For all those supporting BoJo - what success has he delivered over the last 2 years?
I am not supporting him, but he got us out of the EU, got a trade deal that protected our sovereignty more than anyone said was possible, and got us a vaccine program earlier than anyone else in Europe
The one that ended the United Kingdom as a trading block and forces GB and NI companies to have export licences to sell things to each other?
If that's protecting the sovereignty of the UK I'd hate to see what not ptotecting it looks like.
Theresa May's backstop.
Infinitely worse.
Perhaps, but isn't relevant to the argument @Aslan was promoting. He said that the current trade deal - which dissolved the UK trading area - "protected our sovereignty". I now need an export license to sell products in my own country. How has that protected our sovereignty to do things like not need an export license to trade inside our own country...
I don't need you to come back in with alternative takes on external sovereignty - you have one perspective on that, I have another. But the ending of the UK as a trading nation is indisputable - we are now split in two with GB as one trading zone and NI as another trading zone. Usually deals that protect a country's sovereignty doesn't split a chunk off it.
It did protect our sovereignty because we had Article 16 so could override it. The ending is not indisputable, we'll see what the situation is post-Article 16.
There are plenty of countries that have had chunks split off, where its convenient to do so, its far from unprecedented.
On that logic while in the EU our sovereignty was protected because we could always leave.
Either in the EU we were sovereign because we could leave and there is no compromise of sovereignty over NI because we can invoke A16; or in the EU we were not sovereign and we are not sovereign now because there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI.
You are a logical debater. Which is it; it can't be both.
We were always technically sovereign, we could only exercise that sovereignty by invoking Article 50 so we rightly did when people wanted to exercise that sovereignty.
Same deal with Article 16 - and I think it should be invoked too.
So as it stands we are not sovereign because we haven't exercised it. Is that right?
If memory serves, you've been trying variants (so to speak) of this line for a couple of years now, and I'm sorry, but I think it's a stupid argument. If we our sovereignty within the EU is only present because we have the option to leave it, then we clearly aren't sovereign while we're in it, and the fact that we assented (implicitly) to that reality is irrelevant.
He who [has to] break[s] a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.
Apology accepted. Although your point is wrong. We were always sovereign whether we decided to exercise it or not. Of course we made compromises but did so as a sovereign nation.
But that is not the point. If we were not sovereign within the EU because we hadn't "proved" it by leaving, then the NI deal means we are not sovereign because as of this moment we haven't exercised A16. It can't be both.
If you think we weren't sovereign while in the EU and aren't sovereign now because the NI deal means that there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI that is fair enough. But you can't argue for one and not the other.
We were always sovereign for both. The question is if you wanted to exercise your sovereignty or not.
The English and Welsh voted to exercise their sovereignty, hence invoking Article 50. The NI did not, hence the special arrangements.
Now if the NI wish to exercise theirs, then A16 is the right answer for them, just as it was for the UK as a whole. For the same reasons. Using the same logic.
No inconsistencies.
Excellent. So we were sovereign while in the EU: tick. And we are sovereign with this NI deal: tick.
So why all the fuss about leaving the EU to reclaim our sovereignty.
Because we wanted to exercise our sovereignty.
Not just have it in abeyance.
Philip
I remember you telling me that the main benefit of leaving the EU was to get our sovereignty back.
Now you are telling me that we had it all the time!
Just through check-in leaving the USA for the UK. Staff admirably dealing with dozens of different rules for each country. Free pre-departure PCR test from the state government, but they’re backed up, so it took almost 40 hours to get the result. Cutting it fine! A “rapid PCR” at the airport would have been $250. Lateral flow tests do not seem to be widely available.
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
For all those supporting BoJo - what success has he delivered over the last 2 years?
I am not supporting him, but he got us out of the EU, got a trade deal that protected our sovereignty more than anyone said was possible, and got us a vaccine program earlier than anyone else in Europe
The one that ended the United Kingdom as a trading block and forces GB and NI companies to have export licences to sell things to each other?
If that's protecting the sovereignty of the UK I'd hate to see what not ptotecting it looks like.
Theresa May's backstop.
Infinitely worse.
Perhaps, but isn't relevant to the argument @Aslan was promoting. He said that the current trade deal - which dissolved the UK trading area - "protected our sovereignty". I now need an export license to sell products in my own country. How has that protected our sovereignty to do things like not need an export license to trade inside our own country...
I don't need you to come back in with alternative takes on external sovereignty - you have one perspective on that, I have another. But the ending of the UK as a trading nation is indisputable - we are now split in two with GB as one trading zone and NI as another trading zone. Usually deals that protect a country's sovereignty doesn't split a chunk off it.
It did protect our sovereignty because we had Article 16 so could override it. The ending is not indisputable, we'll see what the situation is post-Article 16.
There are plenty of countries that have had chunks split off, where its convenient to do so, its far from unprecedented.
On that logic while in the EU our sovereignty was protected because we could always leave.
Either in the EU we were sovereign because we could leave and there is no compromise of sovereignty over NI because we can invoke A16; or in the EU we were not sovereign and we are not sovereign now because there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI.
You are a logical debater. Which is it; it can't be both.
We were always technically sovereign, we could only exercise that sovereignty by invoking Article 50 so we rightly did when people wanted to exercise that sovereignty.
Same deal with Article 16 - and I think it should be invoked too.
So as it stands we are not sovereign because we haven't exercised it. Is that right?
If memory serves, you've been trying variants (so to speak) of this line for a couple of years now, and I'm sorry, but I think it's a stupid argument. If we our sovereignty within the EU is only present because we have the option to leave it, then we clearly aren't sovereign while we're in it, and the fact that we assented (implicitly) to that reality is irrelevant.
He who [has to] break[s] a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.
Apology accepted. Although your point is wrong. We were always sovereign whether we decided to exercise it or not. Of course we made compromises but did so as a sovereign nation.
But that is not the point. If we were not sovereign within the EU because we hadn't "proved" it by leaving, then the NI deal means we are not sovereign because as of this moment we haven't exercised A16. It can't be both.
If you think we weren't sovereign while in the EU and aren't sovereign now because the NI deal means that there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI that is fair enough. But you can't argue for one and not the other.
We were always sovereign for both. The question is if you wanted to exercise your sovereignty or not.
The English and Welsh voted to exercise their sovereignty, hence invoking Article 50. The NI did not, hence the special arrangements.
Now if the NI wish to exercise theirs, then A16 is the right answer for them, just as it was for the UK as a whole. For the same reasons. Using the same logic.
No inconsistencies.
Excellent. So we were sovereign while in the EU: tick. And we are sovereign with this NI deal: tick.
So why all the fuss about leaving the EU to reclaim our sovereignty.
Because we wanted to exercise our sovereignty.
Not just have it in abeyance.
Philip
I remember you telling me that the main benefit of leaving the EU was to get our sovereignty back.
Now you are telling me that we had it all the time!
Johnson is such a piece of work. Can anyone with a straight face say they've ever known a more repellent Prime Minister?
I feel sorry for Allegra Stratten. She shouldn't have had anything to do with the ghastly man but she not the first to have been attracted by power
Theresa May. Gordon Brown. Tony Blair.
All far more repellent.
None of them as dangerous as him, nor Thatcher and Major either.
Blair invaded Iraq, sought to be able to imprison people without trials, and abolished the ancient protection of Double Jeopardy. Brown trashed the economy as Chancellor, and slinked off and signed the Lisbon Treaty as PM. May tore the nation apart and tried to sign our sovereignty away with the backstop.
All far more dangerous.
On 18 Mar 2003: Boris Johnson voted against saying that the case for war against Iraq has not yet been established,
On 18 Mar 2003: Boris Johnson voted that the Government should use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction leading to the UK joining the US invasion of Iraq two days later.
I don't expect the government to say people can't visit their relatives at Christmas, because they know people wouldn't take any notice of such an instruction.
For all those supporting BoJo - what success has he delivered over the last 2 years?
I am not supporting him, but he got us out of the EU, got a trade deal that protected our sovereignty more than anyone said was possible, and got us a vaccine program earlier than anyone else in Europe
The one that ended the United Kingdom as a trading block and forces GB and NI companies to have export licences to sell things to each other?
If that's protecting the sovereignty of the UK I'd hate to see what not ptotecting it looks like.
Theresa May's backstop.
Infinitely worse.
Perhaps, but isn't relevant to the argument @Aslan was promoting. He said that the current trade deal - which dissolved the UK trading area - "protected our sovereignty". I now need an export license to sell products in my own country. How has that protected our sovereignty to do things like not need an export license to trade inside our own country...
I don't need you to come back in with alternative takes on external sovereignty - you have one perspective on that, I have another. But the ending of the UK as a trading nation is indisputable - we are now split in two with GB as one trading zone and NI as another trading zone. Usually deals that protect a country's sovereignty doesn't split a chunk off it.
It did protect our sovereignty because we had Article 16 so could override it. The ending is not indisputable, we'll see what the situation is post-Article 16.
There are plenty of countries that have had chunks split off, where its convenient to do so, its far from unprecedented.
On that logic while in the EU our sovereignty was protected because we could always leave.
Either in the EU we were sovereign because we could leave and there is no compromise of sovereignty over NI because we can invoke A16; or in the EU we were not sovereign and we are not sovereign now because there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI.
You are a logical debater. Which is it; it can't be both.
We were always technically sovereign, we could only exercise that sovereignty by invoking Article 50 so we rightly did when people wanted to exercise that sovereignty.
Same deal with Article 16 - and I think it should be invoked too.
So as it stands we are not sovereign because we haven't exercised it. Is that right?
If memory serves, you've been trying variants (so to speak) of this line for a couple of years now, and I'm sorry, but I think it's a stupid argument. If we our sovereignty within the EU is only present because we have the option to leave it, then we clearly aren't sovereign while we're in it, and the fact that we assented (implicitly) to that reality is irrelevant.
He who [has to] break[s] a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.
Apology accepted. Although your point is wrong. We were always sovereign whether we decided to exercise it or not. Of course we made compromises but did so as a sovereign nation.
But that is not the point. If we were not sovereign within the EU because we hadn't "proved" it by leaving, then the NI deal means we are not sovereign because as of this moment we haven't exercised A16. It can't be both.
If you think we weren't sovereign while in the EU and aren't sovereign now because the NI deal means that there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI that is fair enough. But you can't argue for one and not the other.
I'm not sure I've followed the detail exactly, but I would argue that:
- We were not sovereign within the EU (at least not "properly") - We still aren't, for the reason you mention - However, the current issues are a direct result of having been in the EU until recently, in particular the mess that was Article 50, and being bound by the ridiculous prevarication by the EU during the negotiations - Also, clearly the situation has been improved substantially by leaving the EU, and there is hope that it will improve further - Therefore, the limits to our current sovereignty are a) acceptable in the short term, b) an improvement, and c) not material - Also also, I don't actually care about Northern Ireland
Thank you. Yes if you believe we weren't sovereign then and aren't sovereign now that is entirely consistent. Philip, for example, believes the exact opposite. We were sovereign then and are sovereign now.
You seem also to be another person who doesn't care about Northern Ireland which is strange because it is part of the UK. Assuming you voted for the UK to leave the EU then it seems that you should be happy with NI being a de facto part of the EU. Good riddance in your book, I imagine.
You Brexiters are very funny.
Ah, OK. I thought Mr Thompson and I were arguing along similar lines, but apparently not. My mistake.
I know that theoretically I should care about NI, but in practice I find it quite hard. Can't say I'd notice if it disappeared entirely, so I'm happy to swallow (what seems to be) the very minor issue of difficulties in its trading relationships, especially given a) it's short term and b) this is all the DUP's fault anyway.
Johnson is such a piece of work. Can anyone with a straight face say they've ever known a more repellent Prime Minister?
I feel sorry for Allegra Stratten. She shouldn't have had anything to do with the ghastly man but she not the first to have been attracted by power
Theresa May. Gordon Brown. Tony Blair.
All far more repellent.
None of them as dangerous as him, nor Thatcher and Major either.
Blair invaded Iraq, sought to be able to imprison people without trials, and abolished the ancient protection of Double Jeopardy. Brown trashed the economy as Chancellor, and slinked off and signed the Lisbon Treaty as PM. May tore the nation apart and tried to sign our sovereignty away with the backstop.
All far more dangerous.
Boris is the worst Prime Minister in my lifetime by a very wide margin.
That narrows down your age to within a couple of hundred years.
Well quite. I am old enough to remember Cameron's self destruction and this is worse.
Boris is unique in that he appears to care for no-one but himself and has no conception of or interest the truth. He will simultaneously promise you anything and sell you out if means a personal advantage for him. He will gamble with your livelihood without a second thought.
Some people buy his schtick for a bit, but those that know him best advise caution
Jesus. Most people are going to support Lockdown 4, aren't they?
Bleak bleak bleak
Put people on a constant diet of fear and they will do whatever you want. My sister and I had to explain to my mum (healthy, in her early 60s, triple vaxxed with Pfizer and Moderna, previously infected) that the chances of her dying of this are now extremely low. She was adamant that if she steps outside she's going to catch it and die, Omicron means we're all back to being in March 2020 and any of us can drop dead at any moment. She actually phoned my wife on Sunday and asked her to get me to stop going out and permanently wfh because "he could die if he goes out".
Jesus. Most people are going to support Lockdown 4, aren't they?
Bleak bleak bleak
Only on PB is it ever considered otherwise. Lockdown is the way out of this for the PM. He's.a selfish bastard and it's good for him. Doubtless this will be followed by folk praising his "instinctive libertarianism".
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
Really? Source?
I found it last night down some 3am rabbit hole, I fear I can't find it again. Feel free to ignore, or not
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
Why did it take a year for this video to emerge. I mean, great it did, but presumably someone’s been sitting on it these last 12 months?
I always wonder about stuff like this. My theory is that rather than someone noticing this 12 months ago and waiting until the right time to release it, someone who has access to the archives (maybe a secret copy on their personal PC) went back through them when the party story broke to see if she mentioned it. But maybe I'm wrong, and politics is even more cut-throat and cynical than I think.
On the media show it was reported that they've had it for a few weeks and have been working through it with lawyers.
I don't care about Allegra Stratton's tearful departure. But I do think that she's quite near the bottom, not the top, of the list of people who should resign over this farce. She clearly wasn't making a joke about breaking the rules; she was obviously laughing at the absurdity of rehearsing a pre-emptive press conference if news of the party leaked - I suspect they thought it might. The blokes acting out the journalists should also go. At least Stratton has had the decency to go before even Boris got round to protecting her.
But most of all, Boris's faux outrage at the released video at PMQs was terrible - how dare he say he was "sickened" by the video when the contents displayed exactly the sort of culture that he has promoted at No. 10 and indeed throughout his political (and personal) life?
Just in preparation for the bollox we may or may be told this evening:
- Patients in UK hospitals with Covid has been decreasing steadily since the end of October to about 7300 now compared to a Jan 21 peak of 38,800. This is a 81% reduction post-vaccines.
- Patients in ventilator beds have been level since mid-August at about 900 compared to 4000 in January 2021.
I don't expect the government to say people can't visit their relatives at Christmas, because they know people wouldn't take any notice of such an instruction.
The way forward is to take as little notice of any rules made by the Government as one can possibly get away with. The rules are without value and so are the people who make them.
Johnson is such a piece of work. Can anyone with a straight face say they've ever known a more repellent Prime Minister?
I feel sorry for Allegra Stratten. She shouldn't have had anything to do with the ghastly man but she not the first to have been attracted by power
Theresa May. Gordon Brown. Tony Blair.
All far more repellent.
None of them as dangerous as him, nor Thatcher and Major either.
Blair invaded Iraq, sought to be able to imprison people without trials, and abolished the ancient protection of Double Jeopardy. Brown trashed the economy as Chancellor, and slinked off and signed the Lisbon Treaty as PM. May tore the nation apart and tried to sign our sovereignty away with the backstop.
All far more dangerous.
Boris is the worst Prime Minister in my lifetime by a very wide margin.
That narrows down your age to within a couple of hundred years.
Well quite. I am old enough to remember Cameron's self destruction and this is worse.
Boris is unique in that he appears to care for no-one but himself and has no conception of or interest the truth. He will simultaneously promise you anything and sell you out if means a personal advantage for him. He will gamble with your livelihood without a second thought.
Some people buy his schtick for a bit, but those that know him best advise caution
I've posted a bit on this before. I genuinely think it's because people feel it's a bit of a laugh, until it happens to them. 'Haha, of course Boris was lying, you gullible idiot, that was obvious... But he'd never lie to me!' Said the Red Wall Tory to the DUP.
"To us, Downing Street was an island where we had to work & lockdown wasn't happening in the same way it was for the rest of the country," a no10 source told me
How this plays out could depend on if people sympathise or see 1 rule for them, 1 for us
Please cry for me, Allegra Stratton The truth is... I have no idea what the truth is.
I've just watched the video: am I alone in thinking that Ms Stratton has been extremely hard done by?
Not really? It’s was her job to do PR. She ought to have known better than a) to have attended parties in No 10 (if she did) and b) to have then made light of that fact on camera, given the circumstances. Her current tears demonstrate that she’s human & understands the impact her actions have had, which more than nothing, but doesn’t actually excuse those actions.
If it turns out that she herself never attended any of these events in No10 & has simply been unlucky enough to be filmed making a joke about how indefensible they are & no one else takes any consequences then yes, she will absolutely have been hard done by though.
It was *supposed* to be her job to do PR, and she was being paid £125,000 to do so, but never actually got to do any, being shunted aside surprisingly early during her contract (therein probably lies another story!) to do other stuff.
"To us, Downing Street was an island where we had to work & lockdown wasn't happening in the same way it was for the rest of the country," a no10 source told me
How this plays out could depend on if people sympathise or see 1 rule for them, 1 for us
For all those supporting BoJo - what success has he delivered over the last 2 years?
I am not supporting him, but he got us out of the EU, got a trade deal that protected our sovereignty more than anyone said was possible, and got us a vaccine program earlier than anyone else in Europe
The one that ended the United Kingdom as a trading block and forces GB and NI companies to have export licences to sell things to each other?
If that's protecting the sovereignty of the UK I'd hate to see what not ptotecting it looks like.
Theresa May's backstop.
Infinitely worse.
Perhaps, but isn't relevant to the argument @Aslan was promoting. He said that the current trade deal - which dissolved the UK trading area - "protected our sovereignty". I now need an export license to sell products in my own country. How has that protected our sovereignty to do things like not need an export license to trade inside our own country...
I don't need you to come back in with alternative takes on external sovereignty - you have one perspective on that, I have another. But the ending of the UK as a trading nation is indisputable - we are now split in two with GB as one trading zone and NI as another trading zone. Usually deals that protect a country's sovereignty doesn't split a chunk off it.
It did protect our sovereignty because we had Article 16 so could override it. The ending is not indisputable, we'll see what the situation is post-Article 16.
There are plenty of countries that have had chunks split off, where its convenient to do so, its far from unprecedented.
On that logic while in the EU our sovereignty was protected because we could always leave.
Either in the EU we were sovereign because we could leave and there is no compromise of sovereignty over NI because we can invoke A16; or in the EU we were not sovereign and we are not sovereign now because there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI.
You are a logical debater. Which is it; it can't be both.
We were always technically sovereign, we could only exercise that sovereignty by invoking Article 50 so we rightly did when people wanted to exercise that sovereignty.
Same deal with Article 16 - and I think it should be invoked too.
So as it stands we are not sovereign because we haven't exercised it. Is that right?
No of course not. We were always sovereign.
We have put our sovereignty into abeyance until we invoke the Article. Its still there, like a break glass, but until we want to do so we're simply not exercising it.
So if you want to exercise your sovereignty you can invoke the Article. If you don't and are OK with abeyance, then no need to do so.
Ah ok so our sovereignty is "in abeyance" (a state of temporary disuse or suspension). So our sovereignty has been suspended. But you said that the NI deal protected our sovereignty, not that it was in abeyance. And if protected means we could exercise it at any time thereby becoming sovereign but have not done so yet then that was precisely our situation while in the EU.
So which is it.
Both.
Just as in the EU we had our sovereignty (because we have Article 50/16) but it is in abeyance until we exercise the relevant Article.
Its not precisely the situation while in the EU, because the abeyance only applies to an tiny fraction (NI) and not the whole country.
At least you accept that the NI deal does not protect our sovereignty and our sovereignty is currently in abeyance ie suspended.
What are you talking about. Abeyance is protected.
Abeyance = suspended = an absence of.
Something can still be protected if its suspended.
If you have something valuable you want to protect and put it into storage instead of using it, then its both protected and its use is suspended.
?!?
I geuss then, the Nazis and Soviets protected democracy by putting it into abeyance. The Soviets protected dissidents by putting them into abayance - Gulag Abeyance probably, in deepest Siberia.
Philip, I genuinely do worry for your mental state. Do you think you might need help?
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
No it isn't. Perhaps you missed the video. I've attached it below. It may calm you down:
This is going to be the most excruciating press conference in the history of scrotum-stapling
I can't decide whether to watch in ghoulish fascination, or avert my face from the tragicomedy
He's going to do whatever his cretinous polling-groups and polls indicate is popular. Vax passports I'm guessing. Anything to stick it to the unvaxed. Get people talking about something else.
"Hmmm... Numbers not looking good. End of of year looks rough for many people/places regarding virus spread and all that comes with it. March and April are not looking great either.
"Omicron Wave Sees South Africa’s Weekly Excess Deaths Almost Double"
This will disappear under the 'good-day-to-bury-bad-news' carpet but the government in its wisdom have stripped the British Council of the contract to run the Turing sudent exchange scheme because they have been underbid by... Capita.
Jesus. Most people are going to support Lockdown 4, aren't they?
Bleak bleak bleak
Call me cynical but I think if you dangle the idea of “working from home” in front of most people at this time of year it will be attractive - not having to get to work with a hangover, getting that Christmas shopping in and doing that work later, sitting around eating quality street in your onesy (gross) all day watching Christmas films…..
If they said “ do you support working from home but non-essential shops, pubs, restaurants etc will be closed” I wonder if the numbers would be the same…..
Just watched PMQ. "Playing politics" has become the equivalent of yeah but your Mum smells, hasn't it?
It was pretty weak, but I have to take issue with those who were saying earlier that Sunak was agreeing with Blackford. Sunak was nodding to the rhetorical question about Boris being the best to lead the country etc. It was obviously in support of Boris, not in support of Blackford.
For all those supporting BoJo - what success has he delivered over the last 2 years?
I am not supporting him, but he got us out of the EU, got a trade deal that protected our sovereignty more than anyone said was possible, and got us a vaccine program earlier than anyone else in Europe
The one that ended the United Kingdom as a trading block and forces GB and NI companies to have export licences to sell things to each other?
If that's protecting the sovereignty of the UK I'd hate to see what not ptotecting it looks like.
Theresa May's backstop.
Infinitely worse.
Perhaps, but isn't relevant to the argument @Aslan was promoting. He said that the current trade deal - which dissolved the UK trading area - "protected our sovereignty". I now need an export license to sell products in my own country. How has that protected our sovereignty to do things like not need an export license to trade inside our own country...
I don't need you to come back in with alternative takes on external sovereignty - you have one perspective on that, I have another. But the ending of the UK as a trading nation is indisputable - we are now split in two with GB as one trading zone and NI as another trading zone. Usually deals that protect a country's sovereignty doesn't split a chunk off it.
It did protect our sovereignty because we had Article 16 so could override it. The ending is not indisputable, we'll see what the situation is post-Article 16.
There are plenty of countries that have had chunks split off, where its convenient to do so, its far from unprecedented.
On that logic while in the EU our sovereignty was protected because we could always leave.
Either in the EU we were sovereign because we could leave and there is no compromise of sovereignty over NI because we can invoke A16; or in the EU we were not sovereign and we are not sovereign now because there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI.
You are a logical debater. Which is it; it can't be both.
We were always technically sovereign, we could only exercise that sovereignty by invoking Article 50 so we rightly did when people wanted to exercise that sovereignty.
Same deal with Article 16 - and I think it should be invoked too.
So as it stands we are not sovereign because we haven't exercised it. Is that right?
If memory serves, you've been trying variants (so to speak) of this line for a couple of years now, and I'm sorry, but I think it's a stupid argument. If we our sovereignty within the EU is only present because we have the option to leave it, then we clearly aren't sovereign while we're in it, and the fact that we assented (implicitly) to that reality is irrelevant.
He who [has to] break[s] a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.
Apology accepted. Although your point is wrong. We were always sovereign whether we decided to exercise it or not. Of course we made compromises but did so as a sovereign nation.
But that is not the point. If we were not sovereign within the EU because we hadn't "proved" it by leaving, then the NI deal means we are not sovereign because as of this moment we haven't exercised A16. It can't be both.
If you think we weren't sovereign while in the EU and aren't sovereign now because the NI deal means that there is no free movement of goods between GB and NI that is fair enough. But you can't argue for one and not the other.
We were always sovereign for both. The question is if you wanted to exercise your sovereignty or not.
The English and Welsh voted to exercise their sovereignty, hence invoking Article 50. The NI did not, hence the special arrangements.
Now if the NI wish to exercise theirs, then A16 is the right answer for them, just as it was for the UK as a whole. For the same reasons. Using the same logic.
No inconsistencies.
Excellent. So we were sovereign while in the EU: tick. And we are sovereign with this NI deal: tick.
So why all the fuss about leaving the EU to reclaim our sovereignty.
Because we wanted to exercise our sovereignty.
Not just have it in abeyance.
But the precise same situation, having our sovereignty in abeyance now is fine by you.
If the people are ok with that yes, as it was fine with me pre Referendum too.
But in the Referendum we chose to exercise it. And the NI Unionists at least have made clear they want to exercise theirs too.
So that justifies invoking both Articles. Entirely consistent.
This is going to be the most excruciating press conference in the history of scrotum-stapling
I can't decide whether to watch in ghoulish fascination, or avert my face from the tragicomedy
He's going to do whatever his cretinous polling-groups and polls indicate is popular. Vax passports I'm guessing. Anything to stick it to the unvaxed. Get people talking about something else.
Well, at least if it's boots to the nads of the anti-vaxxers rather than "stay at home, protect my polling numbers, save my career" then that's not so bad. They deserve to suffer, frankly.
"Ed (questioner in @itvnews video) Oldfield's CV looks v thin and short to be Head of Broadcast at No.10 with no broadcast/journalistic experience. He was apparently a transcriber in CCHQ previously but his father has donated tens of thousands to party so mystery solved I guess..."
And Stratton wasn't up to the job either, but got it by being a friend of the PM's wife.
Johnson is such a piece of work. Can anyone with a straight face say they've ever known a more repellent Prime Minister?
Well Tony Blair knowingly sent soldiers to their deaths after telling lies. So far I don't think Boris has done anything *quite* as bad as that...
Greats Final Honours School, Oxford, 2056.
Ethics and Moral Philosophy paper.
... 8. PM Blair sent soldiers to their deaths, PM Johnson sent civilians to the deaths. Discuss the validity and equivalence of those concepts.
Boris didn't create the virus.
You can have a debate about how effective or ineffective he and his governments response was to the virus but reacting to an act of god (or an act of a Lab in Wuhan) like a global pandemic is hardly the same as telling lies to get a country into a war?
"Hmmm... Numbers not looking good. End of of year looks rough for many people/places regarding virus spread and all that comes with it. March and April are not looking great either.
"Omicron Wave Sees South Africa’s Weekly Excess Deaths Almost Double"
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
No it isn't. Perhaps you missed the video. I've attached it below. It may calm you down:
South African excess deaths have doubled this week. Hospital admissions have doubled in a day this week. There is a surge in patients on ventilators and in ICUs
This does NOT mean it is as bad as Delta, and it could still be "mild", but the idea that many thousands of people are going to SA hospitals with broken fingers then getting classed wrongly as Covid victims, thus accounting for the surge in hospital cases, is preposterous drivel
Severe Omicron cases in Gauteng hospitals on Dec 8
Jesus. Most people are going to support Lockdown 4, aren't they?
Bleak bleak bleak
Call me cynical but I think if you dangle the idea of “working from home” in front of most people at this time of year it will be attractive - not having to get to work with a hangover, getting that Christmas shopping in and doing that work later, sitting around eating quality street in your onesy (gross) all day watching Christmas films…..
If they said “ do you support working from home but non-essential shops, pubs, restaurants etc will be closed” I wonder if the numbers would be the same…..
Everyone knows the drill. Pretty much everyone is wearing masks in shops - annoying, but changes nothing. I imagine that people are working from home more - not great for the economy, but everyone's getting better at it, so not so bad either. And nightclubs really can be switched off for a bit. That might even provide an economic boost given people will have fewer hangovers.
So much of 'lockdown 4' really isn't so bad if it can be limited to relatively modest things like this.
Johnson is such a piece of work. Can anyone with a straight face say they've ever known a more repellent Prime Minister?
Well Tony Blair knowingly sent soldiers to their deaths after telling lies. So far I don't think Boris has done anything *quite* as bad as that...
Greats Final Honours School, Oxford, 2056.
Ethics and Moral Philosophy paper.
... 8. PM Blair sent soldiers to their deaths, PM Johnson sent civilians to the deaths. Discuss the validity and equivalence of those concepts.
Boris didn't create the virus.
You can have a debate about how effective or ineffective he and his governments response was to the virus but reacting to an act of god (or an act of a Lab in Wuhan) like a global pandemic is hardly the same as telling lies to get a country into a war?
Oh, no of course - just reflecting it might be one of those questioins, that's all. Your point is one that a bright student should spot, for instance. But the stident should also spot the notion of lying in a way that subverts the response ...
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
Really? Source?
I found it last night down some 3am rabbit hole, I fear I can't find it again. Feel free to ignore, or not
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
Given the test positivity rate in South Africa is more than 20%, why does it surprise you that people with other ailments (cancer, eye surgery, gunshot wounds, kidney disease, etc.) might have Covid?
Jesus. Most people are going to support Lockdown 4, aren't they?
Bleak bleak bleak
Put people on a constant diet of fear and they will do whatever you want. My sister and I had to explain to my mum (healthy, in her early 60s, triple vaxxed with Pfizer and Moderna, previously infected) that the chances of her dying of this are now extremely low. She was adamant that if she steps outside she's going to catch it and die, Omicron means we're all back to being in March 2020 and any of us can drop dead at any moment. She actually phoned my wife on Sunday and asked her to get me to stop going out and permanently wfh because "he could die if he goes out".
This is what middle England is now like.
Very depressing. Being addicted to technological devices is part of it I think. A lot of people find the virtual world more interesting than the real one, so — to them — lockdowns don't make a difference.
"Hmmm... Numbers not looking good. End of of year looks rough for many people/places regarding virus spread and all that comes with it. March and April are not looking great either.
"Omicron Wave Sees South Africa’s Weekly Excess Deaths Almost Double"
"Hmmm... Numbers not looking good. End of of year looks rough for many people/places regarding virus spread and all that comes with it. March and April are not looking great either.
"Omicron Wave Sees South Africa’s Weekly Excess Deaths Almost Double"
For all I think Sir Keir nailed Boris at PMQs and the "playing politics" line seemed weak, I can categorically say I don't care if people at No10 last December had a few drinks after work together. I am pretty sure we saw both sets of Grandparents on Christmas Day for a while, though not for dinner.
The Allegra Stratton part of the story is just plain weird. Here you have someone who saw the danger, but didn't act. You would have thought she would have grabbed the tape afterwards.
Without being too harsh, I would expect someone potentially the public face of a government to be a little bit more, what is the word, serious in their approach to this role. The occasion seemed like kids having fun, playing at the office.
Whilst you would have to be cold not to feel some sympathy. It's hard to be too sympathetic towards someone who failed at the very skill they were employed to provide.
Yet the real villain of the story is not her. She is yet another casualty left in Boris' wake...
Boris's line more or less is: How appalling; what! making jokes about serious things!! shocked!!; everyone except me could be in the frame for discipline; I had no idea; what about a full enquiry into something I know all about anyway; long grass.
There have been lots of beginnings of the end but I don't see a return to innocence from this. The entire world thinks he is engaging in termiological inexactitude about something simple and emotionally engaging to the averafe punter in a way which policy with Johnny Foreigner isn't.
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
*Exactly*
This is not 4,252 people in hospital seriously ill with Covid, it's 3,000 people with broken legs, and various other ailments, who happen to have Covid.
And 1,000 people who have been hospitalised because of Covid.
Now, this still isn't great, because hospitals have to separate Covid and non-Covid patients, to avoid additional infections, but it is massively better than 4,000 people being hospitalised due to Covid.
In any case, absolute numbers say nothing about the severity – only the ratio of hosps to cases does that. Obviously hosps will rise with cases, but the key is at what ratio.
Sir Roger Gale MP on Sky was just asked whether he thought there was a party. He looked slightly coy and said "I know food was delivered, and drink was delivered, sounds like a party to me."
The 6pt move from Con +2 to Lab +4 in the R&W poll just published doesn't look like calming things down in the Conservative party tonight. Maybe the Tory vote share *is* tending the proportion of their 2019 voters who don't think Boris should resign....
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
Really? Source?
I found it last night down some 3am rabbit hole, I fear I can't find it again. Feel free to ignore, or not
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
Given the test positivity rate in South Africa is more than 20%, why does it surprise you that people with other ailments (cancer, eye surgery, gunshot wounds, kidney disease, etc.) might have Covid?
Enough people are now going through the whole grisly, inevitable process - infection, admission, then on to ventilation and ICU - for us to know the surge in Gauteng is real and it is Covid
There are also reports of the first deaths circling Twitter, and that statistical leap in excess deaths to consider (which might of course be random, or not, or Delta, who the F knows?)
"Hmmm... Numbers not looking good. End of of year looks rough for many people/places regarding virus spread and all that comes with it. March and April are not looking great either.
"Omicron Wave Sees South Africa’s Weekly Excess Deaths Almost Double"
I get the sense a very large number of South Africans now have this disease. With a positivity of c.25% and testing capacity issues perhaps 4 or 5 times the published number (100,000?) and still rising. That would chime with the "with Covid" admissions numbers too.
Doing a reverse calculation, 2,076 excess deaths in a week, assuming an IFR equal to Delta i.e. c.0.4%, and a lag from infection to death, means they had 519,000 infections about 3 weeks ago, i.e. 74k a day.
If we assume a lower IFR of around 0.15% as we've seen in vaccinated / previously infected populations in Europe recently, then that's a whopping 2 million infections per week. 3 weeks ago. With compound exponential growth since. Which would imply cases should already be peaking soon. Or my maths is wrong. Or people are also dying of things other than Covid.
Here is Boris in the 2008 London Mayor debates when I hated his poshness and had a grand on Ken on the back of it... have to say he seems better then than now!
Interesting that he says we should toughen the law on cannabis here - so his new found war on drugs, isn't really that new
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
Really? Source?
I found it last night down some 3am rabbit hole, I fear I can't find it again. Feel free to ignore, or not
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
Given the test positivity rate in South Africa is more than 20%, why does it surprise you that people with other ailments (cancer, eye surgery, gunshot wounds, kidney disease, etc.) might have Covid?
Enough people are now going through the whole grisly, inevitable process - infection, admission, then on to ventilation and ICU - for us to know the surge in Gauteng is real and it is Covid
There are also reports of the first deaths circling Twitter, and that statistical leap in excess deaths to consider (which might of course be random, or not, or Delta, who the F knows?)
OK time to watch Boris scratch the blackboard
So: time to nail your colours to the mast: So you think we should be strengthening measures against Covid (moving towards Lockdown), or continuing with current measures?
The considerable drop in support for the Conservative Party is in large part a consequence of news surrounding a Christmas Party that is alleged to have taken place in Downing Street last year, at a time when coronavirus restrictions forbade such gatherings. The British public is well aware of the reports: 43% say they have heard ‘a significant amount’ and 35% say they have heard ‘a fair amount’ about the Christmas Party news (just 1 in 5 say they have heard ‘a small amount’ or ‘nothing at all’ about this latest news).
Most Britons are taking the allegations very seriously: 69% of respondents say the Metropolitan Police should investigate the Christmas Party held in Downing Street last year. A majority of both 2019 Conservative voters (56%) and 2019 Labour voters (81%) agree that the party should be investigated. Conversely, a fifth (20%) of Britons do not believe the Metropolitan Police should investigate, a position held by 33% of Conservative voters.
Further, 63% believe the Prime Minister should resign if it is confirmed that the Christmas Party took place at a time when the Government had issued coronavirus restrictions which forbade such gatherings. In addition to 81% of Labour voters, a plurality (46%) of Conservative voters, too, think that Boris Johnson should resign in this situation.
A quarter (24%) of respondents hold the alternative view that the Prime Minister should not resign, increasing to 39% among Conservative voters.
For all I think Sir Keir nailed Boris at PMQs and the "playing politics" line seemed weak, I can categorically say I don't care if people at No10 last December had a few drinks after work together. I am pretty sure we saw both sets of Grandparents on Christmas Day for a while, though not for dinner.
I can't remember the exact spread of restrictions but about half the country weren't allowed to do that (here in Cornwall we could, except the grandparents in question weren't allowed to leave Kent to travel here).
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
No it isn't. Perhaps you missed the video. I've attached it below. It may calm you down:
South African excess deaths have doubled this week. Hospital admissions have doubled in a day this week. There is a surge in patients on ventilators and in ICUs
This does NOT mean it is as bad as Delta, and it could still be "mild", but the idea that many thousands of people are going to SA hospitals with broken fingers then getting classed wrongly as Covid victims, thus accounting for the surge in hospital cases, is preposterous drivel
Severe Omicron cases in Gauteng hospitals on Dec 8
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
Really? Source?
I found it last night down some 3am rabbit hole, I fear I can't find it again. Feel free to ignore, or not
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
Given the test positivity rate in South Africa is more than 20%, why does it surprise you that people with other ailments (cancer, eye surgery, gunshot wounds, kidney disease, etc.) might have Covid?
Enough people are now going through the whole grisly, inevitable process - infection, admission, then on to ventilation and ICU - for us to know the surge in Gauteng is real and it is Covid
There are also reports of the first deaths circling Twitter, and that statistical leap in excess deaths to consider (which might of course be random, or not, or Delta, who the F knows?)
OK time to watch Boris scratch the blackboard
So: time to nail your colours to the mast: So you think we should be strengthening measures against Covid (moving towards Lockdown), or continuing with current measures?
I said earlier that I think we should stick with what we have, and instead focus on surging the booster drive, and prepping the NHS for a big wave of new cases between now and late Jan
I fear a grim and foolish logic is, however, leading us to Plan B, and then Lockdown
And some on here are still saying Oh that will be fine, you stay home and eat chocolates.
Jesus F Christ. For many many people the last winter lockdown was pretty much unbearable
Listening to the Six O'clock news, the headline does sound a little like the invention of the Quantum Improbability Drive: people are annoyed they were not invited to the party ...
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
Really? Source?
I found it last night down some 3am rabbit hole, I fear I can't find it again. Feel free to ignore, or not
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
Given the test positivity rate in South Africa is more than 20%, why does it surprise you that people with other ailments (cancer, eye surgery, gunshot wounds, kidney disease, etc.) might have Covid?
Enough people are now going through the whole grisly, inevitable process - infection, admission, then on to ventilation and ICU - for us to know the surge in Gauteng is real and it is Covid
There are also reports of the first deaths circling Twitter, and that statistical leap in excess deaths to consider (which might of course be random, or not, or Delta, who the F knows?)
OK time to watch Boris scratch the blackboard
So: time to nail your colours to the mast: So you think we should be strengthening measures against Covid (moving towards Lockdown), or continuing with current measures?
I said earlier that I think we should stick with what we have, and instead focus on surging the booster drive, and prepping the NHS for a big wave of new cases between now and late Jan
I fear a grim and foolish logic is, however, leading us to Plan B, and then Lockdown
And some on here are still saying Oh that will be fine, you stay home and eat chocolates.
Jesus F Christ. For many many people the last winter lockdown was pretty much unbearable
If there's another lockdown, just ignore it. The police can't weld everybody's doors shut.
The considerable drop in support for the Conservative Party is in large part a consequence of news surrounding a Christmas Party that is alleged to have taken place in Downing Street last year, at a time when coronavirus restrictions forbade such gatherings. The British public is well aware of the reports: 43% say they have heard ‘a significant amount’ and 35% say they have heard ‘a fair amount’ about the Christmas Party news (just 1 in 5 say they have heard ‘a small amount’ or ‘nothing at all’ about this latest news).
Most Britons are taking the allegations very seriously: 69% of respondents say the Metropolitan Police should investigate the Christmas Party held in Downing Street last year. A majority of both 2019 Conservative voters (56%) and 2019 Labour voters (81%) agree that the party should be investigated. Conversely, a fifth (20%) of Britons do not believe the Metropolitan Police should investigate, a position held by 33% of Conservative voters.
Further, 63% believe the Prime Minister should resign if it is confirmed that the Christmas Party took place at a time when the Government had issued coronavirus restrictions which forbade such gatherings. In addition to 81% of Labour voters, a plurality (46%) of Conservative voters, too, think that Boris Johnson should resign in this situation.
A quarter (24%) of respondents hold the alternative view that the Prime Minister should not resign, increasing to 39% among Conservative voters.
It's an absolute catastrophe. He's gone from +26 to -4. Boris is performing at 0/10 level and he's going to have to be 10/10 for a couple of years in order to get these lost votes back.
Johnson is such a piece of work. Can anyone with a straight face say they've ever known a more repellent Prime Minister?
Well Tony Blair knowingly sent soldiers to their deaths after telling lies. So far I don't think Boris has done anything *quite* as bad as that...
Hmm. Shipping dogs back from Afghanistan in place of local interpreters?
The media deserves a large part of the blame for that. The coverage in the media verged in the deferential and This bellend with the dogs was regularly on the news and the breakfast shows droning on about how important his pets were. It was a Clear and cynical media operation and it whipped up a lot of support for him.
"Hmmm... Numbers not looking good. End of of year looks rough for many people/places regarding virus spread and all that comes with it. March and April are not looking great either.
"Omicron Wave Sees South Africa’s Weekly Excess Deaths Almost Double"
How many people die in a normal week in November, and how much does the number of deaths normally vary week on week?
Given Omicron is fairly new, and there have been hardly any serious cases admitted to hospital, it seems unlikely omicron is the cause.
I wonder how long it takes for this comment to transmogrify into: ...old people will die anyway...
An infinite amount of time, it's an entirely different point. I'm questioning whether one week's increase in XDs is no more than normal variability, and whether omicron has been around long enough to cause the deaths, as it takes 3-4 weeks to die from it.
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
Really? Source?
I found it last night down some 3am rabbit hole, I fear I can't find it again. Feel free to ignore, or not
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
Given the test positivity rate in South Africa is more than 20%, why does it surprise you that people with other ailments (cancer, eye surgery, gunshot wounds, kidney disease, etc.) might have Covid?
Enough people are now going through the whole grisly, inevitable process - infection, admission, then on to ventilation and ICU - for us to know the surge in Gauteng is real and it is Covid
There are also reports of the first deaths circling Twitter, and that statistical leap in excess deaths to consider (which might of course be random, or not, or Delta, who the F knows?)
OK time to watch Boris scratch the blackboard
So: time to nail your colours to the mast: So you think we should be strengthening measures against Covid (moving towards Lockdown), or continuing with current measures?
I said earlier that I think we should stick with what we have, and instead focus on surging the booster drive, and prepping the NHS for a big wave of new cases between now and late Jan
I fear a grim and foolish logic is, however, leading us to Plan B, and then Lockdown
And some on here are still saying Oh that will be fine, you stay home and eat chocolates.
Jesus F Christ. For many many people the last winter lockdown was pretty much unbearable
It will not be fine. But neither is having a very high rate of hospitalisation and deaths.
The considerable drop in support for the Conservative Party is in large part a consequence of news surrounding a Christmas Party that is alleged to have taken place in Downing Street last year, at a time when coronavirus restrictions forbade such gatherings. The British public is well aware of the reports: 43% say they have heard ‘a significant amount’ and 35% say they have heard ‘a fair amount’ about the Christmas Party news (just 1 in 5 say they have heard ‘a small amount’ or ‘nothing at all’ about this latest news).
Most Britons are taking the allegations very seriously: 69% of respondents say the Metropolitan Police should investigate the Christmas Party held in Downing Street last year. A majority of both 2019 Conservative voters (56%) and 2019 Labour voters (81%) agree that the party should be investigated. Conversely, a fifth (20%) of Britons do not believe the Metropolitan Police should investigate, a position held by 33% of Conservative voters.
Further, 63% believe the Prime Minister should resign if it is confirmed that the Christmas Party took place at a time when the Government had issued coronavirus restrictions which forbade such gatherings. In addition to 81% of Labour voters, a plurality (46%) of Conservative voters, too, think that Boris Johnson should resign in this situation.
A quarter (24%) of respondents hold the alternative view that the Prime Minister should not resign, increasing to 39% among Conservative voters.
It's an absolute catastrophe. He's gone from +26 to -4. Boris is performing at 0/10 level and he's going to have to be 10/10 for a couple of years in order to get these lost votes back.
That's not happening, of course. Hopefully the Tories' self-preservation by regicide instinct will soon kick in.
On topic, the worst thing from this polling is this.
Three in ten say they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result (29%).
This rises to a third of Labour voters (33%) and those aged 18-34 (33%) who say the same.
Over half say they are just as likely to follow the rules (54%)
Whatever Boris Johnson announces tonight will be ignored by large parts of the country making us less secure.
He needs to go and be replaced by someone with the credibility and authority to launch you new Covid-19 measures.
Except it wouldn't matter if Jesus were to descend from heaven to promote any new Covid measures. First of all, the country, or a large enough fraction of it at any rate, has had enough of Covid measures and will happily ignore them if they think they can get away with it. And secondly, there's probably nothing short of a full lockdown that will do anything to seriously impede the latest version of this bloody virus, it's questionable as to whether or not even that will work, and neither the economy nor wider society can sustain an annual cycle of hokey cokey house arrest for the next thousand years.
The Government can plausibly get away with yet more masks (useless) and WFH (not useful enough,) and after that it is out of options. Reinstating large scale business support and putting about five or six million people back on furlough until various roadmap steps between April and July, let alone shutting all the schools again for the Winter, is a non-starter. And if declining to go to those lengths means, to put it bluntly, tent hospitals and doctors having to decide which Covid patient gets a ventilator and which one gets a big shot of morphine, then that's what's going to end up happening. After all, selectively abandoning non-Covid patients to perish through lack of care capacity is already a reality in the NHS. Why should selectively abandoning Covid patients to perish as well seem so unimaginable?
Basically, if we are fortunate and this latest wave of the disease is moderate then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, and if we aren't and it's bad then there are no workable strategies left for avoiding a massacre. Draconian restrictions are over. Finished.
I'm not sure it's as "mild" as we all hope
Benedict Barclay @BarclayBenedict · 2m Replying to @BarclayBenedict The total number of people in hospital with Covid is 4,252, which is very sharply up on 2,550 last week.
Gauteng has fallen from 72% of cases to 59%, which shows that cases are now rising faster in other provinces.
The report from a couple of days ago was that 76% of the admissions testing positive with Covid were incidental infections i.e. the patient was not being admitted with Covid.
I believe that turned out to be wishful thinking bolleaux
Really? Source?
I found it last night down some 3am rabbit hole, I fear I can't find it again. Feel free to ignore, or not
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
Given the test positivity rate in South Africa is more than 20%, why does it surprise you that people with other ailments (cancer, eye surgery, gunshot wounds, kidney disease, etc.) might have Covid?
Enough people are now going through the whole grisly, inevitable process - infection, admission, then on to ventilation and ICU - for us to know the surge in Gauteng is real and it is Covid
There are also reports of the first deaths circling Twitter, and that statistical leap in excess deaths to consider (which might of course be random, or not, or Delta, who the F knows?)
OK time to watch Boris scratch the blackboard
So: time to nail your colours to the mast: So you think we should be strengthening measures against Covid (moving towards Lockdown), or continuing with current measures?
I said earlier that I think we should stick with what we have, and instead focus on surging the booster drive, and prepping the NHS for a big wave of new cases between now and late Jan
I fear a grim and foolish logic is, however, leading us to Plan B, and then Lockdown
And some on here are still saying Oh that will be fine, you stay home and eat chocolates.
Jesus F Christ. For many many people the last winter lockdown was pretty much unbearable
It will not be fine. But neither is having a very high rate of hospitalisation and deaths.
You fuck people and their businesses over too much, you run out of money, the health service collapses, you get the deaths anyway.
Comments
Philip
I remember you telling me that the main benefit of leaving the EU was to get our sovereignty back.
Now you are telling me that we had it all the time!
So why leave?
Bleak bleak bleak
Boris Johnson voted against saying that the case for war against Iraq has not yet been established,
On 18 Mar 2003:
Boris Johnson voted that the Government should use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction leading to the UK joining the US invasion of Iraq two days later.
I know that theoretically I should care about NI, but in practice I find it quite hard. Can't say I'd notice if it disappeared entirely, so I'm happy to swallow (what seems to be) the very minor issue of difficulties in its trading relationships, especially given a) it's short term and b) this is all the DUP's fault anyway.
So the restrictions are a positive to them or of zero impact.
Boris is unique in that he appears to care for no-one but himself and has no conception of or interest the truth. He will simultaneously promise you anything and sell you out if means a personal advantage for him. He will gamble with your livelihood without a second thought.
Some people buy his schtick for a bit, but those that know him best advise caution
Also, if you have been double jabbed, where does that lie in the protection zone compared to "unvaccinated" and "boosted"
This is what middle England is now like.
Lockdown is the way out of this for the PM. He's.a selfish bastard and it's good for him.
Doubtless this will be followed by folk praising his "instinctive libertarianism".
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#lol #cartoons #cartoonist #sketch #drawingoftheday #comics https://twitter.com/MattCartoonist/status/1468635383634309121/photo/1
Anyway, I just don't believe South African hospitals are taking in loads more people with broken limbs who just "happen" to have Covid as well
From yesterday
"South Africa's Covid Hospital Admissions More Than Double In A Day
"South Africa Covid Cases: According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases 383 people have been admitted to hospital with the disease in the last 24 hours compared with 175 in the preceding period."
https://twitter.com/KatePri35772611/status/1468547278361092098?s=20
BUT here is some more evidence it might be milder
"Worst day yet for hospital admissions in South Africa. #Omicron Cases and Daily Admissions are 3x what we saw with Delta. But the silver lining is that ICU is still 72% below the most applicable Delta comparison period. How many will end up in ICU is the question. #COVID19"
https://twitter.com/farrmacro/status/1468605472584437761?s=20
But most of all, Boris's faux outrage at the released video at PMQs was terrible - how dare he say he was "sickened" by the video when the contents displayed exactly the sort of culture that he has promoted at No. 10 and indeed throughout his political (and personal) life?
- Patients in UK hospitals with Covid has been decreasing steadily since the end of October to about 7300 now compared to a Jan 21 peak of 38,800. This is a 81% reduction post-vaccines.
- Patients in ventilator beds have been level since mid-August at about 900 compared to 4000 in January 2021.
"To us, Downing Street was an island where we had to work & lockdown wasn't happening in the same way it was for the rest of the country," a no10 source told me
How this plays out could depend on if people sympathise or see 1 rule for them, 1 for us
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/08/uk/boris-johnson-christmas-party-2020-intl-gbr/index.html
Quiet night for me then right?
"Playing politics" has become the equivalent of yeah but your Mum smells, hasn't it?
I geuss then, the Nazis and Soviets protected democracy by putting it into abeyance. The Soviets protected dissidents by putting them into abayance - Gulag Abeyance probably, in deepest Siberia.
Philip, I genuinely do worry for your mental state. Do you think you might need help?
I can't decide whether to watch in ghoulish fascination, or avert my face from the tragicomedy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Paq17X6ucQ
Ethics and Moral Philosophy paper.
...
8. PM Blair sent soldiers to their deaths, PM Johnson sent civilians to the deaths. Discuss the validity and equivalence of those concepts.
"Hmmm... Numbers not looking good. End of of year looks rough for many people/places regarding virus spread and all that comes with it. March and April are not looking great either.
"Omicron Wave Sees South Africa’s Weekly Excess Deaths Almost Double"
https://twitter.com/OrchidNYC/status/1468633104822775812?s=20
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/dec/08/capita-undercuts-british-council-to-run-turing-student-exchange-scheme
Honestly, this new series of The Thick of It is far too outlandish to be believable.
If they said “ do you support working from home but non-essential shops, pubs, restaurants etc will be closed” I wonder if the numbers would be the same…..
But in the Referendum we chose to exercise it. And the NI Unionists at least have made clear they want to exercise theirs too.
So that justifies invoking both Articles. Entirely consistent.
I hadn't realised she is the COP26 spokesman who drives a diesel for lifestyle reasons. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
You can have a debate about how effective or ineffective he and his governments response was to the virus but reacting to an act of god (or an act of a Lab in Wuhan) like a global pandemic is hardly the same as telling lies to get a country into a war?
Results at a preliminary stage.
Given Omicron is fairly new, and there have been hardly any serious cases admitted to hospital, it seems unlikely omicron is the cause.
https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1468638762989244419
This does NOT mean it is as bad as Delta, and it could still be "mild", but the idea that many thousands of people are going to SA hospitals with broken fingers then getting classed wrongly as Covid victims, thus accounting for the surge in hospital cases, is preposterous drivel
Severe Omicron cases in Gauteng hospitals on Dec 8
(changes in last week)
On Oxygen Support
165 Dec 1
280 Dec 8 (+70%)
In ICU
63 Dec 1
179 Dec 8 (+184%)
Ventilated
27 Dec 1
58 Dec 8 (+115%)
https://nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-covid-19/surveillance-reports/daily-hospital-surveillance-datcov-report/
So much of 'lockdown 4' really isn't so bad if it can be limited to relatively modest things like this.
It feels like a very different world ...
But it is one more shred of evidence, nonetheless
Tho you are wrong about "hardly any serious cases". There are hundreds now on ventilators etc
There have been lots of beginnings of the end but I don't see a return to innocence from this. The entire world thinks he is engaging in termiological inexactitude about something simple and emotionally engaging to the averafe punter in a way which policy with Johnny Foreigner isn't.
Leon Panic Hour gets earlier each night.
So what can the speaker practically do, rather than just getting crosser and crosser? 🤔
Largest Labour lead we have recorded since 2019 GE.
Full Results (8 Dec):
Labour 38% (+2)
Conservative 34% (-4)
Liberal Democrat 11% (+2)
Green 6% (–)
Reform UK 5% (+1)
Scottish National Party 4% (–)
Other 1% (-1)
Changes +/- 6 Dec
https://t.co/2v5aOdBOfD https://t.co/zRYeEdB0Zm
There are also reports of the first deaths circling Twitter, and that statistical leap in excess deaths to consider (which might of course be random, or not, or Delta, who the F knows?)
OK time to watch Boris scratch the blackboard
Doing a reverse calculation, 2,076 excess deaths in a week, assuming an IFR equal to Delta i.e. c.0.4%, and a lag from infection to death, means they had 519,000 infections about 3 weeks ago, i.e. 74k a day.
If we assume a lower IFR of around 0.15% as we've seen in vaccinated / previously infected populations in Europe recently, then that's a whopping 2 million infections per week. 3 weeks ago. With compound exponential growth since. Which would imply cases should already be peaking soon. Or my maths is wrong. Or people are also dying of things other than Covid.
Interesting that he says we should toughen the law on cannabis here - so his new found war on drugs, isn't really that new
"The stuff we smoked 20 odd years ago"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISDmwCK9ZXI
So you think we should be strengthening measures against Covid (moving towards Lockdown), or continuing with current measures?
Most Britons are taking the allegations very seriously: 69% of respondents say the Metropolitan Police should investigate the Christmas Party held in Downing Street last year. A majority of both 2019 Conservative voters (56%) and 2019 Labour voters (81%) agree that the party should be investigated. Conversely, a fifth (20%) of Britons do not believe the Metropolitan Police should investigate, a position held by 33% of Conservative voters.
Further, 63% believe the Prime Minister should resign if it is confirmed that the Christmas Party took place at a time when the Government had issued coronavirus restrictions which forbade such gatherings. In addition to 81% of Labour voters, a plurality (46%) of Conservative voters, too, think that Boris Johnson should resign in this situation.
A quarter (24%) of respondents hold the alternative view that the Prime Minister should not resign, increasing to 39% among Conservative voters.
(Tee hee)
What about World War III. Invasion of the saucer men?
The Andromeda Strain?
I fear a grim and foolish logic is, however, leading us to Plan B, and then Lockdown
And some on here are still saying Oh that will be fine, you stay home and eat chocolates.
Jesus F Christ. For many many people the last winter lockdown was pretty much unbearable
First 😆
Still not sure speaker will be happy.
Yours is an excellent question.
“Masks are mandatory” signs up
1/2 staff masked
2/7 customers masked
People ain’t complying.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-59581832
"Some women were blackmailed into abusing a baby or a sibling, with Elahi offering to pay off their debts."