Categories Society
7 days
30 days
All time
Recent
Popular
Time to act: thread on why we need to close schools, borders, and ban all household mixing RIGHT AWAY.
To those arguing winter is always like this in the NHS: you are wrong. I faced four serious winter crises as Health Sec and the situation now is off-the-scale worse than any of those.
It’s true that we often had to cancel elective care in Jan to protect emergency care but that too is under severe pressure with record trolley waits for the very sickest patients
Even more worryingly fewer heart attack patients appear to be presenting in ICUs, perhaps because they are not dialling 999 when they need
Full credit to NHS for keeping cancer services open but in Wave 1 there was still a 2/3 drop in cancer appts: people didn’t come forward to GPs or want to go to hospitals, with many potentially avoidable cancer deaths. We hoped to avoid that this time but now looking unlikely.
To those arguing winter is always like this in the NHS: you are wrong. I faced four serious winter crises as Health Sec and the situation now is off-the-scale worse than any of those.
It’s true that we often had to cancel elective care in Jan to protect emergency care but that too is under severe pressure with record trolley waits for the very sickest patients
Exclusive: Leaks reveal record waits for emergency care due to covid pressures https://t.co/CrxYPUJG7v
— Health Service Journal (@HSJnews) January 4, 2021
Even more worryingly fewer heart attack patients appear to be presenting in ICUs, perhaps because they are not dialling 999 when they need
Full credit to NHS for keeping cancer services open but in Wave 1 there was still a 2/3 drop in cancer appts: people didn’t come forward to GPs or want to go to hospitals, with many potentially avoidable cancer deaths. We hoped to avoid that this time but now looking unlikely.
For those wondering what the causes are of Texas blackouts, @JesseJenkins is doing a really good real time analysis of generator capacity and operation. (Short story: we have a natural gas problem in TX). A few additional thoughts to add:
1/ As Jesse notes, natural gas is somewhat unique in that it is both a power plant fuel and a home heating fuel. When cold weather comes, regulators bias in favor of heating rather than power generation.
2/ New England - a region that is both cold and has long been more reliant than others on natural gas for power generation - has had to grapple with this for a long time.
3/ In most of the country, the tightest times for power markets are during hot summer days when demand peaks to run all that AC. In New England, the tightest times are often cold winter days when supply gets constrained as the gas is redirected to heat
4/ Texas isn't used to planning for cold snaps, but they are gas-dependent on the power grid. So they are, in essence, acting like New England right now.
Confidential info from a market participant in ERCOT: As of ~10 AM Eastern time, the system has ~30 GW of capacity offline, ~26 GW of thermal -- mostly natural gas which cant get fuel deliveries which are being priorities for heating loads -- and ~4 GW of wind due to icing. https://t.co/Bfpn0WeRIq
— JesseJenkins (@JesseJenkins) February 15, 2021
1/ As Jesse notes, natural gas is somewhat unique in that it is both a power plant fuel and a home heating fuel. When cold weather comes, regulators bias in favor of heating rather than power generation.
2/ New England - a region that is both cold and has long been more reliant than others on natural gas for power generation - has had to grapple with this for a long time.
3/ In most of the country, the tightest times for power markets are during hot summer days when demand peaks to run all that AC. In New England, the tightest times are often cold winter days when supply gets constrained as the gas is redirected to heat
4/ Texas isn't used to planning for cold snaps, but they are gas-dependent on the power grid. So they are, in essence, acting like New England right now.
Great to see this out. Go and give it a read!
We spoke about the Citizens' Assembly and one of their most exciting plans on the Policy Podcast in
Go and read their reports at
Here are some of the policies they've called for that line up well with @Common_Weal polices (with links to our papers):
[Recommendation 3] A House of Citizens to oversee the Scottish Parliament -
[12] All tax-payer funded documentation to be automatically made publicly available and easily searchable -
\U0001f3f4\U000e0067\U000e0062\U000e0073\U000e0063\U000e0074\U000e007f\U0001f680 Today\u2019s the day! Our report is now live. Check out the Citizens\u2019 Assembly of Scotland\u2019s shared vision for the future of Scotland and 60 recommendations \U0001f4cc https://t.co/SfGb3xmTIJ https://t.co/62K3zPeTqI
— Citizens' Assembly of Scotland (@CitAssemblyScot) January 13, 2021
We spoke about the Citizens' Assembly and one of their most exciting plans on the Policy Podcast in
Go and read their reports at
Here are some of the policies they've called for that line up well with @Common_Weal polices (with links to our papers):
[Recommendation 3] A House of Citizens to oversee the Scottish Parliament -
[12] All tax-payer funded documentation to be automatically made publicly available and easily searchable -