Licence fee barely moved for 10 years, something called for by lots of newspapers (indeed they usually want far more significant cuts) and then outrage as, guess what, the BBC can’t afford to do certain things. telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2021/…
In this case the IOC just did a deal with Discovery directly, didn’t even invite bids with traditional public broadcasters, who wouldn’t have been able to compete. BBC Sport directors have been warning about restrictive licence fee settlements affecting sports coverage for years.
Btw I‘ve no objection to it being on Eurosports so long as it’s free to air. I used to work for a commercial broadcaster and feel strongly about how important they are, just as I do about the BBC. It’s the hypocrisy about BBC inevitably doing less sometimes which is the problem.
Though judging by the superlative coverage of 2012/16 I’m sure BBC’s would have been that bit better 😎
NEW: UK Covid cases fall for the third day in a row.
Number of infections down by 15,000 or so compared with last Friday.
Picture in Scotland looks more positive still. Very clear sustained reduction in cases now. Number of patients admitted to hospital starting to reduce too.
Changes to restrictions on Monday in England won’t have def into UK numbers yet so this doesn’t tell us everything. But if it’s sustained it’s a better place to be and deal with any stage4 effects than we would have been otherwise.
This is quite the provision of the new self isolation rules for NHS workers on gov.uk. The state is being generous enough to allow someone to leave self isolation for work only to send them back into self isolation for everything else.
It’s been reported that this is the case for other newly exempted workers as well and George Eustice has talked about “test to release to work” but not clear from newly updated guidance.
Assuming that it is/even if it only applies to NHS- questions
1) is this another example of the rules bearing little/no similarity to how humans will actually behave? Ie would anyone actually do that?
NEW: 618,903 pings were sent from the NHS app to users last week in England and Wales. A record.
But the number of venue check ins declined, in England’s case quite sharply. Suggests people are choosing to use the app less.
Given how much infections have gone up you might have supposed the number of pings might have gone up still further. Given that and fall in number of venue check ins, plausible that substantial number of deletions of the app/turning off contact tracing have taken place.
On EWS1 specifically the written statement says the govt's move "paves the way" for EWS1 no longer to be required. But this something lenders require not govt. I've got in touch with some tonight- they're clear they welcome the govt's move but we have no sense of when...
...they might change their policy.
It's also unclear what happens to leaseholders who have already paid out money to for remediation so as to secure an EWS1. Do they get the money back?
And in any case EWS1 is just about cladding AND THIS IS ABOUT SO MUCH MORE THAN CLADDING.