field by millions of users over decades. This total overhaul however is due for release around the time of the UK’s currently projected EU exit date. And of course leaving the EU wasn’t anticipated in this project (oh boy). And as well as modifications to take in to account the UK’s changed trading relationships with almost every other country on Earth. Every other country and not just the EU because the EU negotiates trade agreements on behalf of it’s members, agreements the UK will no longer be party to post exit so it leaves with nothing. Not just the change in rules but it will need to scale.

It will need to scale for a doubling of declarations being put through the system from traders previously used to the ease and simplicity of doing business within the EU. Scaling the system currently under development (CDS) is not a problem, it’s modern so just throw more servers at it. But that won’t be ready in time; government IT projects tend to overrun by years and overspend by billions and this isn’t the first attempt to rewrite. So that leaves the existing CHIEF system. This was not written by teenagers yesterday in javascript using node js. CHIEF was written in the 80s in COBEL, ICL OS and DBMS (ICL went out of business 15 years ago) etc. Particularly challenging given the reason for the rewrite (the reason for most rewrites) is that CHIEF had become too risky expensive and time consuming to make changes to. This tends to happen as mods are made to millions of lines of code by a stream of programmers over a quarter of a century… things tend to get a little bent out of shape. So how scalable is CHIEF and how easy to update to account for the radical change in the UK’s trade relationships with every other nation on Earth?

The situation is analogous to an army on the move (from CHIEF to CDS) about to be ambushed (as there’s no time to prepare) by an overwhelming force as the environment in which this system was written to operate in will be radically altered (every everything this system currently does will be under attack from some need to change). This will not go well and there’ll be no going back because when it all goes wrong the build can’t be pulled and the previous version installed because the previous version is the EU model. And what makes this project even more failure prone (if it didn’t have enough stacked against it already) is that hard brexit brings with it a hard deadline. Two years post article 50 notification it’s pencils down whether you’ve finished or not.

But hey surely there’ll be some post exit transition period to allow for implementation? Well normally when it comes to trade agreements yeh because normally these things are mutually beneficial otherwise there wouldn’t be agreement! so it’s in both parties’ interest to implement what has been agreed. This isn’t normal. This is the opposite in every respect. This is the undoing of agreements to both parties’ detriment. So as regards transition the EU attitude generally is ‘what’s in it for us?’ ‘will the end state of transition be good for us?’ ‘No?’ ‘Oh well fuck it then why bother!’ Then the UK according to that recent white paper is prepared to simply walk away from discussions rather than accept a ‘bad deal’ while many of the loons now running the show view any kind of transition with suspicion; a means to keep the UK in by stealth. Nor do they understand the need for an interim period to allow time for systems to be updated, it’s simply a detail that many think is beneath them to understand.

That lack of understanding extends to all those ‘experts’ we’ve heard in the media since the referendum campaign. Generally speaking these experts have been of the kind that don’t do detail. Politicians, business leaders, economists, journalists and celebrity chefs only see the bigger picture. Though how many of these ‘experts’ have ever even written a line of code! IT is rarely part of anyone’s bigger picture regardless of how fundamental it may be. And for some problems if you only see the bigger picture then you’re hardly seeing the problem at all. The experts are indeed wrong because this will be far worse than any of them have predicted.

Which brings us to another reason so little is being said about the catastrophe that awaits should the UK continue on its present path. That is the lack of detail in UK gov pronouncements of their intentions, their plans. Because with so little to go on those who have some grasp of the issues don’t want to commit to any predictions because who wants to be wrong! No one wants to be the one to start yelling the sky is falling then be ‘proved wrong’ when UK gov come to their senses and change course (e.g. remain in the EEA as an interim step say).

 However the vagueness and lack of detail shouldn’t be a cause for doubt it’s rather a very strong indicator. A very strong indicator of cluelessness. UK gov are saying little because they have little to say.

But detail detail detail, in this case the devil isn’t so much there but rather a screaming horde of demons are waiting to be unleashed. Because these issues: the uncertainty until agreements are made and the lack of time to adjust and the degree to which systems have become enmeshed over the decades across borders. This doesn’t just apply to customs IT no, that was just the most obvious pick, it applies to a whole range of other systems within government, business and finance.

The chaos and disruption that awaits will be war scale. Trucks backed up from Dover along the M20 and wrapped round the M25. The army called in to distribute to supermarkets, food rationing and civil unrest. And this on top of the other related shocks to the food system of a country only 60% self sufficient. There is the additional customs bureaucracy along with the system failures; a big problem for time critical consignments such as fresh food. Sterling will drop to parity with Andrex once the scale of clusterfuck becomes obvious to all making food imports that more expensive. The loss of migrant labour upon which the UK’s food industry is heavily dependant. And then the inevitable end of subsidies which account for 50% of farm income.

Ho-hum. Just warning the world of the UK’s impending famine and civil war issue… erm on my art blog. It’s ahhh… a conceptual piece. Coz it err... makes yer fink dunnit?

They say every society is only three meals away from revolution. I think it was said on an episode of Red Dwarf btw.