500 Miles - or 20,000 Care-home Dead - which do you think the Government would rather social media were creating memes about?
The two are indelibly connected. Many of the normal people most enraged by Cummings actions, and Johnson's failure to sack him, are those who lost loved ones in care homes and were not able to be with them at the end, or were not able to share their grief with family at a funeral.
These people are possibly going to be a bit less forgiving of mistakes made by the government in relation to care homes now that they know how the government reacts to its senior members breaking its own rules.
These are not hermetically sealed issues.
You are missing the point. The media went for the non-story of Cummings. They had the care homes....
Big stories will find their way out even if other matters push them aside momentarily. Particularly when a focus on them will not be time limited.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
I loathed Blair and Brown, as most of you know. But they were both very considerable political talents, and they undoubtedly both had great executive ability, which admittedly they did not always use wisely.
Johnson, on the other hand, is, on his own admission, a blithering idiot.
As for downsides, every time he’s done something stupid before it’s turned out alright for him. He may just assume this will be the same. And Cummings won’t care.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Cummings clearly has thought through the downsides, that's why he is leaving* just before the economic catastrophe hits an already reeling economy.
Why can you still get 11/10 LAB Most Seats in the Welsh Assembly elections? Looks like free cash with BoZo driving voters away.
Not any more. Now shortened to 8/11. PB moves a market. Again.
Still, even 8/11 looks generous.
Not sure it is. Admittedly Johnson is trying his hardest to drive waverers to Labour, but Drakeford and Vaughn Gething haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory over this crisis and Labour’s vote share in Wales has been sinking for a long time.
I think its time to move on, the PM has made his mind up and voters will make theirs up on him in turn. Maybe cabinet ministers and Tory MPs might even grow a spine like Javid did and reclaim some power that is rightfully theirs back from Orville and Harris. No? OK well scrap the second sentence then.
It might be time to stop thinking about a selfish man driving 350 miles whilst simultaneously contagious and not contagious, or the eye tests to a beauty spot on his wifes birthday. The PM has told us we are plebs, must eat whatever lies we are told, there is one rule for puppets and their masters, another for real people.
500 Miles - or 20,000 Care-home Dead - which do you think the Government would rather social media were creating memes about?
The darkest time for government was always going to be those few weeks before they could signal meaningful easing of the lockdown. When the numbers of dead stayed stubbornly high, inexplicable to the casual observor. When everyone was getting listless. Why can't we go out now? Like that bloke I never voted for - and certainly won't be voting for next time....
It has now dangled the shiny new thing of a weekend BBQ and soon, shopping! Meanwhile, the scary prospect of forensic investigation of care home deaths by the media recedes. Who wants to be reminded of dead old people - when you can form a socially-distanced queue for a sausage in a bun in the sun?
Brexit Derangement Syndrome. Dom has played it brilliantly to his advantage - by being the ultimate bait. Sure, he will have hated being the guy in the spotlight, rather than the shadows. But, hey, if that is what it took to deflect and get us to the easing of restrictions. He knew it was inevitable the story would come out. Come on Newsnight, come on Today Programme, come on Channel 4 News, come on Guardian, come on SKY - here is my chest. Fire your rubber-tipped arrows at me. Chance of me ending up skewered like St. Sebastian? Nil.
Classic Dom.
You sound like Plato (RIP) carefully painting targets around Donald Trump's tweeted arrows before applauding his genius.
ETA You are nonetheless right about the effect in distracting attention from real scandals.
I suspect even Bad Al Campbell is quietly applauding. "Oh, well played...I couldn't have done it better myself...."
Of course, Plato pointed out that Donald Trump was making the right noises in the right places to get elected. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
Afaicr she also said that the great man wouldn't be POTUS (no doubt due to the assaults of the libtard MSM), so..
She didn't think he'd manage to pull it off. But what she was highlighting made it far less of a punt for some to back Trump winning Michigan....
If this has been declared National Aftertiming Day, I backed Trump to be President, partly as a result of Plato's incessant posting of everything she found on Twitter and Facebook, none of which she appeared to have read. Plato herself rated Hillary the most likely winner, with Trump a 1 in 3 chance iirc (in answer to a direct question).
So Plato was suggesting odds close to those of the market? Ye just can't pay for insight like that.
Plato, partly through her obsession with social media, got the Trump phenomenon much quicker than most and posted incessantly that he should be taken seriously when most (including myself) still regarded his campaign as somewhere between a joke and publicity for his TV programs.
She also incessantly posted easily disprovable conspiracy theories as evidence the Hilary was finished and acted as if she was being attacked if anyone pointed out that they were lies.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Cummings clearly has thought through the downsides, that's why he is leaving* just before the economic catastrophe hits an already reeling economy.
* according to Mail.
Leaving by the end of the year is classic Dom Harris. We were told the same in 2019, perhaps its truthful and he just doesnt specify which year "the year" is.
I think the working classes of Britain have long been a disappointment to Labour. Probably why some of them equal parts infantilise, idealise and disdain the working class.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Why are the govt paying billions in furlough to save jobs and businesses in companies and sectors that rely on EU open trade throughout 2020 only for the govt to kill them off for good in 2021.
It makes no sense, furlough should be stopped for businesses reliant on EU open trade. They are the past, their employees and shareholders need to move on to new things.
Same on voting intention, the Tories now only lead Labour 43% to 38% with middle class ABC1 voters but lead Labour by a much larger 46% to 37% with working class C2DE voters.
The still largely class based politics of the 1970s as portrayed so well in the excellent This House shown again on the National Theatre livestream last night has disappeared
Anyway, I am off to Edinburgh today for a ceremony by which my devil will become a fully fledged member of the Scottish bar. Normally an event involving a good deal of dining and drinking it is going to be a rather sober, socially distanced affair but I am looking forward to it all the same.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Cummings clearly has thought through the downsides, that's why he is leaving* just before the economic catastrophe hits an already reeling economy.
* according to Mail.
Leaving by the end of the year is classic Dom Harris. We were told the same in 2019, perhaps its truthful and he just doesnt specify which year "the year" is.
Isn't Dom supposed to have something that requires an operation that was put off due to December election and his tenure all along was short term to deliver Brexit. This story is just a repeat of that.
So 4 days ago Spain took 2,000 off its Covid 19 death figures and yesterday added 12,000 to its tally. And this is a Western democracy. Why anyone believes Country's figures on Covid 19 deaths is beyond me.
It's not a matter of belief, but of practicalities.
Every observation, measurement or statistic comes with a degree of error. This error does not, in itself, make the measurement worthless.
So, we cannot yet be certain whether the death rate is higher in Spain, Italy or the UK, because of the errors. However, we can be certain that the death rate in all three countries is worse than in Germany, despite the errors.
So we can say useful and consequential things with imperfect data. Why pretend otherwise?
And of course the active question is this. If "it is beyond me" to make international comparisons then why did HMG do so every single day whilst it made the UK look favourable and abruptly stop once it made us look bad?
The stats are either reliable and should be used or they are not and should be ignored. To switch from one to the other at the precise moment they start to make you look bad, then concoct a whine about comparing data was one of the early things the government did to make themselves look dumb. People aren't that stupid...
Mere survival was always guaranteed but the cost has been huge. This will be remembered. The greatest loss is of authority. Last September Johnson withdrew the whip from 21 MPs. That is now outweighed by the fact that 80 odd MPs (the size of his majority) have defied him with, presumably, impunity by calling for Cummings to go, unless of course we now get a weekend of the long knives.
Just to clarify this, the size of his majority is 80 but that means it 'only' takes 40 of his MPs to rebel and vote against for the majority to be overturned.
And why would they do that?
Good morning everybody. And a fine spring morning it is. Here, anyway!
I suggest that if we appear to be getting to a situation where the Tories are going to get an electoral hammering, then some at least MP's for (once) Red Wall seats may decide to rebel, reasoning that they just might save themselves if they appear to be 'putting their constituents first', rather than party loyalty. They won't all be able to do a runner for a less endangered seat, as David Amess did in 1979.
Do you mean 1997?
Edit - would be quite amusing though to see some genuinely independent MPs in those seats, rather than party patsies that too many of them had to put up with (with honourable exceptions like Bolsover).
Why can you still get 11/10 LAB Most Seats in the Welsh Assembly elections? Looks like free cash with BoZo driving voters away.
Not any more. Now shortened to 8/11. PB moves a market. Again.
Still, even 8/11 looks generous.
Not sure it is. Admittedly Johnson is trying his hardest to drive waverers to Labour, but Drakeford and Vaughn Gething haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory over this crisis and Labour’s vote share in Wales has been sinking for a long time.
So, do you think the bookies have priced this about right?
Best prices - Welsh Assembly Most Seats
Lab 8/11 Con 11/8 PC 12/1 LD 100/1
Thing is, even if the Cons get most seats, nobody will give them a coalition or even confidence & supply, to Labour would cling on anyway.
So 4 days ago Spain took 2,000 off its Covid 19 death figures and yesterday added 12,000 to its tally. And this is a Western democracy. Why anyone believes Country's figures on Covid 19 deaths is beyond me.
The 12,000 figure referred to excess deaths, not specifically covid 19 deaths.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Cummings clearly has thought through the downsides, that's why he is leaving* just before the economic catastrophe hits an already reeling economy.
* according to Mail.
Leaving by the end of the year is classic Dom Harris. We were told the same in 2019, perhaps its truthful and he just doesnt specify which year "the year" is.
Isn't Dom supposed to have something that requires an operation that was put off due to December election and his tenure all along was short term to deliver Brexit. This story is just a repeat of that.
Yes, reminds me of Hyman Roth in Godfather II.
(Sadly felt I had to check if Cummings might be Jewish before posting this in case it might be seen as anti semitic. I cant find anything to suggest he might be.)
Joe Biden can't afford a vice-presidential candidate who will be controversial with black voters. So I think she can be laid to very long odds indeed, just as you suggest.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Cummings clearly has thought through the downsides, that's why he is leaving* just before the economic catastrophe hits an already reeling economy.
* according to Mail.
Leaving by the end of the year is classic Dom Harris. We were told the same in 2019, perhaps its truthful and he just doesnt specify which year "the year" is.
Isn't Dom supposed to have something that requires an operation that was put off due to December election and his tenure all along was short term to deliver Brexit. This story is just a repeat of that.
Care homes will come up as an issue in the inevitable public enquiry
I'm not sure it's inevitable. The government has little to gain by holding one.
And even if it is, they might be able to fudge the terms of reference by making it about lockdown instead.
Or pick a friendly chairman, like Blair did for the inquiry into the death of David Kelly.
I hope there is a careful review of Care in general, both in Homes and in the Community. The way we, as a nation, have dealt with the whole area has been disgraceful.
Why can you still get 11/10 LAB Most Seats in the Welsh Assembly elections? Looks like free cash with BoZo driving voters away.
Not any more. Now shortened to 8/11. PB moves a market. Again.
Still, even 8/11 looks generous.
Not sure it is. Admittedly Johnson is trying his hardest to drive waverers to Labour, but Drakeford and Vaughn Gething haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory over this crisis and Labour’s vote share in Wales has been sinking for a long time.
So, do you think the bookies have priced this about right?
Best prices - Welsh Assembly Most Seats
Lab 8/11 Con 11/8 PC 12/1 LD 100/1
Thing is, even if the Cons get most seats, nobody will give them a coalition or even confidence & supply, to Labour would cling on anyway.
The Scrap the Welsh Assembly party would if it gets AMs on the list
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Cummings clearly has thought through the downsides, that's why he is leaving* just before the economic catastrophe hits an already reeling economy.
* according to Mail.
Leaving by the end of the year is classic Dom Harris. We were told the same in 2019, perhaps its truthful and he just doesnt specify which year "the year" is.
Isn't Dom supposed to have something that requires an operation that was put off due to December election and his tenure all along was short term to deliver Brexit. This story is just a repeat of that.
Yes, reminds me of Hyman Roth in Godfather II.
(Sadly felt I had to check if Cummings might be Jewish before posting this in case it might be seen as anti semitic. I cant find anything to suggest he might be.)
If he were, certain segments of the Twittersphere would have surely ensured you knew....
Why can you still get 11/10 LAB Most Seats in the Welsh Assembly elections? Looks like free cash with BoZo driving voters away.
Not any more. Now shortened to 8/11. PB moves a market. Again.
Still, even 8/11 looks generous.
Not sure it is. Admittedly Johnson is trying his hardest to drive waverers to Labour, but Drakeford and Vaughn Gething haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory over this crisis and Labour’s vote share in Wales has been sinking for a long time.
So, do you think the bookies have priced this about right?
Best prices - Welsh Assembly Most Seats
Lab 8/11 Con 11/8 PC 12/1 LD 100/1
Thing is, even if the Cons get most seats, nobody will give them a coalition or even confidence & supply, to Labour would cling on anyway.
To my surprise Drakeford came over very well, I thought, on BBC this morning. Much better than Johnson does, although, unless the latter is reading a script, that's not difficult.
Why can you still get 11/10 LAB Most Seats in the Welsh Assembly elections? Looks like free cash with BoZo driving voters away.
Not any more. Now shortened to 8/11. PB moves a market. Again.
Still, even 8/11 looks generous.
Not sure it is. Admittedly Johnson is trying his hardest to drive waverers to Labour, but Drakeford and Vaughn Gething haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory over this crisis and Labour’s vote share in Wales has been sinking for a long time.
So, do you think the bookies have priced this about right?
Best prices - Welsh Assembly Most Seats
Lab 8/11 Con 11/8 PC 12/1 LD 100/1
Thing is, even if the Cons get most seats, nobody will give them a coalition or even confidence & supply, to Labour would cling on anyway.
Yes, I’ve made that point about the government before. A Plaid/Labour coalition is almost certainly what will emerge unless something very dramatic indeed happens.
To be honest, I am getting more uncertain about the next Assembly elections, rather than less. Three weeks ago I would have made the Tories slight favourites for most seats. However, Cummings hasn’t played well in Wales. At the same time, Labour have been having their own issues with cocking up lockdown and ministers breaking it. Plus, if they don’t reopen in the next month their economy especially in the North faces utter carnage given how much of it is dependent on summer tourism from England.
Labour also have huge inbuilt advantages, insofar as although the Tories have closed this gap appreciably Labour remain the one truly national party in Wales. There are very few seats where they are not at least a reasonably close second. This means they tend to pick up a lot of list seats to compensate for constituency losses - in 2007 for example they had a net loss of just four seats despite losing six overall, and getting just 31% of the vote.
However, with the Brexit party unlikely to stand, UKIP dead and the Tories having spread their appeal while Plaid have retreated to their heartlands, the Blues could still spring a surprise.
Both on 22-24 seats with Plaid on about 12-14 and possibly one Liberal Democrat wouldn’t seem a ridiculous result. But there’s so much uncertainty at the moment you’d have to offer me better odds than that before I’d consider money.
500 Miles - or 20,000 Care-home Dead - which do you think the Government would rather social media were creating memes about?
The darkest time for government was always going to be those few weeks before they could signal meaningful easing of the lockdown. When the numbers of dead stayed stubbornly high, inexplicable to the casual observor. When everyone was getting listless. Why can't we go out now? Like that bloke I never voted for - and certainly won't be voting for next time....
It has now dangled the shiny new thing of a weekend BBQ and soon, shopping! Meanwhile, the scary prospect of forensic investigation of care home deaths by the media recedes. Who wants to be reminded of dead old people - when you can form a socially-distanced queue for a sausage in a bun in the sun?
Brexit Derangement Syndrome. Dom has played it brilliantly to his advantage - by being the ultimate bait. Sure, he will have hated being the guy in the spotlight, rather than the shadows. But, hey, if that is what it took to deflect and get us to the easing of restrictions. He knew it was inevitable the story would come out. Come on Newsnight, come on Today Programme, come on Channel 4 News, come on Guardian, come on SKY - here is my chest. Fire your rubber-tipped arrows at me. Chance of me ending up skewered like St. Sebastian? Nil.
Classic Dom.
You sound like Plato (RIP) carefully painting targets around Donald Trump's tweeted arrows before applauding his genius.
ETA You are nonetheless right about the effect in distracting attention from real scandals.
I suspect even Bad Al Campbell is quietly applauding. "Oh, well played...I couldn't have done it better myself...."
Of course, Plato pointed out that Donald Trump was making the right noises in the right places to get elected. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
Afaicr she also said that the great man wouldn't be POTUS (no doubt due to the assaults of the libtard MSM), so..
She didn't think he'd manage to pull it off. But what she was highlighting made it far less of a punt for some to back Trump winning Michigan....
If this has been declared National Aftertiming Day, I backed Trump to be President, partly as a result of Plato's incessant posting of everything she found on Twitter and Facebook, none of which she appeared to have read. Plato herself rated Hillary the most likely winner, with Trump a 1 in 3 chance iirc (in answer to a direct question).
So Plato was suggesting odds close to those of the market? Ye just can't pay for insight like that.
Plato, partly through her obsession with social media, got the Trump phenomenon much quicker than most and posted incessantly that he should be taken seriously when most (including myself) still regarded his campaign as somewhere between a joke and publicity for his TV programs.
She also incessantly posted easily disprovable conspiracy theories as evidence the Hilary was finished and acted as if she was being attacked if anyone pointed out that they were lies.
There was also a very string suspicion she was being rewarded for posting any old rubbish as long as it was pro-Trump. Some of it was so ludicrous it became obvious she hadn't read it herself.
There have been some genuinely fabulous bits of entrepreneurism and community activism by companies. However, the furlough count is now 8.4m and still climbing and a significant number of those will not emerge out of it with a job.
Lets be optimistic and say its only 3m unemployed at the end. With no job, no options to get rehired into within their former industry and a large stack of people just like them just as stuck. Add then on top the people who cannot go back to work full time because schools will be 2 days a week in the next academic year. This will pose a basic crisis of survival for these people.
We know the government's view of the nightmare that is Universal Credit. A large number of people are about to get their first experience ever of welfare and it will be a hideous wake-up call. that the government have torpedoed the empathy that Boris brought to the table just adds hypocrisy and incompetence to the perception that the general public has.
We know that Dom likes to radically shake things up. He's certainly done a number on the Tory party
So 4 days ago Spain took 2,000 off its Covid 19 death figures and yesterday added 12,000 to its tally. And this is a Western democracy. Why anyone believes Country's figures on Covid 19 deaths is beyond me.
The 12,000 figure referred to excess deaths, not specifically covid 19 deaths.
How does a Country suddenly find 12,000 excess deaths? And how did it take 2,000 off the figures 4 days before?
Annex B: Maintaining good decision making in acute settings
Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made.
Requiring ITU or HDU care Requiring oxygen therapy/ NIV Requiring intravenous fluids NEWS2 > 3 (clinical judgement required in patients with AF &/or chronic respiratory disease) Diminished level of consciousness where recovery realistic Acute functional impairment in excess of home/community care provision Last hours of life Requiring intravenous medication > b.d. (including analgesia) Undergone lower limb surgery within 48hrs Undergone thorax-abdominal/pelvic surgery with 72 hrs Within 24hrs of an invasive procedure (with attendant risk of acute life threatening deterioration)
I think the working classes of Britain have long been a disappointment to Labour. Probably why some of them equal parts infantilise, idealise and disdain the working class.
The Labour Party in the Industrial North and South Wales have often been blighted by low level local corruption through their dominant electoral position. Corbyn's Animal Farm wing of the Party are one set of suspects, but we can also look at entrepreneurial types who saw Labour's dominance in local government as an opportunity to line their own pockets with brown envelopes. Outside the geographical areas mentioned these people probably wouldn't touch Labour with a 10 foot pole .
The chickens have been coming home to roost for some time now. What is ironic is that Johnson is the beneficiary, particularly in the light of Cummings demonstrating his utter contempt for the proles.
When Johnson inevitably disappoints, to where do the disappointed migrate?
Anyway, I am off to Edinburgh today for a ceremony by which my devil will become a fully fledged member of the Scottish bar. Normally an event involving a good deal of dining and drinking it is going to be a rather sober, socially distanced affair but I am looking forward to it all the same.
A second wave lockdown so soon after the first would be a difficult sell.
How is South Korea selling its school closures this time?
They will probably point to their competency. South Korea seems to be a hell of a lot better than the UK at public health and dealing with infectious diseases.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
It's engendered a fair amount of disgust in a pretty large slice of the population.
That isn't going to go away, given a government which doesn't seem able to competently administer.
And, contra MarqueeM, the media does seem to be able to look at more than one thing at once.
Though it’s now pushed down the page, this was the Guardian’s early morning headline:
Worrying uptick in positive tests in my nearest big city and the county, especially the later. Double figures again. Maybe one day's bad noise?
Its almost futile the government announcing 6 can meet at 2m distance. They're already doing that, and not at distance. Aside from the elderly shut away at home pretty much everyone else has visibly said "screw this". Go outside to somewhere people can meet. A lot of groups. A lot of traffic - they aren't going to shop as the shops are still largely shut. And with that comes reinfection.
How - having lost the public trust - this government even attempts to lock people back down when it inevitably is needed I do not know. Its brilliant really. A screwed up strategy which let the virus run rampant at the start, a care home genocide as indirect government policy against the scientific advice, an economy on its knees, an outrageously high dead rate and now a "fuck you hypocrites" perception by the public which means we get to do it all again.
No wonder they are pressing on with no deal. Get on with stupid whilst the public are too busy arguing about your other stupid. No deal was going to be great fun* in normal times. Think of what fun* we will have with a ravaged economy before we implement it!
There have been some genuinely fabulous bits of entrepreneurism and community activism by companies. However, the furlough count is now 8.4m and still climbing and a significant number of those will not emerge out of it with a job.
Lets be optimistic and say its only 3m unemployed at the end. With no job, no options to get rehired into within their former industry and a large stack of people just like them just as stuck. Add then on top the people who cannot go back to work full time because schools will be 2 days a week in the next academic year. This will pose a basic crisis of survival for these people.
We know the government's view of the nightmare that is Universal Credit. A large number of people are about to get their first experience ever of welfare and it will be a hideous wake-up call. that the government have torpedoed the empathy that Boris brought to the table just adds hypocrisy and incompetence to the perception that the general public has.
We know that Dom likes to radically shake things up. He's certainly done a number on the Tory party
As the article makes clear the furlough scheme has been a triumph, leading to far lower unemployment in the UK than other nations which have just put workers out of work and on benefits.
As the lockdown is starting to ease before the furlough is there will also be fewer redundancies from it
A second wave lockdown so soon after the first would be a difficult sell.
How is South Korea selling its school closures this time?
I'm not sure that's the right question.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/05/181_290297.html ...Parents and teachers urged the government Thursday to postpone reopening of schools as more and more students are confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus inside and outside of schools.
From the first day of the second phase of school reopenings, Wednesday, when kindergarteners, first and second graders of elementary school, middle school seniors and second-year high school students returned to their classrooms, 561 kindergartens and schools postponed reopening due to the high risk of community infection.
According to data from the Ministry of Education, 838 schools among the total 20,902 nationwide that were supposed to resume their classes on the same day remained closed in cities including Seoul, Bucheon in Gyeonggi Province and Gumi in North Gyeongsang Province, as of 10 a.m., Thursday. In Bucheon, 251 schools were closed, while 117 in Seoul and 182 in Gumi postponed their reopening.
In Seoul, a high school senior who started to attend class last week tested positive for the virus, and his school and nearby ones as well as an elementary school his younger brother is attending were also closed down.
In regard to the series of infections among students, parents are increasingly concerned about their children's safety in classrooms...
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Once you accept Brexit is a pretty stupid thing for the UK to do but we're doing it anyway, No Deal planning makes some sense. It's preparing for the base case. This government has a vague concept of "planning" however. They haven't prepared GB/EU border arrangements at all yet and are only just beginning working out the GB/NI border arrangements. They are nowhere with getting Customs Agents trained for the Brexit red tape burden. This means stuff will be stuck going in and out of the UK from 1 January next year, unless the EU decides to be extra nice to us. There are plenty other problems as well, but this is he most immediately obvious one.
The Labour Party in the Industrial North and South Wales have often been blighted by low level local corruption through their dominant electoral position.
I know of similar issues in solid Conservative areas. If you are a local "businessman" and want to "influence" things. you join whatever party has control.
Local government reform is one of those areas that isn't discussed enough.
Annex B: Maintaining good decision making in acute settings
Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made.
Requiring ITU or HDU care Requiring oxygen therapy/ NIV Requiring intravenous fluids NEWS2 > 3 (clinical judgement required in patients with AF &/or chronic respiratory disease) Diminished level of consciousness where recovery realistic Acute functional impairment in excess of home/community care provision Last hours of life Requiring intravenous medication > b.d. (including analgesia) Undergone lower limb surgery within 48hrs Undergone thorax-abdominal/pelvic surgery with 72 hrs Within 24hrs of an invasive procedure (with attendant risk of acute life threatening deterioration)
I suspect Cummings hadn't fully appraised Johnson of the policy.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
Cummings clearly has thought through the downsides, that's why he is leaving* just before the economic catastrophe hits an already reeling economy.
* according to Mail.
Leaving by the end of the year is classic Dom Harris. We were told the same in 2019, perhaps its truthful and he just doesnt specify which year "the year" is.
Isn't Dom supposed to have something that requires an operation that was put off due to December election and his tenure all along was short term to deliver Brexit. This story is just a repeat of that.
Yes, reminds me of Hyman Roth in Godfather II.
(Sadly felt I had to check if Cummings might be Jewish before posting this in case it might be seen as anti semitic. I cant find anything to suggest he might be.)
If he were, certain segments of the Twittersphere would have surely ensured you knew....
It is sad that noneoftheabove had to check but understandable. I remember when there were posters/cartoons (I can't remember exactly) re Oliver Letwin and Michael Howard being Jewish.
My first reaction was 'They are Jewish, I didn't know and don't need to know nor care'.
I then noted that the depiction was subtle enough that it would have gone over my head without being told. It was clearly aimed at those that cared about their background and not in a good way.
So 4 days ago Spain took 2,000 off its Covid 19 death figures and yesterday added 12,000 to its tally. And this is a Western democracy. Why anyone believes Country's figures on Covid 19 deaths is beyond me.
The 12,000 figure referred to excess deaths, not specifically covid 19 deaths.
How does a Country suddenly find 12,000 excess deaths? And how did it take 2,000 off the figures 4 days before?
This is why the whole 'the UK is doing the absolute worst in the world' story isn't really gaining much traction. The true picture will only be in place years and years from now, too many countries doing too many different things in counting and accounting for the illness.
500 Miles - or 20,000 Care-home Dead - which do you think the Government would rather social media were creating memes about?
The darkest time for government was always going to be those few weeks before they could signal meaningful easing of the lockdown. When the numbers of dead stayed stubbornly high, inexplicable to the casual observor. When everyone was getting listless. Why can't we go out now? Like that bloke I never voted for - and certainly won't be voting for next time....
It has now dangled the shiny new thing of a weekend BBQ and soon, shopping! Meanwhile, the scary prospect of forensic investigation of care home deaths by the media recedes. Who wants to be reminded of dead old people - when you can form a socially-distanced queue for a sausage in a bun in the sun?
Brexit Derangement Syndrome. Dom has played it brilliantly to his advantage - by being the ultimate bait. Sure, he will have hated being the guy in the spotlight, rather than the shadows. But, hey, if that is what it took to deflect and get us to the easing of restrictions. He knew it was inevitable the story would come out. Come on Newsnight, come on Today Programme, come on Channel 4 News, come on Guardian, come on SKY - here is my chest. Fire your rubber-tipped arrows at me. Chance of me ending up skewered like St. Sebastian? Nil.
Classic Dom.
You sound like Plato (RIP) carefully painting targets around Donald Trump's tweeted arrows before applauding his genius.
ETA You are nonetheless right about the effect in distracting attention from real scandals.
I suspect even Bad Al Campbell is quietly applauding. "Oh, well played...I couldn't have done it better myself...."
Of course, Plato pointed out that Donald Trump was making the right noises in the right places to get elected. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
Although Plato forecast a Clinton victory, when pushed to make a call.
The Labour Party in the Industrial North and South Wales have often been blighted by low level local corruption through their dominant electoral position. Corbyn's Animal Farm wing of the Party are one set of suspects, but we can also look at entrepreneurial types who saw Labour's dominance in local government as an opportunity to line their own pockets with brown envelopes. Outside the geographical areas mentioned these people probably wouldn't touch Labour with a 10 foot pole .
Without taking particular issue with your point, it applies in more general terms. It's the same for all parties that can offer individuals a route to personal gain and status through access to influence. It is exactly the same in shire councils which have been dominated by Conservative majorities for almost all of their existence. And given that at Westminster the Conservative Party has pretty well been the natural party of government for the last 100 years, I trust that you will accept that the Conservatives have a special appeal to such individuals at a national level. It seemed particularly prevalent in the dog days of the last long stretch of continuous Conservative government (Alan B'stard was a popular caricature because he just exaggerated of what people saw). Now we are in another long such period I expect that the pattern will re-establish itself.
It does remind me a little of political journalists who consider UK political pronouncements to be negotiating positions or of dubious honesty, whilst treating European positions as pure truth that must be respected.
500 Miles - or 20,000 Care-home Dead - which do you think the Government would rather social media were creating memes about?
The darkest time for government was always going to be those few weeks before they could signal meaningful easing of the lockdown. When the numbers of dead stayed stubbornly high, inexplicable to the casual observor. When everyone was getting listless. Why can't we go out now? Like that bloke I never voted for - and certainly won't be voting for next time....
It has now dangled the shiny new thing of a weekend BBQ and soon, shopping! Meanwhile, the scary prospect of forensic investigation of care home deaths by the media recedes. Who wants to be reminded of dead old people - when you can form a socially-distanced queue for a sausage in a bun in the sun?
Brexit Derangement Syndrome. Dom has played it brilliantly to his advantage - by being the ultimate bait. Sure, he will have hated being the guy in the spotlight, rather than the shadows. But, hey, if that is what it took to deflect and get us to the easing of restrictions. He knew it was inevitable the story would come out. Come on Newsnight, come on Today Programme, come on Channel 4 News, come on Guardian, come on SKY - here is my chest. Fire your rubber-tipped arrows at me. Chance of me ending up skewered like St. Sebastian? Nil.
Classic Dom.
You sound like Plato (RIP) carefully painting targets around Donald Trump's tweeted arrows before applauding his genius.
ETA You are nonetheless right about the effect in distracting attention from real scandals.
I suspect even Bad Al Campbell is quietly applauding. "Oh, well played...I couldn't have done it better myself...."
Of course, Plato pointed out that Donald Trump was making the right noises in the right places to get elected. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
Afaicr she also said that the great man wouldn't be POTUS (no doubt due to the assaults of the libtard MSM), so..
She didn't think he'd manage to pull it off. But what she was highlighting made it far less of a punt for some to back Trump winning Michigan....
If this has been declared National Aftertiming Day, I backed Trump to be President, partly as a result of Plato's incessant posting of everything she found on Twitter and Facebook, none of which she appeared to have read. Plato herself rated Hillary the most likely winner, with Trump a 1 in 3 chance iirc (in answer to a direct question).
Care homes will come up as an issue in the inevitable public enquiry
I'm not sure it's inevitable. The government has little to gain by holding one.
And even if it is, they might be able to fudge the terms of reference by making it about lockdown instead.
Or pick a friendly chairman, like Blair did for the inquiry into the death of David Kelly.
I hope there is a careful review of Care in general, both in Homes and in the Community. The way we, as a nation, have dealt with the whole area has been disgraceful.
There have been some genuinely fabulous bits of entrepreneurism and community activism by companies. However, the furlough count is now 8.4m and still climbing and a significant number of those will not emerge out of it with a job.
Lets be optimistic and say its only 3m unemployed at the end. With no job, no options to get rehired into within their former industry and a large stack of people just like them just as stuck. Add then on top the people who cannot go back to work full time because schools will be 2 days a week in the next academic year. This will pose a basic crisis of survival for these people.
We know the government's view of the nightmare that is Universal Credit. A large number of people are about to get their first experience ever of welfare and it will be a hideous wake-up call. that the government have torpedoed the empathy that Boris brought to the table just adds hypocrisy and incompetence to the perception that the general public has.
We know that Dom likes to radically shake things up. He's certainly done a number on the Tory party
As the article makes clear the furlough scheme has been a triumph, leading to far lower unemployment in the UK than other nations which have just put workers out of work and on benefits.
As the lockdown is ease before the furlough is there will also be fewer redundancies from it
Its been brilliant at stopping people just being dumped onto the dole - absolutely. The problem is that as it ends so many of the jobs furloughed are in industries that cannot reopen. As the requirement switches to have companies that have zero income pay 20% of wages that will be the end of those jobs and probably the companies. Hospitality, travel and tourism are fucked no matter what you come on here to say. The industry analysis newsletter I get every week is getting worse and worse, with companies already in an absolutely perilous financial state despite all the help they have been given - hard to survive zero revenue for months.
Go ask the pub and restaurant sector about the easing of lockdown. 2m spacing means so many aren't viable as a business. So they'll never reopen. Along with so many of the businesses who supply that sector. Wholesale was hoping that the reopening of schools may help. They don't have hospitality or hotels or restaurants any more. Workplace catering is a fraction of what it was. And with schools going back part time and on packed lunches there's nothing for them either.
Airlines? Fucked. Hotels? Fucked. The service sector who support office workers together with landlords? Fucked. Sorry mate but there is a very hard reality check coming to you.
Next Cabinet Minister out -- note that the "reshuffle" rules vary from place to place so check if you get dead-heat rules on everyone the same day, or the first announced wins.
Robert Jenrick is 20/1 with Starsports (first announced) and Paddy Power (dead-heat). Jenrick is the Housing Secretary who broke the guidelines to drive to his second third home, and who this week had his decision on a housing development overturned. Coincidentally, Jenrick's decision would have saved a Party donor £40 million. The news got lost in the row over eye tests up north but that is two decisions that in normal times might have provoked an exchange of letters. We are not living in normal times so do not lose the rent money!
From The Independent (other newspapers are available): Robert Jenrick approved the Westferry Printworks development in east London on 14 January, a day before new rules would have increased the owners’ costs by up to £50m.
The site belongs to Northern & Shell, the company owned by former Daily Express proprietor Richard Desmond, and which donated £10,000 to the Conservative Party in September 2017.
Tower Hamlets council has now overturned Mr Jenrick’s decision to approve an expanded version of the scheme that included 1,500 homes, which went against the advice of planning inspectors. The council launched the challenge in March on the basis that Mr Jenrick’s decision appeared to have been “influenced by a desire to help the developer to avoid a financial liability”.
The government has now accepted that Mr Jenrick acted unlawfully, the council said in a statement released on Friday. Whitehall backed down to avoid having to release documents that may have shed light on how the housing secretary reached his decision, the authority said.
The Government is correct to think that they've got past the peak of the Cummings story. Most people have filed it as "disgraceful incident" but are probably not interested in picking over more details. Consequently, I expect Conservative poll ratings to stabilise rather than keep dropping.
The problem is more, as Collins observes, that the Government has lost the air of competence. People will be cautiously pleased by the lockdown relaxations, but inclined to attribute them to Johnson wanting to change the subject rather than the successful nexr stage of a masterplan. If no widespread resurgence of the virus follows, people will move on from that too and we'll be debating economic aftermath and Brexit. But the Government's reserves of credibility have been spent, and the next problem will be hard to handle.
Speaking of Brexit, my understanding from a Downing Street contact (politics is a small world, even across party) is that the Government is planning on No Deal - not just contingency planning, but actively assuming it. They are encouraging friendly writers to discuss the new freedoms which No Deal will facilitate. Have they thought through the downsides? I really don't think they have.
“New freedoms”? To abolish environmental, food safety and social standards, those sorts of freedoms?
Annex B: Maintaining good decision making in acute settings
Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made.
Requiring ITU or HDU care Requiring oxygen therapy/ NIV Requiring intravenous fluids NEWS2 > 3 (clinical judgement required in patients with AF &/or chronic respiratory disease) Diminished level of consciousness where recovery realistic Acute functional impairment in excess of home/community care provision Last hours of life Requiring intravenous medication > b.d. (including analgesia) Undergone lower limb surgery within 48hrs Undergone thorax-abdominal/pelvic surgery with 72 hrs Within 24hrs of an invasive procedure (with attendant risk of acute life threatening deterioration)
I suspect that there is more to this than meets the eye. That document was published 6 days after my mother was unexpectedly discharged from hospital. The day beforehand her doctors told my sisters and I that they anticipated her remaining in hospital for a further 6 weeks. Mum's ward mate, who had been an inpatient since Christmas, and was also expecting to be there for another couple of months, was also hastily discharged. The teaching hospital at that point was treating 6 Covid patients.
The Labour Party in the Industrial North and South Wales have often been blighted by low level local corruption through their dominant electoral position.
I know of similar issues in solid Conservative areas. If you are a local "businessman" and want to "influence" things. you join whatever party has control.
Local government reform is one of those areas that isn't discussed enough.
How would you reform it? Proportional representation is one way to break the local party monopolies...
Mere survival was always guaranteed but the cost has been huge. This will be remembered. The greatest loss is of authority. Last September Johnson withdrew the whip from 21 MPs. That is now outweighed by the fact that 80 odd MPs (the size of his majority) have defied him with, presumably, impunity by calling for Cummings to go, unless of course we now get a weekend of the long knives.
As has been pointed out many times, those MPs haven't 'defied' Boris in any meaningful sense. All they have done is virtue-signalled to their constituents in order to save face and protect their majority at the next election, without putting any significant pressure on the Prime Minister at all - as proven by the fact that Cummings is still in post and was _never_ in any real danger of being sacked.
Actually defying the PM would mean voting against him, demanding his resignation if he didn't fire Cummings, resigning the whip, or leaving a ministerial post.
And if you look closely, only one solitary MP has done a single one of those things - the utterly anonymous Under-Secretary of State for Scotland!
The difference between defiance in deed, and defiance in name alone.
So 4 days ago Spain took 2,000 off its Covid 19 death figures and yesterday added 12,000 to its tally. And this is a Western democracy. Why anyone believes Country's figures on Covid 19 deaths is beyond me.
The 12,000 figure referred to excess deaths, not specifically covid 19 deaths.
How does a Country suddenly find 12,000 excess deaths? And how did it take 2,000 off the figures 4 days before?
This is why the whole 'the UK is doing the absolute worst in the world' story isn't really gaining much traction. The true picture will only be in place years and years from now, too many countries doing too many different things in counting and accounting for the illness.
I am always surprised what people believe. You would be amazed at the number of people who think that hospitals are full up cause thats what they have heard on the news.
500 Miles - or 20,000 Care-home Dead - which do you think the Government would rather social media were creating memes about?
The darkest time for government was always going to be those few weeks before they could signal meaningful easing of the lockdown. When the numbers of dead stayed stubbornly high, inexplicable to the casual observor. When everyone was getting listless. Why can't we go out now? Like that bloke I never voted for - and certainly won't be voting for next time....
It has now dangled the shiny new thing of a weekend BBQ and soon, shopping! Meanwhile, the scary prospect of forensic investigation of care home deaths by the media recedes. Who wants to be reminded of dead old people - when you can form a socially-distanced queue for a sausage in a bun in the sun?
Brexit Derangement Syndrome. Dom has played it brilliantly to his advantage - by being the ultimate bait. Sure, he will have hated being the guy in the spotlight, rather than the shadows. But, hey, if that is what it took to deflect and get us to the easing of restrictions. He knew it was inevitable the story would come out. Come on Newsnight, come on Today Programme, come on Channel 4 News, come on Guardian, come on SKY - here is my chest. Fire your rubber-tipped arrows at me. Chance of me ending up skewered like St. Sebastian? Nil.
Classic Dom.
You sound like Plato (RIP) carefully painting targets around Donald Trump's tweeted arrows before applauding his genius.
ETA You are nonetheless right about the effect in distracting attention from real scandals.
I suspect even Bad Al Campbell is quietly applauding. "Oh, well played...I couldn't have done it better myself...."
Of course, Plato pointed out that Donald Trump was making the right noises in the right places to get elected. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
Although Plato forecast a Clinton victory, when pushed to make a call.
So it was a PB myth akin to David Herdsons call in 2017
A second wave lockdown so soon after the first would be a difficult sell.
How is South Korea selling its school closures this time?
They will probably point to their competency. South Korea seems to be a hell of a lot better than the UK at public health and dealing with infectious diseases.
They are massively better. The detail from the contract tracing is almost immediate, and extremely useful for quick and effective interventions.
This is, in Korea terms, a major outbreak. But we're still getting new infections every day in the thousands, so even with a working track and trace program, it would be extremely difficult to do this kind of analysis:
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/05/119_290298.html ...The cluster of infections at the Coupang warehouse began after a worker in her 40s tested positive, May 23, after attending the first birthday party of a child of an acquaintance that took place in a buffet restaurant in Bucheon, May 9.
The birthday party has been linked to infections of at least 15 people, and was traced to Itaewon nightclubs that have caused the new wave of infections here.
Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung issued a "no-assembly" administrative order for the logistics center for two weeks, also Thursday, practically banning business operation.
"Many concerns are being raised over the further spread of COVID-19 as the virus has been detected even in hats and shoes worn by the infected in the logistics center," Lee said during a briefing.
Later in the day, the government announced enhanced preventive measures against the virus, which will be applied to the capital region until June 14.
The measures call for temporary suspension of operations of public establishments such as museums and art galleries, among others.
"The government also asks companies in Seoul and nearby areas to utilize flexible working arrangements, or let their employees work from home during the given period," Minister Park said, stressing that the next two weeks will be crucial to stopping the spread of the virus in the region.
Adding to woes is that infections at the warehouse have been already spread to a large-scale call center, also located in Bucheon...
The Labour Party in the Industrial North and South Wales have often been blighted by low level local corruption through their dominant electoral position. Corbyn's Animal Farm wing of the Party are one set of suspects, but we can also look at entrepreneurial types who saw Labour's dominance in local government as an opportunity to line their own pockets with brown envelopes. Outside the geographical areas mentioned these people probably wouldn't touch Labour with a 10 foot pole .
Without taking particular issue with your point, it applies in more general terms. It's the same for all parties that can offer individuals a route to personal gain and status through access to influence. It is exactly the same in shire councils which have been dominated by Conservative majorities for almost all of their existence. And given that at Westminster the Conservative Party has pretty well been the natural party of government for the last 100 years, I trust that you will accept that the Conservatives have a special appeal to such individuals at a national level. It seemed particularly prevalent in the dog days of the last long stretch of continuous Conservative government (Alan B'stard was a popular caricature because he just exaggerated of what people saw). Now we are in another long such period I expect that the pattern will re-establish itself.
I was thinking the likes of T. Dan Smith in Newcastle, Jenkins in Port Talbot. The problem for Labour are those they purported to represent, can least afford to be screwed by corrupt Labour politicians
So he will get himself banned from twitter then refuse to leave when he loses the election as his right to free speech wasnt heard. If the remaining adults in the Republican party dont take back control at that time, it might be the last US presidential election in decades (or at least the last with more than one candidate allowed).
I know it was late at night but your response was unnecessarily assertive!
My use of Alastair’s now infamous stairs stat wasn’t to in some way to criticise the lockdown, it is merely good shorthand for people’s warped perception of risk.
People are getting wiser to the actual risks they face. If you are under 60 and healthy, you are (apparently, according to PB, I haven’t verified this) at more risk of falling down the stairs than from Covid-19.
I dare say few people know this. And I wasn’t only talking about risk of death, I was talking about general risk of both death and injury.
Apparently a quarter of a million Britons a year end up in hospital having fallen down the stairs. Of course, only a fraction of those A&E reports die, but many are injured (some seriously) from their accident.
So, Alastair’s stat is useful, as it provides an everyday comparator. @AndyJS has been trying to convey this risk profile daily, and is often ignored or even attacked for it.
Yet the risk profile is very relevant. That is not to underplay the risks from Covid, merely to quantify and compare them.
500 Miles - or 20,000 Care-home Dead - which do you think the Government would rather social media were creating memes about?
The darkest time for government was always going to be those few weeks before they could signal meaningful easing of the lockdown. When the numbers of dead stayed stubbornly high, inexplicable to the casual observor. When everyone was getting listless. Why can't we go out now? Like that bloke I never voted for - and certainly won't be voting for next time....
It has now dangled the shiny new thing of a weekend BBQ and soon, shopping! Meanwhile, the scary prospect of forensic investigation of care home deaths by the media recedes. Who wants to be reminded of dead old people - when you can form a socially-distanced queue for a sausage in a bun in the sun?
Brexit Derangement Syndrome. Dom has played it brilliantly to his advantage - by being the ultimate bait. Sure, he will have hated being the guy in the spotlight, rather than the shadows. But, hey, if that is what it took to deflect and get us to the easing of restrictions. He knew it was inevitable the story would come out. Come on Newsnight, come on Today Programme, come on Channel 4 News, come on Guardian, come on SKY - here is my chest. Fire your rubber-tipped arrows at me. Chance of me ending up skewered like St. Sebastian? Nil.
Classic Dom.
You sound like Plato (RIP) carefully painting targets around Donald Trump's tweeted arrows before applauding his genius.
ETA You are nonetheless right about the effect in distracting attention from real scandals.
I suspect even Bad Al Campbell is quietly applauding. "Oh, well played...I couldn't have done it better myself...."
Of course, Plato pointed out that Donald Trump was making the right noises in the right places to get elected. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
Although Plato forecast a Clinton victory, when pushed to make a call.
So it was a PB myth akin to David Herdsons call in 2017
Indeed - David’s post a day or two earlier was useful for betting but he revised his view later. Sometimes we are better going with our gut!
I know it was late at night but your response was unnecessarily assertive!
My use of Alastair’s now infamous stairs stat wasn’t to in some way to criticise the lockdown, it is merely good shorthand for people’s warped perception of risk.
People are getting wiser to the actual risks they face. If you are under 60 and healthy, you are (apparently, according to PB, I haven’t verified this) at more risk of falling down the stairs than from Covid-19.
I dare say few people know this. And I wasn’t only talking about risk of death, I was talking about general risk of both death and injury.
Apparently a quarter of a million Britons a year end up in hospital having fallen down the stairs. Of course, only a fraction of those A&E reports die, but many are injured (some seriously) from their accident.
So, Alastair’s stat is useful, as it provides an everyday comparator. @AndyJS has been trying to convey this risk profile daily, and is often ignored or even attacked for it.
Yet the risk profile is very relevant. That is not to underplay the risks from Covid, merely to quantify and compare them.
Hmm ... a lot of those falls are for prior medical reasons, so it's not a fair comparator. Falling is a symptom rather than a disease in itself. [edit]
There have been some genuinely fabulous bits of entrepreneurism and community activism by companies. However, the furlough count is now 8.4m and still climbing and a significant number of those will not emerge out of it with a job.
Lets be optimistic and say its only 3m unemployed at the end. With no job, no options to get rehired into within their former industry and a large stack of people just like them just as stuck. Add then on top the people who cannot go back to work full time because schools will be 2 days a week in the next academic year. This will pose a basic crisis of survival for these people.
We know the government's view of the nightmare that is Universal Credit. A large number of people are about to get their first experience ever of welfare and it will be a hideous wake-up call. that the government have torpedoed the empathy that Boris brought to the table just adds hypocrisy and incompetence to the perception that the general public has.
We know that Dom likes to radically shake things up. He's certainly done a number on the Tory party
As the article makes clear the furlough scheme has been a triumph, leading to far lower unemployment in the UK than other nations which have just put workers out of work and on benefits.
As the lockdown is ease before the furlough is there will also be fewer redundancies from it
Its been brilliant at stopping people just being dumped onto the dole - absolutely. The problem is that as it ends so many of the jobs furloughed are in industries that cannot reopen. As the requirement switches to have companies that have zero income pay 20% of wages that will be the end of those jobs and probably the companies. Hospitality, travel and tourism are fucked no matter what you come on here to say. The industry analysis newsletter I get every week is getting worse and worse, with companies already in an absolutely perilous financial state despite all the help they have been given - hard to survive zero revenue for months.
Go ask the pub and restaurant sector about the easing of lockdown. 2m spacing means so many aren't viable as a business. So they'll never reopen. Along with so many of the businesses who supply that sector. Wholesale was hoping that the reopening of schools may help. They don't have hospitality or hotels or restaurants any more. Workplace catering is a fraction of what it was. And with schools going back part time and on packed lunches there's nothing for them either.
Airlines? Fucked. Hotels? Fucked. The service sector who support office workers together with landlords? Fucked. Sorry mate but there is a very hard reality check coming to you.
That's a pretty good summary. But I wouldn't automatically assume that Sunak won't come up with some useful ideas to start rebuilding the economy.
It's going to require both massive intervention (an example might be adopting elements of the 'Green New Deal' *), and innovative ideas to incentivise productive employment by the private sector.
And the fucked industries will come back eventually, but it's going to be a long haul.
*If we're going to be resigned to massive government borrowing, we might as well try to spend the money on something useful. Re-engineering the country's energy supplies is not the worst place to start.
Otherwise, surely they would have banned him by now for his own sake.
It is bizarre what twitter is doing. They refuse to ban Nazi's (except in Germany) but now they are doing this with Trump's tweet.
I Don't Get it.
Presumably they’re trying to get Trump off their platform, by continually challenging everything he says.
The risk is that they upset politicians enough that a bipartisanan bill removing their S230 protections gets through, turning them into a publisher that can be sued for libel for anything false and defamatory posted on their site.
There have been some genuinely fabulous bits of entrepreneurism and community activism by companies. However, the furlough count is now 8.4m and still climbing and a significant number of those will not emerge out of it with a job.
Lets be optimistic and say its only 3m unemployed at the end. With no job, no options to get rehired into within their former industry and a large stack of people just like them just as stuck. Add then on top the people who cannot go back to work full time because schools will be 2 days a week in the next academic year. This will pose a basic crisis of survival for these people.
We know the government's view of the nightmare that is Universal Credit. A large number of people are about to get their first experience ever of welfare and it will be a hideous wake-up call. that the government have torpedoed the empathy that Boris brought to the table just adds hypocrisy and incompetence to the perception that the general public has.
We know that Dom likes to radically shake things up. He's certainly done a number on the Tory party
As the article makes clear the furlough scheme has been a triumph, leading to far lower unemployment in the UK than other nations which have just put workers out of work and on benefits.
As the lockdown is ease before the furlough is there will also be fewer redundancies from it
Its been brilliant at stopping people just being dumped onto the dole - absolutely. The problem is that as it ends so many of the jobs furloughed are in industries that cannot reopen. As the requirement switches to have companies that have zero income pay 20% of wages that will be the end of those jobs and probably the companies. Hospitality, travel and tourism are fucked no matter what you come on here to say. The industry analysis newsletter I get every week is getting worse and worse, with companies already in an absolutely perilous financial state despite all the help they have been given - hard to survive zero revenue for months.
Go ask the pub and restaurant sector about the easing of lockdown. 2m spacing means so many aren't viable as a business. So they'll never reopen. Along with so many of the businesses who supply that sector. Wholesale was hoping that the reopening of schools may help. They don't have hospitality or hotels or restaurants any more. Workplace catering is a fraction of what it was. And with schools going back part time and on packed lunches there's nothing for them either.
Airlines? Fucked. Hotels? Fucked. The service sector who support office workers together with landlords? Fucked. Sorry mate but there is a very hard reality check coming to you.
You forgot agriculture. Farmers round here are having to throw milk away because of the drop in demand.
If hospitality reopens it has to be without social distancing (which is not a rule in any case). Social interaction and closeness are the whole point of it.
And if people say oh no they must stay closed then, ask yourselves whether you want to live in a world without pubs, restaurants, cafes, village halls, theatres, clubs, choirs, concert halls, live music, festivals etc etc.
500 Miles - or 20,000 Care-home Dead - which do you think the Government would rather social media were creating memes about?
The darkest time for government was always going to be those few weeks before they could signal meaningful easing of the lockdown. When the numbers of dead stayed stubbornly high, inexplicable to the casual observor. When everyone was getting listless. Why can't we go out now? Like that bloke I never voted for - and certainly won't be voting for next time....
It has now dangled the shiny new thing of a weekend BBQ and soon, shopping! Meanwhile, the scary prospect of forensic investigation of care home deaths by the media recedes. Who wants to be reminded of dead old people - when you can form a socially-distanced queue for a sausage in a bun in the sun?
Brexit Derangement Syndrome. Dom has played it brilliantly to his advantage - by being the ultimate bait. Sure, he will have hated being the guy in the spotlight, rather than the shadows. But, hey, if that is what it took to deflect and get us to the easing of restrictions. He knew it was inevitable the story would come out. Come on Newsnight, come on Today Programme, come on Channel 4 News, come on Guardian, come on SKY - here is my chest. Fire your rubber-tipped arrows at me. Chance of me ending up skewered like St. Sebastian? Nil.
Classic Dom.
You sound like Plato (RIP) carefully painting targets around Donald Trump's tweeted arrows before applauding his genius.
ETA You are nonetheless right about the effect in distracting attention from real scandals.
I suspect even Bad Al Campbell is quietly applauding. "Oh, well played...I couldn't have done it better myself...."
Of course, Plato pointed out that Donald Trump was making the right noises in the right places to get elected. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
Although Plato forecast a Clinton victory, when pushed to make a call.
So it was a PB myth akin to David Herdsons call in 2017
I wonder why Trump doesn't start his own social media platform (he could call it Trumpet). It would almost certainly attract a sufficiently large number of users from the kick off.
I think Marquee Mark's general point about the press losing their cool and being unable to see through the issue is pretty much bang on. They've absolutely lost it. Lost. It.
Yep, it's a big moment. The entire Opposition Blob fired everything they had at Cummings, including several kitchen sinks and the BBC's comical 'impartiality', and they could. not. move. him. The Government's ability to ignore any future trumped-up scandals is vastly increased, as is its ability to tell the media to get stuffed if they don't like it.
Annex B: Maintaining good decision making in acute settings
Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made.
Requiring ITU or HDU care Requiring oxygen therapy/ NIV Requiring intravenous fluids NEWS2 > 3 (clinical judgement required in patients with AF &/or chronic respiratory disease) Diminished level of consciousness where recovery realistic Acute functional impairment in excess of home/community care provision Last hours of life Requiring intravenous medication > b.d. (including analgesia) Undergone lower limb surgery within 48hrs Undergone thorax-abdominal/pelvic surgery with 72 hrs Within 24hrs of an invasive procedure (with attendant risk of acute life threatening deterioration)
I suspect that there is more to this than meets the eye. That document was published 6 days after my mother was unexpectedly discharged from hospital. The day beforehand her doctors told my sisters and I that they anticipated her remaining in hospital for a further 6 weeks. Mum's ward mate, who had been an inpatient since Christmas, and was also expecting to be there for another couple of months, was also hastily discharged. The teaching hospital at that point was treating 6 Covid patients.
I'm sure there is, almost certainly on a national scale. But the document is incontrovertible evidence of the government planning.
Comments
PP/Betfair: 7/1 go, 1/20 stay
the others are still munching their smashed avocado on toast.
Johnson, on the other hand, is, on his own admission, a blithering idiot.
As for downsides, every time he’s done something stupid before it’s turned out alright for him. He may just assume this will be the same. And Cummings won’t care.
* according to Mail.
It might be time to stop thinking about a selfish man driving 350 miles whilst simultaneously contagious and not contagious, or the eye tests to a beauty spot on his wifes birthday. The PM has told us we are plebs, must eat whatever lies we are told, there is one rule for puppets and their masters, another for real people.
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1266273532993916930
It makes no sense, furlough should be stopped for businesses reliant on EU open trade. They are the past, their employees and shareholders need to move on to new things.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/05/26/voting-intention-con-44-lab-38-25-26-may
The still largely class based politics of the 1970s as portrayed so well in the excellent This House shown again on the National Theatre livestream last night has disappeared
And even if it is, they might be able to fudge the terms of reference by making it about lockdown instead.
Or pick a friendly chairman, like Blair did for the inquiry into the death of David Kelly.
The stats are either reliable and should be used or they are not and should be ignored. To switch from one to the other at the precise moment they start to make you look bad, then concoct a whine about comparing data was one of the early things the government did to make themselves look dumb. People aren't that stupid...
Otherwise, surely they would have banned him by now for his own sake.
Best prices - Welsh Assembly Most Seats
Lab 8/11
Con 11/8
PC 12/1
LD 100/1
Thing is, even if the Cons get most seats, nobody will give them a coalition or even confidence & supply, to Labour would cling on anyway.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52844323
https://twitter.com/rolandsmartin/status/1266160168515121152?s=09
(Sadly felt I had to check if Cummings might be Jewish before posting this in case it might be seen as anti semitic. I cant find anything to suggest he might be.)
Next.
I Don't Get it.
To be honest, I am getting more uncertain about the next Assembly elections, rather than less. Three weeks ago I would have made the Tories slight favourites for most seats. However, Cummings hasn’t played well in Wales. At the same time, Labour have been having their own issues with cocking up lockdown and ministers breaking it. Plus, if they don’t reopen in the next month their economy especially in the North faces utter carnage given how much of it is dependent on summer tourism from England.
Labour also have huge inbuilt advantages, insofar as although the Tories have closed this gap appreciably Labour remain the one truly national party in Wales. There are very few seats where they are not at least a reasonably close second. This means they tend to pick up a lot of list seats to compensate for constituency losses - in 2007 for example they had a net loss of just four seats despite losing six overall, and getting just 31% of the vote.
However, with the Brexit party unlikely to stand, UKIP dead and the Tories having spread their appeal while Plaid have retreated to their heartlands, the Blues could still spring a surprise.
Both on 22-24 seats with Plaid on about 12-14 and possibly one Liberal Democrat wouldn’t seem a ridiculous result. But there’s so much uncertainty at the moment you’d have to offer me better odds than that before I’d consider money.
Lets be optimistic and say its only 3m unemployed at the end. With no job, no options to get rehired into within their former industry and a large stack of people just like them just as stuck. Add then on top the people who cannot go back to work full time because schools will be 2 days a week in the next academic year. This will pose a basic crisis of survival for these people.
We know the government's view of the nightmare that is Universal Credit. A large number of people are about to get their first experience ever of welfare and it will be a hideous wake-up call. that the government have torpedoed the empathy that Boris brought to the table just adds hypocrisy and incompetence to the perception that the general public has.
We know that Dom likes to radically shake things up. He's certainly done a number on the Tory party
But if not, then this Monday's coming mad dash to unlock the bbq down is going to seriously backfire in two weeks.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/880288/COVID-19_hospital_discharge_service_requirements.pdf
Annex B: Maintaining good decision making in acute settings
Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made.
Requiring ITU or HDU care Requiring oxygen therapy/ NIV
Requiring intravenous fluids
NEWS2 > 3
(clinical judgement required in patients with AF &/or chronic respiratory disease)
Diminished level of consciousness where recovery realistic
Acute functional impairment
in excess of home/community care provision
Last hours of life
Requiring intravenous medication > b.d. (including analgesia)
Undergone lower limb surgery within 48hrs
Undergone thorax-abdominal/pelvic surgery with 72 hrs
Within 24hrs of an invasive procedure
(with attendant risk of acute life threatening deterioration)
probably wouldn't touch Labour with a 10 foot pole .
The chickens have been coming home to roost for some time now. What is ironic is that Johnson is the beneficiary, particularly in the light of Cummings demonstrating his utter contempt for the proles.
When Johnson inevitably disappoints, to where do the disappointed migrate?
They flagged one of his tweets
So he sign an executive order
So they censored him (a bit)
The Scottish dry bar...
That isn't going to go away, given a government which doesn't seem able to competently administer.
And, contra MarqueeM, the media does seem to be able to look at more than one thing at once.
Though it’s now pushed down the page, this was the Guardian’s early morning headline:
Government rejected radical lockdown of England's care homes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/government-rejected-radical-lockdown-england-care-homes-coronavirus
.. and another couple taken from the front page just now:
Matt Hancock's obsession with hospitals has warped priorities and cost lives
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/29/matt-hancock-hospitals-warped-priorities-cost-lives-coronavirus
After PPE and testing, contact tracing looks like the next UK shambles
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/28/ppe-testing-contact-tracing-shambles-outsourcing-coronavirus
How - having lost the public trust - this government even attempts to lock people back down when it inevitably is needed I do not know. Its brilliant really. A screwed up strategy which let the virus run rampant at the start, a care home genocide as indirect government policy against the scientific advice, an economy on its knees, an outrageously high dead rate and now a "fuck you hypocrites" perception by the public which means we get to do it all again.
No wonder they are pressing on with no deal. Get on with stupid whilst the public are too busy arguing about your other stupid. No deal was going to be great fun* in normal times. Think of what fun* we will have with a ravaged economy before we implement it!
As the lockdown is starting to ease before the furlough is there will also be fewer redundancies from it
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/05/181_290297.html
...Parents and teachers urged the government Thursday to postpone reopening of schools as more and more students are confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus inside and outside of schools.
From the first day of the second phase of school reopenings, Wednesday, when kindergarteners, first and second graders of elementary school, middle school seniors and second-year high school students returned to their classrooms, 561 kindergartens and schools postponed reopening due to the high risk of community infection.
According to data from the Ministry of Education, 838 schools among the total 20,902 nationwide that were supposed to resume their classes on the same day remained closed in cities including Seoul, Bucheon in Gyeonggi Province and Gumi in North Gyeongsang Province, as of 10 a.m., Thursday. In Bucheon, 251 schools were closed, while 117 in Seoul and 182 in Gumi postponed their reopening.
In Seoul, a high school senior who started to attend class last week tested positive for the virus, and his school and nearby ones as well as an elementary school his younger brother is attending were also closed down.
In regard to the series of infections among students, parents are increasingly concerned about their children's safety in classrooms...
The weather's been good enough to keep people outside. It's hard to identify what would have caused an increase in spread.
Local government reform is one of those areas that isn't discussed enough.
My first reaction was 'They are Jewish, I didn't know and don't need to know nor care'.
I then noted that the depiction was subtle enough that it would have gone over my head without being told. It was clearly aimed at those that cared about their background and not in a good way.
Mr. Slackbladder, quite.
It does remind me a little of political journalists who consider UK political pronouncements to be negotiating positions or of dubious honesty, whilst treating European positions as pure truth that must be respected.
The transcript of the program is here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/fileon4/PG02_Care_Homes_Catastrophe.pdf
Go ask the pub and restaurant sector about the easing of lockdown. 2m spacing means so many aren't viable as a business. So they'll never reopen. Along with so many of the businesses who supply that sector. Wholesale was hoping that the reopening of schools may help. They don't have hospitality or hotels or restaurants any more. Workplace catering is a fraction of what it was. And with schools going back part time and on packed lunches there's nothing for them either.
Airlines? Fucked. Hotels? Fucked. The service sector who support office workers together with landlords? Fucked. Sorry mate but there is a very hard reality check coming to you.
Wish me luck!
With these goats I'm about to sacrifice to Athena and Zeus on your behalf, success is surely guaranteed.
Actually defying the PM would mean voting against him, demanding his resignation if he didn't fire Cummings, resigning the whip, or leaving a ministerial post.
And if you look closely, only one solitary MP has done a single one of those things - the utterly anonymous Under-Secretary of State for Scotland!
The difference between defiance in deed, and defiance in name alone.
Remember to check you've answered all the questions you are supposed to!
The detail from the contract tracing is almost immediate, and extremely useful for quick and effective interventions.
This is, in Korea terms, a major outbreak. But we're still getting new infections every day in the thousands, so even with a working track and trace program, it would be extremely difficult to do this kind of analysis:
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/05/119_290298.html
...The cluster of infections at the Coupang warehouse began after a worker in her 40s tested positive, May 23, after attending the first birthday party of a child of an acquaintance that took place in a buffet restaurant in Bucheon, May 9.
The birthday party has been linked to infections of at least 15 people, and was traced to Itaewon nightclubs that have caused the new wave of infections here.
Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung issued a "no-assembly" administrative order for the logistics center for two weeks, also Thursday, practically banning business operation.
"Many concerns are being raised over the further spread of COVID-19 as the virus has been detected even in hats and shoes worn by the infected in the logistics center," Lee said during a briefing.
Later in the day, the government announced enhanced preventive measures against the virus, which will be applied to the capital region until June 14.
The measures call for temporary suspension of operations of public establishments such as museums and art galleries, among others.
"The government also asks companies in Seoul and nearby areas to utilize flexible working arrangements, or let their employees work from home during the given period," Minister Park said, stressing that the next two weeks will be crucial to stopping the spread of the virus in the region.
Adding to woes is that infections at the warehouse have been already spread to a large-scale call center, also located in Bucheon...
Crack a carapace !
I know it was late at night but your response was unnecessarily assertive!
My use of Alastair’s now infamous stairs stat wasn’t to in some way to criticise the lockdown, it is merely good shorthand for people’s warped perception of risk.
People are getting wiser to the actual risks they face. If you are under 60 and healthy, you are (apparently, according to PB, I haven’t verified this) at more risk of falling down the stairs than from Covid-19.
I dare say few people know this. And I wasn’t only talking about risk of death, I was talking about general risk of both death and injury.
Apparently a quarter of a million Britons a year end up in hospital having fallen down the stairs. Of course, only a fraction of those A&E reports die, but many are injured (some seriously) from their accident.
So, Alastair’s stat is useful, as it provides an everyday comparator. @AndyJS has been trying to convey this risk profile daily, and is often ignored or even attacked for it.
Yet the risk profile is very relevant. That is not to underplay the risks from Covid, merely to quantify and compare them.
Starsports: 8/1 go, 1/25 stay
But I wouldn't automatically assume that Sunak won't come up with some useful ideas to start rebuilding the economy.
It's going to require both massive intervention (an example might be adopting elements of the 'Green New Deal' *), and innovative ideas to incentivise productive employment by the private sector.
And the fucked industries will come back eventually, but it's going to be a long haul.
*If we're going to be resigned to massive government borrowing, we might as well try to spend the money on something useful.
Re-engineering the country's energy supplies is not the worst place to start.
The risk is that they upset politicians enough that a bipartisanan bill removing their S230 protections gets through, turning them into a publisher that can be sued for libel for anything false and defamatory posted on their site.
If hospitality reopens it has to be without social distancing (which is not a rule in any case). Social interaction and closeness are the whole point of it.
And if people say oh no they must stay closed then, ask yourselves whether you want to live in a world without pubs, restaurants, cafes, village halls, theatres, clubs, choirs, concert halls, live music, festivals etc etc.
But the document is incontrovertible evidence of the government planning.