Starmer has the ability to win 270 seats, IMHO. After that it becomes tricky.
270 is all he needs plus 45 odd SNP and 20 to 30 LDs
If Labour advances to that extent in England & Wales, I do not see the SNP on 45 seats. More likely they fall back to circa 30 with Labour on circa 285.
Maybe but it does not really matter whether 270 Labour and 45 SNP or 285 Labour and 30 SNP they would still be the same number of anti Tory block MPs
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
To me the correct PR strategy would have not been a week of the announcement is coming, the speech, then another day and the document.
It would have been so much better for it to be briefed much closer to the speech, then for him to set the tone and general direction and then end with and now we publish our plans, can be found here...and for god's sake send out Gove, rather than Raab.
All the lead up led to speculation, gossip and leaks, then Boris spoke and then it left another day with people going but I don't understand, there is no hard and fast rules.
News of Scotland's first confirmed coronavirus case, in Tayside, was announced on 1 March.
The BBC can reveal the virus had been brought to Scotland the week before.
An outbreak began in Edinburgh on 26 and 27 of February at a conference for the sportswear giant Nike. More than 70 employees from all over the world attended the conference at the Hilton Carlton Hotel.... At least 25 people linked to this one event are confirmed to have been infected
I honestly don't expect Johnson to lead the Tories into the next election. They tend to be ruthless once they realise their leader is a liability, which is one of the reasons they don't lose very often.
Time to back a prominent Tory with some sort of attention to detail but enough pro-Leave credentials to satisfy the members, if you're into the "next prime minister" market. Javid was available at 33-1 last time I looked. Or just bet against Starmer, whose odds are pretty short but who can't be the next PM if Johnson doesn't last to 2024.
Will Boris even want to. I presume he thought Get Brexit Done 2020, well somebody else negotiate getting Brexit done and then be easy street.
Instead he is probably got at least 2-3 years of dealing with Coronavirus (and longer to deal with the economic fall out) and Brexit deal will get delayed for another year at least.
He was smart enough to realise that to win the Tory leadership and then the GE he just needed to be full of bonhomie and be the most Brexity-thing on offer. I am still not convinced he is really that bothered about Brexit either way, he simply saw it as his vehicle to the top.
The plan was all going swimmingly up till 2 months ago.
I certainly don't think that that gruelling and depressing slog ahead is what Boris signed up for and I can quite see him jacking it in in a year or two using poor health as his get-out card.
To be honest, if Coronavirus does turn into a 2-3 year thing, I wouldn't blame any politician for saying I have done my bit, I am off. Being PM at the best of times is a day in, day out job, but dealing with a war or a global pandemic is orders of magnitude greater in terms of time and also the pressure of the decision making. Should I go with HS2 or not or dodgy Chinese company for 5G, is totally different stress to should I allow schools to reopen, because that might kill a load more people.
I agree and I'd hate to have the responsibility but I still believe that Boris will be less up for it than most of his predecessors. I think there is a reasonable chance he will not be PM by the next GE.
Much as I dislike his character Johnson is undoubtedly a vote-winner for the Tories. Of the current cabinet I could only see Sunak making a decent fist of taking over and he still has some way to go to prove himself. Probably getting ahead of myself now!
I think both would beat Starmer easily, if he were up against anyone else he might win
Wilson appeared pretty invincible in 1966 - and certainly not at all threatened by Heath. Despite that, Heath won a majority of 30 in 1970. Johnson does not come remotely close to being a leader of Wilson's calibre , and I suspect voters will be far more comfortable with Starmer than they ever were with Heath.
News of Scotland's first confirmed coronavirus case, in Tayside, was announced on 1 March.
The BBC can reveal the virus had been brought to Scotland the week before.
An outbreak began in Edinburgh on 26 and 27 of February at a conference for the sportswear giant Nike. More than 70 employees from all over the world attended the conference at the Hilton Carlton Hotel.... At least 25 people linked to this one event are confirmed to have been infected
If Texas goes Democrat, you might as well give up trying to win the presidency if you're a Republican for the next 20 years.
Though Hubert Humphrey carried Texas in 1968 and still lost! Admittedly the Republicans were then still able to win California and Illinois - both of which are now well beyond them.
I honestly don't expect Johnson to lead the Tories into the next election. They tend to be ruthless once they realise their leader is a liability, which is one of the reasons they don't lose very often.
Time to back a prominent Tory with some sort of attention to detail but enough pro-Leave credentials to satisfy the members, if you're into the "next prime minister" market. Javid was available at 33-1 last time I looked. Or just bet against Starmer, whose odds are pretty short but who can't be the next PM if Johnson doesn't last to 2024.
Will Boris even want to. I presume he thought Get Brexit Done 2020, well somebody else negotiate getting Brexit done and then be easy street.
Instead he is probably got at least 2-3 years of dealing with Coronavirus (and longer to deal with the economic fall out) and Brexit deal will get delayed for another year at least.
He was smart enough to realise that to win the Tory leadership and then the GE he just needed to be full of bonhomie and be the most Brexity-thing on offer. I am still not convinced he is really that bothered about Brexit either way, he simply saw it as his vehicle to the top.
The plan was all going swimmingly up till 2 months ago.
I certainly don't think that that gruelling and depressing slog ahead is what Boris signed up for and I can quite see him jacking it in in a year or two using poor health as his get-out card.
To be honest, if Coronavirus does turn into a 2-3 year thing, I wouldn't blame any politician for saying I have done my bit, I am off. Being PM at the best of times is a day in, day out job, but dealing with a war or a global pandemic is orders of magnitude greater in terms of time and also the pressure of the decision making. Should I go with HS2 or not or dodgy Chinese company for 5G, is totally different stress to should I allow schools to reopen, because that might kill a load more people.
I agree and I'd hate to have the responsibility but I still believe that Boris will be less up for it than most of his predecessors. I think there is a reasonable chance he will not be PM by the next GE.
Much as I dislike his character Johnson is undoubtedly a vote-winner for the Tories. Of the current cabinet I could only see Sunak making a decent fist of taking over and he still has some way to go to prove himself. Probably getting ahead of myself now!
I think both would beat Starmer easily, if he were up against anyone else he might win
Wilson appeared pretty invincible in 1966 - and certainly not at all threatened by Heath. Despite that, Heath won a majority of 30 in 1970. Johnson does not come remotely close to being a leader of Wilson's calibre , and I suspect voters will be far more comfortable with Starmer than they ever were with Heath.
Wilson of course came back to beat Heath in 1974 much as Churchill came back to beat Attlee in 1951 after their shock defeats in 1945 and 1970 respectively
I honestly don't expect Johnson to lead the Tories into the next election. They tend to be ruthless once they realise their leader is a liability, which is one of the reasons they don't lose very often.
Time to back a prominent Tory with some sort of attention to detail but enough pro-Leave credentials to satisfy the members, if you're into the "next prime minister" market. Javid was available at 33-1 last time I looked. Or just bet against Starmer, whose odds are pretty short but who can't be the next PM if Johnson doesn't last to 2024.
Will Boris even want to. I presume he thought Get Brexit Done 2020, well somebody else negotiate getting Brexit done and then be easy street.
Instead he is probably got at least 2-3 years of dealing with Coronavirus (and longer to deal with the economic fall out) and Brexit deal will get delayed for another year at least.
He was smart enough to realise that to win the Tory leadership and then the GE he just needed to be full of bonhomie and be the most Brexity-thing on offer. I am still not convinced he is really that bothered about Brexit either way, he simply saw it as his vehicle to the top.
The plan was all going swimmingly up till 2 months ago.
I certainly don't think that that gruelling and depressing slog ahead is what Boris signed up for and I can quite see him jacking it in in a year or two using poor health as his get-out card.
To be honest, if Coronavirus does turn into a 2-3 year thing, I wouldn't blame any politician for saying I have done my bit, I am off. Being PM at the best of times is a day in, day out job, but dealing with a war or a global pandemic is orders of magnitude greater in terms of time and also the pressure of the decision making. Should I go with HS2 or not or dodgy Chinese company for 5G, is totally different stress to should I allow schools to reopen, because that might kill a load more people.
I agree and I'd hate to have the responsibility but I still believe that Boris will be less up for it than most of his predecessors. I think there is a reasonable chance he will not be PM by the next GE.
Much as I dislike his character Johnson is undoubtedly a vote-winner for the Tories. Of the current cabinet I could only see Sunak making a decent fist of taking over and he still has some way to go to prove himself. Probably getting ahead of myself now!
I think both would beat Starmer easily, if he were up against anyone else he might win
Wilson appeared pretty invincible in 1966 - and certainly not at all threatened by Heath. Despite that, Heath won a majority of 30 in 1970. Johnson does not come remotely close to being a leader of Wilson's calibre , and I suspect voters will be far more comfortable with Starmer than they ever were with Heath.
Are you a betting man? I'll lay 13/8 Starmer is PM by 2025
Includes Trumps favourite drug, which a number of studies have now found doesn't work.
I do know that anti Malarial drugs have been prescribed to patients diagnosed a having this thing including being prescribed by GPs. Two people i know well were put on those drugs so something somewhere must make the medical brains think it could help.
The China Virus: The stories keep coming in dribs & drabs each with a different angle. The latest report from NBC involved suggestions some kind kind of incident at the lab in mid October based on SIGNIT (or the lack of it) from the site.
Curiously the timeline runs similar to one that I proposed on here a few weeks back. What made it potentially interesting, however, was the methodology by which they deducted something was up. In a recent post I reckoned the US might have to reveal its raw source collection method if it had a case it actually wanted to prove rather than just suggest. Of course, they could be lying about the method to ensure keystone collection methods remain in place and of course the whole story could be false. It, does, have a bit more reality to it. The source is suggested without going into over detail, the nature of what happened is not precise but is something that would raise the eyebrows. In short it fits where the US are at the moment which is trying to put a series of fragments into a firm conclusion about what. The when around Coivd 19 they probably can calculate but the what is the bit they cannot firmly conclude on yet. They don't have everything needed to say it was definitely A or B, its all probabilities as of today.
The thing to watch for in reports via major media organs: Most releases of 'intelligence' stories in the media in the West don't come from within the intelligence community directly, they come from government officials or indeed politicians who get to hear something. If they do come from intelligence community they are often by government approved release so its filtered . The attributed source is important, 'officials' even 'national security' officials often means non-IC people, Administration is plainly government and so on. Full on attribution to an 'Intelligence official' from an agency isn't that common. The unattributed actually needs careful monitoring because it may be valid. If the term 'agent' is used anywhere its been spruced up or made up.
Certain agencies have certain media organs they will talk off the record to knowing the info will get out because they trust their conduit. If you know the organs then you might well sort the wheat from the chaff.
One final note, there is every possibility that confidential reports and papers of Western governments and officials around Covid 19 talks, decisions and responses will get stolen & leaked within the next month. The operative word is stolen, its the kind of target outside actors would go for.
Starmer is a poundland Ed Miliband. What the Labour Party needs right now. But not the country.
He's still an infinitely better LotO than we've had for the past five years. A sensible Opposition can do a good job keeping government on their toes, something that's not been the case since 2015 with the ragged bunch of trots and anti-semites in charge.
A nightmare time for SKS to be taking over though, when no-one is paying attention to anything he has to say - but on the other hand, he's got a few months to clean up his own house away from too much public glare. Good luck to him.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Never in the field of televisual broadcast was so little offered to so many.
Includes Trumps favourite drug, which a number of studies have now found doesn't work.
I do know that anti Malarial drugs have been prescribed to patients diagnosed a having this thing including being prescribed by GPs. Two people i know well were put on those drugs so something somewhere must make the medical brains think it could help.
The China Virus: The stories keep coming in dribs & drabs each with a different angle. The latest report from NBC involved suggestions some kind kind of incident at the lab in mid October based on SIGNIT (or the lack of it) from the site.
Curiously the timeline runs similar to one that I proposed on here a few weeks back. What made it potentially interesting, however, was the methodology by which they deducted something was up. In a recent post I reckoned the US might have to reveal its raw source collection method if it had a case it actually wanted to prove rather than just suggest. Of course, they could be lying about the method to ensure keystone collection methods remain in place and of course the whole story could be false. It, does, have a bit more reality to it. The source is suggested without going into over detail, the nature of what happened is not precise but is something that would raise the eyebrows. In short it fits where the US are at the moment which is trying to put a series of fragments into a firm conclusion about what. The when around Coivd 19 they probably can calculate but the what is the bit they cannot firmly conclude on yet. They don't have everything needed to say it was definitely A or B, its all probabilities as of today..(snipped).
Two points about the BBC clinical trial story: firstly, it wouldn’t be entirely true to describe the anti malarial as ‘safe’, as it has significant side effects in some people, and secondly Francis is correct - the evidence of its efficacy is very slim indeed. Worse, the sheer number of trials involving the drug, thanks to the hype, have crowded out others, and it has been difficult to recruit the numbers needed properly to test what might be more promising treatments.
A novel bat coronavirus closely related to SARS-CoV-2 contains natural insertions at the S1/S2 cleavage site of the spike protein https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(20)30662-X.pdf ... Although bats are regarded as the most likely natural hosts for SARS-CoV-2 [3], the origins of the virus remain unclear. Here, we report a novel bat-derived coronavirus, denoted RmYN02, identified from a metagenomics analysis of samples from 227 bats collected from Yunnan Province in China between May and October, 2019. Notably, RmYN02 shares 93.3% nucleotide identity with SARS-CoV-2 at the scale of the complete virus genome and 97.2% identity in the 1ab gene, in which it is the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 reported to date. In contrast, RmYN02 showed low sequence identity (61.3%) to SARS-CoV-2 in the receptor binding domain (RBD) and might not bind to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Critically, and in a similar manner to SARS-CoV-2, RmYN02 was characterized by the insertion of multiple amino acids at the junction site of the S1 and S2 subunits of the spike (S) protein. This provides strong evidence that such insertion events can occur naturally in animal betacoronaviruses....
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
More likely, surely, is the theory that the government was spooked from its original plan leaving Boris with airtime to fill but not much to say. And it became apparent yesterday there is still confusion at the top about the new measures, again suggesting a late shift.
FPT Ydoethur said- '280 seats would require (excl. SNP/PC held seats) a UNS of c. 3.5%.
Not hard to see that happening.
However, that’s on existing boundaries, although they favour Labour rather less than they did. They will of course almost certainly be different come an election.
But it won’t be easy. They will have to work for it. '
I am not clear as to how you arrive at that.
A swing of 3.5% from Con only produces 34 Labour gains. Add in a few from SNP and Plaid and Labour only gets back to circa 240 seats. To get to 280 seats, Labour would need 77 net gains.70 of those gains would have to be at Tory expense - but implies a swing of circa 6.5%.
Morning Justin.
You’re quite right, and I apologise. I was looking at the wrong column. I thought it said ‘majority’ and it said ‘swing needed.’ Rookie error.
6.5 would be a very tough ask. Has any leader other than Blair achieved such a swing? However, if Johnson is still PM I don’t think it will be impossible.
Starmer is a poundland Ed Miliband. What the Labour Party needs right now. But not the country.
Oh come on, that's ridiculous. Sir Keir Starmer is way, way, above Ed Miliband. He has a forensic attention to detail, is highly intelligent and he will be a constant thorn in Boris' side because Boris' weakest point is his brief.
That doesn't mean Starmer will win the next election. He may not be that likeable. I don't know. But saying he's a poundland EdM is really silly.
Measuring immunity is important, but it isn’t easy. The most obvious way is to look for the presence of antibodies. But antibodies to what? The virus has many components. Its main entry weapon is known as Spike. This is a large, sugar-coated protein complex that can rip a hole in the membrane of a cell to allow the virus to enter. Block Spike, and you keep the virus out. It’s easy enough to measure antibodies to Spike, but not all of them actually prevent the virus from entering cells. To find out whether the antibodies are doing their job effectively, you have to culture the virus in a high-containment facility, titrate tiny amounts of serum extracted from the test subject’s blood into the virus culture, and demonstrate that the serum blocks the virus. It’s painfully slow. We are working on ways to make these assays faster, easier and more accurate. So are many others, and for once I’m happy when another lab does something better. The procedure isn’t going to be useful for testing on a large scale: instead, we’ll have to correlate antibody tests with the neutralisation assays. Some of the newly developed commercial antibody tests will probably correlate well. Others will be useful only for epidemiologists as markers of infection. Until very recently, most of the widely available tests have been so inaccurate as to be useless.
If someone outside a high-end research lab has conducted a test for you purporting to show that you are ‘immune’, I strongly caution against assuming it means anything. Lots of people have had symptoms compatible with coronavirus. In a recent draft of a study from an excellent laboratory in New York, 99.5 per cent of people who had confirmed infection developed antibodies eventually, sometimes several weeks after the test for the virus itself. Only 38 per cent of people with likely symptoms of Covid-19 – but with no positive test – had developed antibodies. Assuming that probable infection means definite immunity is a very big mistake.
There are four ‘seasonal’ coronaviruses – 229E, OC43, NL63 and HKU1 – that cause mild disease in nearly everyone, only occasionally causing pneumonia. They can be given to healthy volunteers to study the immune response. They cause the ‘common cold’, and in experimentally infected humans they give rise to an antibody response. That response wanes after a few months, and the same people can be experimentally reinfected, though they tend to get milder symptoms the second time round. It is thought that adults get reinfected on average about once every five years. Sars-CoV-2 causes mild disease in most cases, and gives rise to antibody responses in nearly all cases. We don’t know how long these responses will last, but it is likely that people who suffer only mild disease will be susceptible to reinfection after a few months or years. Humanity has never developed ‘herd immunity’ to any coronavirus, and it’s unlikely that Sars-CoV-2 infection will be any different. If we did nothing, a likely possibility is that Covid-19 would become a recurring plague. We don’t know yet.
Of course, saying that on average people get reinfected by seasonal coronaviruses once every five tears is very different from saying immunity lasts for five years. If the average period to reinfection is five years, the average duration of immunity will be less than that, perhaps much less, depending on the prevalence of the virus and its transmissibility.
Starmer is a poundland Ed Miliband. What the Labour Party needs right now. But not the country.
Oh come on, that's ridiculous. Sir Keir Starmer is way, way, above Ed Miliband. He has a forensic attention to detail, is highly intelligent and he will be a constant thorn in Boris' side because Boris' weakest point is his brief.
Johnson doesn’t do briefs.
They get in the way when he sees young...no. Let’s not lower the tone.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Never in the field of televisual broadcast was so little offered to so many.
9m watched Mrs. Brown's Boys at Christmas 2017....
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Never in the field of televisual broadcast was so little offered to so many.
9m watched Mrs. Brown's Boys at Christmas 2017....
Dehenna could do worse than frequent PB. When the BBC introduced Starmer, my first thought was "I don't remember seeing something like this before, when did this last happen?" And sure enough someone on here knew.
Dehenna could do worse than frequent PB. When the BBC introduced Starmer, my first thought was "I don't remember seeing something like this before, when did this last happen?" And sure enough someone on here knew.
All politicians should frequent PB.
If only to understand why there should be a blanket ban on all pizzas that have pineapple on them.
Mr. Coach, indeed. The BBC whined about the 'unforeseen consequences' of betting firms shedding jobs following the cut in FOBT stakes to £2 at most, yet this was entirely predictable (and was indeed predicted) at the time of the stakes change and garnered widespread approving noises from the media.
I expect to see the same kind of nonsense with the current situation. Whatever the Government does, jobs and lives will be lost. The best they can do is mitigate the numbers, although that also depends heavily on individual behaviour.
It seems plenty of people are either paralysed by fear or enjoying the paid holiday, both situations need to be addressed urgently.
P&O sacked 1100 yesterday this is just the start. And the same people complaining about the easing of rules will now be moaning about the job losses.
The govt face an impossible task I'm afraid
There was a comment on twitter that the Government had 6 weeks to prepare for the next phase and doesn't seem to have done that particularly well.
I suspect a lot of management in firms have spent the last 6 weeks more wisely. And in a lot of cases the future of their firm is going to be far smaller than it was before.
Boris does waffle .The politicians avoid answering questions. Journalists and broadcasters act like seven-year-olds.
I'd like to see proper answers from the experts. "No, that isn't a good question, it's the spoiled incomprehension of a child." "Please learn to add up before you ask questions you don't understand." "I refer to my previous seventeen answers." "I can explain that for the ninth time but you still won't understand." "No, Mr Peston, the confusion is totally yours."
That doesn't mean Starmer will win the next election. He may not be that likeable. I don't know.
(exposing my shallowness) I watched Sir K's last question time, and my initial thought was what a weird voice he has and how boring his vocal delivery was.
Now that might just be me, and it is probably correctable if he has good advisors.
However, and to address the thread header, the job of PM has become more and more presidential. The role therefore is less overtly political and requires someone who can "speak for the nation". Blair for all his other faults understood this, I suspect Starmer does not.
Boris does waffle .The politicians avoid answering questions. Journalists and broadcasters act like seven-year-olds.
I'd like to see proper answers from the experts. "No, that isn't a good question, it's the spoiled incomprehension of a child." "Please learn to add up before you ask questions you don't understand." "I refer to my previous seventeen answers." "I can explain that for the ninth time but you still won't understand." "No, Mr Peston, the confusion is totally yours."
I can think of some professors of my acquaintance who would have said all that, as well!
It seems plenty of people are either paralysed by fear or enjoying the paid holiday, both situations need to be addressed urgently.
P&O sacked 1100 yesterday this is just the start. And the same people complaining about the easing of rules will now be moaning about the job losses.
The govt face an impossible task I'm afraid
There was a comment on twitter that the Government had 6 weeks to prepare for the next phase and doesn't seem to have done that particularly well.
I suspect a lot of management in firms have spent the last 6 weeks more wisely. And in a lot of cases the future of their firm is going to be far smaller than it was before.
And a quick glance at a forum (elsewhere) shows me 2 people (from a group of about 10) whose firms have big announcements coming on Friday regarding jobs.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Never in the field of televisual broadcast was so little offered to so many.
9m watched Mrs. Brown's Boys at Christmas 2017....
It seems plenty of people are either paralysed by fear or enjoying the paid holiday, both situations need to be addressed urgently.
P&O sacked 1100 yesterday this is just the start. And the same people complaining about the easing of rules will now be moaning about the job losses.
The govt face an impossible task I'm afraid
There was a comment on twitter that the Government had 6 weeks to prepare for the next phase and doesn't seem to have done that particularly well.
I suspect a lot of management in firms have spent the last 6 weeks more wisely. And in a lot of cases the future of their firm is going to be far smaller than it was before.
Have these people actually read the document realeased yesterday and this guidance from the Government on working safely?
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I really think you've got that wrong.
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
I hear the Sunday Telegraph is releasing weekly collection of DIY PPE. This Sunday it's making your own gowns from left over Union Flags from VE day. Almost as good as the old Go Fishing collection but you don't get a free maggot box
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
And what does that tell us? I don't see it as comparable in anyway to Princess Diana's funeral. Who killed JR or a Morecambe and Wise Christmas show
It was also across the networks.
I am not sure you can extrapolate a recognition of Boris' awesomeness by the viewing figures. We are all scared stiff of Covid-19. Boris Johnson is the guy who has been tasked with leading us out from the horror of it all, of course we should be listening to him. I watched it in the hope of getting answers based on the science advice received from Whitty and Vallance. For me it missed the mark, I would have been no less the wiser if I had gone out, as I suspect many did to make a cup of tea before VanDer Call.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
It seems plenty of people are either paralysed by fear or enjoying the paid holiday, both situations need to be addressed urgently.
P&O sacked 1100 yesterday this is just the start. And the same people complaining about the easing of rules will now be moaning about the job losses.
The govt face an impossible task I'm afraid
There was a comment on twitter that the Government had 6 weeks to prepare for the next phase and doesn't seem to have done that particularly well.
I suspect a lot of management in firms have spent the last 6 weeks more wisely. And in a lot of cases the future of their firm is going to be far smaller than it was before.
Have these people actually read the document realeased yesterday and this guidance from the Government on working safely?
For a lot of businesses it doesn't matter - demand is down and there is little chance of it returning to old levels quickly - that means you need to reduce production which might justify closing the least productive factory.
In my world demand for consulting is down - it doesn't particular impact me as we shifted to packaged solutions but for a lot of companies that means they won't be taking their full 2020 graduate intake.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
They haven't covered themselves in glory, have they?
I'm wondering if there's a subconscious psychology here. Corbyn was, I will now also admit, a godawful option for the country and one the media had to take down for everyone's sake. Maybe for the past few months they have subconsciously taken on the role of the Official Opposition. The daily briefings have beefed up their self-importance.
They no longer need to. Starmer is installed and gradually the focus will return to Parliamentary scrutiny and media interviews. The Opposition Party will once more be the Official Opposition.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
And what does that tell us? I don't see it as comparable in anyway to Princess Diana's funeral. Who killed JR or a Morecambe and Wise Christmas show
It was also across the networks.
I am not sure you can extrapolate a recognition of Boris' awesomeness by the viewing figures. We are all scared stiff of Covid-19. Boris Johnson is the guy who has been tasked with leading us out from the horror of it all, of course we should be listening to him. I watched it in the hope of getting answers based on the science advice received from Whitty and Vallance. For me it missed the mark, I would have been no less the wiser if I had gone out, as I suspect many did to make a cup of tea before VanDer Call.
Van der Valk! Autocorrect is a pernicious indicator of dominant Chinese totalitarianism.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
That is to defend in terms of spin. What resulted was confusion about what the government wants us to do, and the slow realisation that the government itself is not sure.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
They haven't covered themselves in glory, have they?
I'm wondering if there's a subconscious psychology here. Corbyn was, I will now also admit, a godawful option for the country and one the media had to take down for everyone's sake. Maybe for the past few months they have subconsciously taken on the role of the Official Opposition. The daily briefings have beefed up their self-importance.
They no longer need to. Starmer is installed and gradually the focus will return to Parliamentary scrutiny and media interviews. The Opposition Party will once more be the Official Opposition.
The correct place for debate is indeed Parliament.
The issue with the Lobby is that they've assumed the role of the Opposition over the past few years, as a consequence of both the ineffectiveness of Corbyn's Labour, and the unity of the hacks themselves in opposition to Brexit. They've also completely failed to understand that most of the country doesn't share their own insular view of the world.
The public wants to switch on the news to hear reports of what happened today - they really don't want some hack's opinion piece leading the Six, which is what we (and the Lobby) have become used to seeing.
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
That is to defend in terms of spin. What resulted was confusion about what the government wants us to do, and the slow realisation that the government itself is not sure.
It's hardly the fault of the Prime Minister, that the Lobby hacks can't see past their own noses and don't understand words of more than one syllable.
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
That is to defend in terms of spin. What resulted was confusion about what the government wants us to do, and the slow realisation that the government itself is not sure.
It's hardly the fault of the Prime Minister, that the Lobby hacks can't see past their own noses and don't understand words of more than one syllable.
Lobby hacks, the public, MPs, the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister. Either everyone is an idiot or there was a late change of plan.
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
That is to defend in terms of spin. What resulted was confusion about what the government wants us to do, and the slow realisation that the government itself is not sure.
It's hardly the fault of the Prime Minister, that the Lobby hacks can't see past their own noses and don't understand words of more than one syllable.
They do seem to be in a bubble, and to have been in that same bubble, more or less, all their lives.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
Well William Hague has conceded that the address was unclear and it would have been better to have had it after the parliamentary debate. Using up a PM nationwide address when the message hasn't been finalised and isn't clear really wasn't wise.
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
That is to defend in terms of spin. What resulted was confusion about what the government wants us to do, and the slow realisation that the government itself is not sure.
It's hardly the fault of the Prime Minister, that the Lobby hacks can't see past their own noses and don't understand words of more than one syllable.
Lobby hacks, the public, MPs, the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister. Either everyone is an idiot or there was a late change of plan.
Why shouldn't there be a late change or adjustment to the plan. In fact in PMQs Boris said the reason for the Sunday address was because they were waiting for the data that was coming in later this week in order to get as much data as they can before they announce the plan.
The only reason you'd do that is because you were planning to change the plan depending upon what that data says - and he was already saying the data isn't in thus the plan isn't finalised at PMQs.
The fact the media missed that isn't here nor there.
Wish I'd thought of doing this earlier. On the Traffic England site current traffic conditions are shown, and I've just started looking at the morning's 'rush hour' conditions. Obviously it normally doesn't worry me that much; as an OAP I don't use the roads much before 9! However, it's noticeable that the local black-spots were much as they normally are, although traffic seems to be moving slowly at one of them, rather than virtually stationary by now! The Dartford Crossing is slow, not stationary, too.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I really think you've got that wrong.
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
It's all Maslow.
Boris Johnson did just fine.
You must have watched a different broadcast to me. It was the most ghastly and amateurish presentation I have ever seen from a leading politician. Even the hopeless Corbyn would have done it better. Content: 2/10; presentation 2/10; clarity of message 1/10. If that had been a job interview presentation he would have failed a junior management assessment.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I understood it, but then I chose to
Exactly, I am astonished at people who claim to not understand what he said, he gave a detailed account of what had happened with Covid-19, he explained the science of it and that there were still lots of ifs as they were learning about the virus all the time, then he explained how he was loosening the lockdown very slightly. He also gave an outline of what he hoped to do in the future with the dates that he will do it. In regard to returning to work, Construction and Manufacturing have never been industries that have been on the list of jobs that are currently banned (pubs etc). Firms have just decided to stop work. He was telling them to go back to work now. There has always been guidance on how to work with Covid-19 on the Governments website, but from Sir Keir Starmer down you would not believe there was any as they seem to have never accessed it or at least are pretending they didn't know it existed. There is now even more very detailed guidance. People are just looking for excuses to not understand basic English or to return to work. As an example I had an email yesterday from American Golf at 12.01 telling me that golf would now be allowed but you could only play by yourself or with a member of your household. Clearly that was totally wrong but one wonders where they got this information from.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
Well William Hague has conceded that the address was unclear and it would have been better to have had it after the parliamentary debate. Using up a PM nationwide address when the message hasn't been finalised and isn't clear really wasn't wise.
Mr Hague's actual words:
This has major implications for how ministers should present their approach. I make no criticism of Mr Johnson for his broadcast on Sunday evening – he spoke well and clearly, the direction he set was right, and the immediate decisions justified. But he would be well advised in future to present a detailed statement to Parliament first, with the accompanying documents and detail, and then address the nation. Then there would be far fewer opportunities for critics to jump on the absence of detail, or for the media to have to rely on briefings about the implications. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/11/slogans-far-simplistic-complex-emergency-like-one/
TL:DR - In an environment that's fast changing and getting more complex, a simple slogan is no longer sufficient. In making his address, the PM is right, and the media don't understand what's going on unless it's spoon-fed to them.
O/T, the Tories have a lot of reasons to be worried about Starmer. The main one is perhaps that the general population will catch up with the fact that he is a professional and Johnson a rank amateur. Not only does he look more Prime Ministerial, he IS more prime ministerial. The second one is that is you agree with my analysis that the main reason for the collapse of the Red Wall was not Brexit, but a phobia of Corbyn then that causes problems for the Tories at the next GE. If you adhere to HYUFD's belief that it was because of Brexit then this will surely not be anything like an issue at the next GE,except in the minds of the most stalwart believer. Tories in ex-Labour seats would be wise to be setting up contingency plans for employment after the next GE. Their two main reasons to be have been removed.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I really think you've got that wrong.
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
It's all Maslow.
Boris Johnson did just fine.
You must have watched a different broadcast to me. It was the most ghastly and amateurish presentation I have ever seen from a leading politician. Even the hopeless Corbyn would have done it better. Content: 2/10; presentation 2/10; clarity of message 1/10. If that had been a job interview presentation he would have failed a junior management assessment.
As i said yesterday my 13 year old nephew totally understood it.
I don't think the intention is to keep matches secret. If you have Newcastle playing West Ham at a stadium in Manchester then it's less likely that fans will congregate outside the ground then if it's played at either teams home ground.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
Well William Hague has conceded that the address was unclear and it would have been better to have had it after the parliamentary debate. Using up a PM nationwide address when the message hasn't been finalised and isn't clear really wasn't wise.
Mr Hague's actual words:
This has major implications for how ministers should present their approach. I make no criticism of Mr Johnson for his broadcast on Sunday evening – he spoke well and clearly, the direction he set was right, and the immediate decisions justified. But he would be well advised in future to present a detailed statement to Parliament first, with the accompanying documents and detail, and then address the nation. Then there would be far fewer opportunities for critics to jump on the absence of detail, or for the media to have to rely on briefings about the implications. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/11/slogans-far-simplistic-complex-emergency-like-one/
TL:DR - In an environment that's fast changing and getting more complex, a simple slogan is no longer sufficient. In making his address, the PM is right, and the media don't understand what's going on unless it's spoon-fed to them.
Your blind loyalty to a person that is clearly not up to the job by almost every measure is touching.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I really think you've got that wrong.
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
It's all Maslow.
Boris Johnson did just fine.
You must have watched a different broadcast to me. It was the most ghastly and amateurish presentation I have ever seen from a leading politician. Even the hopeless Corbyn would have done it better. Content: 2/10; presentation 2/10; clarity of message 1/10. If that had been a job interview presentation he would have failed a junior management assessment.
As i said yesterday my 13 year old nephew totally understood it.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
No, it's entirely about avoiding the spin and getting through to the general public directly.
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
"getting through" implies there is something to get through. Whereas it was just a holding exercise of waffle while the civil servants hurried to write up the latest change of tack.
The 50-page document was ready to go on Sunday, it only wasn't released at the same time as the PM's speech because the correct protocol was to release it first to Parliament.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
Well William Hague has conceded that the address was unclear and it would have been better to have had it after the parliamentary debate. Using up a PM nationwide address when the message hasn't been finalised and isn't clear really wasn't wise.
Mr Hague's actual words:
This has major implications for how ministers should present their approach. I make no criticism of Mr Johnson for his broadcast on Sunday evening – he spoke well and clearly, the direction he set was right, and the immediate decisions justified. But he would be well advised in future to present a detailed statement to Parliament first, with the accompanying documents and detail, and then address the nation. Then there would be far fewer opportunities for critics to jump on the absence of detail, or for the media to have to rely on briefings about the implications. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/11/slogans-far-simplistic-complex-emergency-like-one/
TL:DR - In an environment that's fast changing and getting more complex, a simple slogan is no longer sufficient. In making his address, the PM is right, and the media don't understand what's going on unless it's spoon-fed to them.
Your blind loyalty to a person that is clearly not up to the job by almost every measure is touching.
Your blind disloyalty to someone who is clearly doing their best in the most challenging of circumstances, is quite something to behold.
I don't think the intention is to keep matches secret. If you have Newcastle playing West Ham at a stadium in Manchester then it's less likely that fans will congregate outside the ground then if it's played at either teams home ground.
And they think some grounds will be better for social distancing than others.
But given the Bundesliga is restarting this weekend with teams playing home games at their home venue, the PL will try to get this too.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I really think you've got that wrong.
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
It's all Maslow.
Boris Johnson did just fine.
It really wasn't fine. First of all you had the spin doctors briefing papers on "Freedom is coming". Then Johnson on Sunday announces a number of inconsequential easings of lockdown, a new meaningless slogan, and by the way you need to go back to work tomorrow. Then the realisation that actually they need some sort of planning. And then the release of the plan, which is in fact a decent one.
You don't have to be a genius of communication to know to focus on the key points, which in this case is getting people back to work safely. So the presentation should be explicitly about that: explain what the government expects from employers and employees and what support the government is giving to both. It's not difficult.
I don't think the intention is to keep matches secret. If you have Newcastle playing West Ham at a stadium in Manchester then it's less likely that fans will congregate outside the ground then if it's played at either teams home ground.
How about we treat the public as if they are responsible? Is that so difficult?
The Germans are doing it, and when the Germans do it its great, but when we suggest that its horrific.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I really think you've got that wrong.
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
It's all Maslow.
Boris Johnson did just fine.
You must have watched a different broadcast to me. It was the most ghastly and amateurish presentation I have ever seen from a leading politician. Even the hopeless Corbyn would have done it better. Content: 2/10; presentation 2/10; clarity of message 1/10. If that had been a job interview presentation he would have failed a junior management assessment.
As i said yesterday my 13 year old nephew totally understood it.
As did anyone who can think for themselves.
It’s Brexit all over again - “it’s too complex for the plebs - we can’t risk the confusion “
I don't think the intention is to keep matches secret. If you have Newcastle playing West Ham at a stadium in Manchester then it's less likely that fans will congregate outside the ground then if it's played at either teams home ground.
Indeed, the police concern is primarily of crowds outside stadia.
The Premier League clubs sound like F1 teams - they're never going to agree on anything, so someone needs to step up and make the decision and tell the clubs to get on with it, if they want their share of the revenues.
The weakness in the government’s message stems from the anaemic recovery from the Coronavirus. The government was unable to point to a substantial improvement, but still wants people to go out to generate economic activity. A policy that contradicts the messaging of the past few weeks. In its own framework, the government could not point to a change of status.
It was impossible for the government to say, “we’re broke, take the risk, go back to work’, hence the contortions and confusion. The fact that a substantial group have to work to go back to also needs to be dealt with.
How do you look for work in the era of Coronavirus?
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I really think you've got that wrong.
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
It's all Maslow.
Boris Johnson did just fine.
It really wasn't fine. First of all you had the spin doctors briefing papers on "Freedom is coming". Then Johnson on Sunday announces a number of inconsequential easings of lockdown, a new meaningless slogan, and by the way you need to go back to work tomorrow. Then the realisation that actually they need some sort of planning. And then the release of the plan, which is in fact a decent one.
You don't have to be a genius of communication to know to focus on the key points, which in this case is getting people back to work safely. So the presentation should be explicitly about that: explain what the government expects from employers and employees and what support the government is giving to both. It's not difficult.
Johnson never said "you need to go to work tomorrow".
If you're going to criticise something at least try watching it. And if you watched it you need to pay more attention to the words that were actually said.
I have read all the guidance on the HSE website regarding the requirements that employers must carry out to protect their staff. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. The HSE will also be carrying out far more spot checks to ensure compliance. It’s worth a read.
If they had released all the documents at the same time as Boris gave his speech, they wouldn't have got half the incoming.
Boris’s address was superfluous; it hasn’t added anything except confusion.
Viewing figures between 27 and 30 million
That is a huge figure
That's a vindication of the No. 10 strategy, if half the country actually tuned in to listen to the PM directly - rather than listening to others interpret and spin his words in their own way. 27m is in the top 10 TV audiences of all time, up there with World Cup matches, which is why he went for the 7pm Sunday slot.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
Sod the death toll and go for the viewing figures? If you are right about vindicating Number 10's strategy then perhaps that is the problem, that Boris and Cummings are more interested in spin than science. It's a pandemic, not an election campaign.
Not at all - by having the PM address the nation on Sunday night, rather than Monday night, he managed to get ahead of the media spin and let the people hear him directly.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
I really think you've got that wrong.
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
It's all Maslow.
Boris Johnson did just fine.
It really wasn't fine. First of all you had the spin doctors briefing papers on "Freedom is coming". Then Johnson on Sunday announces a number of inconsequential easings of lockdown, a new meaningless slogan, and by the way you need to go back to work tomorrow. Then the realisation that actually they need some sort of planning. And then the release of the plan, which is in fact a decent one.
You don't have to be a genius of communication to know to focus on the key points, which in this case is getting people back to work safely. So the presentation should be explicitly about that: explain what the government expects from employers and employees and what support the government is giving to both. It's not difficult.
What do you think has been happening with the millions of people who have worked through the lockdown?
Comments
(In St Pancras.)
It would have been so much better for it to be briefed much closer to the speech, then for him to set the tone and general direction and then end with and now we publish our plans, can be found here...and for god's sake send out Gove, rather than Raab.
All the lead up led to speculation, gossip and leaks, then Boris spoke and then it left another day with people going but I don't understand, there is no hard and fast rules.
Basically, if Twitter is 100% convinced of something, then go all in on the opposite...
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1259971836470865926?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1259972626346389507?s=20
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1259962078166691840?s=20
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j1yr
BBC News - Coronavirus: UK drug trial for over-50s recruiting
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52622804
Includes Trumps favourite drug, which a number of studies have now found doesn't work.
The China Virus: The stories keep coming in dribs & drabs each with a different angle. The latest report from NBC involved suggestions some kind kind of incident at the lab in mid October based on SIGNIT (or the lack of it) from the site.
Curiously the timeline runs similar to one that I proposed on here a few weeks back. What made it potentially interesting, however, was the methodology by which they deducted something was up. In a recent post I reckoned the US might have to reveal its raw source collection method if it had a case it actually wanted to prove rather than just suggest. Of course, they could be lying about the method to ensure keystone collection methods remain in place and of course the whole story could be false. It, does, have a bit more reality to it. The source is suggested without going into over detail, the nature of what happened is not precise but is something that would raise the eyebrows. In short it fits where the US are at the moment which is trying to put a series of fragments into a firm conclusion about what. The when around Coivd 19 they probably can calculate but the what is the bit they cannot firmly conclude on yet. They don't have everything needed to say it was definitely A or B, its all probabilities as of today.
The thing to watch for in reports via major media organs: Most releases of 'intelligence' stories in the media in the West don't come from within the intelligence community directly, they come from government officials or indeed politicians who get to hear something. If they do come from intelligence community they are often by government approved release so its filtered . The attributed source is important, 'officials' even 'national security' officials often means non-IC people, Administration is plainly government and so on. Full on attribution to an 'Intelligence official' from an agency isn't that common. The unattributed actually needs careful monitoring because it may be valid. If the term 'agent' is used anywhere its been spruced up or made up.
Certain agencies have certain media organs they will talk off the record to knowing the info will get out because they trust their conduit. If you know the organs then you might well sort the wheat from the chaff.
One final note, there is every possibility that confidential reports and papers of Western governments and officials around Covid 19 talks, decisions and responses will get stolen & leaked within the next month. The operative word is stolen, its the kind of target outside actors would go for.
A nightmare time for SKS to be taking over though, when no-one is paying attention to anything he has to say - but on the other hand, he's got a few months to clean up his own house away from too much public glare. Good luck to him.
That the media collectively shat themselves for a few hours, between the PM's address to the people and the announcement in Parliament, shows exactly why the strategy was necessary in the first place.
A Monday night address would have been completely overshadowed with media talking points and opposition to the plans that were unveiled on Monday in Parliament.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(20)30662-X.pdf
... Although bats are regarded as the most likely natural hosts for SARS-CoV-2 [3], the origins of the virus remain unclear. Here, we report a novel bat-derived coronavirus, denoted RmYN02, identified from a metagenomics analysis of samples from 227 bats collected from Yunnan Province in China between May and October, 2019. Notably, RmYN02 shares 93.3% nucleotide identity with SARS-CoV-2 at the scale of the complete virus genome and 97.2% identity in the 1ab gene, in which it is the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 reported to date. In contrast, RmYN02 showed low sequence identity (61.3%) to SARS-CoV-2 in the receptor binding domain (RBD) and might not bind to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Critically, and in a similar manner to SARS-CoV-2, RmYN02 was characterized by the insertion of multiple amino acids at the junction site of the S1 and S2 subunits of the spike (S) protein. This provides strong evidence that such insertion events can occur naturally in animal betacoronaviruses....
You’re quite right, and I apologise. I was looking at the wrong column. I thought it said ‘majority’ and it said ‘swing needed.’ Rookie error.
6.5 would be a very tough ask. Has any leader other than Blair achieved such a swing? However, if Johnson is still PM I don’t think it will be impossible.
That doesn't mean Starmer will win the next election. He may not be that likeable. I don't know. But saying he's a poundland EdM is really silly.
They get in the way when he sees young...no. Let’s not lower the tone.
P&O sacked 1100 yesterday this is just the start. And the same people complaining about the easing of rules will now be moaning about the job losses.
The govt face an impossible task I'm afraid
If only to understand why there should be a blanket ban on all pizzas that have pineapple on them.
Mr. Coach, indeed. The BBC whined about the 'unforeseen consequences' of betting firms shedding jobs following the cut in FOBT stakes to £2 at most, yet this was entirely predictable (and was indeed predicted) at the time of the stakes change and garnered widespread approving noises from the media.
I expect to see the same kind of nonsense with the current situation. Whatever the Government does, jobs and lives will be lost. The best they can do is mitigate the numbers, although that also depends heavily on individual behaviour.
I suspect a lot of management in firms have spent the last 6 weeks more wisely. And in a lot of cases the future of their firm is going to be far smaller than it was before.
I'd like to see proper answers from the experts. "No, that isn't a good question, it's the spoiled incomprehension of a child." "Please learn to add up before you ask questions you don't understand." "I refer to my previous seventeen answers." "I can explain that for the ninth time but you still won't understand." "No, Mr Peston, the confusion is totally yours."
Now that might just be me, and it is probably correctable if he has good advisors.
However, and to address the thread header, the job of PM has become more and more presidential. The role therefore is less overtly political and requires someone who can "speak for the nation". Blair for all his other faults understood this, I suspect Starmer does not.
It’s not about whether it is overshadowed and how successful it is in media spin.
It was a Prime Ministerial address, and is supposed to have an important purpose in sending us a clear message. Which it comprehensively failed to do.
https://twitter.com/spajw/status/1260090908097290241?s=21
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-safely-during-coronavirus-covid-19
Johnson sounded serious and conveyed the need now to change. Of course people feel threatened and confused but that's not because of the PM. It's because the 'Stay Home' message was something everyone could get. It worked, and worked too well. It instilled fear into the hardest of hearts (not Peter Hitchens, obvs). So they did their job.
Phase 2, releasing the headlock, is like letting a colony of house rabbits out on a wild warren for the first time. They're now scared. They want to return to their hutches. To feel warm, snug and secure where this evil invisible predator cannot snatch them away.
It's all Maslow.
Boris Johnson did just fine.
Almost as good as the old Go Fishing collection but you don't get a free maggot box
Those listening to what the PM actually said - rather than what others said he said, or think he said, or want to think he said - will have a much clearer idea of what is actually going on.
By its very nature, the next phase is more complicated and can't be distilled in to a single soundbite - which is really upsetting the likes of Rigby and Peston, who appear not to have the capacity to think beyond a single soundbite.
It was also across the networks.
I am not sure you can extrapolate a recognition of Boris' awesomeness by the
viewing figures. We are all scared stiff of Covid-19. Boris Johnson is the guy who
has been tasked with leading us out from
the horror of it all, of course we should be listening to him. I watched it in the hope of getting answers based on the science advice received from Whitty and Vallance.
For me it missed the mark, I would have been no less the wiser if I had gone out, as I suspect many did to make a cup of tea before VanDer Call.
In my world demand for consulting is down - it doesn't particular impact me as we shifted to packaged solutions but for a lot of companies that means they won't be taking their full 2020 graduate intake.
If the PM had instead spoken on Monday night, all we would have seen on the news was the spin and out-of-context quotes, not what the PM actually had to say. By making the speech on Sunday night, everyone (literally half the country, a massive TV audience) got to hear the actual message.
FWIW, I'm expecting more of the same process in future. A public statement, followed by more detailed Parliamentary statement and questioning, then the press conference. The press conference last being quite the deliberate strategy, in an attempt to try and hold back the utter inanity that's dominated the Lobby's efforts for the last three months.
I'm wondering if there's a subconscious psychology here. Corbyn was, I will now also admit, a godawful option for the country and one the media had to take down for everyone's sake. Maybe for the past few months they have subconsciously taken on the role of the Official Opposition. The daily briefings have beefed up their self-importance.
They no longer need to. Starmer is installed and gradually the focus will return to Parliamentary scrutiny and media interviews. The Opposition Party will once more be the Official Opposition.
The issue with the Lobby is that they've assumed the role of the Opposition over the past few years, as a consequence of both the ineffectiveness of Corbyn's Labour, and the unity of the hacks themselves in opposition to Brexit. They've also completely failed to understand that most of the country doesn't share their own insular view of the world.
The public wants to switch on the news to hear reports of what happened today - they really don't want some hack's opinion piece leading the Six, which is what we (and the Lobby) have become used to seeing.
The only reason you'd do that is because you were planning to change the plan depending upon what that data says - and he was already saying the data isn't in thus the plan isn't finalised at PMQs.
The fact the media missed that isn't here nor there.
This has major implications for how ministers should present their approach. I make no criticism of Mr Johnson for his broadcast on Sunday evening – he spoke well and clearly, the direction he set was right, and the immediate decisions justified. But he would be well advised in future to present a detailed statement to Parliament first, with the accompanying documents and detail, and then address the nation. Then there would be far fewer opportunities for critics to jump on the absence of detail, or for the media to have to rely on briefings about the implications.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/11/slogans-far-simplistic-complex-emergency-like-one/
TL:DR - In an environment that's fast changing and getting more complex, a simple slogan is no longer sufficient. In making his address, the PM is right, and the media don't understand what's going on unless it's spoon-fed to them.
Meanwhile
https://twitter.com/torcuil/status/1259862064765513732?s=21
But given the Bundesliga is restarting this weekend with teams playing home games at their home venue, the PL will try to get this too.
You don't have to be a genius of communication to know to focus on the key points, which in this case is getting people back to work safely. So the presentation should be explicitly about that: explain what the government expects from employers and employees and what support the government is giving to both. It's not difficult.
The Germans are doing it, and when the Germans do it its great, but when we suggest that its horrific.
It’s Brexit all over again - “it’s too complex for the plebs - we can’t risk the confusion “
The Premier League clubs sound like F1 teams - they're never going to agree on anything, so someone needs to step up and make the decision and tell the clubs to get on with it, if they want their share of the revenues.
It was impossible for the government to say, “we’re broke, take the risk, go back to work’, hence the contortions and confusion. The fact that a substantial group have to work to go back to also needs to be dealt with.
How do you look for work in the era of Coronavirus?
If you're going to criticise something at least try watching it. And if you watched it you need to pay more attention to the words that were actually said.