On my phone i can't see any way to reach the discussion posts from the new mobile version so am back to the web version with the left hand characters off the side of the page...
A regional party's going to ally with one that could house all its MPs in a minibus? OK.
The future is hard to see, but you would be wrong to dismiss the Lib Dems so readily. The number of Lib Dem MPs is lower than it ought to be, because of our flawed voting system. Support for the Lib Dems ran much higher in terms of votes at the last election. And they are the main challengers to the Tories in many seats. Raab´s seat, for example, looks highly vulnerable to me, especially if the Labour Party are now able to start working with other groups.
Lots of focus on the public not thinking what is expected now is clear, but in fact only 10% answered "don't know" when asked whether the changes went too far. Which side by side make for curious reading.
Not really - when asked if lockdown measures should be relaxed in three weeks' time, only 34% said "don't know".
Basically, people feel compelled to give an answer. This sort of polling is useless.
70% think that the new guidance is unclear (only 7% said neither guidance was clear) but only 10% don't know if it goes too far relaxing things? Looks curious to me.
The 2011 Census questionnaire had two places where you could say you worked from home. One was in the workplace address questionnaire (used for constructing flow data) and the other was in the method of travel to work question. There are two tables for method of travel to work:
The latter is nearly double the former. You have to be really careful with expecting the public to give consistent responses.
I'm not expecting consistency. The point I'm making (and it's actually a point that government supporters might welcome if they thought about it) is that the public may have taken more on board about staying alert than they themselves believe that they have.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I always suspected that the wondrousness of their response to the crisis was a bit overblown.
Overblown or not, the evidence is that it worked - and they did it with a daily testing capacity below 20,000. Systems rather than headline numbers are what is important, and that is what our government doesn't get.
Lots of focus on the public not thinking what is expected now is clear, but in fact only 10% answered "don't know" when asked whether the changes went too far. Which side by side make for curious reading.
Not really - when asked if lockdown measures should be relaxed in three weeks' time, only 34% said "don't know".
Basically, people feel compelled to give an answer. This sort of polling is useless.
70% think that the new guidance is unclear (only 7% said neither guidance was clear) but only 10% don't know if it goes too far relaxing things? Looks curious to me.
The 2011 Census questionnaire had two places where you could say you worked from home. One was in the workplace address questionnaire (used for constructing flow data) and the other was in the method of travel to work question. There are two tables for method of travel to work:
The latter is nearly double the former. You have to be really careful with expecting the public to give consistent responses.
I'm not expecting consistency. The point I'm making (and it's actually a point that government supporters might welcome if they thought about it) is that the public may have taken more on board about staying alert than they themselves believe that they have.
Well, I'd suggest that we are somewhat unusual in agonizing about what Boris said (or didn't say) last night.
Most people have their own lives to worry about. No one would have been expecting any huge changes, so whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there to most people.
One of the many things I dislike about 24 hr news is the way they cut an interview short with the interviewee mid sentence. They did this with Ed Miliband on BBC just now to go to the Scottish briefing. It is just so rude and also unnecessary, they could just have finished up the interview and ran the Scottish briefing with a few seconds delay. (And separately at the risk of incoming from our Scots contingent, not sure that the Scots briefing needs 30 mins live coverage every day on the UK wide news channel, there are Scottish specific channels).
Lots of focus on the public not thinking what is expected now is clear, but in fact only 10% answered "don't know" when asked whether the changes went too far. Which side by side make for curious reading.
Not really - when asked if lockdown measures should be relaxed in three weeks' time, only 34% said "don't know".
Basically, people feel compelled to give an answer. This sort of polling is useless.
70% think that the new guidance is unclear (only 7% said neither guidance was clear) but only 10% don't know if it goes too far relaxing things? Looks curious to me.
The 2011 Census questionnaire had two places where you could say you worked from home. One was in the workplace address questionnaire (used for constructing flow data) and the other was in the method of travel to work question. There are two tables for method of travel to work:
The latter is nearly double the former. You have to be really careful with expecting the public to give consistent responses.
I'm not expecting consistency. The point I'm making (and it's actually a point that government supporters might welcome if they thought about it) is that the public may have taken more on board about staying alert than they themselves believe that they have.
Well, I'd suggest that we are somewhat unusual in agonizing about what Boris said (or didn't say) last night.
Most people have their own lives to worry about. No one would have been expecting any huge changes, so whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there to most people.
Very funny. "Most people have their own lives to worry about" and "whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there."
To most people whether you can meet with two, three or four people is absolutely central.
Although not to people who are well off, comfortable, maybe with families in large houses, perhaps a garden. Not you, though, right?
I guess he doesn't realise that if everyone stays home and doesn't work, there won't be any need for unions as there will be no jobs and a loaf of bread will be £100.
Most of the working class are probably still working and have been throughout. It is the middle class who are sunbathing in their garden on 80-100% pay (or wasting their day on politicalbetting or whatever flavour website takes their fancy).
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I always suspected that the wondrousness of their response to the crisis was a bit overblown.
Overblown or not, the evidence is that it worked - and they did it with a daily testing capacity below 20,000. Systems rather than headline numbers are what is important, and that is what our government doesn't get.
You think the media would have picked up on this? Instead they got distracted by a shiny number.
Lots of focus on the public not thinking what is expected now is clear, but in fact only 10% answered "don't know" when asked whether the changes went too far. Which side by side make for curious reading.
Not really - when asked if lockdown measures should be relaxed in three weeks' time, only 34% said "don't know".
Basically, people feel compelled to give an answer. This sort of polling is useless.
70% think that the new guidance is unclear (only 7% said neither guidance was clear) but only 10% don't know if it goes too far relaxing things? Looks curious to me.
The 2011 Census questionnaire had two places where you could say you worked from home. One was in the workplace address questionnaire (used for constructing flow data) and the other was in the method of travel to work question. There are two tables for method of travel to work:
The latter is nearly double the former. You have to be really careful with expecting the public to give consistent responses.
I'm not expecting consistency. The point I'm making (and it's actually a point that government supporters might welcome if they thought about it) is that the public may have taken more on board about staying alert than they themselves believe that they have.
Well, I'd suggest that we are somewhat unusual in agonizing about what Boris said (or didn't say) last night.
Most people have their own lives to worry about. No one would have been expecting any huge changes, so whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there to most people.
Very funny. "Most people have their own lives to worry about" and "whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there."
To most people whether you can meet with two, three or four people is absolutely central.
Although not to people who are well off, comfortable, maybe with families in large houses, perhaps a garden. Not you, though, right?
I live my 70 something parents. We're lucky that my sister and family live just round the corner from us to they've been stopping by to chat from the front garden. I've seen plenty of people stopping to chat at a safe distance when I've been out walking.
You won't find any evidence of me criticizing urban dwellers from spending time in the parks. I think some police forces have behaved - and still are behaving - disgracefully during all of this.
That sounds odd. Staying alert is an ALTERNATIVE to staying at home. You need to be alert when you are out. When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back to what it normally is for most people - not particularly alert.
When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back - but by being alert you can choose to spend more time in.
But "alert" carries an air of strained activism. You alertly decide to stay at home so that you don't need to be alert? That doesn't scan.
On reflection, I much prefer "woke" - since this implies a constant state of enlightened awareness.
Most of the working class are probably still working and have been throughout. It is the middle class who are sunbathing in their garden on 80-100% pay (or wasting their day on politicalbetting or whatever flavour website takes their fancy).
There's plenty of furloughed people in the southeast making a tidy profit from saving ££££ on commuting into London. Again, this will be white collar people benefitting.
I live in a block of flats and my neighbours include a washing machine engineer and a builder. They have been working throughout. It's us white collar workers squirrelled in our flats scrounging off the state (and getting everything delivered by actual working people).
Lots of focus on the public not thinking what is expected now is clear, but in fact only 10% answered "don't know" when asked whether the changes went too far. Which side by side make for curious reading.
Not really - when asked if lockdown measures should be relaxed in three weeks' time, only 34% said "don't know".
Basically, people feel compelled to give an answer. This sort of polling is useless.
70% think that the new guidance is unclear (only 7% said neither guidance was clear) but only 10% don't know if it goes too far relaxing things? Looks curious to me.
The 2011 Census questionnaire had two places where you could say you worked from home. One was in the workplace address questionnaire (used for constructing flow data) and the other was in the method of travel to work question. There are two tables for method of travel to work:
The latter is nearly double the former. You have to be really careful with expecting the public to give consistent responses.
I'm not expecting consistency. The point I'm making (and it's actually a point that government supporters might welcome if they thought about it) is that the public may have taken more on board about staying alert than they themselves believe that they have.
Well, I'd suggest that we are somewhat unusual in agonizing about what Boris said (or didn't say) last night.
Most people have their own lives to worry about. No one would have been expecting any huge changes, so whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there to most people.
Very funny. "Most people have their own lives to worry about" and "whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there."
To most people whether you can meet with two, three or four people is absolutely central.
Although not to people who are well off, comfortable, maybe with families in large houses, perhaps a garden. Not you, though, right?
I live my 70 something parents. We're lucky that my sister and family live just round the corner from us to they've been stopping by to chat from the front garden. I've seen plenty of people stopping to chat at a safe distance when I've been out walking.
You won't find any evidence of me criticizing urban dwellers from spending time in the parks. I think some police forces have behaved - and still are behaving - disgracefully during all of this.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I always suspected that the wondrousness of their response to the crisis was a bit overblown.
Overblown or not, the evidence is that it worked - and they did it with a daily testing capacity below 20,000. Systems rather than headline numbers are what is important, and that is what our government doesn't get.
You think the media would have picked up on this? Instead they got distracted by a shiny number.
Its the speed of the process and automatic prioritisation of high risk suspected cases that is the big thing.
Bill Gates said you need it to be 24hrs max due to the nature of this virus.
One of the many things I dislike about 24 hr news is the way they cut an interview short with the interviewee mid sentence. They did this with Ed Miliband on BBC just now to go to the Scottish briefing. It is just so rude and also unnecessary, they could just have finished up the interview and ran the Scottish briefing with a few seconds delay. (And separately at the risk of incoming from our Scots contingent, not sure that the Scots briefing needs 30 mins live coverage every day on the UK wide news channel, there are Scottish specific channels).
But of course it does! They want to dissect every syllable that the First Minister says and then spend hours minutely analysing every actual or apparent difference with what the Prime Minister said yesterday. That's enough to keep them going for several hours until the Prime Minister speaks again. Then they can dissect his every syllable and spend the evening minutely analysing any differences with what the First Minister said. Etc, etc, etc, etc...
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I gather there are particular issues due to the LGBT angle.
That sounds odd. Staying alert is an ALTERNATIVE to staying at home. You need to be alert when you are out. When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back to what it normally is for most people - not particularly alert.
When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back - but by being alert you can choose to spend more time in.
But "alert" carries an air of strained activism. You alertly decide to stay at home so that you don't need to be alert? That doesn't scan.
On reflection, I much prefer "woke" - since this implies a constant state of enlightened awareness.
Stay Woke (to the virus). Save Lives.
Of course it works. The reason you're staying in is because you're alert to the dangers of going out.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I gather there are particular issues due to the LGBT angle.
Lee Youngwu , a gay man in his 30s, told the Guardian:
I admit it was a huge mistake to visit the gay district when the corona situation was not fully over. But visiting the area is the only time when I can be myself and hang out with others similar to me. During the week, I have to pretend to like women.
My credit card company told me that they passed on my payment information in the district to the authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face a public humiliation. I feel as if my whole life is about to collapse. I have never felt suicidal before and never thought I would, but I am feeling suicidal now...
That sounds odd. Staying alert is an ALTERNATIVE to staying at home. You need to be alert when you are out. When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back to what it normally is for most people - not particularly alert.
When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back - but by being alert you can choose to spend more time in.
But "alert" carries an air of strained activism. You alertly decide to stay at home so that you don't need to be alert? That doesn't scan.
On reflection, I much prefer "woke" - since this implies a constant state of enlightened awareness.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I always suspected that the wondrousness of their response to the crisis was a bit overblown.
Overblown or not, the evidence is that it worked - and they did it with a daily testing capacity below 20,000. Systems rather than headline numbers are what is important, and that is what our government doesn't get.
Very little attention has been given to how quickly people get their test results. Doing 100k and returning them a week later seems to me far less valuable than doing 10k and returning them the same day. More detail on how we are doing here would be good, especially given the reports of tests being flown to the US.
The (near) complete absence of test, track and trace in the PMs announcement is a strong indicator our capability is still nowhere near where it needs to be.
Lots of focus on the public not thinking what is expected now is clear, but in fact only 10% answered "don't know" when asked whether the changes went too far. Which side by side make for curious reading.
Not really - when asked if lockdown measures should be relaxed in three weeks' time, only 34% said "don't know".
Basically, people feel compelled to give an answer. This sort of polling is useless.
70% think that the new guidance is unclear (only 7% said neither guidance was clear) but only 10% don't know if it goes too far relaxing things? Looks curious to me.
The 2011 Census questionnaire had two places where you could say you worked from home. One was in the workplace address questionnaire (used for constructing flow data) and the other was in the method of travel to work question. There are two tables for method of travel to work:
The latter is nearly double the former. You have to be really careful with expecting the public to give consistent responses.
I'm not expecting consistency. The point I'm making (and it's actually a point that government supporters might welcome if they thought about it) is that the public may have taken more on board about staying alert than they themselves believe that they have.
Well, I'd suggest that we are somewhat unusual in agonizing about what Boris said (or didn't say) last night.
Most people have their own lives to worry about. No one would have been expecting any huge changes, so whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there to most people.
Very funny. "Most people have their own lives to worry about" and "whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there."
To most people whether you can meet with two, three or four people is absolutely central.
Although not to people who are well off, comfortable, maybe with families in large houses, perhaps a garden. Not you, though, right?
I live my 70 something parents. We're lucky that my sister and family live just round the corner from us to they've been stopping by to chat from the front garden. I've seen plenty of people stopping to chat at a safe distance when I've been out walking.
You won't find any evidence of me criticizing urban dwellers from spending time in the parks. I think some police forces have behaved - and still are behaving - disgracefully during all of this.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I always suspected that the wondrousness of their response to the crisis was a bit overblown.
Overblown or not, the evidence is that it worked - and they did it with a daily testing capacity below 20,000. Systems rather than headline numbers are what is important, and that is what our government doesn't get.
You think the media would have picked up on this? Instead they got distracted by a shiny number.
I'd far rather the government had done so, and wasn't engaged in distracting with what are now rather tarnished numbers.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
It's not concern, it's faux outrageux from people who would give Boris no credit if thins went right and jump on every perceived error as if its a catastrophe
And why should they do one or the other? They are phasing something out, it's entirely the right thing to do tread the middle path
They're not treading a middle path. Are they advising or not?
They don't want people to be as locked in as they were, nor go out like everything is ok. Cautious tiptoeing out is what they want, and looks like that's what they're getting.
I despair at the feebleness of people, they should be embarrassed not to have the nous to work out this for themselves.
But you're substituting what you wish government would say for what they're actually saying. (I have quite a lot of sympathy with your wish, but it really isn't what's being said.)
They're still trying to give advice, and making a complete horlicks of it.
I am not substituting it, I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted the message to be slightly vague so people tiptoe out of lockdown. They probably credit the public with having more common sense than the media do.
What is the message everyone is getting? You're allowed to do more than last week but not much more. That's enough
Studied vagueness would be fine with an appropriate message about making your own cautious assessment. Having a senior government minister unclear whether you can appropriately meet one parent or both simultaneously is just inept.
If I want to meet one of my parents or both, I would just do it. I have done it several times since lockdown, actually; I cycled to their house and we stood/sat at opposite ends of the garden and had a chinwag.
Grown ups should make their own choices and live with the consequences, not wait for/blame the government.
Then the government should say "that's exactly the type of decision we expect you to be making for yourselves". But that's not what it's doing.
As it happens, I've already done exactly that, but that's because I take my own view how I'm going to apply all this stuff anyway and I have no great confidence that these clowns know what they are doing, so why would I take what they advise as gospel?
"that's exactly the type of decision we expect you to be making for yourselves"
Good Lord, can you imagine the reaction if they said that?! Have you seen The Life of Brian?
The reaction would be pretty positive, I'd say, if they coupled it with "obviously we'll be keeping a close eye on whether Covid-19 is taking off again, so proceed with caution for now - and remember, if you get this wrong, you'll be putting your loved ones at risk".
Have you ever been messed about by someone you fancy, in the manner of the song "Keep Me Hanging On"? They constantly send you mixed messages, so you don't come on too strong, but don't stop wanting them either.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is some leftfield Cummings idea to get the public doing just what they are - cautiously tiptoeing out of lockdown, without going too far.
I remember Portillo saying on the sadly departed This Week; the best way to get the public to do what you want them to do is to make them think it was their idea
This could be the case. OTOH there is a risk that Cummings' reputation for supersonic insight into the psyche of the public means that everything he's involved with is assumed to be much deeper and cleverer than it really is.
My sense is that the government are in a genuine and total tizz about how best to proceed.
Thanks for comments on the new mobile version of PB. Hopefully the tech team will be able to fix the cropping off of the first character issue in each comment.
Apart from that the mobile site is working faster than the main one
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I always suspected that the wondrousness of their response to the crisis was a bit overblown.
Overblown or not, the evidence is that it worked - and they did it with a daily testing capacity below 20,000. Systems rather than headline numbers are what is important, and that is what our government doesn't get.
You think the media would have picked up on this? Instead they got distracted by a shiny number.
Its the speed of the process and automatic prioritisation of high risk suspected cases that is the big thing.
Bill Gates said you need it to be 24hrs max due to the nature of this virus.
Also some very odd lagging where scrolling is impossible, once comments are opened. First maybe 5 seconds of the comments loading, then maybe seconds 10-15 too?
Same here with Chrome on Android 10 on a 1 month old phone. Looks good but character problem still there and it takes a second or two to load the comments.
Most of the working class are probably still working and have been throughout. It is the middle class who are sunbathing in their garden on 80-100% pay (or wasting their day on politicalbetting or whatever flavour website takes their fancy).
There's plenty of furloughed people in the southeast making a tidy profit from saving ££££ on commuting into London. Again, this will be white collar people benefitting.
I live in a block of flats and my neighbours include a washing machine engineer and a builder. They have been working throughout. It's us white collar workers squirrelled in our flats scrounging off the state (and getting everything delivered by actual working people).
Great post, this is why people are complaining they don't understand what Boris has said.They like their new life of getting paid for staying at home and are quite happy for other people to have worked to provide for them over the past 7 weeks. I don't remember anyone wondering how social distancing is going on in Food Processing Centres. They don't care as it does not affect them, as long as they get their delivery of Waitrose Lasagne.
There are still somewhere between 15-20k new infections per day. If he had come on and said look only about 200 new deaths a day now, look how you the public are winning, he would have got absolutely lambasted on a number of angles.
a) A genuine criticism of being irresponsible, as new infection rate still high, R still likely very close to danger level. It could easily give people wrong message that it is totally safe out there.
b) The media still don't get the death totals, so would have arguing / debating this figure rather than the core message.
c) Opponents already scream and shout about the absolute death total anytime he mentions that we are past the peak, doing well, etc.
It was clearly a similar policy not to mention we had past the peak, which was about the 8th April, until well into May.
That all been said, I have said since the start, the government charts at the daily press conference are bollocks. They should have produced the ones like Prof Cricket from the get go.
We've established in the past that you post these as criticisms never just for info, but what about this one is critical? There is a lack of clarity at present and that appears to be a way to improve it.
Still, it makes more sense than criticising a lack of clarity and the release of any guidance to reduce that lack of clarity.
We can take what we want from the info. You presumably think it OK to make a major imminent announcement apparently without having thought through any of the detail. Others have a different opinion.
I dont know why you think I think that. I've said stay alert by definition is ambiguous and clear explanations would be required to ensure public bodies are able to transmit any messaging effectively. In terms of taking away what we want from info my supposition Scott posts such things as criticisms was based on his own explanation for such postings, not my assumption.
So I'll thank you not to invent my opinion for me to make yourself feel superior.
So the “super cautious” Labour Welsh administration (with the worst Covid rates and poorest testing) are opening garden centres, libraries and recycling centres, while the reckless Tory government in England are not.
Also some very odd lagging where scrolling is impossible, once comments are opened. First maybe 5 seconds of the comments loading, then maybe seconds 10-15 too?
Same here with Chrome on Android 10 on a 1 month old phone. Looks good but character problem still there and it takes a second or two to load the comments.
I don't seem to get comments at all on the mobile version. Opera browser on a Pixel 3a.
There are still somewhere between 15-20k new infections per day. If he had come on and said look only about 200 new deaths a day now, look how you the public are winning, he would have got absolutely lambasted on a new of angles.
a) A genuine criticism of being irresponsible, as new infection rate still high, R still likely very close to danger level. It could easily give people wrong message that it is totally safe out there.
b) The media still don't get the death totals, so would have arguing / debating this figure rather than the core message.
c) Opponents already scream and shout about the absolute death total anytime he mentions that we are past the peak, doing well, etc.
The steady decline in numbers indicate that the effective R number is below 1.
At the risk of being an armchair scientist, you would surely want to make sure the decline is steady, and cases at a low enough level to make a rise a non-disaster, before you started to lift the lockdown. Gradually.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I always suspected that the wondrousness of their response to the crisis was a bit overblown.
Overblown or not, the evidence is that it worked - and they did it with a daily testing capacity below 20,000. Systems rather than headline numbers are what is important, and that is what our government doesn't get.
Very little attention has been given to how quickly people get their test results. Doing 100k and returning them a week later seems to me far less valuable than doing 10k and returning them the same day. More detail on how we are doing here would be good, especially given the reports of tests being flown to the US.
The (near) complete absence of test, track and trace in the PMs announcement is a strong indicator our capability is still nowhere near where it needs to be.
So the “super cautious” Labour Welsh administration (with the worst Covid rates and poorest testing) are opening garden centres, libraries and recycling centres, while the reckless Tory government in England are not.
And still testing bugger all people. The fact they just gave up on a 5k a day testing target and ended up just doing basically the same number as the previous month should be receiving massive criticism.
I don't care so much about precise arbitrary targets, but the fact they are still doing bugger all testing is a massive problem, especially given the hotspot is Cardiff and large amounts of traffic between Cardiff and places like Bristol every day.
Lots of focus on the public not thinking what is expected now is clear, but in fact only 10% answered "don't know" when asked whether the changes went too far. Which side by side make for curious reading.
Not really - when asked if lockdown measures should be relaxed in three weeks' time, only 34% said "don't know".
Basically, people feel compelled to give an answer. This sort of polling is useless.
70% think that the new guidance is unclear (only 7% said neither guidance was clear) but only 10% don't know if it goes too far relaxing things? Looks curious to me.
The 2011 Census questionnaire had two places where you could say you worked from home. One was in the workplace address questionnaire (used for constructing flow data) and the other was in the method of travel to work question. There are two tables for method of travel to work:
The latter is nearly double the former. You have to be really careful with expecting the public to give consistent responses.
I'm not expecting consistency. The point I'm making (and it's actually a point that government supporters might welcome if they thought about it) is that the public may have taken more on board about staying alert than they themselves believe that they have.
I think that is probably true in a similar way to them taking a lot more on board about stay at home than many might have thought from all the focus on the areas where there was confusion (how to exercise and where fir instance).
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I gather there are particular issues due to the LGBT angle.
Lee Youngwu , a gay man in his 30s, told the Guardian:
I admit it was a huge mistake to visit the gay district when the corona situation was not fully over. But visiting the area is the only time when I can be myself and hang out with others similar to me. During the week, I have to pretend to like women.
My credit card company told me that they passed on my payment information in the district to the authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face a public humiliation. I feel as if my whole life is about to collapse. I have never felt suicidal before and never thought I would, but I am feeling suicidal now...
A company I was working with wanted to setup an office in South Korea. I mentioned that there would be substantial cultural issues (it was in arts and media) for the existing workforce and the prevalent climate in SK. They simply denied there could be any such issues.
As soon as a Govt starts getting the piss extracted...it's a slippery slope. I remember the Cones Hotline, and Gordon Brown's election that never was.
This Tory Govt is decaying from the inside....and fast....
Your daily update twitter is not real life. This is the most popular government in a generation whether we like it or loathe it!
They`ll not remain popular for long at this rate. Interesting to see whether they remain "populist" when they become unpopular! If the populist tendency does drain away - perversely they may grow some balls and make some difficult decisions rather than behaving like the utimate political weathervanes.
They also need to start attacking Starmer (and Sturgeon).
As soon as a Govt starts getting the piss extracted...it's a slippery slope. I remember the Cones Hotline, and Gordon Brown's election that never was.
This Tory Govt is decaying from the inside....and fast....
Your daily update twitter is not real life. This is the most popular government in a generation whether we like it or loathe it!
They`ll not remain popular for long at this rate. Interesting to see whether they remain "populist" when they become unpopular! If the populist tendency does drain away - perversely they may grow some balls and make some difficult decisions rather than behaving like the utimate political weathervanes.
They also need to start attacking Starmer (and Sturgeon).
We've been hearing this for weeks but still they poll at 50%. If Labour provided a decent opposition then things would be different. I would rather government moved forward and acted with the science than were timid like Sturgeon and refused to let the country come out of its shell.
Huawei and some older mobile phones cannot run the NHS contact-tracing app being trialled on the Isle of Wight, according to NHSX, the health service's digital innovation unit. Dr Geraint Lewis, who is in charge of the development of the NHS Covid-19 app, said the new tool would only work with newer operating systems on Apple and Samsung phones.
Did they not try this app using virtualization software and you know perhaps get a range of real devices beforehand?
We aren't getting this app (pivoted to use Google/IoS API) for another month are we, at the earliest.
Most of the working class are probably still working and have been throughout. It is the middle class who are sunbathing in their garden on 80-100% pay (or wasting their day on politicalbetting or whatever flavour website takes their fancy).
There's plenty of furloughed people in the southeast making a tidy profit from saving ££££ on commuting into London. Again, this will be white collar people benefitting.
I live in a block of flats and my neighbours include a washing machine engineer and a builder. They have been working throughout. It's us white collar workers squirrelled in our flats scrounging off the state (and getting everything delivered by actual working people).
Great post, this is why people are complaining they don't understand what Boris has said.They like their new life of getting paid for staying at home and are quite happy for other people to have worked to provide for them over the past 7 weeks. I don't remember anyone wondering how social distancing is going on in Food Processing Centres. They don't care as it does not affect them, as long as they get their delivery of Waitrose Lasagne.
If the figure of 37% of the working population is WTF is true (mentioned earlier), then at 50-60% of the working population is at work.
That sounds odd. Staying alert is an ALTERNATIVE to staying at home. You need to be alert when you are out. When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back to what it normally is for most people - not particularly alert.
Yes in plain natural English I think this is right. If the key slogan had been "take care" or "be cautious", then "take care by staying at home" or "be cautious by staying at home" would have fitted together rather better. Though they arguably lack the required sense of urgency when applied to out-of-home activities!
Having said that, as per my previous post, I think "stay alert" could eventually come to mean - as far as the average punter is concerned - whatever the government wants us to think that it means. Just like "stay at home" didn't end up meaning, literally, "stay at home". My issue with "stay alert" is similar to the one you've flagged up though - that if it doesn't seem congruent with "stay at home", despite being cunningly worded to recall that slogan, there's a risk of "stay at home when possible" being diluted as a message when it is still a key part of the current phase. We will have to see how this all pans out, but I think a lot will rest on the government's message discipline and whether the creative part of its comms team can craft the kind of public information films and internet adverts that capture the complexity and nuance of the current phase's advice and manage to communicate a clear, consistent core message.
The problem is they now want to get different messages out to several different groups of people. You can't really do that with the super compact Get Brexit Done template.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandary. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy. .
I can find that pretty plausible, it's how most governments act most of the time - the rest of the time being overly decisive in an effort to 'do something' - though I hope it's not the case.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I gather there are particular issues due to the LGBT angle.
Lee Youngwu , a gay man in his 30s, told the Guardian:
I admit it was a huge mistake to visit the gay district when the corona situation was not fully over. But visiting the area is the only time when I can be myself and hang out with others similar to me. During the week, I have to pretend to like women.
My credit card company told me that they passed on my payment information in the district to the authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face a public humiliation. I feel as if my whole life is about to collapse. I have never felt suicidal before and never thought I would, but I am feeling suicidal now...
A company I was working with wanted to setup an office in South Korea. I mentioned that there would be substantial cultural issues (it was in arts and media) for the existing workforce and the prevalent climate in SK. They simply denied there could be any such issues.
It didn't end well.
Some pretty big misogyny issues, too. Korea has become an advanced nation very quickly, but a lot of things haven't moved quite so fast.
Most of the working class are probably still working and have been throughout. It is the middle class who are sunbathing in their garden on 80-100% pay (or wasting their day on politicalbetting or whatever flavour website takes their fancy).
There's plenty of furloughed people in the southeast making a tidy profit from saving ££££ on commuting into London. Again, this will be white collar people benefitting.
I live in a block of flats and my neighbours include a washing machine engineer and a builder. They have been working throughout. It's us white collar workers squirrelled in our flats scrounging off the state (and getting everything delivered by actual working people).
Great post, this is why people are complaining they don't understand what Boris has said.They like their new life of getting paid for staying at home and are quite happy for other people to have worked to provide for them over the past 7 weeks. I don't remember anyone wondering how social distancing is going on in Food Processing Centres. They don't care as it does not affect them, as long as they get their delivery of Waitrose Lasagne.
If the figure of 37% of the working population is WTF is true...
Can you imagine the reaction if he had said only 250 people died on Tuesday?
Yes I can - and there lies the problem. The fact is that only 250 people are dying each day (NHS England only) IS good news compared to where we were and given the size of the population. It IS good news what the death rate from covid is likely to prove to be well under 1%, when it was originally expected to be much higher - which means that over 99% survive it. The government is suffering a paralysis - and being frightened to say such things continues to skew the public`s perception of risk.
Huawei and some older mobile phones cannot run the NHS contact-tracing app being trialled on the Isle of Wight, according to NHSX, the health service's digital innovation unit. Dr Geraint Lewis, who is in charge of the development of the NHS Covid-19 app, said the new tool would only work with newer operating systems on Apple and Samsung phones.
Did they not try this app using virtualization software and you know perhaps get a range of real devices beforehand?
We aren't getting this app (pivoted to use Google/IoS API) for another month are we, at the earliest.
It takes 3-4 weeks to take an app from concept to production, at least from my experience. We've only just started concepting for the new version of the app so at least another 3 weeks.
Most of the working class are probably still working and have been throughout. It is the middle class who are sunbathing in their garden on 80-100% pay (or wasting their day on politicalbetting or whatever flavour website takes their fancy).
There's plenty of furloughed people in the southeast making a tidy profit from saving ££££ on commuting into London. Again, this will be white collar people benefitting.
I live in a block of flats and my neighbours include a washing machine engineer and a builder. They have been working throughout. It's us white collar workers squirrelled in our flats scrounging off the state (and getting everything delivered by actual working people).
Great post, this is why people are complaining they don't understand what Boris has said.They like their new life of getting paid for staying at home and are quite happy for other people to have worked to provide for them over the past 7 weeks. I don't remember anyone wondering how social distancing is going on in Food Processing Centres. They don't care as it does not affect them, as long as they get their delivery of Waitrose Lasagne.
People are complaining, because he wasn’t clear. Anecdotal evidence is everywhere.
Remember that he used the privilege of a Prime Ministerial address to make the announcement (to which I believe formally the other parties have the right to reply).
He could have just waited until the detailed document was ready and then put it before parliament in the normal way. The only argument for a prime TV broadcast was to explain in clear headline terms what was being announced. Which he has failed to do.
No it`s not. Other than obviously the last few days, which is clearly indicated. It is David Paton`s graph produced by bar chart. The falling death figures are massively encouraging.
The daily hospital death rate in England is probably around 150-175 per day at the moment. The community transmission rate implied by the falling death rate should allow for a fairly broad opening up of the economy. These baby steps are a good start but we can probably go quite a bit further.
Shopping this morning: no queues at any of the local supermarkets. Very, very long queues for banks and building societies (showing my age -- I guess technically they are banks too).
Horseshit...He did not miss the meeting afaik. He did not attend it which is entirely different.
He would hardly as PM just not show up on the day, having said he would attend.
So there is in fact little difference.
He said he would attend?
No - he would not say he would attend and then not turn up. Therefore "miss" in that sense is unthinkable. Thus "miss" in practice means "did not see the need to put it in his schedule". Thus there is not (in practice) some massive difference between "miss" and "did not attend". They both mean (in practice) "did not see the need to put it in his schedule". Which was my point.
The daily hospital death rate in England is probably around 150-175 per day at the moment. The community transmission rate implied by the falling death rate should allow for a fairly broad opening up of the economy. These baby steps are a good start but we can probably go quite a bit further.
"Baby steps"! The figures have fallen from a 880+ peak.
Thanks for comments on the new mobile version of PB. Hopefully the tech team will be able to fix the cropping off of the first character issue in each comment.
Apart from that the mobile site is working faster than the main one
One of the many things I dislike about 24 hr news is the way they cut an interview short with the interviewee mid sentence. They did this with Ed Miliband on BBC just now to go to the Scottish briefing. It is just so rude and also unnecessary, they could just have finished up the interview and ran the Scottish briefing with a few seconds delay. (And separately at the risk of incoming from our Scots contingent, not sure that the Scots briefing needs 30 mins live coverage every day on the UK wide news channel, there are Scottish specific channels).
Of course it's 2 way traffic. Some people may thinks Matt Hancock going alertly into No 10 is more important than what the FM thinks, others may not.
Thanks for comments on the new mobile version of PB. Hopefully the tech team will be able to fix the cropping off of the first character issue in each comment.
Apart from that the mobile site is working faster than the main one
And the comment order issue?
How did you even access the comments? Clicking on the article title just enlarged the image, for me
No it`s not. Other than obviously the last few days, which is clearly indicated. It is David Paton`s graph produced by bar chart. The falling death figures are massively encouraging.
So the “super cautious” Labour Welsh administration (with the worst Covid rates and poorest testing) are opening garden centres, libraries and recycling centres, while the reckless Tory government in England are not.
Our recycling centre reopened only due to the personal efforts of our Tory MP so claimed the MP and his cheerleaders on Fbook. When challenged by ordinary punters that this was probably a Bad Idea due to queuing and this virus said cheerleaders said the blame would lie with the Labour council for reopening it.
Most of the working class are probably still working and have been throughout. It is the middle class who are sunbathing in their garden on 80-100% pay (or wasting their day on politicalbetting or whatever flavour website takes their fancy).
There's plenty of furloughed people in the southeast making a tidy profit from saving ££££ on commuting into London. Again, this will be white collar people benefitting.
I live in a block of flats and my neighbours include a washing machine engineer and a builder. They have been working throughout. It's us white collar workers squirrelled in our flats scrounging off the state (and getting everything delivered by actual working people).
Great post, this is why people are complaining they don't understand what Boris has said.They like their new life of getting paid for staying at home and are quite happy for other people to have worked to provide for them over the past 7 weeks. I don't remember anyone wondering how social distancing is going on in Food Processing Centres. They don't care as it does not affect them, as long as they get their delivery of Waitrose Lasagne.
We should be a little bit careful tarring everybody who is having a relatively comfortable experience during this lockdown with the same brush. Quite apart from those for whom this is a true ordeal, I am sure that many of those who are managing reasonably well are at the very least willing to accept that they need to go back out to work again as soon as it becomes feasible to do so. But there's doubtless also a substantial element of the workforce that is rather enjoying being paid to sit on their fat arses whilst remaining happily isolated from the plague that stalks the land outside.
You can argue the toss over the details of how the Government is going about the task of encouraging the far arse brigade back out the door, but when we get down to brass tacks only two groups of people who are employed, and would therefore be in work at the moment if this catastrophe had not overtaken us, should be entitled to income replacement by the state (providing that their work cannot be done from home):
1. Those working in businesses that have been forcibly shuttered by Government regulation 2. Those who have been essentially ordered into house arrest under the shielding rules
Everyone else has been permitted to travel to work throughout the pandemic, and we need those people to work, provided that their working conditions have been made compliant with the necessary hygiene and distancing requirements. These are not rocket science. A great many organisations have already managed to do this and have remained operational throughout the pandemic as a result. So most of the employers have no excuses either.
It simply isn't on for the fat arse brigade to expect other people to go out to work - and accept the attendant risk of catching the plague - just so that they can be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed. And no, being frightened of the virus does not count as sufficient excuse for continued inertia.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
It's not concern, it's faux outrageux from people who would give Boris no credit if thins went right and jump on every perceived error as if its a catastrophe
And why should they do one or the other? They are phasing something out, it's entirely the right thing to do tread the middle path
They're not treading a middle path. Are they advising or not?
They don't want people to be as locked in as they were, nor go out like everything is ok. Cautious tiptoeing out is what they want, and looks like that's what they're getting.
I despair at the feebleness of people, they should be embarrassed not to have the nous to work out this for themselves.
But you're substituting what you wish government would say for what they're actually saying. (I have quite a lot of sympathy with your wish, but it really isn't what's being said.)
They're still trying to give advice, and making a complete horlicks of it.
I am not substituting it, I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted the message to be slightly vague so people tiptoe out of lockdown. They probably credit the public with having more common sense than the media do.
What is the message everyone is getting? You're allowed to do more than last week but not much more. That's enough
Studied vagueness would be fine with an appropriate message about making your own cautious assessment. Having a senior government minister unclear whether you can appropriately meet one parent or both simultaneously is just inept.
If I want to meet one of my parents or both, I would just do it. I have done it several times since lockdown, actually; I cycled to their house and we stood/sat at opposite ends of the garden and had a chinwag.
Grown ups should make their own choices and live with the consequences, not wait for/blame the government.
Not a problem under the new guidance as long as you clean their house.
There are still somewhere between 15-20k new infections per day. If he had come on and said look only about 200 new deaths a day now, look how you the public are winning, he would have got absolutely lambasted on a number of angles.
a) A genuine criticism of being irresponsible, as new infection rate still high, R still likely very close to danger level. It could easily give people wrong message that it is totally safe out there.
b) The media still don't get the death totals, so would have arguing / debating this figure rather than the core message.
c) Opponents already scream and shout about the absolute death total anytime he mentions that we are past the peak, doing well, etc.
It was clearly a similar policy not to mention we had past the peak, which was about the 8th April, until well into May.
That all been said, I have said since the start, the government charts at the daily press conference are bollocks. They should have produced the ones like Prof Cricket from the get go.
Prof Cricket has been brilliant, someone who actually understands statistics.
I pointed out the linear trendline in deaths a week ago and said that if it continued we'd be on trend to have no daily deaths by the end of next (now this) week - remarkably we still seem on trend for that. Not that I expect that to happen, there has to be a plateau at some point but the lower the plateau the better.
No it`s not. Other than obviously the last few days, which is clearly indicated. It is David Paton`s graph produced by bar chart. The falling death figures are massively encouraging.
There are still somewhere between 15-20k new infections per day. If he had come on and said look only about 200 new deaths a day now, look how you the public are winning, he would have got absolutely lambasted on a number of angles.
a) A genuine criticism of being irresponsible, as new infection rate still high, R still likely very close to danger level. It could easily give people wrong message that it is totally safe out there.
b) The media still don't get the death totals, so would have arguing / debating this figure rather than the core message.
c) Opponents already scream and shout about the absolute death total anytime he mentions that we are past the peak, doing well, etc.
It was clearly a similar policy not to mention we had past the peak, which was about the 8th April, until well into May.
That all been said, I have said since the start, the government charts at the daily press conference are bollocks. They should have produced the ones like Prof Cricket from the get go.
On the other hand...
A simple arithmetic rationale for crushing the epidemic curve of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) instead of flattening it https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20093112v1 Countries with ambitious strategies to "crush the curve" of their epidemic trajectories, to promptly eliminate SARS-CoV-2 transmission at national level, include China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia. In stark contrast, many of the European countries hit hardest over the last two months, including Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and the United Kingdom, currently appear content to merely "flatten the curve" of their epidemic trajectories so that transmission persists at rates their critical care services can cope with. Here is presented a simple set of arithmetic modelling analyses that explain why preferable crush the "curve strategies", to eliminate transmission within months, would require only a modest amount of additional containment effort when compared to "flatten the curve" strategies that allow epidemics to persist at a steady, supposedly manageable level for years, decades or even indefinitely...
No it`s not. Other than obviously the last few days, which is clearly indicated. It is David Paton`s graph produced by bar chart. The falling death figures are massively encouraging.
Do you actually think only 33 people died of Covid on the 9th?
Do you see how the number get revised upwards for all the previous days?
No of course I don`t think that . Read my post. I said "under 250 now". Once revised, the daily run rate is under 250 p/d. Down from 880 + at peak. Cracking success - don`t you agree?
Mr. Divvie, that reminds me, writ small, of a decade or more ago. It was before the Germany-hosted World Cup.
A man whose bid to have the Saudi Government sued for his torture was speaking about the bid's failure. The news (BBC, I think) cut to live footage of the England football team's coach pulling up to its hotel.
I'm not a Sturgeon fan, as you may be aware, but that's absolutely shocking, even by Burley's standards.
No it`s not. Other than obviously the last few days, which is clearly indicated. It is David Paton`s graph produced by bar chart. The falling death figures are massively encouraging.
Do you actually think only 33 people died of Covid on the 9th?
Do you see how the number get revised upwards for all the previous days?
No of course I don`t think that . Read my post. I said "under 250 now". Once revised, the daily run rate is under 250 p/d. Down from 880 + at peak. Cracking success - don`t you agree?
That sounds odd. Staying alert is an ALTERNATIVE to staying at home. You need to be alert when you are out. When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back to what it normally is for most people - not particularly alert.
When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back - but by being alert you can choose to spend more time in.
But "alert" carries an air of strained activism. You alertly decide to stay at home so that you don't need to be alert? That doesn't scan.
On reflection, I much prefer "woke" - since this implies a constant state of enlightened awareness.
Stay Woke (to the virus). Save Lives.
You`re an arse kinabalu
That is a touch unfair! We must stay woke to the danger (at all times) but not be paralyzed by it. Is there a better way of putting it? Not sure there is.
Actually what has been revealing amongst this crisis is how many people who, I would guess, consider themselves proud atheists, the type that mock organised religion and all that follow it, have really just replaced traditional religion and its leaders with politics. They cant think for themselves and wait on the PM/Govt every pronouncement in order to live their life in just the way people used to on Vicars/Churches in the old days, yet they genuinely believe they are above all that.
The people whose tweets Scott has chosen to post today would no doubt say "Tell us how to fuck off!" if Boris told them to
You're mischaracterising a lot of the concern. The government should shit or get off the pot. Currently it is doing neither.
Yes, but if it shits the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have got off the pot" and if it gets off the pot the opposition/unions/media/keyboard warriers will say "you should have had a good ole shit".
Probably. Either would be better than the current horlicks.
My sense - re this helpful analogy - is that PM Johnson is in a genuine quandry. He does not have the confidence to shit. Neither does he feel able to get up and leave the cubicle. So there he squats, waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that things do not get too messy.
And the root cause of this is (i) lack of knowledge about the virus and (ii) suspicion verging on certainty that track & trace at scale is beyond us.
Just as interesting point on track and trace. South Korea, the gold standard, the big daddy, the state sponsored surveillance system that no Western government could ever get their population to buy into, in this outbreak in the nightclub, only tracked down 700 people out of the 6000-7000 at these venues after several days.
I gather there are particular issues due to the LGBT angle.
Lee Youngwu , a gay man in his 30s, told the Guardian:
I admit it was a huge mistake to visit the gay district when the corona situation was not fully over. But visiting the area is the only time when I can be myself and hang out with others similar to me. During the week, I have to pretend to like women.
My credit card company told me that they passed on my payment information in the district to the authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face a public humiliation. I feel as if my whole life is about to collapse. I have never felt suicidal before and never thought I would, but I am feeling suicidal now...
Awful situation. LGBT is not accepted in many countries in that region. Singapore and Malaysia, for example, where I have spent much time.
That sounds odd. Staying alert is an ALTERNATIVE to staying at home. You need to be alert when you are out. When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back to what it normally is for most people - not particularly alert.
When you're in you can allow your level of alertness to fall back - but by being alert you can choose to spend more time in.
But "alert" carries an air of strained activism. You alertly decide to stay at home so that you don't need to be alert? That doesn't scan.
On reflection, I much prefer "woke" - since this implies a constant state of enlightened awareness.
Stay Woke (to the virus). Save Lives.
Of course it works. The reason you're staying in is because you're alert to the dangers of going out.
Surprised you would go to the barricades over this one. The concept and phrase is at the very least a bit clumsy. Ugly even. OK, not quite as ugly as a Michael Gove bookshelf, but still.
Sean and his acolytes do not only post their bollox on here, but even by his standards this is absolute barking Little Englander claptrap. ...............
Englishmen are returning to work to do the jobs and pay the taxes that provide the money - for Scotsmen to stay at home. Which also means Englishmen will die so that Scotsmen may live. https://twitter.com/thomasknox/status/1259789580875726849
If Sturgeon wants to lock down Scotland for longer she should be free to do so. And if that isn't covered by Barnett consequentials then Sturgeon can raise taxes if need be.
Pity she does not have any control over taxes as that is retained by Westminster. Try to engage your brain Philip. Your Little Englander threats are pretty childish, why not Bozo the clown just declare Scotland as independent.
Some taxes are retained in Westminster, many are in Scotland and Sturgeon has the power to change taxes.
No threats. Scotland should do what it wants to do and pay for it accordingly how it wants to do so. I do believe Scotland should be independent.
Almost all taxes are retained and they cannot affect them and are only allowed to borrow a very small amount , you know less than nothing of devolution , Barnett , tax powers, etc I see.
More can be affected than you make out.
And I think the limits on borrowing should be removed. In fact I think you should have complete power over taxes and spending. Do you disagree?
As you know I want full independence, anything else will be a fudge with London still in control, giving all tax powers to Scotland would just lead to constant bickering re us trying to do England down etc. Sooner it is done the better.
One of the many things I dislike about 24 hr news is the way they cut an interview short with the interviewee mid sentence. They did this with Ed Miliband on BBC just now to go to the Scottish briefing. It is just so rude and also unnecessary, they could just have finished up the interview and ran the Scottish briefing with a few seconds delay. (And separately at the risk of incoming from our Scots contingent, not sure that the Scots briefing needs 30 mins live coverage every day on the UK wide news channel, there are Scottish specific channels).
we get every inch of news from down south every day of our lives and you have to wait up till an ungodly hour before they give the supposed Scottish news which most times is 50% minimum repeat of the London news. No idea why we should be tortured with the English hour live every night.
Comments
This Tory Govt is decaying from the inside....and fast....
Most people have their own lives to worry about. No one would have been expecting any huge changes, so whether you can meet with two, three or four people is neither here nor there to most people.
(Android 10, latest Chrome)
So I’m sticking to Vanilla for the moment.
To most people whether you can meet with two, three or four people is absolutely central.
Although not to people who are well off, comfortable, maybe with families in large houses, perhaps a garden. Not you, though, right?
I guess he doesn't realise that if everyone stays home and doesn't work, there won't be any need for unions as there will be no jobs and a loaf of bread will be £100.
You won't find any evidence of me criticizing urban dwellers from spending time in the parks. I think some police forces have behaved - and still are behaving - disgracefully during all of this.
On reflection, I much prefer "woke" - since this implies a constant state of enlightened awareness.
Stay Woke (to the virus). Save Lives.
Major's decaying government was opposed by Blair, Brown, Cook and Blunkett.
Brown's sinking ship was opposed by Cameron and Osborne.
Keir Starmer is ably supported by...? He himself would have made a capable shadow minister of state in Blair's shadow team.
I live in a block of flats and my neighbours include a washing machine engineer and a builder. They have been working throughout. It's us white collar workers squirrelled in our flats scrounging off the state (and getting everything delivered by actual working people).
Bill Gates said you need it to be 24hrs max due to the nature of this virus.
Johnson completely failed to get this across yesterday. A good news opportunity squandered.
https://twitter.com/WesleyR1980/status/1259804092546912258/photo/1
I admit it was a huge mistake to visit the gay district when the corona situation was not fully over. But visiting the area is the only time when I can be myself and hang out with others similar to me. During the week, I have to pretend to like women.
My credit card company told me that they passed on my payment information in the district to the authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face a public humiliation. I feel as if my whole life is about to collapse. I have never felt suicidal before and never thought I would, but I am feeling suicidal now...
The (near) complete absence of test, track and trace in the PMs announcement is a strong indicator our capability is still nowhere near where it needs to be.
The problems with the Police acting like prats is because they've been trying to enforce things that aren't the law. That's not their job.
My sense is that the government are in a genuine and total tizz about how best to proceed.
Apart from that the mobile site is working faster than the main one
There are still somewhere between 15-20k new infections per day. If he had come on and said look only about 200 new deaths a day now, look how you the public are winning, he would have got absolutely lambasted on a number of angles.
a) A genuine criticism of being irresponsible, as new infection rate still high, R still likely very close to danger level. It could easily give people wrong message that it is totally safe out there.
b) The media still don't get the death totals, so would have arguing / debating this figure rather than the core message.
c) Opponents already scream and shout about the absolute death total anytime he mentions that we are past the peak, doing well, etc.
It was clearly a similar policy not to mention we had past the peak, which was about the 8th April, until well into May.
That all been said, I have said since the start, the government charts at the daily press conference are bollocks. They should have produced the ones like Prof Cricket from the get go.
So there is in fact little difference.
So I'll thank you not to invent my opinion for me to make yourself feel superior.
At the risk of being an armchair scientist, you would surely want to make sure the decline is steady, and cases at a low enough level to make a rise a non-disaster, before you started to lift the lockdown. Gradually.
I don't care so much about precise arbitrary targets, but the fact they are still doing bugger all testing is a massive problem, especially given the hotspot is Cardiff and large amounts of traffic between Cardiff and places like Bristol every day.
It didn't end well.
They also need to start attacking Starmer (and Sturgeon).
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/10/kamala-harris-early-biden-vice-president-favorite-248615
Did they not try this app using virtualization software and you know perhaps get a range of real devices beforehand?
We aren't getting this app (pivoted to use Google/IoS API) for another month are we, at the earliest.
Korea has become an advanced nation very quickly, but a lot of things haven't moved quite so fast.
Remember that he used the privilege of a Prime Ministerial address to make the announcement (to which I believe formally the other parties have the right to reply).
He could have just waited until the detailed document was ready and then put it before parliament in the normal way. The only argument for a prime TV broadcast was to explain in clear headline terms what was being announced. Which he has failed to do.
See below:
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1259477893828227072/photo/1
Edit: 29 minutes.
Things I do for you, Rob.
https://twitter.com/NSP55/status/1259758559052599296?s=20
Do you see how the number get revised upwards for all the previous days?
You can argue the toss over the details of how the Government is going about the task of encouraging the far arse brigade back out the door, but when we get down to brass tacks only two groups of people who are employed, and would therefore be in work at the moment if this catastrophe had not overtaken us, should be entitled to income replacement by the state (providing that their work cannot be done from home):
1. Those working in businesses that have been forcibly shuttered by Government regulation
2. Those who have been essentially ordered into house arrest under the shielding rules
Everyone else has been permitted to travel to work throughout the pandemic, and we need those people to work, provided that their working conditions have been made compliant with the necessary hygiene and distancing requirements. These are not rocket science. A great many organisations have already managed to do this and have remained operational throughout the pandemic as a result. So most of the employers have no excuses either.
It simply isn't on for the fat arse brigade to expect other people to go out to work - and accept the attendant risk of catching the plague - just so that they can be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed. And no, being frightened of the virus does not count as sufficient excuse for continued inertia.
I pointed out the linear trendline in deaths a week ago and said that if it continued we'd be on trend to have no daily deaths by the end of next (now this) week - remarkably we still seem on trend for that. Not that I expect that to happen, there has to be a plateau at some point but the lower the plateau the better.
After about 3-4 days the changes are very small.
A simple arithmetic rationale for crushing the epidemic curve of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) instead of flattening it
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20093112v1
Countries with ambitious strategies to "crush the curve" of their epidemic trajectories, to promptly eliminate SARS-CoV-2 transmission at national level, include China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia. In stark contrast, many of the European countries hit hardest over the last two months, including Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and the United Kingdom, currently appear content to merely "flatten the curve" of their epidemic trajectories so that transmission persists at rates their critical care services can cope with. Here is presented a simple set of arithmetic modelling analyses that explain why preferable crush the "curve strategies", to eliminate transmission within months, would require only a modest amount of additional containment effort when compared to "flatten the curve" strategies that allow epidemics to persist at a steady, supposedly manageable level for years, decades or even indefinitely...
A man whose bid to have the Saudi Government sued for his torture was speaking about the bid's failure. The news (BBC, I think) cut to live footage of the England football team's coach pulling up to its hotel.
I'm not a Sturgeon fan, as you may be aware, but that's absolutely shocking, even by Burley's standards.
Still in the weekend effect of course