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22 Oct, 5 tweets, 2 min read
I pointed out three months ago that daily dashboard infection figures don’t include anyone infected for a second time, and that I thought this unfortunate, because by definition it means those daily figures are not the whole Covid19 story. These daily figures…
still don’t include re-infections, even though a SAGE paper published today confirms that previous Covid19 infection provides “less protection against infection with Delta than against previous virus variants”. See attached. And this lessened protection will only…
increase with the passage of time, as antibody protection wanes. So today’s infection total of just under 50,000 is an understatement. It might be only a small understatement, of perhaps a couple of percentage points (which would be the magnitude implied by other surveillance…
studies). But we can’t be sure it is as small as that in anything like real time, because the reinfection surveys are published with a lag. I don’t think I am being overly fastidious in being anxious about this eccentricity of the daily published data, given the raging…
debate about whether infections are now at a level that should prompt @BorisJohnson to introduce Plan B.

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Robert Peston Profile picture
26 Sep
Standing ovation for Margaret Hodge speech about rooting out antisemitism through Labour Party rule changes. The change to disciplinary procedures, which will give more power to NEC, very significant. Feels as though a very important reform is coming
If the reform passes, there would be a new internal disciplinary process with independent oversight for cases about antisemitism, Islamophobia, other forms of racism, sexual harassment, and discrimination on the grounds of disability, sexual orientation…
age, religion or belief, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership. For these complaints, the role of the national constitutional committee will be take by an independent complaints board (ICB) with 12 members with time-limited terms…
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24 Sep
Under the “supplier of last resort” scheme to protect customers of failed energy companies, every rescued customer of a failed energy company costs the rescuing company £600 to £700 to “on board”, which they have the right to reclaim over 15 to 24 months from every…
energy customer in the country. In other words the costs of customers’ mistakes in buying energy from fragile businesses are “socialised”. As I said earlier this week there has to be a debate about how fair it is that all UK households will pay a big price for failed businesses…
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Robert Peston Profile picture
22 Sep
Avro Energy, which was USwitch's best-value-for-money energy provider in 2019 and has 1.2m customers, is in financial difficulties, having defaulted on the industry's balancing and settlement code (which is in essence the scheme to satisfy demand for energy that is more than ...
what a company has contracted to buy). An announcement on how customers will be protected is expected from the regulator Ofgem. Normally those customers would be transferred to bigger, less fragile companies under the Supplier of Last Resort Scheme, but it is possible a...
special administrator would have to be appointed. I am told three other much smaller energy businesses are in trouble. The cost of these rescues, plus this week's of People's Energy, would be well over £1bn (industry sources put them at £1.1bn), and would be passed on to all...
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Robert Peston Profile picture
20 Sep
I cannot see how even cheap government loans are remotely going to fix this problem of crashing energy companies. Because the fundamental problem is that energy customers are MASSIVELY loss making for energy suppliers that haven’t hedged their gas supply commitments. That’s…
true for those businesses failing now and any big company that might take on those stranded customers. So why would big companies ride to the rescue? I can’t see it. Unless that is government were to legislate to allow the price cap next spring to rise way beyond…
even the current doubling in market prices, such that today’s losses were offset by tomorrow’s super profits. But that would crush living standards and be politically disastrous for the Tories. So one way or another this government is going to end up pumping billions…
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Robert Peston Profile picture
11 Sep
As someone who has just got through Covid-19, I wondered how rare I am to have contracted it as a double vaxxed person. According to new data from the government’s Vaccine Surveillance Report, in the age group 40 to 79, the overwhelming majority of those infected have…
been double vaxxed (see attached). I was surprised by what looks like high prevalence among the double vaxxed. And according to leading scientists at least part of the explanation is that “vaccine efficacy is not as good as we would like for the Delta variant”. Now it …
is important to remember that severe disease is considerably less common among the vaccinated infected than among the unvaxxed. But I am surprised these statistics have received so little attention and have occasioned so little debate. If the return to school leads to…
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Robert Peston Profile picture
6 Sep
Cabinet government has become a very degraded thing. Last time I checked, 45 minutes ago, cabinet ministers had still not been told whether the PM’s plan to announce tomorrow two breaches of his 2019 election manifesto would even be on the formal agenda for discussion at the…
8.30am cabinet meeting. BUT as of now, @BorisJohnson is going ahead with 1) a manifesto-breaking 1.25% national insurance rise to raise circa £10bn and fill a circa £15bn hole in health and social care provision; b) a new cap-and-floor system, based on Dilnot, to limit to circa…
£80k the amount an individual would have to contribute to their own care (the cap), and to protect approx £100k of their savings from any care costs (the floor); c) a temporary waiver, which will require legislation, of the manifesto-guaranteed “triple lock” on…
Read 5 tweets

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