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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The nation rallies to Boris but who’ll now make the critical decisions?
Today’s front pages very much sum up the the mood of the nation and the political issues created by the continued hospitalisation of the prime minister who has been in intensive care now for a second night. All this comes at the height of the biggest peacetime emergency that the UK has seen in generations.
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Which is not to say speculation on potential concerns is therefore irrelevant, but talk of power vacuums or paralysis of government or confusion seems very premature to me when the situation has been made very clear - cabinet government continues and we have been told who will coordinate it in the PMs absence - and there is not a need to resolve a situation which has not arisen.
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1247604211262636033?s=09
The other thing I'm picking up is that senior figures should be drafted in, including from other parties.
At the moment we're winging it, which is clearly unsatisfactory. It's based on the idea that Boris may only spend 5-7 days in ICU. There are a huge number of key decisions to make in the coming days including the big one: when to ease lockdown.
Anecdotally, judging by the behaviour I'm witnessing I would say that a lot of Britons are already easing the lockdown.
The papers emphatically do sum up the mood of the Nation!
“The health of Boris is the health of the nation, we need you Prime minister.” Alison Pearson Daily Telegraph.
perhaps the chief medical eggheads can tell us if Germany have tested all their tigers yet?
I mean if the scientist is going to say that whilst stood next to the acting Prime Minister, what’s the thick of it behind the scenes scientists having with this governments equivalent of Alistair Campbell?
Going forward you'll need to work out not just when to end the lockdown, but *how* to end it. You can't just go back to what you were doing before or the virus will come back and you'll be back in lockdown again. Some businesses won't be able to reopen, others will need to change how they operate. The whole society needs to be restructured at high speed - nothing on this scale has been done since WW2.
There are experts and ministers each looking over their own domains but they're connected, especially when it comes to messaging; One thing that's forced Japan back on the defensive is that the government announced that it would be reopening the schools, would probably have been fine on its own, but people took it to mean the crisis was over and they got complacent in a bunch of other unintended ways as well. You need someone in charge.
Now, I don't know whether or not Johnson would be capable of this kind of leadership if he was healthy, but it's many times harder if everybody has to second-guess what their PM would think about it if he wasn't in intensive care.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/07/americas/greg-mortimer-cruise-ship-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html
https://twitter.com/kevinbasham/status/1247623428800208897?s=21
1. Themselves. Their own self importance.
2. Making a meal out of politics where there is nothing to eat.
3. Trying to get experts or public to say something that makes politicians look like liars. (Like a bad running gag through channel 4 news last night).
could they vary the people they send. Does it have to be political reporters? Can’t they ask questions more relevant to public concerns? Anger at China? Tell Sainsbury’s to pull their finger out? We are worried about the care homes?
Can this prove the old media days have passed. The new media can do better job if called upon? Raab should say tomorrow “Peston your 6 naff questions masquerading as 1 question and 20 minutes you took to ask them now over. Next, Eagles - PB” and the nation will get a proper question. Because We could build it together, PB brains trust. we could vote on which subject. We can speak for the nation, we are the nation.
“Do you feel the lies out of China caused your government to be wrong footed at start of the campaign?” That’s to the point isn’t it?
“Care home staff have been left feeling like second class, can you detail your plans for the coming weeks that will relieve the pressures and difficulty on care homes?” No trying to cleverly trip anyone up, just beautiful opportunity to put the record straight and reassure a lot of people.
“When you sit down to watch die hard next Christmas, will you have Pineapple on your pizza? It’s a yes or no answer Foreign Secretary.” Well obviously not. The point I am making is it’s wrong at these briefings, with most senior political and SME in this war for those asking the questions to be following hobby horses or stray from what the public want to know, and miss the opportunity by being in some warped competition with other stations and organs, The Pest on pests, for example “supplementary if I may prime minister. We know corona lives in faeces. Fact. We know it’s in tigers cats and dogs. Fact. Can we contract the virus from the feet of flies? Should we now kill all flies, for example?”
The up it’s own arse and not representing the nation tone of Channel 4 news was bang out of order last night. If the old media can’t represent us, they should step aside.
Wisconsin risks having a huge spread of CV-19 just for Bernie's ego.
No one is looking at it until he returns is the message.
The point, misunderstood as with a lot of this virus, is not that the animals catch it and then spread it, but then any roving object can spread the virus. Same with dogs.
The one which really concerns me particularly from an African-centric point of view is mosquitoes. Anyone know if this has been studied?
2. They don't spread coronavirus.
3. No idea what your second paragraph is trying to say.
Raab knows, indeed says, that when review time comes there won't be enough data for them to know the extent to which the spread has been slowed. Surely he should put it differently (i) there will be a review just as the PM announced, (ii) unluckily it seems that they'd need much more data than they'll have for the review to lead to any decision about any change of measures.
The right-wingers on here will myopically criticise the press and shout down anyone who raises issues as a left-winger. However, there's no getting away from the fact that this is a problem and a pretty serious one at that.
The country is in its greatest ever peacetime crisis. Leadership of the right kind: consistent, strong, collective is required. With Boris in hospital I can't honestly say that any of those three adjectives currently apply. In their heart-of-hearts I doubt any of our blue-card carrying friends can either. (Except 666, obvs.)
Everyone is assuming it's going to be OK here, just because it's looking better in Italy and Spain. But that depends on people observing the rules, and how can we just how many people are doing that, from where we are?
They won't review the lockdown until they have a good reason to do so. Vallance and Whitty both said that.
BoJo's health and whereabouts don't come into it. They may as well cancel the 5pm press conference because the press will only ask the same old questions and write the headlines they'd already written.
Zeee nasty little critters land on your skin and secrete saliva onto your skin before inserting their little proboscis. They spend many seconds planted on the surface of your body before departing.
The question I'm interested in is whether in that process they can become a virus vector. My head says, theoretically yes.
The Governor had suspended election day, the GOP sued to make it happen. Bernie withdrawing would have had no effect.
Edit/ Although I see that the WHO has gone further and concluded it cannot be transmitted that way
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/faq.html
2. Proof please and scientific evidence
3. How can I put it in more simple terms? We know that Coronavirus sits 'live' on surfaces for a length of time: 24-72 hours. Some reports suggest even up to 2 weeks. Clearly an animal has a surface. If you're infected your virus droplets can reside on animal fur. When the animal wanders off, ergo, it carries it with him or her. In other words, they can be virus vectors without actually catching the virus.
Fleas, Bubonic Plague, n' all that. See?
From the podium yesterday they said the work was being done on leaving a lockdown but they did not want to talk about anything other than maintaining the strict measures.
No doubt too simplistic for some and too complex for others.
Any figures on vegans?
A bit of Googling reputable medical sites might help you here.
Fleas are infected by the plague bacteria. There is no comparison with a respiratory virus.
Is how the BBC put it.
The primary is a side show to the Supreme Court election.
Sanders wanted the primary postponed.
"KEEP CATS INDOORS, VETS RECOMMEND."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52204534
I don't like scare stories but there is a point to this one which seems to me something to be, at least, considered.
"To prevent any risk of pets carrying the virus from owners' hands in their fur, British Veterinary Association (BVA), president Daniella Dos Santos encouraged owners to take "sensible precautions".
"Practise good hand hygiene, try and keep cats indoors," she said.
"Avoid unnecessary contact with your pets, such a hugging or allowing them to lick your face, and do not touch other people's dogs when on walks."
p.s. I'm a dog owner in case anyone thinks I'm petist.
"It is precisely Bojo's health that was given as the reason for the delay of the review."
I admit I usually drift off when the press keep parroting the same questions and I only tend to listen to the experts but I don't remember Whitty or Vallance saying that.
It's always been a joke. The journalists only ask questions to fit the political bubble they've constructed. The review will come when there's scientific cover to do so. The press want certainty when there isn't any.
Is it me, or have they always been excitable children?
Edit. And anothe thing ... the antibody test will be avilable when it's available. Having said that, I've been retired ten years, so I could easily be wrong.
That’s the problem with the news channels - they would rather spend time on what some correspondent thinks it means rather than take it from the horses mouth.
A distorting filter.
Boom boom
Yay, pun time.
However there was a shortage of chickpeas in supermarkets at the start of the lockdown - which are a rare source of zinc for food haters such as vegans.
My cat has been pushing up bamboo for 2 years, so no problems there.
It's rather endearing to find you believe what the media say. And politicians aren't far behind..
I think the printed press have a had particularly bad war. The viewers' questions have been far more informative.
https://twitter.com/MattSingh_/status/1247784320539877377
Wonder how she coped with those figures?
This crisis has revealed that HMG comms - and decision making - are below par.
Also, everyone remember to stick a wooden spoon up your arse for Matt Hancock at 8pm sharp tonight.
Yet again another piece of appalling reporting that is going to cause further grief and increased the risk of animals just being dumped.
The media just need to keep their piss from sloshing out of their nappies, grow the fuck up, and stop spreading hysteria. So naturally they'll probably do the exact opposite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T5NuI6Ai-o
As an aside, this risks showing how useless the Monarchy has become. Any head of state with independent authority would intervene to insist on a replacement head of government, but the Monarchy appears to have decided that inaction at all times is the surest way to preserve their position. The idea that they might provide a bulwark against totalitarianism is exposed as fantasy.
The neighbours' cats, on the other hand, can feck right off.
But what he described was a discussion over how to balance the human and economic cost of this crisis. Frankly that is EXACTLY the discussion that should be happening in the Cabinet and I would be a lot more worried if it wasn’t.
https://twitter.com/mailsport/status/1247785027837947904?s=21
Quality.
What it isn't is as immediate a concern as presented by some press and, rather unusually, is an example where the UK's flexible governance arrangements affords an advantage. Collective decisions can continue to be made based on the scientific advice, and we know who is to be gone to for an urgent call, be it a reactive or proactive one. I cannot see what would be different if Boris were still up and about other than questions of mandate, which like most references to mandate, are meaningless.