*IF* the Telegraph isn't warping the message and the WHO (which cannot reasonably be accused of being in the Tory Party's pocket) is suggesting that schools are a very low-risk environment for Covid, then it will be intriguing to hear why both the devolved administrations and most of the teaching unions still insist that it is too dangerous to take even modest steps toward the unshuttering of education before September.
If danger to life is negligible - which it would be if we permit teachers over the age of 50, sick children and other such exceptions to be excused - then at some point one would presumably have to concede that the risk of widespread damage to children's education (to say nothing of the economic consequences of being stuck at home for a great many working parents) exceeds the remote risk of the children or their teachers coming to serious harm?
If an Iranian newspaer made a joke about this, would it be racist towards the English?
Why is it "worth noting" at all?
Its at least as worth noting as the fact he bought a field for his mum for £15,000 which apparently is massively newsworthy.
Sunak having 12 houses isn't worth noting though
One of them is a Tory who unashamedly celebrates financial success, the other purports to lead a socialist party that rails against it and in recent years tried to crush it entirely.
Both are rich, but only one is a hypocrite.
£15k for a field that size shows astute financial acumen to me. Quite a bargain, and a kind gesture for his mum to keep donkeys in.
The fun will start if someone accidentally builds houses on it.
I bought a 4 acre field some years ago, as it backs onto my garden. £10 000 per acre is the going rate here, but 20-40 times that with planning permission. No one builds on it but me. I have a few sheep on it at present.
At the moment planning permission is a windfall. If councils charged £100k an acre, everyone would be happy and a good source of revenue.
Love the ridge and furrow. Never been ploughed. A relic of the middle ages.
Assume ridge and furrow is similar to lazybeds? Sometimes they're the only evidence of what must have been very old settlements in the Hebrides and Highlands.
The R & f strips are much wider than feannagan - the latter were hand-dug to scrape up othe soilt into something that would grow potatoes. IIRC from what I have seen/read the R & F is more like 10 yards wide - Wikiepedia says 5-22 yards. Individual strips to be allocated to different people but also to allow drainage, the ox and plough going alternately along the length to mound up in the middle.
On assignment in beautiful Connemara a few years ago, a local hotelier took me out on a late summer evening to look at the fields, on a rocky promontory, in the slant evening light
The fields were ribbed.
He told me those were the lazy beds last farmed during the Irish Famine, and abandoned ever since. Only visible in this angled light,. It was remarkable. Like seeing the skeleton of a nation. An x ray of genocide
Exactly right, justly put.
I was, some years ago, on the Isle of Eigg and shown the remains of a settlement which was described in a book written about a visit in 1844 - just as the potato famine was about to begin. I was shown the feannagan, and a field wall which had been made with public subsidy lest the Gaels become lazy and demoralised and dependent on the public purse. In other words, they had to work or starve. And this wall marched straight across the remains of the locals' houses. Just like that. That side of the island was cleared - but, happily for others, not the north-western side.
One small point: I don't like to use the term lazy-beds: AIUI it stems from Victorian incomers' cultural arrogance, as if one could apply Lothian and Merse style high farming to the climate and scenery of the western isles. It seems so unkind, once one thinks about it. Feannagan is what the locals called them.
I likes the forces perspective shots across the length of a train.
The important thing is the statistics on usage - In God we trust. All others bring data.
Tomorrow will be interesting - TfL intend to run a 70% tube service including re-opening the Circle Line and a number of stations.
As it remains our "civic duty" not to use public transport, that will mean the taxpayer will be paying for empty trains to travel round and up and down the network that we aren't supposed to be using.
This is grade A lunacy and part of a silly political point Boris Johnson and Grant Shapps are trying to make at Khan's expense. Forcing him to run empty trains and wasting taxpayers' money so doing is part of the reason I could never support the current bunch of nunbskulls running the country.
I presume this is part of London's "punishment" for having the temerity to back Khan rather than Zac Goldsmith in 2016.
It is to increase the carrying capacity of the Tube systems while allowing for social distancing. The suggested numbers are that the services can run at 10-15% of capacity while preserving the distancing.
Capacity increase has to lead any increase in usage.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
I likes the forces perspective shots across the length of a train.
The important thing is the statistics on usage - In God we trust. All others bring data.
Tomorrow will be interesting - TfL intend to run a 70% tube service including re-opening the Circle Line and a number of stations.
As it remains our "civic duty" not to use public transport, that will mean the taxpayer will be paying for empty trains to travel round and up and down the network that we aren't supposed to be using.
This is grade A lunacy and part of a silly political point Boris Johnson and Grant Shapps are trying to make at Khan's expense. Forcing him to run empty trains and wasting taxpayers' money so doing is part of the reason I could never support the current bunch of nunbskulls running the country.
I presume this is part of London's "punishment" for having the temerity to back Khan rather than Zac Goldsmith in 2016.
It is to increase the carrying capacity of the Tube systems while allowing for social distancing. The suggested numbers are that the services can run at 10-15% of capacity while preserving the distancing.
Capacity increase has to lead any increase in usage.
Isn't the congestion charge coming back tomorrow?
Yes. Paying tax on things is going to be fashionable this year.
I likes the forces perspective shots across the length of a train.
The important thing is the statistics on usage - In God we trust. All others bring data.
Tomorrow will be interesting - TfL intend to run a 70% tube service including re-opening the Circle Line and a number of stations.
As it remains our "civic duty" not to use public transport, that will mean the taxpayer will be paying for empty trains to travel round and up and down the network that we aren't supposed to be using.
This is grade A lunacy and part of a silly political point Boris Johnson and Grant Shapps are trying to make at Khan's expense. Forcing him to run empty trains and wasting taxpayers' money so doing is part of the reason I could never support the current bunch of nunbskulls running the country.
I presume this is part of London's "punishment" for having the temerity to back Khan rather than Zac Goldsmith in 2016.
It is to increase the carrying capacity of the Tube systems while allowing for social distancing. The suggested numbers are that the services can run at 10-15% of capacity while preserving the distancing.
Capacity increase has to lead any increase in usage.
Isn't the congestion charge coming back tomorrow?
Yes. Paying tax on things is going to be fashionable this year.
*IF* the Telegraph isn't warping the message and the WHO (which cannot reasonably be accused of being in the Tory Party's pocket) is suggesting that schools are a very low-risk environment for Covid, then it will be intriguing to hear why both the devolved administrations and most of the teaching unions still insist that it is too dangerous to take even modest steps toward the unshuttering of education before September.
If danger to life is negligible - which it would be if we permit teachers over the age of 50, sick children and other such exceptions to be excused - then at some point one would presumably have to concede that the risk of widespread damage to children's education (to say nothing of the economic consequences of being stuck at home for a great many working parents) exceeds the remote risk of the children or their teachers coming to serious harm?
It is quite simple - not re-opening schools is easier for some groups than re-opening them.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I see yet another footballer has been caught ignoring to lockdown rules to engage with a lady of questionable morals.
A fit and athletic twentysomething male is about as likely to be struck down by a lightning bolt as they are to die of Covid-19. It should, therefore, surprise precisely no-one that rules which command them not to fuck for months on end are wilfully disregarded.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
Should like with Rog in the South of France instead....
Plan to extend private beaches provokes class war in Nice
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I am not agreeing with anyone here, but presented with this conundrum, I personally would get the staff to isolate with the residents. Caravans etc. I believe that some care homes have done that.
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
I see yet another footballer has been caught ignoring to lockdown rules to engage with a lady of questionable morals.
A fit and athletic twentysomething male is about as likely to be struck down by a lightning bolt as they are to die of Covid-19. It should, therefore, surprise precisely no-one that rules which command them not to fuck for months on end are wilfully disregarded.
Well this time the footballer involved has already had it. Wonder if he got it from similar late night escapades?
I've noticed that, despite all the caterwauling about a spike in public transport use in London after the Boris broadcast last weekend (and OMFG the virus will spread like wildfire and we're all going to die,) the trend line for the Tube appears to show no increase in passengers at all.
The TfL bus numbers are no longer available, presumably because they have stopped charging passengers, so I suppose that it is theoretically possible that some huge increase in demand for them isn't being picked up - but the national railway and bus graphs are also completely flat.
There was some video shot at North Acton which was used by the anti-lock down media as evidence said lock down was collapsing and should be eased.
North Acton is where Central Line trains from Ealing Broadway meet those coming from West Ruislip so it's not surprising you see people getting off one Central Line onto another (the same happens at Leytonstone). What the video doesn't show is how full or empty the trains were but that wasn't the point - the image was aimed to illustrate the lock down in London was collapsing and people in their hordes were returning to work.
As you say, passenger number and other anecdotal evidence suggests tubes and trains are and remain very quiet. Buses will be charging again from tomorrow as part of the "deal" Sadiq Khan was forced to make with the Government to keep any kind of service going.
The Government take over of Transport for London (akin to what happened in Northamptonshire) hasn't yet been mirrored among the rail operators but they too are running almost empty trains and must be suffering financially.
I likes the forces perspective shots across the length of a train.
The important thing is the statistics on usage - In God we trust. All others bring data.
Has there been any blow back onto Mayor Khan for his extension of the congestion charge to Saturday & Sunday (when there is no congestion) and putting up the rate on the very day people were advised not to use public transport?
Thanks for posting that. Starkey's melodramatic style is risible, but his arguments are worth hearing, and you won't hear them like this on the BBC or other msm.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I am not agreeing with anyone here, but presented with this conundrum, I personally would get the staff to isolate with the residents. Caravans etc. I believe that some care homes have done that.
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
And why would the staff (who normally are on minimum wage) agree to that?
Should a mother of young children who work in care homes be obliged to separate from their children for months/years on end in order to isolate from the community? Or should her children and husband move into the caravan too? And if her husband does, does he then have to isolate from his job since the virus is running rampant too?
I honestly don't see a way that would work. "Let it rip" in the community is code for let it rip in care homes too in a far more endemic way than we have seen so far.
I see yet another footballer has been caught ignoring to lockdown rules to engage with a lady of questionable morals.
Footballers have been a good source of unintentional double meanings this weekend. We had the Germans disinfecting their balls at half time yesterday and a footballer meeting a model in lingerie tonight.
I see yet another footballer has been caught ignoring to lockdown rules to engage with a lady of questionable morals.
Footballers have been a good source of unintentional double meanings this weekend. We had the Germans disinfecting their balls at half time yesterday and a footballer meeting a model in lingerie tonight.
I think there are a number of footballers already well accustomed to having to regularly disinfect their balls even before this whole coronavirus thing.
If you enjoy this kind of thing..says alot about you comrade.... I bet you are a fan of Jim Davidson?
Misplaced satire. And he is very sharp on social media, hence his success
Interesting this coincides with the failure of Stewart Lee today. I think social satirists and commentators in general, on all sides, find it very hard to make fun of covid, they find it hard to even process it. Because it is so momentous and strange, perhaps. It does not yield to traditional analysis from any political persuasion
It was appalling....but I'll take your word that he's done other stuff that hits the mark. Comedy should be about freedom of expression, and be in your face....but this video was just obnoxious....
Golly. I am all for pointing at lefty anti-semites and laughing, but I haven't seen a weaker claim than this. It is a completely pathetic "Foreign names are hilarious, especially when they accidentally contain proper English words" gag, but who knew Tugendhat was a Jewish name, if it is?
The point is that if it were in a right wing paper and the butt of the joke were a left winger's foreign sounding name, I think O'Brien would be up in arms.
We frequently see such double standards on here.
I was told that Boris "literally just said" 'People of Colour', in a sentence that confirmed his White Supremacism, by someone who is now warning Tory MPs to expect to be done for libelling Keir Starmer because they fell for fake news the same as he did!
Tom Tugendhat's father attended the same Private Boarding school as James O'Brien
Christ. They’re all posho c*nts, aren’t they? All of them
Isn't this is Catholic thing? Ampleforth?
I’m really REALLY bored of being governed by, or lectured by, or hectored by, anyone who has been to private school. I want a revolution, I want a culling of the Kulaks. They are, above all, useless fuckwits who lost the Empire, so they’re not even very good at what they are meant to do.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I am not agreeing with anyone here, but presented with this conundrum, I personally would get the staff to isolate with the residents. Caravans etc. I believe that some care homes have done that.
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
And why would the staff (who normally are on minimum wage) agree to that?
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
Golly. I am all for pointing at lefty anti-semites and laughing, but I haven't seen a weaker claim than this. It is a completely pathetic "Foreign names are hilarious, especially when they accidentally contain proper English words" gag, but who knew Tugendhat was a Jewish name, if it is?
The point is that if it were in a right wing paper and the butt of the joke were a left winger's foreign sounding name, I think O'Brien would be up in arms.
We frequently see such double standards on here.
I was told that Boris "literally just said" 'People of Colour', in a sentence that confirmed his White Supremacism, by someone who is now warning Tory MPs to expect to be done for libelling Keir Starmer because they fell for fake news the same as he did!
Tom Tugendhat's father attended the same Private Boarding school as James O'Brien
Christ. They’re all posho c*nts, aren’t they? All of them
Isn't this is Catholic thing? Ampleforth?
I’m really REALLY bored of being governed by, or lectured by, or hectored by, anyone who has been to private school. I want a revolution, I want a culling of the Kulaks. They are, above all, useless fuckwits who lost the Empire, so they’re not even very good at what they are meant to do.
"Trained to empire, trained to rule the waves. All gone. All taken away."
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I am not agreeing with anyone here, but presented with this conundrum, I personally would get the staff to isolate with the residents. Caravans etc. I believe that some care homes have done that.
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
And why would the staff (who normally are on minimum wage) agree to that?
Should a mother of young children who work in care homes be obliged to separate from their children for months/years on end in order to isolate from the community? Or should her children and husband move into the caravan too? And if her husband does, does he then have to isolate from his job since the virus is running rampant too?
I honestly don't see a way that would work. "Let it rip" in the community is code for let it rip in care homes too in a far more endemic way than we have seen so far.
Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it's far too late to do much about it now, BUT... if the authorities had properly appreciated what was coming then they could've offered to pay the carers a bloody fortune to go in there and stay for a while, and organised relief teams who would also be paid a bloody fortune to replace them after a couple of months (with a period of precautionary self-isolation prior to the handover.)
Any mechanisms that could've been used to divide the population as cleanly and completely as possible into two segments - the less and the more vulnerable - would've been well worth almost any imaginable financial expense, given both the financial and wider health and societal costs with which we now find ourselves burdened.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets t cake care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I am not agreeing with anyone here, but presented with this conundrum, I personally would get the staff to isolate with the residents. Caravans etc. I believe that some care homes have done that.
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
And why would the staff (who normally are on minimum wage) agree to that?
Give them money. Everyone has their price.
Good luck with that. I know many women with primary school aged children who work in care homes - I don't think there's any plausible price they'd cut themselves off from their children or the community indefinitely for. Nor should they.
If you're prepared to see the virus run rampant in care homes then maybe say that's a price worth paying to avoid lockdown. But the idea the vulnerable could self-isolate alone has always been preposterous nonsense. The most vulnerable in our society rely upon the healthy in our society in order to look after them.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
If you enjoy this kind of thing..says alot about you comrade.... I bet you are a fan of Jim Davidson?
Misplaced satire. And he is very sharp on social media, hence his success
Interesting this coincides with the failure of Stewart Lee today. I think social satirists and commentators in general, on all sides, find it very hard to make fun of covid, they find it hard to even process it. Because it is so momentous and strange, perhaps. It does not yield to traditional analysis from any political persuasion
Now this is good and funny.....and I think he's on number 7 in lockdown
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I am not agreeing with anyone here, but presented with this conundrum, I personally would get the staff to isolate with the residents. Caravans etc. I believe that some care homes have done that.
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
And why would the staff (who normally are on minimum wage) agree to that?
Should a mother of young children who work in care homes be obliged to separate from their children for months/years on end in order to isolate from the community? Or should her children and husband move into the caravan too? And if her husband does, does he then have to isolate from his job since the virus is running rampant too?
I honestly don't see a way that would work. "Let it rip" in the community is code for let it rip in care homes too in a far more endemic way than we have seen so far.
Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it's far too late to do much about it now, BUT... if the authorities had properly appreciated what was coming then they could've offered to pay the carers a bloody fortune to go in there and stay for a while, and organised relief teams who would also be paid a bloody fortune to replace them after a couple of months (with a period of precautionary self-isolation prior to the handover.)
Any mechanisms that could've been used to divide the population as cleanly and completely as possible into two segments - the less and the more vulnerable - would've been well worth almost any imaginable financial expense, given both the financial and wider health and societal costs with which we now find ourselves burdened.
How would they 'go in there'? To declare an interest the one my wife works in has a hundred residents, about as many staff going in working shifts to provide 24/7 care. Where were those staff supposed to go? Should our children and I and the rest of the workers families have gone in too?
"It takes a village" is quite realistic in this instance, it really does. Its just not realistic to isolate.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets t cake care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I am not agreeing with anyone here, but presented with this conundrum, I personally would get the staff to isolate with the residents. Caravans etc. I believe that some care homes have done that.
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
And why would the staff (who normally are on minimum wage) agree to that?
Give them money. Everyone has their price.
Good luck with that. I know many women with primary school aged children who work in care homes - I don't think there's any plausible price they'd cut themselves off from their children or the community indefinitely for. Nor should they.
If you're prepared to see the virus run rampant in care homes then maybe say that's a price worth paying to avoid lockdown. But the idea the vulnerable could self-isolate alone has always been preposterous nonsense. The most vulnerable in our society rely upon the healthy in our society in order to look after them.
Actually I think both that the lockdown was necessary, and more should have been done to isolate care homes. It sounds like an obvious infectious disease protocol to me. What do they do in a bad flu year?
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
We are left with the question of how much are the young and economically active willing to pay in order to extend the lives of the old and economically inactive.
As I have stated previously, I am not advocating a mass die-off of the elderly, far from it, but clearly we cannot bring our entire economy to a grinding standstill indefinitely to add to the lifespans of the already superannuated. It is an unfair sacrifice to ask of the young, who will suffer from depression, debt, unemployment, poverty and so on, long after the crisis is over.
The longer the economy is put on hold the greater the damage, not just economic but also social, a professor at the University of Bristol estimated a 6% annual GDP drop to equal a three month shortening of lifespans overall, presumably as a result of reduced funding available for healthcare etc.
So therefore a balance must be struck. That balance must involve those of us who are fit and healthy getting back to work, alongside provisions to shield the vulnerable. We need to find solutions that work. It would be cheaper to pay live in carers 100k salaries than shut down the entire economy. Heck, if we have to ship them all off to the Isle of Man, so be it. Children were evacuated to safety in WWII...
The truth is we are all just going to have to live with the risk. The situation as it stands cannot go on forever and a second lockdown will not be tolerated by the vast majority of people who have figured out this disease isn't harmful to them personally. Lockdown, however, is harmful to us all. It harms our economy, harms our tax base, our public services, our mental health, our freedom and our futures. It is a terrible policy.
Just checking today's numbers, the level of new infections is still stubbornly high, with 3500.
These two things may well be connected. The positive tests look like they may have stopped declining, even as the hospitalisations continue to trickle downwards. As another poster earlier theorized, it could be evidence that most transmission outside of health and care settings is amongst younger, fitter people who are increasingly disregarding the lockdown (indeed, it really would be fascinating if we knew how the proportion of total positive tests by age group had changed over the course of the pandemic.)
After all, even if the Government refuses to let almost the whole leisure and hospitality sector trade, it can do practically nothing about family visiting one another, friends hosting dinner parties, parents organising playdates and non-cohabiting couples seeing each other to date and have sex.
If things carry on like this it might actually be very good news. If people of working age can mingle more-or-less freely without placing undue pressure on the healthcare system, whilst most oldies continue to self-isolate, then the rationale for blanket lockdown and compulsory social distancing will have been removed.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
One thing this has shown is just how bloody unimaginative people are. The first weekend you can go anywhere and everyone goes to the same places. Just like on the last weekend you could go anywhere. Amidst great surprise that anyone else might be there.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
His article in today’s Sunday Times was very well-argued. Have you read it?
Are you still berating people for leaving their own homes in case they have an accident while out and about?
I'm with the policy of 3 out of the 4 nations. It is only the English government who think it is sensible to drive around the country for no good reason.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
I am not agreeing with anyone here, but presented with this conundrum, I personally would get the staff to isolate with the residents. Caravans etc. I believe that some care homes have done that.
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
In Dr David Katz’ risk segmentation model, frontline health- and care-workers are group two of four and thus are subject to fairly stringent isolation measures.
One thing this has shown is just how bloody unimaginative people are. The first weekend you can go anywhere and everyone goes to the same places. Just like on the last weekend you could go anywhere. Amidst great surprise that anyone else might be there.
One thing this has shown is just how bloody unimaginative people are. The first weekend you can go anywhere and everyone goes to the same places. Just like on the last weekend you could go anywhere. Amidst great surprise that anyone else might be there.
I couldn't think of anywhere to go. Most of the things I enjoy are closed, and I don't like the beach. I usually run on Saturday and Sunday so didn't particularly want to go for a walk.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
I wish I had posted it from YouTube without the Peter Hitchens link as it gave people the chance to ignore what Sumption said, which is what I was interested in, and criticise Hitchens.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
His article in today’s Sunday Times was very well-argued. Have you read it?
Are you still berating people for leaving their own homes in case they have an accident while out and about?
I'm with the policy of 3 out of the 4 nations. It is only the English government who think it is sensible to drive around the country for no good reason.
I don’t even own a car, but I still don’t see why driving to a local beauty spot is any more risky than my riding up there.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
It’s truly bizarre. I’ve seen lots of people wandering down the middle of blue and red trails in popular mountain biking areas and reacting with sheer terror when mountain bikers pass them.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
We are left with the question of how much are the young and economically active willing to pay in order to extend the lives of the old and economically inactive.
As I have stated previously, I am not advocating a mass die-off of the elderly, far from it, but clearly we cannot bring our entire economy to a grinding standstill indefinitely to add to the lifespans of the already superannuated. It is an unfair sacrifice to ask of the young, who will suffer from depression, debt, unemployment, poverty and so on, long after the crisis is over.
The longer the economy is put on hold the greater the damage, not just economic but also social, a professor at the University of Bristol estimated a 6% annual GDP drop to equal a three month shortening of lifespans overall, presumably as a result of reduced funding available for healthcare etc.
So therefore a balance must be struck. That balance must involve those of us who are fit and healthy getting back to work, alongside provisions to shield the vulnerable. We need to find solutions that work. It would be cheaper to pay live in carers 100k salaries than shut down the entire economy. Heck, if we have to ship them all off to the Isle of Man, so be it. Children were evacuated to safety in WWII...
The truth is we are all just going to have to live with the risk. The situation as it stands cannot go on forever and a second lockdown will not be tolerated by the vast majority of people who have figured out this disease isn't harmful to them personally. Lockdown, however, is harmful to us all. It harms our economy, harms our tax base, our public services, our mental health, our freedom and our futures. It is a terrible policy.
Arguably key figures in government were panicked into a massive lockdown by a model based on 13 year old computer code that produces different results with the same input depending on the machine and the number of CPUs.
I don't know about anyone else, but I veer between three different attitudes to the Plague:
1. Optimism - either it turns out that this disease has a lower than expected threshold for herd immunity, or a vaccination or drug treatment trial tames it at some point in the next few months 2. Pessimism - we're going to be stuck with the misery of social distancing for years, it's going to destroy the economy and make everyone's lives unbearable. Mass cliff-jumping and wrist-slitting will commence by Christmas at the latest 3. Fatalism - the disease will take off again but attempts to reimpose lockdown will fail because people will have lost all faith in it. Best efforts will be made to protect the vulnerable and will hopefully do some good; much of the rest of the population will get it, and it'll burn itself out by the end of the year
Any evidence supporting (1) gets filed in the "too good to be true" folder, because I'm a glass half empty kind of a character. I spend most of the time pitching between (2) and (3). Whilst my personal circumstances are better than a lot of other people's, this still isn't very much fun.
Top post. That’s pretty much me to a Tee
I don’t think this virus will kill 1% of us. Right now I m terrified of the economic sequelae.
eg 60% of Greek hotels are technically bankrupt, 50,000 Italian restaurants likewise, half of the UK’s pubs and so on. I fear a tsunami of bad debt around the world which will make the Great Depression look like the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 27th August, 1896.
The failure to protect the aged in general and care homes in particular looks like turning into the most expensive public policy blunder in the whole of human history - here and in much of the rest of the world. I've been reviewing a recent ONS publication on the mortality stats for England and fully 83% of all deaths were in those aged over 70. The death rate for those under 70 contracting the disease peaks at 0.7% of all identified cases for the 65-69 cohort, declining to below 0.1% for all age groups under 50.
Basically if we'd told all the nation's pensioners to self-isolate at the start of all this, arranged to have them supplied with free groceries for the entire course of the pandemic, and sealed off the care homes and done likewise, and also bunged every member of staff who works in them £100k each to stay put and not leave for the duration, then the pandemic really would've been no worse than a bad flu season for everybody else and we could've got to herd immunity and been over it by the Summer - all for a sum that, compared to the bill now confronting the Government, would be trivial.
Still, hindsight's a wonderful thing, eh?
I don't think it possible to protect carehomes. Despite the varying competence and efforts of various countries, infections in care-homes have been pretty universal.
People crave understanding and meaning, and will invent malevolence and heroism as Applicable... despite being fierce atheists
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
Wrong.
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
Its as simple as that is it? How do they?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
We are left with the question of how much are the young and economically active willing to pay in order to extend the lives of the old and economically inactive.
As I have stated previously, I am not advocating a mass die-off of the elderly, far from it, but clearly we cannot bring our entire economy to a grinding standstill indefinitely to add to the lifespans of the already superannuated. It is an unfair sacrifice to ask of the young, who will suffer from depression, debt, unemployment, poverty and so on, long after the crisis is over.
The longer the economy is put on hold the greater the damage, not just economic but also social, a professor at the University of Bristol estimated a 6% annual GDP drop to equal a three month shortening of lifespans overall, presumably as a result of reduced funding available for healthcare etc.
So therefore a balance must be struck. That balance must involve those of us who are fit and healthy getting back to work, alongside provisions to shield the vulnerable. We need to find solutions that work. It would be cheaper to pay live in carers 100k salaries than shut down the entire economy. Heck, if we have to ship them all off to the Isle of Man, so be it. Children were evacuated to safety in WWII...
The truth is we are all just going to have to live with the risk. The situation as it stands cannot go on forever and a second lockdown will not be tolerated by the vast majority of people who have figured out this disease isn't harmful to them personally. Lockdown, however, is harmful to us all. It harms our economy, harms our tax base, our public services, our mental health, our freedom and our futures. It is a terrible policy.
One and a half million people work in care. Paying them all £100,000 each would be an initial cost of £150 billion - and that is before you find them somewhere to live (as the care home buildings won't have space) and would not halt the damage to the economy.
The truth is we are all just going to have to live with the risk. The situation as it stands cannot go on forever and a second lockdown will not be tolerated by the vast majority of people who have figured out this disease isn't harmful to them personally. Lockdown, however, is harmful to us all. It harms our economy, harms our tax base, our public services, our mental health, our freedom and our futures. It is a terrible policy.
I'd qualify that and say that it's something that can be justified in an emergency, but is wholly unsustainable in the long term.
Once the people who aren't at significant risk of dying of the disease grow exhausted with lockdown (which, after all, cannot continue forever and MUST at some point end,) and thus end up violating it by going to socialise with one another, then most of the crippling policies associated with it - the near-total shutdown of the schools and the enforced shuttering of whole sectors of the economy - become virtually worthless.
At that point, one is really concerned principally with the protection of the vulnerable in health and social care settings, and with the thorny matter of whether the state should expressly order the over-70s and shielded people to stay at home whilst everybody else is permitted to get on with their lives - or if it ought rather to adopt the position advocated by Lord Sumption and make the lockdown voluntary for all.
People who can't understand the simple arguments Lord Sumption is making in the video posted earlier really are idiots.
People like Sumption who can't understand that their actions put others at risk are idiots.
His article in today’s Sunday Times was very well-argued. Have you read it?
Are you still berating people for leaving their own homes in case they have an accident while out and about?
I'm with the policy of 3 out of the 4 nations. It is only the English government who think it is sensible to drive around the country for no good reason.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
It’s truly bizarre. I’ve seen lots of people wandering down the middle of blue and red trails in popular mountain biking areas and reacting with sheer terror when mountain bikers pass them.
Most people won't know what a green or red trail is (I certainly don't) or recognise an MTB trail, let alone understand why it is anything other than a general right of way. If you are on public land, or indeed anything that you don't have exclusive access to, then you ride sensibly.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
Yes but. Some people are utterly clueless. That is why relying on "common sense and staying alert" worries many. At the shop today there was a queue admirably socially distanced. My partner tried to exit, but the bloke at the front of the line was standing right in the middle of the doorway. She stopped. He indicated he wanted to go in. She replied he therefore needed to move for her to get out. A slow dawning of realisation at this simple yet apparently revolutionary concept. He backed up two paces and turned round, crashing straight into the guy behind who was totally unalert. Every example of this induces apprehension and a lack of willingness to return to normal. Cos some just can't cope with the requirement to pay attention and consider others.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
I don't know about terrible grip - that's a slightly sardonic way of putting it - but that's the conclusion I reached. I rarely walk for pleasure normally, and doing it for exercise but worrying about everyone I met (and seeing them worrying too) felt stresful rather than relaxing. So I don't. It's not that I'm terrified - just that I'm somewhat concerned and that's more important than going for a walk.
I think there will be a persistent change in habits for people like me. Anyone who really likes walking will clearly do it anyway, but the rest of us will feel it's not worth any risk at all, just as I wouldn't go to a restaurant whether the government allowed it or not. Conversely, I'm getting more adventurous with cooking and look forward to meeting friends at my and their homes.
The thing is, I'm fine with it - I don't feel deprived, I'm simply adjusting. If the virus more or less vanishes, I might change back to previous habits, or not. So unless this is really unusual (and I have friends who feel just the same), there will be some long-term behavioural changes.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
It’s truly bizarre. I’ve seen lots of people wandering down the middle of blue and red trails in popular mountain biking areas and reacting with sheer terror when mountain bikers pass them.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
It’s truly bizarre. I’ve seen lots of people wandering down the middle of blue and red trails in popular mountain biking areas and reacting with sheer terror when mountain bikers pass them.
Most people won't know what a green or red trail is (I certainly don't) or recognise an MTB trail, let alone understand why it is anything other than a general right of way. If you are on public land, or indeed anything that you don't have exclusive access to, then you ride sensibly.
I’ve not seen anyone riding without care, and I see a lot of riders. I have seen lots of people wandering around in the middle of trails, paying absolutely no attention and being shocked and fearful when mountain bikers route around them at 10-feet berths.
If an Iranian newspaer made a joke about this, would it be racist towards the English?
Why is it "worth noting" at all?
Its at least as worth noting as the fact he bought a field for his mum for £15,000 which apparently is massively newsworthy.
Sunak having 12 houses isn't worth noting though
One of them is a Tory who unashamedly celebrates financial success, the other purports to lead a socialist party that rails against it and in recent years tried to crush it entirely.
Both are rich, but only one is a hypocrite.
£15k for a field that size shows astute financial acumen to me. Quite a bargain, and a kind gesture for his mum to keep donkeys in.
The fun will start if someone accidentally builds houses on it.
I bought a 4 acre field some years ago, as it backs onto my garden. £10 000 per acre is the going rate here, but 20-40 times that with planning permission. No one builds on it but me. I have a few sheep on it at present.
At the moment planning permission is a windfall. If councils charged £100k an acre, everyone would be happy and a good source of revenue.
Love the ridge and furrow. Never been ploughed. A relic of the middle ages.
Assume ridge and furrow is similar to lazybeds? Sometimes they're the only evidence of what must have been very old settlements in the Hebrides and Highlands.
The R & f strips are much wider than feannagan - the latter were hand-dug to scrape up othe soilt into something that would grow potatoes. IIRC from what I have seen/read the R & F is more like 10 yards wide - Wikiepedia says 5-22 yards. Individual strips to be allocated to different people but also to allow drainage, the ox and plough going alternately along the length to mound up in the middle.
On assignment in beautiful Connemara a few years ago, a local hotelier took me out on a late summer evening to look at the fields, on a rocky promontory, in the slant evening light
The fields were ribbed.
He told me those were the lazy beds last farmed during the Irish Famine, and abandoned ever since. Only visible in this angled light,. It was remarkable. Like seeing the skeleton of a nation. An x ray of genocide
Exactly right, justly put.
I was, some years ago, on the Isle of Eigg and shown the remains of a settlement which was described in a book written about a visit in 1844 - just as the potato famine was about to begin. I was shown the feannagan, and a field wall which had been made with public subsidy lest the Gaels become lazy and demoralised and dependent on the public purse. In other words, they had to work or starve. And this wall marched straight across the remains of the locals' houses. Just like that. That side of the island was cleared - but, happily for others, not the north-western side.
One small point: I don't like to use the term lazy-beds: AIUI it stems from Victorian incomers' cultural arrogance, as if one could apply Lothian and Merse style high farming to the climate and scenery of the western isles. It seems so unkind, once one thinks about it. Feannagan is what the locals called them.
I think lazybeds is the right term BECAUSE it is so resonant of the attitudes of the time.
The East Coast of Harris is one of the most poignant and beautiful places in Europe. The gnarled and impossible lazy beds, populated by impoverished gaels, cleared from the sweet machair in the West
"The Golden Road" if I recall, due to the expense of trying to make one through the moonscape of rock and bog. It is hard to believe anyone could have scratched a living there.
The proposed superquarry would have been a massive blot on that landscape, although the arrays of wind turbines that have been allowed on Lewis aren't really much better.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
It’s truly bizarre. I’ve seen lots of people wandering down the middle of blue and red trails in popular mountain biking areas and reacting with sheer terror when mountain bikers pass them.
Most people won't know what a green or red trail is (I certainly don't) or recognise an MTB trail, let alone understand why it is anything other than a general right of way. If you are on public land, or indeed anything that you don't have exclusive access to, then you ride sensibly.
I’ve not seen anyone riding without care, and I see a lot of riders. I have seen lots of people wandering around in the middle of trails, paying absolutely no attention and being shocked and fearful when mountain bikers route around them at 10-feet berths.
Well, pedestrians do have right of way so it's quite reasonable to pay little attention. As far as I'm concerned, a trail is to walk or run on and it's for cyclists to avoid me. I guess some people don't know much about mountain biking and are not confident about the cyclists' ability to avoid them, or stop in time.
Desperate stuff there from Donald. He's cherry picked the most favorable Polling organisation (Rasmussen I think) and ignored the rest. Nate Silver has him on 44% from a weighted average of polls, and that's actualy higher than usual. Generally he's a bit lower and has never been above 50%, as correctly pointed out by Ben.
Desperate stuff there from Donald. He's cherry picked the most favorable Polling organisation (Rasmussen I think) and ignored the rest. Nate Silver has him on 44% from a weighted average of polls, and that's actualy higher than usual. Generally he's a bit lower and has never been above 50%, as correctly pointed out by Ben.
Another twitter user who doesn't understand the point of the Swedish approach, which is to avoid future waves of the virus. There's no point in making comparisons now, during the first wave.
Aren't masks for enclosed spaces under the guidelines?
From your Mail link: Yesterday saw cautious Britons begin to step outside as traffic congestion data across the UK crept up by three per cent. But the predicted stampede of 15million day trippers on the first weekend since lockdown was partially lifted failed to materialise as most decided to enjoy the weather closer to home.
The lower-than-expected numbers could have been down to 'coronaphobia' - the fear of travelling too far during the pandemic. However data from TomTom today has revealed traffic is up in major cities such as London, Brighton and Manchester.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
It’s truly bizarre. I’ve seen lots of people wandering down the middle of blue and red trails in popular mountain biking areas and reacting with sheer terror when mountain bikers pass them.
Most people won't know what a green or red trail is (I certainly don't) or recognise an MTB trail, let alone understand why it is anything other than a general right of way. If you are on public land, or indeed anything that you don't have exclusive access to, then you ride sensibly.
I’ve not seen anyone riding without care, and I see a lot of riders. I have seen lots of people wandering around in the middle of trails, paying absolutely no attention and being shocked and fearful when mountain bikers route around them at 10-feet berths.
Well, pedestrians do have right of way so it's quite reasonable to pay little attention. As far as I'm concerned, a trail is to walk or run on and it's for cyclists to avoid me. I guess some people don't know much about mountain biking and are not confident about the cyclists' ability to avoid them, or stop in time.
No, the trails are a shared space. This has been a feature of lockdown, what is normally a well-worked system has broken down because part-time/one-off walkers have seemingly decided it’s “for cyclists to avoid me”.
BBC news. Unbelievable. A woman sat on a crowded beach in I think Dorset, who drove for an 1 1/2 hours to get there, is moaning that there are a lot of people there and "it is quite annoying".
It is extremely silly, although she's also worrying herself unnecessarily. Someone walking around her at less than 2m distance is hardly going to make any difference. They'd need to sneeze in her face or something to pose a real risk, and even then they most likely wouldn't have the dreaded bug anyway.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
It’s getting beyond silly. Some people have seemingly been driven quite mad with fear. I biked past a lady this weekend, on a grassy hill, on a trail in open countryside. I was a good ten feet from her. She blurted out “you need to be six feet from me”. I just went on my way.
I don't understand why people who are so terribly gripped with fear are out and about anyway. If they were really, desperately gripped with fear they would be at home.
It’s truly bizarre. I’ve seen lots of people wandering down the middle of blue and red trails in popular mountain biking areas and reacting with sheer terror when mountain bikers pass them.
Most people won't know what a green or red trail is (I certainly don't) or recognise an MTB trail, let alone understand why it is anything other than a general right of way. If you are on public land, or indeed anything that you don't have exclusive access to, then you ride sensibly.
I’ve not seen anyone riding without care, and I see a lot of riders. I have seen lots of people wandering around in the middle of trails, paying absolutely no attention and being shocked and fearful when mountain bikers route around them at 10-feet berths.
Well, pedestrians do have right of way so it's quite reasonable to pay little attention. As far as I'm concerned, a trail is to walk or run on and it's for cyclists to avoid me. I guess some people don't know much about mountain biking and are not confident about the cyclists' ability to avoid them, or stop in time.
There are purpose-built mountain bike trails in many forests and they aren't for pedestrians. They usually have signs at the beginning and end of each section indicating this (and also no-entry signs for cyclists going the wrong way).
The Black/Red/Blue thing is just a difficulty grading (similar to ski runs).
Bridleways are a different matter and cyclists should always expect to give way to walkers (and horses).
Golly. I am all for pointing at lefty anti-semites and laughing, but I haven't seen a weaker claim than this. It is a completely pathetic "Foreign names are hilarious, especially when they accidentally contain proper English words" gag, but who knew Tugendhat was a Jewish name, if it is?
The point is that if it were in a right wing paper and the butt of the joke were a left winger's foreign sounding name, I think O'Brien would be up in arms.
We frequently see such double standards on here.
I was told that Boris "literally just said" 'People of Colour', in a sentence that confirmed his White Supremacism, by someone who is now warning Tory MPs to expect to be done for libelling Keir Starmer because they fell for fake news the same as he did!
Tom Tugendhat's father attended the same Private Boarding school as James O'Brien
Christ. They’re all posho c*nts, aren’t they? All of them
Isn't this is Catholic thing? Ampleforth?
I’m really REALLY bored of being governed by, or lectured by, or hectored by, anyone who has been to private school. I want a revolution, I want a culling of the Kulaks. They are, above all, useless fuckwits who lost the Empire, so they’re not even very good at what they are meant to do.
Empire was racist and undemocratic.
Ironically one legacy of the Empire was parliamentary democracy (except in America).
Currently watching, and enjoying, Normal People & The Last Dance
Gangs of London is awful...Last Dance is really interesting, not sure if just me or supposed to be this way, but all the main protagonists, other than Phil Jackson, come off as total arses.
If an Iranian newspaer made a joke about this, would it be racist towards the English?
Why is it "worth noting" at all?
Its at least as worth noting as the fact he bought a field for his mum for £15,000 which apparently is massively newsworthy.
Sunak having 12 houses isn't worth noting though
One of them is a Tory who unashamedly celebrates financial success, the other purports to lead a socialist party that rails against it and in recent years tried to crush it entirely.
Both are rich, but only one is a hypocrite.
£15k for a field that size shows astute financial acumen to me. Quite a bargain, and a kind gesture for his mum to keep donkeys in.
The fun will start if someone accidentally builds houses on it.
I bought a 4 acre field some years ago, as it backs onto my garden. £10 000 per acre is the going rate here, but 20-40 times that with planning permission. No one builds on it but me. I have a few sheep on it at present.
At the moment planning permission is a windfall. If councils charged £100k an acre, everyone would be happy and a good source of revenue.
Love the ridge and furrow. Never been ploughed. A relic of the middle ages.
Assume ridge and furrow is similar to lazybeds? Sometimes they're the only evidence of what must have been very old settlements in the Hebrides and Highlands.
The R & f strips are much wider than feannagan - the latter were hand-dug to scrape up othe soilt into something that would grow potatoes. IIRC from what I have seen/read the R & F is more like 10 yards wide - Wikiepedia says 5-22 yards. Individual strips to be allocated to different people but also to allow drainage, the ox and plough going alternately along the length to mound up in the middle.
On assignment in beautiful Connemara a few years ago, a local hotelier took me out on a late summer evening to look at the fields, on a rocky promontory, in the slant evening light
The fields were ribbed.
He told me those were the lazy beds last farmed during the Irish Famine, and abandoned ever since. Only visible in this angled light,. It was remarkable. Like seeing the skeleton of a nation. An x ray of genocide
Exactly right, justly put.
I was, some years ago, on the Isle of Eigg and shown the remains of a settlement which was described in a book written about a visit in 1844 - just as the potato famine was about to begin. I was shown the feannagan, and a field wall which had been made with public subsidy lest the Gaels become lazy and demoralised and dependent on the public purse. In other words, they had to work or starve. And this wall marched straight across the remains of the locals' houses. Just like that. That side of the island was cleared - but, happily for others, not the north-western side.
One small point: I don't like to use the term lazy-beds: AIUI it stems from Victorian incomers' cultural arrogance, as if one could apply Lothian and Merse style high farming to the climate and scenery of the western isles. It seems so unkind, once one thinks about it. Feannagan is what the locals called them.
I think lazybeds is the right term BECAUSE it is so resonant of the attitudes of the time.
The East Coast of Harris is one of the most poignant and beautiful places in Europe. The gnarled and impossible lazy beds, populated by impoverished gaels, cleared from the sweet machair in the West
"The Golden Road" if I recall, due to the expense of trying to make one through the moonscape of rock and bog. It is hard to believe anyone could have scratched a living there.
The proposed superquarry would have been a massive blot on that landscape, although the arrays of wind turbines that have been allowed on Lewis aren't really much better.
At least the wind turbines can be removed, Europe's biggest superquarry would have been a bit more irredeemable.
My dad lived in Leverburgh at the time it was proposed and was initially in favour because the local lads were as they thought there would be secure jobs in it. From imperfect memory Redland offered 12 permanent jobs and £20000 to the local community to sugar it; beads and blankets for the Indians springs to mind.
The truth is we are all just going to have to live with the risk. The situation as it stands cannot go on forever and a second lockdown will not be tolerated by the vast majority of people who have figured out this disease isn't harmful to them personally. Lockdown, however, is harmful to us all. It harms our economy, harms our tax base, our public services, our mental health, our freedom and our futures. It is a terrible policy.
I'd qualify that and say that it's something that can be justified in an emergency, but is wholly unsustainable in the long term.
Once the people who aren't at significant risk of dying of the disease grow exhausted with lockdown (which, after all, cannot continue forever and MUST at some point end,) and thus end up violating it by going to socialise with one another, then most of the crippling policies associated with it - the near-total shutdown of the schools and the enforced shuttering of whole sectors of the economy - become virtually worthless.
At that point, one is really concerned principally with the protection of the vulnerable in health and social care settings, and with the thorny matter of whether the state should expressly order the over-70s and shielded people to stay at home whilst everybody else is permitted to get on with their lives - or if it ought rather to adopt the position advocated by Lord Sumption and make the lockdown voluntary for all.
Yes, I think a short lockdown was reasonable in order to build capacity in the NHS and prepare. But as you say, indefinite lockdown is not an option. You can shut down the businesses and institutions, but you can't stop individuals meeting up.
I think the over 70s are adults and should be allowed to judge their own level of risk. They can go bungee jumping or cage fighting if they want to. It's their choice.
Personally, if I thought I only had a few good years left in me, I would not want to waste them sitting at home worrying, isolated from family members. But it should be the individual's choice and provision should be made to support vulnerable groups who do wish to self isolate, logistically and financially.
Golly. I am all for pointing at lefty anti-semites and laughing, but I haven't seen a weaker claim than this. It is a completely pathetic "Foreign names are hilarious, especially when they accidentally contain proper English words" gag, but who knew Tugendhat was a Jewish name, if it is?
The point is that if it were in a right wing paper and the butt of the joke were a left winger's foreign sounding name, I think O'Brien would be up in arms.
We frequently see such double standards on here.
I was told that Boris "literally just said" 'People of Colour', in a sentence that confirmed his White Supremacism, by someone who is now warning Tory MPs to expect to be done for libelling Keir Starmer because they fell for fake news the same as he did!
Tom Tugendhat's father attended the same Private Boarding school as James O'Brien
Christ. They’re all posho c*nts, aren’t they? All of them
Isn't this is Catholic thing? Ampleforth?
I’m really REALLY bored of being governed by, or lectured by, or hectored by, anyone who has been to private school. I want a revolution, I want a culling of the Kulaks. They are, above all, useless fuckwits who lost the Empire, so they’re not even very good at what they are meant to do.
Empire was racist and undemocratic.
Ironically one legacy of the Empire was parliamentary democracy (except in America).
As proven by the fact that no other country has ever become a parliamentary democracy.
If an Iranian newspaer made a joke about this, would it be racist towards the English?
Why is it "worth noting" at all?
Its at least as worth noting as the fact he bought a field for his mum for £15,000 which apparently is massively newsworthy.
Sunak having 12 houses isn't worth noting though
One of them is a Tory who unashamedly celebrates financial success, the other purports to lead a socialist party that rails against it and in recent years tried to crush it entirely.
Both are rich, but only one is a hypocrite.
£15k for a field that size shows astute financial acumen to me. Quite a bargain, and a kind gesture for his mum to keep donkeys in.
The fun will start if someone accidentally builds houses on it.
I bought a 4 acre field some years ago, as it backs onto my garden. £10 000 per acre is the going rate here, but 20-40 times that with planning permission. No one builds on it but me. I have a few sheep on it at present.
At the moment planning permission is a windfall. If councils charged £100k an acre, everyone would be happy and a good source of revenue.
Love the ridge and furrow. Never been ploughed. A relic of the middle ages.
Assume ridge and furrow is similar to lazybeds? Sometimes they're the only evidence of what must have been very old settlements in the Hebrides and Highlands.
The R & f strips are much wider than feannagan - the latter were hand-dug to scrape up othe soilt into something that would grow potatoes. IIRC from what I have seen/read the R & F is more like 10 yards wide - Wikiepedia says 5-22 yards. Individual strips to be allocated to different people but also to allow drainage, the ox and plough going alternately along the length to mound up in the middle.
On assignment in beautiful Connemara a few years ago, a local hotelier took me out on a late summer evening to look at the fields, on a rocky promontory, in the slant evening light
The fields were ribbed.
He told me those were the lazy beds last farmed during the Irish Famine, and abandoned ever since. Only visible in this angled light,. It was remarkable. Like seeing the skeleton of a nation. An x ray of genocide
Exactly right, justly put.
I was, some years ago, on the Isle of Eigg and shown the remains of a settlement which was described in a book written about a visit in 1844 - just as the potato famine was about to begin. I was shown the feannagan, and a field wall which had been made with public subsidy lest the Gaels become lazy and demoralised and dependent on the public purse. In other words, they had to work or starve. And this wall marched straight across the remains of the locals' houses. Just like that. That side of the island was cleared - but, happily for others, not the north-western side.
One small point: I don't like to use the term lazy-beds: AIUI it stems from Victorian incomers' cultural arrogance, as if one could apply Lothian and Merse style high farming to the climate and scenery of the western isles. It seems so unkind, once one thinks about it. Feannagan is what the locals called them.
I think lazybeds is the right term BECAUSE it is so resonant of the attitudes of the time.
The East Coast of Harris is one of the most poignant and beautiful places in Europe. The gnarled and impossible lazy beds, populated by impoverished gaels, cleared from the sweet machair in the West
"The Golden Road" if I recall, due to the expense of trying to make one through the moonscape of rock and bog. It is hard to believe anyone could have scratched a living there.
The proposed superquarry would have been a massive blot on that landscape, although the arrays of wind turbines that have been allowed on Lewis aren't really much better.
At least the wind turbines can be removed, Europe's biggest superquarry would have been a bit more irredeemable.
My dad lived in Leverburgh at the time it was proposed and was initially in favour because the local lads were as they thought there would be secure jobs in it. From imperfect memory Redland offered 12 permanent jobs and £20000 to the local community to sugar it; beads and blankets for the Indians springs to mind.
True, you can't really put a mountain back (although I bet someone would have tried to back fill it with rubbish).
These mad schemes always say they will bring jobs to a local economy, but then it turns out that nobody local is 'suitably qualified'.
In a quarry that size it would all have been GPS driven mega trucks by now, anyway.
Comments
If danger to life is negligible - which it would be if we permit teachers over the age of 50, sick children and other such exceptions to be excused - then at some point one would presumably have to concede that the risk of widespread damage to children's education (to say nothing of the economic consequences of being stuck at home for a great many working parents) exceeds the remote risk of the children or their teachers coming to serious harm?
As Lord Sumption says, people in the high risk categories can continue to self-isolate.
Why can't you understand that simple point?
I was, some years ago, on the Isle of Eigg and shown the remains of a settlement which was described in a book written about a visit in 1844 - just as the potato famine was about to begin. I was shown the feannagan, and a field wall which had been made with public subsidy lest the Gaels become lazy and demoralised and dependent on the public purse. In other words, they had to work or starve. And this wall marched straight across the remains of the locals' houses. Just like that. That side of the island was cleared - but, happily for others, not the north-western side.
One small point: I don't like to use the term lazy-beds: AIUI it stems from Victorian incomers' cultural arrogance, as if one could apply Lothian and Merse style high farming to the climate and scenery of the western isles. It seems so unkind, once one thinks about it. Feannagan is what the locals called them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8Js-tEmlg
The man is an ass, as is anyone else who peddles the same nonsense.
Or internment centres.
Or, more likely, we'll trust the good sense of the British people. Oh dear.
Fear of Covid-19 is starting to dominate everything for a lot of people and make them behave strangely. Wasn't it just the other day that one of our police forces was compelled to ask people not to walk in the middle of the road just to stick rigidly to the 2m rule, because simply walking past someone along a pavement posed an absolutely negligible risk and you were far more likely to get run over?
Lets take care homes for example. Care homes have dozens of staff who are regular adults in the community who need to go in to work and go home every day. If we let the virus run rampant in the community then how do you isolate care homes so that the staff don't catch the virus and bring it in with them?
If you have an answer to that question I'd love to hear it - and so I'm sure would care homes around the country and the government.
If you enjoy this kind of thing..says alot about you comrade....
I bet you are a fan of Jim Davidson?
Plan to extend private beaches provokes class war in Nice
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/17/plan-extend-private-beaches-provokes-class-war-nice/
However, I understand that such measures were very far from 100% effective. COVID19 still got into some homes that were trying to isolate.
You may as well quote the Daily Star.
Should a mother of young children who work in care homes be obliged to separate from their children for months/years on end in order to isolate from the community? Or should her children and husband move into the caravan too? And if her husband does, does he then have to isolate from his job since the virus is running rampant too?
I honestly don't see a way that would work. "Let it rip" in the community is code for let it rip in care homes too in a far more endemic way than we have seen so far.
Testing - which is largely within their control I can half forgive - a vaccine is pure nuts.
The idea that single young people were going to continue a vow of chastity indefinitely was far-fetched.
Tinker, Taylor, Solder.
Any mechanisms that could've been used to divide the population as cleanly and completely as possible into two segments - the less and the more vulnerable - would've been well worth almost any imaginable financial expense, given both the financial and wider health and societal costs with which we now find ourselves burdened.
If you're prepared to see the virus run rampant in care homes then maybe say that's a price worth paying to avoid lockdown. But the idea the vulnerable could self-isolate alone has always been preposterous nonsense. The most vulnerable in our society rely upon the healthy in our society in order to look after them.
More Americans voted for Crooked Hillary than Dodgy Donald! Sad!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnZ_5cm5eXA
"It takes a village" is quite realistic in this instance, it really does. Its just not realistic to isolate.
Are you still berating people for leaving their own homes in case they have an accident while out and about?
As I have stated previously, I am not advocating a mass die-off of the elderly, far from it, but clearly we cannot bring our entire economy to a grinding standstill indefinitely to add to the lifespans of the already superannuated. It is an unfair sacrifice to ask of the young, who will suffer from depression, debt, unemployment, poverty and so on, long after the crisis is over.
The longer the economy is put on hold the greater the damage, not just economic but also social, a professor at the University of Bristol estimated a 6% annual GDP drop to equal a three month shortening of lifespans overall, presumably as a result of reduced funding available for healthcare etc.
So therefore a balance must be struck. That balance must involve those of us who are fit and healthy getting back to work, alongside provisions to shield the vulnerable. We need to find solutions that work. It would be cheaper to pay live in carers 100k salaries than shut down the entire economy. Heck, if we have to ship them all off to the Isle of Man, so be it. Children were evacuated to safety in WWII...
The truth is we are all just going to have to live with the risk. The situation as it stands cannot go on forever and a second lockdown will not be tolerated by the vast majority of people who have figured out this disease isn't harmful to them personally. Lockdown, however, is harmful to us all. It harms our economy, harms our tax base, our public services, our mental health, our freedom and our futures. It is a terrible policy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/17/ministers-eye-bad-bank-stop-firms-going/
After all, even if the Government refuses to let almost the whole leisure and hospitality sector trade, it can do practically nothing about family visiting one another, friends hosting dinner parties, parents organising playdates and non-cohabiting couples seeing each other to date and have sex.
If things carry on like this it might actually be very good news. If people of working age can mingle more-or-less freely without placing undue pressure on the healthcare system, whilst most oldies continue to self-isolate, then the rationale for blanket lockdown and compulsory social distancing will have been removed.
Just like on the last weekend you could go anywhere.
Amidst great surprise that anyone else might be there.
https://twitter.com/marcdaalder/status/1262139075403759617?s=19
Night all.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
Once the people who aren't at significant risk of dying of the disease grow exhausted with lockdown (which, after all, cannot continue forever and MUST at some point end,) and thus end up violating it by going to socialise with one another, then most of the crippling policies associated with it - the near-total shutdown of the schools and the enforced shuttering of whole sectors of the economy - become virtually worthless.
At that point, one is really concerned principally with the protection of the vulnerable in health and social care settings, and with the thorny matter of whether the state should expressly order the over-70s and shielded people to stay at home whilst everybody else is permitted to get on with their lives - or if it ought rather to adopt the position advocated by Lord Sumption and make the lockdown voluntary for all.
At the shop today there was a queue admirably socially distanced. My partner tried to exit, but the bloke at the front of the line was standing right in the middle of the doorway. She stopped. He indicated he wanted to go in. She replied he therefore needed to move for her to get out.
A slow dawning of realisation at this simple yet apparently revolutionary concept. He backed up two paces and turned round, crashing straight into the guy behind who was totally unalert.
Every example of this induces apprehension and a lack of willingness to return to normal.
Cos some just can't cope with the requirement to pay attention and consider others.
I think there will be a persistent change in habits for people like me. Anyone who really likes walking will clearly do it anyway, but the rest of us will feel it's not worth any risk at all, just as I wouldn't go to a restaurant whether the government allowed it or not. Conversely, I'm getting more adventurous with cooking and look forward to meeting friends at my and their homes.
The thing is, I'm fine with it - I don't feel deprived, I'm simply adjusting. If the virus more or less vanishes, I might change back to previous habits, or not. So unless this is really unusual (and I have friends who feel just the same), there will be some long-term behavioural changes.
You are infringing the safe distance
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327725/Brits-head-early-parks-beaches-temperatures-set-hit-70F.html
The proposed superquarry would have been a massive blot on that landscape, although the arrays of wind turbines that have been allowed on Lewis aren't really much better.
Detectorists BIG HIT
Gangs of London BIG MISS
Currently watching, and enjoying, Normal People & The Last Dance
From your Mail link:
Yesterday saw cautious Britons begin to step outside as traffic congestion data across the UK crept up by three per cent. But the predicted stampede of 15million day trippers on the first weekend since lockdown was partially lifted failed to materialise as most decided to enjoy the weather closer to home.
The lower-than-expected numbers could have been down to 'coronaphobia' - the fear of travelling too far during the pandemic. However data from TomTom today has revealed traffic is up in major cities such as London, Brighton and Manchester.
The Black/Red/Blue thing is just a difficulty grading (similar to ski runs).
Bridleways are a different matter and cyclists should always expect to give way to walkers (and horses).
My dad lived in Leverburgh at the time it was proposed and was initially in favour because the local lads were as they thought there would be secure jobs in it. From imperfect memory Redland offered 12 permanent jobs and £20000 to the local community to sugar it; beads and blankets for the Indians springs to mind.
I think the over 70s are adults and should be allowed to judge their own level of risk. They can go bungee jumping or cage fighting if they want to. It's their choice.
Personally, if I thought I only had a few good years left in me, I would not want to waste them sitting at home worrying, isolated from family members. But it should be the individual's choice and provision should be made to support vulnerable groups who do wish to self isolate, logistically and financially.
These mad schemes always say they will bring jobs to a local economy, but then it turns out that nobody local is 'suitably qualified'.
In a quarry that size it would all have been GPS driven mega trucks by now, anyway.
It was very well avoided.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1262102825607352320?s=21