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Messages - Rods2

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31
General Discussion Area / Re: Corona virus Europe
« on: 10 March 2020, 01:10:45 »
Incase anybody is still under the illusion this is like a mild dose of influenza here are some stats on mortality by age group:

Influenza

AgeMortality %
0-40.01
5-170.01
18-490.06
50-640.06
65+0.83

Covid-19

AgeMortality %xTimes More Deadly
0-900
10-190.220
20-290.210
30-390.210
40-490.420
50-591.321.68
60-653.660*
65-693.64.30*
70-798%9.6
80+14.817.8
*statistical anomaly due to the different age bands.

These use the Chinese figures from the Worldometer site which has been updated with some mortality rates for confirmed cases. In the UK there are typically 17,000 additional deaths during the winter Influenza season, mainly in the over 65s. Covid-19 death rates start ramping up from 45 & really accelerate beyond 60-65. Common factors are age, chronic medical conditions & (probably smoking rates (& even if you have given up that increases once below 20 years since you gave up according to NYC heath officials)). I haven't done any back of the envelop calculations here as they certainly won't cheer anybody up, but start adding zeros to 17,000. :o

CountryMale Smoking %X. Confirmed CasesY. RecoveredZ. Deaths(Z / X)%(Z / Y)%(Z / (Y + Z))%
China50%+80,73558,7353,1203.865.315.04
Italy25.49,1727244635.0463.9539.00
South Korea40.77,478118530.7144.9132.91
Iran23.47,1612,3942373.319.809.01
UK16.53211841.2522.2218.18

In the UK those that haven't done their preparation over the last 3 to 5 weeks when it was obvious it was going to get worse & probably be a pandemic, have left it much too late. Fortunately, I was ahead of the curve here with buying 100 disposable masks, 10 x safety glasses, 3 x 500ml sanitiser, 2 x tubs of sanitiser creme (easy to use when out & about), N95/P3 sealing respirator, with case & spare filters, sealing safety goggles, (I always keep a box of 100's disposable gloves to hand for when working on cars etc.), 30-60 at a stretch 90 days of lockdown tinned, dried & frozen food & other essential supplies when there were no shortages or price hikes.

UK confirmed cases are doubling every 3 days, so quarantine will in IMV start within 14 days & as like in Italy death rates will escalate rapidly where the NHS is overwhelmed where beds, but especially ICUs for the 1000's of critical viral pneumonia cases fall well short of demand. It is going to be everybody for themselves, so good luck to all on here. :o :( UK guidelines suggest that ICU use will be decided by patient scoring & those that fall outside of this offered pallitive care while they get on with the inportant job of dying (or if very lucky surviving)! ??? :-[ :( :'(

32
General Discussion Area / Re: Fuel prices down?
« on: 27 February 2020, 12:37:07 »

As for the NHS. Gormless McRuin more than doubled its budget and made it worse in the process. Its problem isn't money. Its problem is that it doesn't work and cant work in the 21st century. Someone needs to scrap the whole thing and start over again with a clean sheet of paper.

This I agree with, in part. Its biggest issues are a) advancements in medical science, which are expensive and people believe should be provided free at the point of use, most of which link to quality of life, which was not in the remit of the original NHS. b) a rapidly ageing population. Only about half of employed people pay any income tax at all (and about 1/3 is paid by the top 1% of earners). While it has been funded comparatively well of late, what hasn't been is social care, particularly for adults, which pushes a significant burden onto the NHS for activities which, by rights should never have been with its remit.

NHS inefficiency is probably the most well loved UK cliche but if you compare it to other systems, it is reasonably efficient, but doesn't produce as strong health outcomes as some other systems.

This argument is a red herring.

The burden of tax as  a percentage of earnings has always fallen on the poor.

For example. When the poor man fills his shagged out old Vectra   with petrol he pays the same tax  and VAT as the rich man. However, as a proportion of his wages the poor man pays far more.

Besides, most wealthy people and business corporations employ bent tax lawyers to avoid paying tax in the first place. Just look at Amazon and Starbucks, they pay SFA.  :-\

 

Companies articles of association will be along the lines of making profits and paying dividends & to maximise the shareholders dividends, which is a directors fundicial duty. If they don't minimise the tax they pay according to HMG corporate tax guides then they can quite rightly be sued by the shareholders & being US companies the first thing with any perceived shareholder gripe is to reach for your lawyer.

Lord Opti obviously feels he is not getting enough free stuff from HMG, where he should be legally able to steal more of other peoples hard earned economic output. :(

If I'm earning over £150k a year & pay myself dividends from each £100k earned beyond this. then this is the tax you will pay:

£100,000 x 0.8 = £80,000. VAT on sales
£80,000 x 0.81 = £64,800. 19% advanced corporation tax where you can only pay dividends out of profits.
£64,800 x 0.625 = £42,750. 37.5% Income tax.
£42,750 x 0.8 = £34,200. When you actually use the personal money to buy something useful which will then mostly attract VAT.

So out of your £100,000 of hard earned economic output you get to spend £34,200 & the government steals £65,800. If you sensibly have the red line that you keep a minimum of 50.1% of your economic output then you move to IOM, Channel Islands, Virgin Islands et al, Monorco (there is a waiting list so it can take time to do this), Dubai or Singapore. I know quite a few people that have done this & HMG now collects less tax from 45% taxpayers than at 40%, but of course to the left it is not about raising revenue, but appeasing their jealousy & punishing entrepreneurs risk taking, skill, hard work & success where they use our capitalist system to have a comfortable life. Many at the same time will also relocate some or all of their business interests so the UK gets poorer & wage inflation/standard of living for mr & mrs average is reduced. UK still attracts inward investment where is is the least worst in Western Europe for this and where we speak the global language of business English. GMT is also an advantage with +/- 12 hours East to West for time zones.

33
General Discussion Area / Re: Corona virus Europe
« on: 27 February 2020, 00:57:53 »
WHO 19/2/2020 situation report reports that the Chinese recovered death rate is 2.3%. This drops to 0.9% (which is about the same overall death rate for flu so this is x2.5 times more deadly) for the under 50's where it starts to climb to about 14% in the over 80's. Chronic conditions make a massive difference with heart problems top at 10% fatality rate, followed by diabetes at 7%, COPD at 6%, then hypertension. Poo, pooing statistics is fine until you, your families & friends start being one of them and then it gets personal. If you have heart problems, diabetes issues, COPD, kidney problems or hypertension all of these chronic conditions can be made significantly worse with a very reduced rest of life, quality of life if you survive.

Iran's death rate is currently running at 14-15% which suggests there a x5 to x10 more people infected than they have reported.

What it will do is affect people's jobs, incomes, create shortages of food, medicines & lots of other essential items, so expect to take a hit on your quality of life for the next year or 2 or 3 until it is under control. SARs took almost 3 years to eradicate & only involved 8-9,000 people & was much more difficult to catch although the WHO fatality rate was at 14.5%. MERS is very difficult to catch from camels but kills 34% of those infected. At best the first vaccines will become available in 2021 which will then start to help to eradicate it.

The whole idea of the Governments self-isolation policy is not to stop its spread but the rate it is spread, so the NHS is not overwhelmed with the number of pneumonia cases which if they run out of assisted respiratory systems it will push up the mortality rate. The gaussian distribution will have a much, much longer Y time axis, but a much lower backend loaded pneumonia cases peak. The leading experts all think we are beyond the will it become a global pandemic to which countries will do better controlling it than others?

The majority on here are over 50, many with chronic conditions, so be lucky & use basic hygiene procedures like washing your hands regularly with warm soapy water, do touch your face & eyes with dirty hands & used alcohol based sanitisers when available. If you get it then control the spraying of the virus with paper tissues when coughing or sneezing.

That it an escaped bio weapon, is an out & out conspiracy theory as the weapon & antidote are developed together, so you can protect the 'good side' which infecting the 'bad one'. Where the rural Chinese live in their houses with their domesticated animals & will trade in markets & eat any domesticated or wild animals including: dogs, cats, badgers, bats, crivets, snakes, rats, mice (eating baby mice live is considered a delicacy!). The last 3 global diseases that have jumped species in China: pigs->humans swine flu, bats->humans SARS & 93% chance bats->humans Covid-19.

34
General Discussion Area / Re: This corona virus
« on: 24 February 2020, 15:32:28 »
There are two types of pneumonia Bacterial & Viral & when you have both at the same time it is called double pneumonia. Tis vaccine, which I've had, protects against bacterial pneumonia. Still worth having to protect against double pneumonia but it offers no protection against Covid-19 pneumonia as this a a viral pneumonia.

35
General Discussion Area / Re: Flood defences
« on: 19 February 2020, 19:31:16 »
The Somerset Levels haven't flooded like they did in the winter of 2015-16 as it has now been dredged. :y :y Dredging works but EU greens have made it very difficult & expensive to do, Australian controlled bush fires & vegetation clearance pre-date European settlers where this was done by the Aborigines & has now been outlawed by the greens & is backed up with satellite, aircraft & drone photography, so anybody doing it, especially homeowners to defend their properties face massive fines & jail terms. >:( Expensive unreliable, very, very ungreen bird slaughterers & major polluting wind turbines & solar power is being forced upon us, you've guessed by the green lobby. Vehicle air pollution & air quality has been getting better with lower pollution levels (apart from NOX which is stable) & the new vehicle city charging & exclusion zones are being imposed upon us via the EU tree hugging lobby.

The 'green' capitalists like Soros, Al Gore et al where they have been buying up billions of CO2 licences which are compulsory from 2030 under the Paris Climate Treaty & their aim is to turn these billions into trillions & guess who is going to be paying them this? >:( >:( >:(

With any luck the EU & especially the Eurozone are unlikely to survive to 2030 through a combination of eye watering trillions of €€€€ debts, member countries near zero growth, sovereign debt, ECB debt, TARGET 2 debts & the acceleration of the deindustrialization Europe through EU's new green deal. German industry has been one of the most resilient of EU/Eurozone countries but they are now drifting in & out of slight growth & recession as their industrial production declines. Brexit will also badly affect their funding & the amount we buy from the EU where there are cheaper & better ROW places especially when we have FTAs with many countries. CPTPP which we have been invited to join is 14% of world trade & growing. :y

Where the EU's funding falls by £12.6bn through the UK-EU transition period ending on 31-12-2020, the EU member states are already fighting like ferrets in a sack on who is going to pick up this shortfall. ;D

36
General Discussion Area / Re: This corona virus
« on: 11 February 2020, 10:38:33 »
Death toll of those that have had it, in China, and are now well again seems to be running at about 1% so no where as dangerous as SARS where the death toll was 14-15% with it running at over 50% in the over 65s. As of yesterday the numbers in China are: 40171 confirmed cases and 187,518 under medical observation. The daily infection rates in China are dropping from a peak of over 3,000 to under that yesterday.

The UK person that caught it, at a conference, in Singapore, a super spreader, then went on holiday to France and then back in Brighton who has given it to a few more people including 2 GPs. I will be surprised if we don't now have a pandemic in the UK where it spreads very easily as an airborne virus by somebody before they know they have got it! :(

For the majority it will be a mild illness but a percentage will get viral pneumonia and 1% will die. This will be mainly older people with other medical conditions. The key to survival with pneumonia is getting treatment early, if you don't you can't be saved. My wife has had pneumonia several times and she has been to her GP and then hospital treatment, another person I know who left it late was told by the doctors that if he had left it another 24 hours they would have not been able to save him where he spend 2 weeks in our local hospital in an isolation room having treatment. When I went to see him I have to dress into a paper protection suit, hair cover and mask to see him. :o

37
General Discussion Area / Re: I blame Brexit
« on: 09 February 2020, 00:21:05 »
A week in since leaving the EU & I'm very, very disappointed where project fear told us our £1 would be worth less than a lira or a 1920's deutschmark but the GBP is steady against the USD & Euro. I've still been able to buy toilet rolls so I haven't had to use my reserve of Liebour or Limpdims 12/12 GE sheet of lies to smear some of their sh*t back. :o Worst of all is that we were guaranteed the skies would be full of flying fire breathing dragons, giving us Leavers fire, brimstone & eternal hottest part of hell's damnation & I haven't seen one, not one, has anybody else?

On the 31/12/2020 I proudly wore my leave 31/01/2020 T-shirt & a couple of shouty remoaners had a go at us & their best argument was we think personally it is a bad idea to leave the EU. ;D ;D ;D

38
A client who I recommended move from his current hosting provider when his server needed updating instead decided to stay with them. It has bitten him bigtime (& unfortunately me) where he is losing everything from some traffic to all traffic from his direct sales but more importantly XML to a massive UK online retailer which generates the majority of his online sales. I can see we are losing some inbound XML data, but not all, by setting up a range of quotes on their system that I can identify as not arriving on our server & more traffic where the 3rd party are seeing my reply XML connections to them as being aborted partly through the sending of the XML data & this can be from about 20% to 100% so he is getting from reduced business to no business! >:(

1. How reliable are the NSX VM Edge Gateways & their software?
2. If you are not very competent, is it easy to miss-configure & then blame the H/W & S/W or are there genune issues?

I started speaking to Zen last week about moving but the current contract with his current supplier runs until the end of the year. I may have to recommend he goes to them for at least the XML feed in the short term & sees out the contract for the direct websites, as the money & gross profits he is losing is much, much bigger than the additional monthly server outlay, but of course it is still an outlay which reduces his profitability.

39
General Discussion Area / Solid state batteries
« on: 08 February 2020, 19:55:26 »
https://youtu.be/g0nA8CfxBqA

The next big advance in batteries from one of the developers of Lithium-ion batteries?

40
General Discussion Area / Re: Is it better to......
« on: 08 February 2020, 19:51:34 »
M'lud gone strangely quiet, has he still got a working laptop? ???

41
General Discussion Area / Re: Lad is sad
« on: 03 February 2020, 20:02:42 »
I can see this being a really useful tool for predicting the 2019-nCoV infection & death rates from previous SAR & influenza pandemics prediction curve statistics where this is very, very difficult to work out until afterwards, due to it being an asymmetric statistics problem which is described well here:

https://towardsdatascience.com/why-everyone-knows-and-acts-like-the-2019-ncov-statistics-are-misleading-5919b3c33476

Being able to use past known predictive distribution curves & what is known so far with this current pandemic you could produce a posterior distribution curve using Bayesian statistics & then as this pandemic develops see how the real world results compare to the calculations for an unknown confidence value in how accurate the results are.

That would be a good question for you to ask your lad STEMO.

42
General Discussion Area / Re: Terrorism
« on: 03 February 2020, 18:41:09 »
Personally, I was very happy with pre-1997 UK society & didn't need to be culturally enhanced by Tony BLiar & Mandlescum with their mass migration from all corners of the globe which has IMV caused the current UK society's surge in violent crime, terrorist problems & northern cities pedophile grooming gangs drugging & raping young underage vulnerable girls. >:(

Most traditional UK organised crime gangs have been taken over or displaced by much more violent Eastern European gangs with the most violent of the lot from Albania controlling & running the UK sex trade which includes people trafficking. >:(

43
General Discussion Area / Re: I thought town centres were dying
« on: 01 February 2020, 18:40:09 »
Problems with "town" centres can be solved quite easily ... turn them back into "town" centres and not streets full of shops.... if they were a MIX of houses, flats, shops, eating & drinking places they would do much better, as those that live there have somewhere to go LOCAL, rather than the present situation where you have to "go" somewhere to shop, somewhere else to eat, somewhere else to drink and then somewhere else to live !! etc etc

Planners are far to shortsighted as they see the cash cow of "business rates" as the holy grail .. but if the shops are empty they get no rates....

Not true thanks to that financial genius Gordon 'buy gold high, sell low, no boom all bust' McRuin where empty business premises landlord are charged rates after it has been empty after 3 months, except industrial premises which can apply for a further 3 month extension. The effect on this has been to increase commercial price/rent instability still further.where property rented at any price (free 1st 3,6,12 months not unusual) or is converted during a recession into profitable uses (In the great 2008 recession I know somebody that converted his empty office block into flats for this reason.) or pulled down thus leaving a shortage of business premises once the economy & property market picks up with higher commercial building prices or rent & to cover any rent free losses or business rates. This has resulted in many smaller (usually cheaper rentals) selling out to hedge funds & Middle Eastern wealth funds who will double or quadruple rents overnight. Shops & Pubs have been especially hard hit with this which is why so many of both have shut.

Most town centre redevelopments these days are unaffordable to independent retailers, so they end up stuffed with sterile-puerile overpriced me-to multiples. I haven't visited our local shopping centre for over 5 years for this reason, What I can't buy from local out-of-town Aldi/Lidl/Tesco, local small independents or online, I go without.

44
General Discussion Area / Re: Warning: HMRC Scam still circulating
« on: 31 January 2020, 20:41:00 »
Oh dear, a scam on top of bloodsuckers scam where today is deadline day for electronic submission of your self-assessment tax form. This has been an annual event for me since starting my first business in the early 1980s. As per usual, yesterday evening after filling in their form & they kindly calculate the extortion charge, I then had to pay a big chunk of money to bloodsucker to keep this wolf from the front door, but I never even get a thank you for my generous donation to clearing the national debt. Unfortunately, that is still growing where they seem to still be shovelling our cash down the drain faster than the rate we over-worked, underpaid & over-taxed plebs can replenish it at. >:( >:( >:(
I thought you were self-employed? You'd better stop over-working yourself or you'll have to take yourself to a industrial tribunal. If you lose your case you'll have to pay yourself compensation.

Sounds a bit like Brighton & Hove FC who today have been negotiating a release fee to get their own player to play for them. They sent him a season long loan & didn't include a recall clause, so they are now having to pay £700k to release him where he is needed to cover for injuries. ;D ;D ;D

45
General Discussion Area / Re: Warning: HMRC Scam still circulating
« on: 31 January 2020, 19:58:21 »
Oh dear, a scam on top of bloodsuckers scam where today is deadline day for electronic submission of your self-assessment tax form. This has been an annual event for me since starting my first business in the early 1980s. As per usual, yesterday evening after filling in their form & they kindly calculate the extortion charge, I then had to pay a big chunk of money to bloodsucker to keep this wolf from the front door, but I never even get a thank you for my generous donation to clearing the national debt. Unfortunately, that is still growing where they seem to still be shovelling our cash down the drain faster than the rate we over-worked, underpaid & over-taxed plebs can replenish it at. >:( >:( >:(

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