Utsikt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I think the author of the study has a right to get their answer published by the news site. Isn’t it called «right of reply» or something like that?
United Kingdom News (including UK wide, England, NI and Wales - see separate thread for news from Scotland)
- Thread starter Sly Saint
- Start date
I think the author of the study has a right to get their answer published by the news site. Isn’t it called «right of reply» or something like that?
Lou B Lou
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The (over 750) Telegraph readers' Comments underneath this lurid mask-mocking article are truly frightening.
99.9% of the Comments to this article mock, denigrate and smear mask wearers as
"Loons", "Branch Covidians", perpetually calling mask wearers 'mentally ill', portraying mask wearers as aliens, as cultists, as 'Other'. It's scary.
It's possible to subscribe to both the online Telegraph and The Times for a seriously cut price amount. Both papers offer deals (usually 4 or 6 months for One UK Pound a month). With the cut price subscription you can also Comment on the online articles.
You just have to remember to cancel your cut price subscription before it moves over to full price. But when you cancel the cut price subscription, the papers offer you another cut price subscription!
I ended up paying just 50p a month for the Telegraph for the next 6 months.
TBH I can't stand reading most of the Telegraph articles, but it's handy to see what they are publishing, especially on ME or Covid.
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Robert 1973
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The Daily Telegraph stopped being a serious newspaper a long time ago. Unfortunately, like boiling frogs, many of its readers seem to be oblivious to its slide into post-truth populism.
I don’t mean this to be a comment about the rights or wrongs of the newspaper’s political allegiances – just an observation of its apparent disregard for truth. So I hope it doesn’t breach forum rules.
I’m also aware that the boiling frogs metaphor (or simile) is a fallacy, but it’s still a useful analogy.
[edit: more autocorrect typos]
I don’t mean this to be a comment about the rights or wrongs of the newspaper’s political allegiances – just an observation of its apparent disregard for truth. So I hope it doesn’t breach forum rules.
I’m also aware that the boiling frogs metaphor (or simile) is a fallacy, but it’s still a useful analogy.
[edit: more autocorrect typos]
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Dolphin
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
PPIE Award Winner 2025: Dr Keith Geraghty and Prof Aneez Esmail
PPIE Award Winner 2025: Dr Keith Geraghty and Prof Aneez Esmail
blogs.manchester.ac.uk
Chandelier
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Page by tern | @1goodtern.bsky.social
Sickness, Disability, and Death in NHS England Staff The three graphs that *every person* needs to see. The question that every single person needs to ask their government: What are you doing to protect me from Covid infection?
skywriter.blue
@Utsikt this time a similar graph but with pre-pandemic data included. Previous conversation: https://www.s4me.info/threads/news-from-finland.25309/post-664027
Utsikt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Thank you for tagging me! This is not looking good..
Moved post
Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but it seems something to keep an eye on.
www.timeshighereducation.com
Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but it seems something to keep an eye on.
Three UK research councils suspend funding opportunities
Temporary block on grant applications by MRC, BBSRC and EPSRC heightens concerns over funding cuts
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Binkie4
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Haven't responses to questions in the H of C about research into ME lately referred to grants being awarded by the MRC? And years before etc etc.....?
From article posted by @Eleanor above:
"At the MRC, which had a core budget of £602 million in 2025-26, applicant-led research grants, new investigator research grants and partnership grants have been paused since late December with no indication of when they might reopen."
Do we not need another question asking when grants will be resumed? I have not kept abreast of how Sequence ME is to be funded but there seem to have been a number of Parliamentary questions on funding answered by reference to the MRC or the NIHR.
However on looking up recent questions on S4ME thread,
Dr Zubir Ahmed answered a question on funding for ME in the H of C on 6th Jan as follows
"The Department funds research on health and social care through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR and the Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, are committed to funding high-quality research to understand the causes, consequences, and treatment for post-acute infection conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), and long COVID."
...........
"The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including ME/CFS and long COVID. Research funding is available, and applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality."
The MRC seems not to have been included with NIHR in the statement saying 'research funding is available'. Am I reading too much into this?
From article posted by @Eleanor above:
"At the MRC, which had a core budget of £602 million in 2025-26, applicant-led research grants, new investigator research grants and partnership grants have been paused since late December with no indication of when they might reopen."
Do we not need another question asking when grants will be resumed? I have not kept abreast of how Sequence ME is to be funded but there seem to have been a number of Parliamentary questions on funding answered by reference to the MRC or the NIHR.
However on looking up recent questions on S4ME thread,
Dr Zubir Ahmed answered a question on funding for ME in the H of C on 6th Jan as follows
"The Department funds research on health and social care through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR and the Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, are committed to funding high-quality research to understand the causes, consequences, and treatment for post-acute infection conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), and long COVID."
...........
"The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including ME/CFS and long COVID. Research funding is available, and applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality."
The MRC seems not to have been included with NIHR in the statement saying 'research funding is available'. Am I reading too much into this?
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bicentennial
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Sadly an expedient of the next predicted pandemic might fix a lot of trading people not now on the same page - who will not agree on equable peace, health, safety and environment, - not until needs must.
Even then, trading bureacracies could not rise to the 2020 occasion, stuck in formulas, liable to turn Europe back into a graveyard, while moaning about the lost marvels of "growth"
Endless growth - its pathological, a body gets so big then it stops getting bigger and instead invests in repair and maintenace., National acromegaly is pathological. The profit margin just cannot go on getting bigger, backlogging repair and maintenance
Its the minority delusion of "stakeholders" at the wobbly top
Even then, trading bureacracies could not rise to the 2020 occasion, stuck in formulas, liable to turn Europe back into a graveyard, while moaning about the lost marvels of "growth"
Endless growth - its pathological, a body gets so big then it stops getting bigger and instead invests in repair and maintenace., National acromegaly is pathological. The profit margin just cannot go on getting bigger, backlogging repair and maintenance
Its the minority delusion of "stakeholders" at the wobbly top
Chandelier
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Page by tern | @1goodtern.bsky.social
Are people sicker now than in 2019? Civil servants in England are. Sickness absence rates have *risen by between 12% to 23% across the age groups*. Are things getting worse? It certainly looks like it. This is exactly what we predicted repeat covid infection would do.
skywriter.blue
February 9, 2026
tern
@1goodtern.bsky.socialAre people sicker now than in 2019?
Civil servants in England are.
Sickness absence rates have *risen by between 12% to 23% across the age groups*.
Are things getting worse?
It certainly looks like it.
This is exactly what we predicted repeat covid infection would do.
I faded out the year 2021 because that year includes all of the 'lockdowns' and during that year people were taking precautions to avoid illness.
And I synchronised the graphs at 2019 because that's the last covid free year, and it ties the chart together neatly.
People used to be getting healthier year on year.Now we're getting sicker year on year.The difference is Covid.
The data's all here, go knock yourself out. www.gov.uk
The highest two plots (orange and dark green) are the age ranges: under 30s and 30-39.
Utsikt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Thanks for sharing! 5 years is still a short time pre-pandemic. By demonstrating that the pre-pandemic trend was consistent over many years, it’s harder to dismiss the changes as just randomness. The longer the better.
Although the mostly downward trend was reversed to an upwards trend, which should be striking enough by itself.
It will just keep getting worse..
Although the mostly downward trend was reversed to an upwards trend, which should be striking enough by itself.
It will just keep getting worse..
bicentennial
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Does it mean the older people on the legacy contracts are quite properly allowed more margin, so less over-taxed (work-wise) as their thresholds are bound to lower, at some point, with increasing age?
But then some slack is dumped on the younger people being over-taxed (work-wise):
- with less margin than ever and probably on later contracts with the lesser terms, conditions, pay and pension deals
- in the fabulous British system so infamous over decades now for having the highest staistical rates of sickness and overtime in Europe with the lowest rates of people volunteering their spare time, or so I was told
Well at least the civil service knows whats going on.
Actually, according to the populace represented by a few people who feel enormously moved to comment, viciously, in my hearing: this is all because the workforce is vanishing due to:
"Young people do not want to work and are allowed to have an easy time scrounging on the dole instead, mostly snowflakes making out they are too mentally ill to work, and in vast numbers bullying their parents, so, they won't be working to provide for their parent's generation to retire.
"Also many older people all took affordable early retirement.
"And the civil service is a bunch of overpaid useless w..k.ers"
God knows where these commentators think people got the money to live on when they all "chose to stop working"
One wonders where they get their news from
But then some slack is dumped on the younger people being over-taxed (work-wise):
- with less margin than ever and probably on later contracts with the lesser terms, conditions, pay and pension deals
- in the fabulous British system so infamous over decades now for having the highest staistical rates of sickness and overtime in Europe with the lowest rates of people volunteering their spare time, or so I was told
Well at least the civil service knows whats going on.
Actually, according to the populace represented by a few people who feel enormously moved to comment, viciously, in my hearing: this is all because the workforce is vanishing due to:
"Young people do not want to work and are allowed to have an easy time scrounging on the dole instead, mostly snowflakes making out they are too mentally ill to work, and in vast numbers bullying their parents, so, they won't be working to provide for their parent's generation to retire.
"Also many older people all took affordable early retirement.
"And the civil service is a bunch of overpaid useless w..k.ers"
God knows where these commentators think people got the money to live on when they all "chose to stop working"
One wonders where they get their news from
MrMagoo
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The usual suspects have terribly high sickness - HMRC and DWP.
Mental health was the most common reason.
By grade the lower and higher grades had higher sickness, by region London had lowest.
“Civil servants” includes the person working at the job centre, the person writing to you because you were overpaid some tax, the person organising Home Office student visas for overseas students.
People tend to imagine it’s just the “Senior Civil Service” aka the big cheeses running departments and liasing with ministers, but that’s a very small group mostly based in London.
Mental health was the most common reason.
By grade the lower and higher grades had higher sickness, by region London had lowest.
“Civil servants” includes the person working at the job centre, the person writing to you because you were overpaid some tax, the person organising Home Office student visas for overseas students.
People tend to imagine it’s just the “Senior Civil Service” aka the big cheeses running departments and liasing with ministers, but that’s a very small group mostly based in London.
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