Skip to content

Announcing Tractor Quantitative Easing

The death rate from tractors in the UK is equal to that of a pandemic disease.

Therefore the Bank of England must immediately start tractor quantitative easing.

This message brought to you by the Sage of Ely.

13 thoughts on “Announcing Tractor Quantitative Easing”

  1. I suspect that tractor related deaths stay reasonably constant over time. The problem with a nasty flu strain is that it has the potential to increase and spread rapidly. At present we don’t know whether it will be a huge problem or really no big deal.

  2. The death rate from tractors in the UK is equal to [half] that of a pandemic disease.

    You’re dangerously out of date. Release the funds!

  3. About this self-isolation malarkey – say someone does that for a month. I would think he would catch the virus as soon as he emerges from his hole unless the virus has been wiped out?

  4. Dennis, Tiresome Denizen of Central Ohio

    What is striking to me is that Spud has absolutely no conception of how repulsive his pushing this particular hobby-horse is within the context of events. Just below the surface you can actually sense his hopes that the pandemic will hard the UK hard. Ghoulish… at best.

  5. Surely self-isolation is only useful for known or suspected cases with mild symptoms? As with the face masks, put one on if you’ve got the bug – not in order to avoid it.

  6. “I would think he would catch the virus as soon as he emerges from his hole”

    Quite good adaptation of War of The Worlds has just started on TV. It’s a Fox production available on Sky and other satellite broadcasters.

    Thought of that with the ’emerging from holes’ comment.

    Certainly I’ve not detected any Woke shyte which the BBC remake had and is now mandatory on anything made by the BBC.

    The scenes set in ‘London’ were actually filmed in Bristol (which interests me because that’s where I’m from).

    Gabriel Byrne is in it. He looks OLD. Probably because he is 69.

    It’s kind of weird. In my head Gabriel Byrne is Dean Keaton from The Usual Suspects. But if Gabrial Byrne is now a lot older, that means………wait…..that means I’M a lot older. Fuck.

  7. Figures are such fun – you can prove anything you like with them.

    Tractor deaths in the UK are about 30 a year. Taking influenza as a similar disease to the Covid-19 virus, the reported death rate is around 600 a year – rising to heights of perhaps 10,000 pa during a bad outbreak.

    Is it reasonable to compare these figures, however? The ‘flu deaths are typically of the elderly or those in poor health (or both). A death from ‘flu here might only be anticipating a death from, say, diabetes complications a few days later. A tractor death, however, is likely to be of a worker in the peak of health or a healthy but curious child. It is likely to be a far more ‘avoidable’ death than a death from ‘flu, and is a bigger blow to society, even though the two deaths may have a similar impact on the families of the deceased.

    I assume that SOME deaths from ‘flu are of otherwise healthy individuals – randomly struck down in the prime of their lives. If we had these figures we might find that they were comparable to tractor deaths after all…

  8. The aim of self isolation and other measures are to slow down the spread of the disease. So we get to find out more about the virus, and if it turns out that 20% really do need hospitalising, then the cases happen at a rate at which the NHS can cope.

    4000 critical care beds in the UK. 4/5ths of them occupied. That’s 800 spare. And we’d need some notice to free up some of the others (i.e. stop doing pre-planned surgeries). Doesn’t seem like a lot of headroom. Seems well worth slowing the spread down.

  9. The Meissen Bison

    Dodgy Geezer: A tractor death, however, is likely to be of a worker in the peak of health or a healthy but curious child.

    Jim should be able to tell us more but I think that a lot of farm fatalities (other than suicide) are of middle aged or elderly farmers whose children are not involved in the farm and who cannot afford outside contractors or casual labour. As a consequence they are operating machinery which they are no longer capable of using safely.

  10. @Jussi
    @BiG

    A thought: when a person is infected, is it by one virus or by ‘consuming’ a big dollop of lots of them in one go?

    @TMB

    Correct. Jim has made that point before iirc not only “not capable”, but also trying to do a two man job

  11. As with the face masks, put one on if you’ve got the bug – not in order to avoid it.

    If nothing else, wearing a mask may help prevent the frequent unconscious touching of your own face.

  12. “wearing a mask may help prevent the frequent unconscious touching of your own face”: so they say.

    But a different source tells me that if you’re not used to wearing a mask it positively invites touching your face as it tickles and irritates you.

  13. “Jim should be able to tell us more but I think that a lot of farm fatalities (other than suicide) are of middle aged or elderly farmers whose children are not involved in the farm and who cannot afford outside contractors or casual labour. As a consequence they are operating machinery which they are no longer capable of using safely.”

    The biggest killer on farms is livestock, followed by falls from height, and being run over by a vehicle. And the most at risk are the elderly, about half the annual 30-ish death toll on farms are 60 and above. Its not so much that these people cannot afford contractors, its more that people continue doing the things they’ve done all their lives, forgetting that anno domini has caught up with them. The charging cow you jumped over a gate to avoid in your 20s or 30s catches your leg in your 40s and in your 50s or 60s it crushes you completely. Or you never see the bale of hay that falls on your head because your peripheral vision has gone. Very few accidents on farms are down to badly maintained or obsolete equipment, the majority can be put down to a) age and b) the fact that farming is an industry where the owner is often also the worker, and frequently works alone. Thus H&S regulations that work in businesses where everyone is an employee, workers and management alike, fail to stop a man working alone on a tractor getting off to clear a blockage in the baler and not stopping the PTO drive, to ‘save time’.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *