Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
On what grounds?
Because I defected to the LibDems. Bad naughty RP.
Oh dear. The Party is a long way from its chapel roots: I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety-nine just persons, which need no repentance. — Luke 15:7
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
I though the first ministers were at the SAGE meetings?
No, not to my knowledge. IIRC they or their scientific officers were sent the written reports. But not invited to participate other than sending written questions, I think. This may or may not haver changed, but was in contrast to political spad participation from the London gmt. .
It's a subtle nudge to push companies to make staff redundant (or bring them back, of course). That only Costa the government £700 per month in UC rather than £2000 for the furlough.
I think it sort of makes sense because some businesses do need a starting gun for reopening.
This is where it starts to get difficult for government, as was always going to be the case.
The current schemes have been exceptionally generous by international standards, but it’s now time for companies to start thinking about what their business looks like in the future, especially in terms of making redundancies. Asking companies to start paying partial salaries will help get these conversations going.
Over the next few months, the government support needs to taper from the furlough scheme levels towards standard UC levels for people who don’t have a job to go back to - it’s necessary but of course isn’t going to be popular, there’s probably a couple of million people initially going to be affected.
The Gov't needs to keep the furlough scheme open where businesses legally can't trade and then perhaps a touch longer. Everyone needs to know where aggregate demand is after that.
Yes, but there’s going to be a big difference between being allowed to trade, and being allowed to trade at previous volumes. Capacities of many entertainment venues are going to be reduced, even if demand is still there - that’s going to be the difficult bit to work out, as their business models rely on venues being full.
2m rule + end of furlough = mass unemployment. It cannot possibly be otherwise.
*Social distancing in schools means that they cannot possibly accept all their pupils back full-time, which can only result in the mass sacking of working parents (albeit that much off the resultant unemployment may be offset by hirings of people without the same commitments)
*It also means that restaurants, even assuming that they are allowed to re-open, will go under because they can't cater for enough guests: essentially, losing most of their tables should also mean that most of these businesses will be wiped out, except for takeaways and perhaps a handful with very spacious premises and/or that offer high end cuisine at extortionate prices to very wealthy people
*Pubs, bars, nightclubs, cinemas and theatres probably still won't be open come the Autumn. The big brewery firms might be willing and able to mothball their tied houses and bring them back when this is all over, but the rest of these venues have had it. The Government might consider having mercy on museums and art galleries and allowing them to receive visitors, but the performance arts are basically finished as a sector, and the same goes for most of professional sport
*I expect that we'll still have some hotels at the end of all this but the numbers will be substantially reduced
Counting all of these losses plus those in the supply chain - e.g. food suppliers and catering companies going to the wall through lack of custom - the carnage will be enormous. Through a combination of the 45-day deadline before the end of the furlough scheme and it becoming obvious that the problem with part-time schooling may continue indefinitely, I reckon we've a tsunami wave of P45s coming in September. Unemployment could easily be over 4 million by November 1st.
By November we could be into the third wave. If so there may be more pressing concerns.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
I am not surprised really , given that you were so recently openly campaigning for another party having quit Labour.
Indeed, party HQs and local party branches and associations might overlook voting for another party once or twice in the past when considering membership applications, they will not overlook openly campaigning for another party, especially openly an election or 2 ago
There's at least one case of a Labour MP in Scotland actively recommending voting for another party, in a Graun interview IIRC. Can't remember which election though.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
I though the first ministers were at the SAGE meetings?
No, not to my knowledge. IIRC they or their scientific officers were sent the written reports. But not invited to participate other than sending written questions, I think. This may or may not haver changed, but was in contrast to political spad participation from the London gmt. .
It seems like they are, otherwise why would Nicola sturgeon be complaining about participation rights of her advisors?
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
I though the first ministers were at the SAGE meetings?
No, not to my knowledge. IIRC they or their scientific officers were sent the written reports. But not invited to participate other than sending written questions, I think. This may or may not haver changed, but was in contrast to political spad participation from the London gmt. .
It seems like they are, otherwise why would Nicola sturgeon be complaining about participation rights of her advisors?
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
Well I know of one former green party activist in the "ooh Jeremy Corbyn" camp who was admitted to the party in the Autumn of 2015 having stood against the party in local elections in May 2015. She turned out to be all mouth and no trousers, one of those who tries to dominate meetings yet contributes diddly squat on the ground.
She wasn't subject to objections from a local faction more concerned to maintain the ideological purity of their local party than to accept that the party can only win as a coalition of different strands of the left who chooe to concentrate on what unites them. I presume that you were.
It's a shame anyway as you appear to be more supportive of the current leadership than many of those "inspired" by the previous leader.
I know for a fact that one of the people locally most stridently objecting to me defecting from the LibDems to support Starmer himself defected from the LibDems to support Jezbollah.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
On what grounds?
Because I defected to the LibDems. Bad naughty RP.
Oh dear. The Party is a long way from its chapel roots: I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety-nine just persons, which need no repentance. — Luke 15:7
That was the quote I was looking for!
Great minds, etc!
Genuine question - so they are saying that modern Labour party policy is not to accept defections of active political participants from other political parties? Or is it only those who have previous been Labour members, left, been politically active and are trying to return?
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
I am not surprised really , given that you were so recently openly campaigning for another party having quit Labour.
Indeed, party HQs and local party branches and associations might overlook voting for another party once or twice in the past when considering membership applications, they will not overlook openly campaigning for another party, especially only an election or 2 ago
And yet councillors and MPs defect from one party to another effortlessly enough. Then we have the nature of that campaign. Our LD candidate put out posts pretty openly asking people to support the Labour candidate. And then with the vote swap thing being organised by People's Vote we got national coverage in The Independent and beyond.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
I though the first ministers were at the SAGE meetings?
Only Pre-submitted questions and no comments - hardly active representation.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
The UK had a three week warning about what was happening in Italy and two weeks from Spain, they chose to let it rip when they could have locked down. I did suggest they should take advantage of this window on here. They didn’t and subsequently have come over as reactive with no structured forward planning, if it is structured and well planned they have done a poor job of selling it.
And the question for the enquiry will be who gave the advice and how Cobra acted
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
I am not surprised really , given that you were so recently openly campaigning for another party having quit Labour.
Indeed, party HQs and local party branches and associations might overlook voting for another party once or twice in the past when considering membership applications, they will not overlook openly campaigning for another party, especially only an election or 2 ago
Presumably unless you’re an elected councillor or parliamentarian, in which case your defection comes complete with a press release?
It's a subtle nudge to push companies to make staff redundant (or bring them back, of course). That only Costa the government £700 per month in UC rather than £2000 for the furlough.
I think it sort of makes sense because some businesses do need a starting gun for reopening.
This is where it starts to get difficult for government, as was always going to be the case.
The current schemes have been exceptionally generous by international standards, but it’s now time for companies to start thinking about what their business looks like in the future, especially in terms of making redundancies. Asking companies to start paying partial salaries will help get these conversations going.
Over the next few months, the government support needs to taper from the furlough scheme levels towards standard UC levels for people who don’t have a job to go back to - it’s necessary but of course isn’t going to be popular, there’s probably a couple of million people initially going to be affected.
The Gov't needs to keep the furlough scheme open where businesses legally can't trade and then perhaps a touch longer. Everyone needs to know where aggregate demand is after that.
Yes, but there’s going to be a big difference between being allowed to trade, and being allowed to trade at previous volumes. Capacities of many entertainment venues are going to be reduced, even if demand is still there - that’s going to be the difficult bit to work out, as their business models rely on venues being full.
2m rule + end of furlough = mass unemployment. It cannot possibly be otherwise.
*Social distancing in schools means that they cannot possibly accept all their pupils back full-time, which can only result in the mass sacking of working parents (albeit that much off the resultant unemployment may be offset by hirings of people without the same commitments)
*It also means that restaurants, even assuming that they are allowed to re-open, will go under because they can't cater for enough guests: essentially, losing most of their tables should also mean that most of these businesses will be wiped out, except for takeaways and perhaps a handful with very spacious premises and/or that offer high end cuisine at extortionate prices to very wealthy people
*Pubs, bars, nightclubs, cinemas and theatres probably still won't be open come the Autumn. The big brewery firms might be willing and able to mothball their tied houses and bring them back when this is all over, but the rest of these venues have had it. The Government might consider having mercy on museums and art galleries and allowing them to receive visitors, but the performance arts are basically finished as a sector, and the same goes for most of professional sport
*I expect that we'll still have some hotels at the end of all this but the numbers will be substantially reduced
Counting all of these losses plus those in the supply chain - e.g. food suppliers and catering companies going to the wall through lack of custom - the carnage will be enormous. Through a combination of the 45-day deadline before the end of the furlough scheme and it becoming obvious that the problem with part-time schooling may continue indefinitely, I reckon we've a tsunami wave of P45s coming in September. Unemployment could easily be over 4 million by November 1st.
By November we could be into the third wave. If so there may be more pressing concerns.
If there's a series of waves coming then we'll have to deal with both the economic problem and the piles of bodies at the same time.
I can remember some on the not-so-right who praised the Chinese Government for standing up to Western Imperialism (demands for representative democracy), unlike Russia.
Completely off-topic, but I've been watching the BBC's coverage of election nights. During the 2001 election night it strikes me how certain the pundits and politicians were that we were going to have a referendum on joining the Euro.
Anyway, one thing that puzzles me is that Frank Dobson said that joining at the current rate of exchange (around 1.67 to the pound) would be disastrous. Can someone who understands this better than I do, explain why that would have been the case?
Locks in a hugely strong value which would have seen massive movement of business to elsewhere in the EU. It's the opposite of what Germany did, they locked in a weak value and saw a huge boom afterwards.
Completely off-topic, but I've been watching the BBC's coverage of election nights. During the 2001 election night it strikes me how certain the pundits and politicians were that we were going to have a referendum on joining the Euro.
Anyway, one thing that puzzles me is that Frank Dobson said that joining at the current rate of exchange (around 1.67 to the pound) would be disastrous. Can someone who understands this better than I do, explain why that would have been the case?
The pound would have been locked in overvalued.
Have a look what it is now (or what it was pre-referendum even) and contrast. Having a locked in, overvalued currency would have made it harder to compete.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
Fair enough. I didn't actually mention Cobra - more concerned with the SAGE group and the origon of the science, and the way the devolved admins wouldn't have had a first hand view of the internal workings of SAGE, influence from spads, etc.
Edit: it does reflect the Blairite devolution settlement that the UK and English Gmts are one and the same - with the English numerical domination, control of most fiscal levers, the borders, immigration (quarantine), and so on, the devolved gmts are in an unenviable position.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
The UK had a three week warning about what was happening in Italy and two weeks from Spain, they chose to let it rip when they could have locked down. I did suggest they should take advantage of this window on here. They didn’t and subsequently have come over as reactive with no structured forward planning, if it is structured and well planned they have done a poor job of selling it.
I'd suggest we've had a structured lockdown. Furloughing etc has ensured people have survived and hopefully as much of the economy as possible has survived and the NHS never collapsed.
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
I though the first ministers were at the SAGE meetings?
They were at all the Cobra meetings which Sage feeds into
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
I though the first ministers were at the SAGE meetings?
They were at all the Cobra meetings which Sage feeds into
Thanks, Big_G... that is the meeting I was thinking about.
Completely off-topic, but I've been watching the BBC's coverage of election nights. During the 2001 election night it strikes me how certain the pundits and politicians were that we were going to have a referendum on joining the Euro.
Anyway, one thing that puzzles me is that Frank Dobson said that joining at the current rate of exchange (around 1.67 to the pound) would be disastrous. Can someone who understands this better than I do, explain why that would have been the case?
If we went in at too high a rate, it would be deflationary. Our goods would be too expensive so we would not be able to export them, and we would suck in imports, so we'd have a balance of trade problem, high unemployment and low investment.
Note that if you thought our greatest economic problem was inflation then you might welcome deflation through joining the Euro at too high a rate.
There is another, separate problem with joining at all. Because our economic cycles are not synchronised, then whatever rate we joined at, it would be too high for part of the cycle and too low at another time. This leads us to Gordon Brown's five tests, and keeping us out of the Euro.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
The UK had a three week warning about what was happening in Italy and two weeks from Spain, they chose to let it rip when they could have locked down. I did suggest they should take advantage of this window on here. They didn’t and subsequently have come over as reactive with no structured forward planning, if it is structured and well planned they have done a poor job of selling it.
I'd suggest we've had a structured lockdown. Furloughing etc has ensured people have survived and hopefully as much of the economy as possible has survived and the NHS never collapsed.
The most positive thing in the UK response has been protecting the NHS from overload, although the secondary impact of that is still to be measured. Is furlough just a phased was into redundancy? Time will tell, the lockdown was never really as severe as it could have been and the, what appears to be ad Hoc announcements about relaxation does not give the appearance of a structured project.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
As a rightie rather than a pure-bred PB Tory, I would award the government 7/10, the NHS 5/10, PHE 1/10, and the MSM -10/10.
My guess is that a Starmer government would have been broadly similar, though the mistakes would have been different ones.
As a caveat I would not expect any large organisation to better 8/10 - mistakes are inevitably part of any complex process with lots of unknowns. Better to know and accept this at the start, be flexible, absorb the lesson, then move on.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
I am not surprised really , given that you were so recently openly campaigning for another party having quit Labour.
Indeed, party HQs and local party branches and associations might overlook voting for another party once or twice in the past when considering membership applications, they will not overlook openly campaigning for another party, especially only an election or 2 ago
And yet councillors and MPs defect from one party to another effortlessly enough. Then we have the nature of that campaign. Our LD candidate put out posts pretty openly asking people to support the Labour candidate. And then with the vote swap thing being organised by People's Vote we got national coverage in The Independent and beyond.
My finest work...
That is different, they are already elected representatives who bring the party another vote in the council chamber or House of Commons. Had you been a councillor you would have had more bargaining power.
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
Fair enough. I didn't actually mention Cobra - more concerned with the SAGE group and the origon of the science, and the way the devolved admins wouldn't have had a first hand view of the internal workings of SAGE, influence from spads, etc.
Edit: it does reflect the Blairite devolution settlement that the UK and English Gmts are one and the same - with the English numerical domination, control of most fiscal levers, the borders, immigration (quarantine), and so on, the devolved gmts are in an unenviable position.
To be honest Cobra is where the decisions were made and it is those decisions and why they were made that must be at the heart of the enquiry. As all parts of the UK acted together the question must be why
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
I know Starmer's polling is looking great but I still feel like Labour are missing chances to define the narrative. People are relaxing their efforts to avoid spreading the rona and it's likely to create new spikes. They need to be connected to the government. Why aren't Labour warning people against creating Cummings Clusters or something?
I think maybe they need a strong voice in addition to Starmer who can play an attack dog role.
Sunak 9/10 - Excellent thus far but of course giving away the money is the easy part Hancock 5/10 - He's had the hardest gig to run through the whole crisis, has handled it OK. Some failures such as care homes look bad right now but how do they compare to other european countries. Johnson 4/10 - Good messaging at the start but badly off track now. Asleep at the wheel pre crisis.
So Amy failed to prosecute the right people, and Kamala Harris did prosecute the wrong people. But Harris has been backed as Amy fades (and Catherine Cortez Masto withdrew overnight). Too hard for this bear of little brain.
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
I know Starmer's polling is looking great but I still feel like Labour are missing chances to define the narrative. People are relaxing their efforts to avoid spreading the rona and it's likely to create new spikes. They need to be connected to the government. Why aren't Labour warning people against creating Cummings Clusters or something?
I think maybe they need a strong voice in addition to Starmer who can play an attack dog role.
Completely off-topic, but I've been watching the BBC's coverage of election nights. During the 2001 election night it strikes me how certain the pundits and politicians were that we were going to have a referendum on joining the Euro.
Anyway, one thing that puzzles me is that Frank Dobson said that joining at the current rate of exchange (around 1.67 to the pound) would be disastrous. Can someone who understands this better than I do, explain why that would have been the case?
Locks in a hugely strong value which would have seen massive movement of business to elsewhere in the EU. It's the opposite of what Germany did, they locked in a weak value and saw a huge boom afterwards.
But one could not know that at the time. The value was the value.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
I know for a fact that one of the people locally most stridently objecting to me defecting from the LibDems to support Starmer himself defected from the LibDems to support Jezbollah.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
Well I know of one former green party activist in the "ooh Jeremy Corbyn" camp who was admitted to the party in the Autumn of 2015 having stood against the party in local elections in May 2015. She turned out to be all mouth and no trousers, one of those who tries to dominate meetings yet contributes diddly squat on the ground.
She wasn't subject to objections from a local faction more concerned to maintain the ideological purity of their local party than to accept that the party can only win as a coalition of different strands of the left who chooe to concentrate on what unites them. I presume that you were.
It's a shame anyway as you appear to be more supportive of the current leadership than many of those "inspired" by the previous leader.
I know for a fact that one of the people locally most stridently objecting to me defecting from the LibDems to support Starmer himself defected from the LibDems to support Jezbollah.
The difference in your case is likely to be that as a former - and recent - Labour activist, your defection will be seen by longstanding members as an act of betrayal - and agreeing to readmit you so soon might be viewed as offensive and a slap in face to them.Had you never previously been a Labour member but just a LibDem activist for a few years, it would be rather different. Personally I would be far more concerned about people such as Ian Austin, John Woodcock and Gisela Stuart who openly campaigned for Labour voters to support Johnson. They deserve a life ban - as would a BNP member - and to be confronted with the consequences of what they have helped foist on the country.
So Amy failed to prosecute the right people, and Kamala Harris did prosecute the wrong people. But Harris has been backed as Amy fades (and Catherine Cortez Masto withdrew overnight). Too hard for this bear of little brain.
The KLOBUCHAR thing doesn't seem to check out, the timing is off. But her problem is that she has local activists gunning for her. It's a front Biden probably doesn't want to have to fight on.
OTOH maybe the rioting scares white people towards Trump and makes Minnesota more marginal, in which case he'll need Baemy to save it...
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
You are most reasonable on here, Big G, unlike some of your fellow PB tories.
This government, unlike Sturgeon, has no humility and refuses to acknowledge any mistakes. For example, Hancock and Johnson: "we threw a protective ring around care homes right from the start". They clearly didn't, and should just acknowledge that.
And the same for D** C******s (don't want to bring the name up again) - if they, and he, had simply said "sorry, bit of an error, should have cleared it in advance", I suspect only about 10% of the mud would have stuck.
There are several other examples.
It is, sadly, the Trump modus operandi: never, ever admit that you may have erred.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
Your choice or theirs?
Theirs. Sod off email by Jennie Formby complete with letter from the Legal and Governance Unit. Apparently "I campaigned for the Liberal Democrats against Labour". Erm they don't seem aware of what I did to the local LibDem election campaign...
Have to laugh. If they don't want me back as a 25 year veteran then how do they win back millions of Labour to Tory switchers?
Formby? She was sacked weeks ago for being a racist nutter oops, being too closely aligned with Corbyn’s leadership.
How come her name is still on the letter?
She only stepped down when David Evans was elected a couple of days ago
Write to her and ask if you had campaigned against Labour for the SWP would she have welcomed you with open arms? Just like the rest of them.
She wouldnt, its against party rules surprised a 25 year veteran didn't know that
I personally would be happy to have as many people who are willing to fight for a Labour victory back in the fold, its definitely in the rule book though.
Plus Rochdale is disruptive to local activity if his inability to stop going on and on about the previous regime on here is anything like how he behaves in front of fellow party members.
Completely off-topic, but I've been watching the BBC's coverage of election nights. During the 2001 election night it strikes me how certain the pundits and politicians were that we were going to have a referendum on joining the Euro.
Completely off-topic, but I've been watching the BBC's coverage of election nights. During the 2001 election night it strikes me how certain the pundits and politicians were that we were going to have a referendum on joining the Euro.
Anyway, one thing that puzzles me is that Frank Dobson said that joining at the current rate of exchange (around 1.67 to the pound) would be disastrous. Can someone who understands this better than I do, explain why that would have been the case?
If we went in at too high a rate, it would be deflationary. Our goods would be too expensive so we would not be able to export them, and we would suck in imports, so we'd have a balance of trade problem, high unemployment and low investment.
Note that if you thought our greatest economic problem was inflation then you might welcome deflation through joining the Euro at too high a rate.
There is another, separate problem with joining at all. Because our economic cycles are not synchronised, then whatever rate we joined at, it would be too high for part of the cycle and too low at another time. This leads us to Gordon Brown's five tests, and keeping us out of the Euro.
Indeed - to have joined at such a high rate would have repeated the ERM mistake from 1990.
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
Looking at it the other way round, we're at the same point now as we were in March just two days before lockdown.
That would be a very misguided way to look at the data.
See the comment I've just posted.
But just think about it. When the UK stopped testing everyone with symptoms on 11 March, the daily rate of confirmed cases was about 100. Now the estimated true infection rate is about 8000 a day.
I really don't think it's tenable to suggest we have a smaller infection rate now than we did then - just 12 days before lockdown.
I know Starmer's polling is looking great but I still feel like Labour are missing chances to define the narrative. People are relaxing their efforts to avoid spreading the rona and it's likely to create new spikes. They need to be connected to the government. Why aren't Labour warning people against creating Cummings Clusters or something?
I think maybe they need a strong voice in addition to Starmer who can play an attack dog role.
I think you have a point. Angela Rayner, Deputy Leader, seems to have been rather quiet. I expected her to be to Starmer as Prescott was to Blair. She still may be in due course.
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
I presume nice companies with a little cash will stump up the lowish contributions in Aug-Oct to get some income to their furloughed staff, while not so nice companies will cut them off after July.
Oh FFS! It’s not a question of being nice or not nice. It’s a question of not having the income and not being able to afford it. The rules on trading while insolvent have not been abolished.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
Well I know of one former green party activist in the "ooh Jeremy Corbyn" camp who was admitted to the party in the Autumn of 2015 having stood against the party in local elections in May 2015. She turned out to be all mouth and no trousers, one of those who tries to dominate meetings yet contributes diddly squat on the ground.
She wasn't subject to objections from a local faction more concerned to maintain the ideological purity of their local party than to accept that the party can only win as a coalition of different strands of the left who chooe to concentrate on what unites them. I presume that you were.
It's a shame anyway as you appear to be more supportive of the current leadership than many of those "inspired" by the previous leader.
I know for a fact that one of the people locally most stridently objecting to me defecting from the LibDems to support Starmer himself defected from the LibDems to support Jezbollah.
How do you expect to get back in if you cant even use respectful language.
You could always rejoin the LDs or start a local anti "Jezbollah" party.
I presume nice companies with a little cash will stump up the lowish contributions in Aug-Oct to get some income to their furloughed staff, while not so nice companies will cut them off after July.
Oh FFS! It’s not a question of being nice or not nice. It’s a question of not having the income and not being able to afford it. The rules on trading while insolvent have not been abolished.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
Quite nice graph - England only, hospitals only, but it's date of specimen rather than date reported (and as with PHE hospital deaths figures, last 3 days will be updated a lot)
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
Fair enough. I didn't actually mention Cobra - more concerned with the SAGE group and the origon of the science, and the way the devolved admins wouldn't have had a first hand view of the internal workings of SAGE, influence from spads, etc.
Edit: it does reflect the Blairite devolution settlement that the UK and English Gmts are one and the same - with the English numerical domination, control of most fiscal levers, the borders, immigration (quarantine), and so on, the devolved gmts are in an unenviable position.
To be honest Cobra is where the decisions were made and it is those decisions and why they were made that must be at the heart of the enquiry. As all parts of the UK acted together the question must be why
Sturgeon and Drakeford have input but no veto on the decisions of Cobra.To the extent that they disagree , the devolved authorities can pursue their own paths - as indeed both have done on certain matters.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
Thanks for that.
The very early stages will be the most interesting. I don't think Boris had his eye on the ball but you may well be right that the the advice from SAGE was incorrect. I still remain intrigued as to why Sturgeon's ratings seem to be doing very well and Johnson's have declined significantly during the crisis. Not sure where Drakeford's polling was before or now to be honest.
I hope that the easing of lockdown hasn't just be an attempt to create a diversion away from the Cummings problem. I am concerned that our infections seem to still be in the thousands every day whereas the Italians, Spanish, French and Germans are in the hundreds. (Even accepting that the Worldometer figures are imperfect)
From what I can see on my limited trips out people don't seem to be taking many precautions. We seem to have far fewer mask wearers than elsewhere - I think RCS commented even in LA 60-70% of people were wearing a mask.
What is going to kill Boris and, more importantly, kill any economic recovery is if we suffer a second wave which others avoid. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't.
I know Starmer's polling is looking great but I still feel like Labour are missing chances to define the narrative. People are relaxing their efforts to avoid spreading the rona and it's likely to create new spikes. They need to be connected to the government. Why aren't Labour warning people against creating Cummings Clusters or something?
I think maybe they need a strong voice in addition to Starmer who can play an attack dog role.
Dr Rosena got under Hancock's skin.
Our deputy leader has been invisible.
It seems really easy to provoke a Hancock strop too.
Completely off-topic, but I've been watching the BBC's coverage of election nights. During the 2001 election night it strikes me how certain the pundits and politicians were that we were going to have a referendum on joining the Euro.
Anyway, one thing that puzzles me is that Frank Dobson said that joining at the current rate of exchange (around 1.67 to the pound) would be disastrous. Can someone who understands this better than I do, explain why that would have been the case?
Locks in a hugely strong value which would have seen massive movement of business to elsewhere in the EU. It's the opposite of what Germany did, they locked in a weak value and saw a huge boom afterwards.
But one could not know that at the time. The value was the value.
The effects of locking in an exchange rate were know and talked about.
Many in banking were startled that the Germans had managed to lock in such a low rate. There were articles in the Economist etc about the effects on the rest of Europe...
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
Fair enough. I didn't actually mention Cobra - more concerned with the SAGE group and the origon of the science, and the way the devolved admins wouldn't have had a first hand view of the internal workings of SAGE, influence from spads, etc.
Edit: it does reflect the Blairite devolution settlement that the UK and English Gmts are one and the same - with the English numerical domination, control of most fiscal levers, the borders, immigration (quarantine), and so on, the devolved gmts are in an unenviable position.
To be honest Cobra is where the decisions were made and it is those decisions and why they were made that must be at the heart of the enquiry. As all parts of the UK acted together the question must be why
Sturgeon and Drakeford have input but no veto on the decisions of Cobra.To the extent that they disagree , the devolved authorities can pursue their own paths - as indeed both have done on certain matters.
No.
They acted together on stay at home
They only varied when Boris changed to stay alert
And indeed they both seem to be playing catch up with England now
But just think about it. When the UK stopped testing everyone with symptoms on 11 March, the daily rate of confirmed cases was about 100. Now the estimated true infection rate is about 8000 a day.
I really don't think it's tenable to suggest we have a smaller infection rate now than we did then - just 12 days before lockdown.
It's all rather confused by testing differences though - the testing rate has increased (literally) 100x since that date, so we're picking up a vastly higher % of our infections. Also, anyone infected on Mar11th might not be tested until say the 21st (?), by when the daily case rate had cleared 1k.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
You are most reasonable on here, Big G, unlike some of your fellow PB tories.
This government, unlike Sturgeon, has no humility and refuses to acknowledge any mistakes. For example, Hancock and Johnson: "we threw a protective ring around care homes right from the start". They clearly didn't, and should just acknowledge that.
And the same for D** C******s (don't want to bring the name up again) - if they, and he, had simply said "sorry, bit of an error, should have cleared it in advance", I suspect only about 10% of the mud would have stuck.
There are several other examples.
It is, sadly, the Trump modus operandi: never, ever admit that you may have erred.
I think a lot more of we did make mistakes would have played well. It has for Nicola
I presume nice companies with a little cash will stump up the lowish contributions in Aug-Oct to get some income to their furloughed staff, while not so nice companies will cut them off after July.
Oh FFS! It’s not a question of being nice or not nice. It’s a question of not having the income and not being able to afford it. The rules on trading while insolvent have not been abolished.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
Is the 2 metre rule written in law anywhere ?
No.
But as my daughter keeps pointing out if Environmental Health Officers start saying that this - and similar - guidance must be followed even in venues where it is not possible to do so, even physically, then she and many other places (not just pubs) are stuffed.
That is why the advice to EHOs must be that what is done / required is what is reasonable for the venue and why, if the government wanted to keep the hospitality and other similar sectors alive or in with a fighting chance, they need to say and pass legislation to the effect that such places will not be liable if a customer catches the virus. This is a virus which affects us all and can be caught from anyone anywhere. No reason why one or a few sectors should bear the burden.
It would protect the NHS as well since that is one place where the risk of catching it is high.
I presume nice companies with a little cash will stump up the lowish contributions in Aug-Oct to get some income to their furloughed staff, while not so nice companies will cut them off after July.
Oh FFS! It’s not a question of being nice or not nice. It’s a question of not having the income and not being able to afford it. The rules on trading while insolvent have not been abolished.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
Is the 2 metre rule written in law anywhere ?
I believe that it would be enforced, as part of a risk assessment/plan, by HSE, on business premises.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
Thanks for that.
The very early stages will be the most interesting. I don't think Boris had his eye on the ball but you may well be right that the the advice from SAGE was incorrect. I still remain intrigued as to why Sturgeon's ratings seem to be doing very well and Johnson's have declined significantly during the crisis. Not sure where Drakeford's polling was before or now to be honest.
I hope that the easing of lockdown hasn't just be an attempt to create a diversion away from the Cummings problem. I am concerned that our infections seem to still be in the thousands every day whereas the Italians, Spanish, French and Germans are in the hundreds. (Even accepting that the Worldometer figures are imperfect)
From what I can see on my limited trips out people don't seem to be taking many precautions. We seem to have far fewer mask wearers than elsewhere - I think RCS commented even in LA 60-70% of people were wearing a mask.
What is going to kill Boris and, more importantly, kill any economic recovery is if we suffer a second wave which others avoid. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't.
Thank you for your response and I agree wholeheartedly
This forum is at it's best when arguments are made and discussed and so often we have more that unites us than divides us
But just think about it. When the UK stopped testing everyone with symptoms on 11 March, the daily rate of confirmed cases was about 100. Now the estimated true infection rate is about 8000 a day.
I really don't think it's tenable to suggest we have a smaller infection rate now than we did then - just 12 days before lockdown.
It's all rather confused by testing differences though - the testing rate has increased (literally) 100x since that date, so we're picking up a vastly higher % of our infections. Also, anyone infected on Mar11th might not be tested until say the 21st (?), by when the daily case rate had cleared 1k.
The 8000 is an estimate from the ONS survey, so nothing to do with the testing rate.
The reason I chose 11 March was because that was when they gave up testing non-hospital cases. No doubt it was a severe underestimate, but not by a factor of 80, I think! You can add a period for the lag between infection and test results if you like, but the point is that we still have an infection rate as high as that in early March, soon before a lockdown had to be put into effect.
I presume nice companies with a little cash will stump up the lowish contributions in Aug-Oct to get some income to their furloughed staff, while not so nice companies will cut them off after July.
Oh FFS! It’s not a question of being nice or not nice. It’s a question of not having the income and not being able to afford it. The rules on trading while insolvent have not been abolished.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
Is the 2 metre rule written in law anywhere ?
I believe that it would be enforced, as part of a risk assessment/plan, by HSE, on business premises.
And if it is, it means closure of thousands of businesses. Every pub and restaurant, cafe and club for miles around where I am living would have to close. That stuffs the local suppliers, the farmers, the local tourism sector, all the owners of holiday lets and B&B’s and all the local activities which visitors come up here for.
Does the government have any idea of what this means in practice for large areas of the country?
BTW my MP Trudi Harrison responded on Cummings by writing a lengthy email setting out his version of events and saying that we should all move on. She didn’t even say that she would have acted differently. To be expected, given that she is Boris’s PPS, I suppose.
But just think about it. When the UK stopped testing everyone with symptoms on 11 March, the daily rate of confirmed cases was about 100. Now the estimated true infection rate is about 8000 a day.
I really don't think it's tenable to suggest we have a smaller infection rate now than we did then - just 12 days before lockdown.
It's all rather confused by testing differences though - the testing rate has increased (literally) 100x since that date, so we're picking up a vastly higher % of our infections. Also, anyone infected on Mar11th might not be tested until say the 21st (?), by when the daily case rate had cleared 1k.
The 8000 is an estimate from the ONS survey, so nothing to do with the testing rate.
The reason I chose 11 March was because that was when they gave up testing non-hospital cases. No doubt it was a severe underestimate, but not by a factor of 80, I think! You can add a period for the lag between infection and test results if you like, but the point is that we still have an infection rate as high as that in early March, soon before a lockdown had to be put into effect.
It may seem surprising, but I would actually consider it perfectly possible that there was a vast undercounting of cases vs the testing in early March.
I know Starmer's polling is looking great but I still feel like Labour are missing chances to define the narrative. People are relaxing their efforts to avoid spreading the rona and it's likely to create new spikes. They need to be connected to the government. Why aren't Labour warning people against creating Cummings Clusters or something?
I think maybe they need a strong voice in addition to Starmer who can play an attack dog role.
Wouldn't that be poor form considering many people called for a govt of National Unity, presumably as they thought these were unprecedented times that shouldn't really be party political?
I presume nice companies with a little cash will stump up the lowish contributions in Aug-Oct to get some income to their furloughed staff, while not so nice companies will cut them off after July.
Oh FFS! It’s not a question of being nice or not nice. It’s a question of not having the income and not being able to afford it. The rules on trading while insolvent have not been abolished.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
Is the 2 metre rule written in law anywhere ?
I believe that it would be enforced, as part of a risk assessment/plan, by HSE, on business premises.
And if it is, it means closure of thousands of businesses. Every pub and restaurant, cafe and club for miles around where I am living would have to close. That stuffs the local suppliers, the farmers, the local tourism sector, all the owners of holiday lets and B&B’s and all the local activities which visitors come up here for.
Does the government have any idea of what this means in practice for large areas of the country?
BTW my MP Trudi Harrison responded on Cummings by writing a lengthy email setting out his version of events and saying that we should all move on. She didn’t even say that she would have acted differently. To be expected, given that she is Boris’s PPS, I suppose.
Perhaps we could test our readiness to move on, or otherwise, by taking a long hard look at the government’s actions over care homes.
They might suddenly want to go back to Barnard Castle...
I know Starmer's polling is looking great but I still feel like Labour are missing chances to define the narrative. People are relaxing their efforts to avoid spreading the rona and it's likely to create new spikes. They need to be connected to the government. Why aren't Labour warning people against creating Cummings Clusters or something?
I think maybe they need a strong voice in addition to Starmer who can play an attack dog role.
Wouldn't that be poor form considering many people called for a govt of National Unity, presumably as they thought these were unprecedented times that shouldn't really be party political?
I think such calls ended with the Cummings nonsense.
I presume nice companies with a little cash will stump up the lowish contributions in Aug-Oct to get some income to their furloughed staff, while not so nice companies will cut them off after July.
Oh FFS! It’s not a question of being nice or not nice. It’s a question of not having the income and not being able to afford it. The rules on trading while insolvent have not been abolished.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
Is the 2 metre rule written in law anywhere ?
I believe that it would be enforced, as part of a risk assessment/plan, by HSE, on business premises.
And if it is, it means closure of thousands of businesses. Every pub and restaurant, cafe and club for miles around where I am living would have to close. That stuffs the local suppliers, the farmers, the local tourism sector, all the owners of holiday lets and B&B’s and all the local activities which visitors come up here for.
Does the government have any idea of what this means in practice for large areas of the country?
Do you have any idea what a second wave will mean?
Not just in terms of deaths, but in terms of the economic effect. Not just on a particular sector, but for the whole economy.
It may seem surprising, but I would actually consider it perfectly possible that there was a vast undercounting of cases vs the testing in early March.
Not sure where I'd stand on the then vs now comparison (other than previous comments on the difficulty of figures), but the ICL model suggested back then tests were capturing something like 1 in 30 infections, assuming a ten day lag.
The Gov't has some horrendous decisions to make around certain parts of the hospitality industry. You'd have thought they'd want to get to those with as much goodwill in the bank as possible, but apparently saving an advisor was deemed more important to use that particular capital on.
'I ignored my instincts and Mum died alone, in a care home' Sonia Purnell, Boris Johnson's biographer, on her anger at the Dominic Cummings saga, after she was unable to say goodbye to her mother
You can get a drink in Hoxton Square, my sources tell me.
A few of my mates had a pint or two outside a pub in the Shoreditch area earlier. The Old Kings Head
I used to live about 200 yards from there.
Trendy! I cycled through the city today and passed that pub after they'd left (to go back to work for a short while before returning!)
More bikes than cars, I was amazed at fellow cyclists who breezed through red traffic lights. Maybe I missed a trick and they don't apply to cyclists?!
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
Fair enough. I didn't actually mention Cobra - more concerned with the SAGE group and the origon of the science, and the way the devolved admins wouldn't have had a first hand view of the internal workings of SAGE, influence from spads, etc.
Edit: it does reflect the Blairite devolution settlement that the UK and English Gmts are one and the same - with the English numerical domination, control of most fiscal levers, the borders, immigration (quarantine), and so on, the devolved gmts are in an unenviable position.
To be honest Cobra is where the decisions were made and it is those decisions and why they were made that must be at the heart of the enquiry. As all parts of the UK acted together the question must be why
Sturgeon and Drakeford have input but no veto on the decisions of Cobra.To the extent that they disagree , the devolved authorities can pursue their own paths - as indeed both have done on certain matters.
No.
They acted together on stay at home
They only varied when Boris changed to stay alert
And indeed they both seem to be playing catch up with England now
BigG. time will tell who was right.
Frustrated though I am at still being under house arrest, the logic behind the steady as she goes programme makes sense if we are to avoid the second wave following quickly on the heels of the first.
It is true I don't like Johnson, but neither do I rate Drakeford, however Johnson seems to be making it up as he goes along, throwing us scraps to divert our attention from issues he doesn't want us to see. I hope I am wrong.
'I ignored my instincts and Mum died alone, in a care home' Sonia Purnell, Boris Johnson's biographer, on her anger at the Dominic Cummings saga, after she was unable to say goodbye to her mother
But just think about it. When the UK stopped testing everyone with symptoms on 11 March, the daily rate of confirmed cases was about 100. Now the estimated true infection rate is about 8000 a day.
I really don't think it's tenable to suggest we have a smaller infection rate now than we did then - just 12 days before lockdown.
It's all rather confused by testing differences though - the testing rate has increased (literally) 100x since that date, so we're picking up a vastly higher % of our infections. Also, anyone infected on Mar11th might not be tested until say the 21st (?), by when the daily case rate had cleared 1k.
The 8000 is an estimate from the ONS survey, so nothing to do with the testing rate.
The reason I chose 11 March was because that was when they gave up testing non-hospital cases. No doubt it was a severe underestimate, but not by a factor of 80, I think! You can add a period for the lag between infection and test results if you like, but the point is that we still have an infection rate as high as that in early March, soon before a lockdown had to be put into effect.
It may seem surprising, but I would actually consider it perfectly possible that there was a vast undercounting of cases vs the testing in early March.
Presumably you didn't read the part of the comment you were replying to, that said "No doubt it was a severe underestimate"?
This kind of thing seems a bit of a waste of time.
Out of interest, do any of the PB Tories believe that the government has handled the pandemic (as opposed to the Cummings affair) well?
The reason I ask is that chatting away with 7 or 8 neighbours in the road after the Thursday clap a couple who I know to be Conservative voters weighed into the corona discussion by opining that they were completely embarrassed at the way the government had handled it. I was surprised at the strength of feeling which was unanimous and somebody did say that nobody could think they were doing a good job and it set me to wondering.
I would say that all the component parts of the UK failed collectively at the onset of the crisis. Nicola should and could have dealt with the Nike ground zero outbreak in Edinburgh in February and been more pro - active, and to her credit she admits mistakes were made. All four leaders should have gone into lockdown quicker and defended care homes which across the nation has been a disaster. The football and Cheltenham should have been cancelled as well.
It therefore asks the question, why were they all blindsided and of course the common denominator is Cobra and the advice given and the obvious unanimity on the way forward. There has not been one leader who has demured on the early stages, and to be fair Nicola has accepted that errors were made, but cites the benefit of hindsight
Ulimately, the enquiry that is coming will be very interesting, but I would be very worried about the advice Sage and each PH body gave and just how well they reacted. The big question is how much got lost in the depths of the inner organisation of these bodies, and how long it took for the private sector to be commissioned on PPE etc
And this is my honest opinion and I am not trying to make political points
UK government were fully aware G, what did they do, the UK government and their tame scientists led by Cummings were on a different tack , they are the ones that were running the show at that time. How could Sturgeon have announced a lockdown in Scotland a month before the UK. They were following crap information trying not to follow WHO to show how great they were against the rest. Crap experts and crap politicians in Westminster are the root of it all.
Sadly Malc, Nicola has already admitted Scotlands mistakes over Nike ground zero, slow into lockdown, and the disaster in Scotlands care homes
I make a fair comment piece and you do a good impression of just utter denial and lash out
At least Nicola is the grown up
The point Malc is making is strongly corroborated by the presumably deliberate exclusion of the Scots and Welsh Gmts from the SAGE meetings. Edit: though it's so common for people in London to forget there is such a thing as devolution, that it could just be incompetent carelessness.
Nicola, Drakesford and Foster all sat alongside Boris in Cobra and all acted in unison. Sage inputted into Cobra.
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
You are most reasonable on here, Big G, unlike some of your fellow PB tories.
This government, unlike Sturgeon, has no humility and refuses to acknowledge any mistakes. For example, Hancock and Johnson: "we threw a protective ring around care homes right from the start". They clearly didn't, and should just acknowledge that.
And the same for D** C******s (don't want to bring the name up again) - if they, and he, had simply said "sorry, bit of an error, should have cleared it in advance", I suspect only about 10% of the mud would have stuck.
There are several other examples.
It is, sadly, the Trump modus operandi: never, ever admit that you may have erred.
I think a lot more of we did make mistakes would have played well. It has for Nicola
'It played well'
Maybe some politicians just think it's the right thing to do.
I presume nice companies with a little cash will stump up the lowish contributions in Aug-Oct to get some income to their furloughed staff, while not so nice companies will cut them off after July.
Oh FFS! It’s not a question of being nice or not nice. It’s a question of not having the income and not being able to afford it. The rules on trading while insolvent have not been abolished.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
Is the 2 metre rule written in law anywhere ?
I believe that it would be enforced, as part of a risk assessment/plan, by HSE, on business premises.
And if it is, it means closure of thousands of businesses. Every pub and restaurant, cafe and club for miles around where I am living would have to close. That stuffs the local suppliers, the farmers, the local tourism sector, all the owners of holiday lets and B&B’s and all the local activities which visitors come up here for.
Does the government have any idea of what this means in practice for large areas of the country?
BTW my MP Trudi Harrison responded on Cummings by writing a lengthy email setting out his version of events and saying that we should all move on. She didn’t even say that she would have acted differently. To be expected, given that she is Boris’s PPS, I suppose.
The health and safety advice that businesses I know/are involved with have been given is (cut down to a few words), you need a plan detailing your measures, 2m rule unless you have other mitigation in place (screens, PPE etc).
I don't see anyone being allowed to do different to that, in the near future.
You can get a drink in Hoxton Square, my sources tell me.
A few of my mates had a pint or two outside a pub in the Shoreditch area earlier. The Old Kings Head
I used to live about 200 yards from there.
Trendy! I cycled through the city today and passed that pub after they'd left (to go back to work for a short while before returning!)
More bikes than cars, I was amazed at fellow cyclists who breezed through red traffic lights. Maybe I missed a trick and they don't apply to cyclists?!
Shoreditch is shit these days. It's basically just Clapham plus a big roundabout.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
I know for a fact that one of the people locally most stridently objecting to me defecting from the LibDems to support Starmer himself defected from the LibDems to support Jezbollah.
Breaking news - my application to join the Labour Party has been rejected! *giggles*
Well I know of one former green party activist in the "ooh Jeremy Corbyn" camp who was admitted to the party in the Autumn of 2015 having stood against the party in local elections in May 2015. She turned out to be all mouth and no trousers, one of those who tries to dominate meetings yet contributes diddly squat on the ground.
She wasn't subject to objections from a local faction more concerned to maintain the ideological purity of their local party than to accept that the party can only win as a coalition of different strands of the left who chooe to concentrate on what unites them. I presume that you were.
It's a shame anyway as you appear to be more supportive of the current leadership than many of those "inspired" by the previous leader.
I know for a fact that one of the people locally most stridently objecting to me defecting from the LibDems to support Starmer himself defected from the LibDems to support Jezbollah.
The difference in your case is likely to be that as a former - and recent - Labour activist, your defection will be seen by longstanding members as an act of betrayal - and agreeing to readmit you so soon might be viewed as offensive and a slap in face to them.Had you never previously been a Labour member but just a LibDem activist for a few years, it would be rather different. Personally I would be far more concerned about people such as Ian Austin, John Woodcock and Gisela Stuart who openly campaigned for Labour voters to support Johnson. They deserve a life ban - as would a BNP member - and to be confronted with the consequences of what they have helped foist on the country.
Its the opposite - most of the big hitter members were fine with it (several actively begging me to "come home"). Its the bitter Corbynites who have done me. Ah well. I hope they pour the same levels of bile on the former Labour voters who went Tory for the first time last year...
It may seem surprising, but I would actually consider it perfectly possible that there was a vast undercounting of cases vs the testing in early March.
Not sure where I'd stand on the then vs now comparison (other than previous comments on the difficulty of figures), but the ICL model suggested back then tests were capturing something like 1 in 30 infections, assuming a ten day lag.
That's the kind of figure I was taking into account in the comment Malmesbury was replying to.
It's fair enough to point out the lag between infection and test results, though.
I know Starmer's polling is looking great but I still feel like Labour are missing chances to define the narrative. People are relaxing their efforts to avoid spreading the rona and it's likely to create new spikes. They need to be connected to the government. Why aren't Labour warning people against creating Cummings Clusters or something?
I think maybe they need a strong voice in addition to Starmer who can play an attack dog role.
Wouldn't that be poor form considering many people called for a govt of National Unity, presumably as they thought these were unprecedented times that shouldn't really be party political?
I think he's taken the right approach. Disgusting as the government's actions have been on Cummings (you only need to see a Tory MP try and explain self-isolation guidance to see it has undermined their message badly) the greater risk for Labour at the moment is to over play its hand and look to be cheering on the government's failings rather than coolly pointing them out when they become indisputable. The government burnt nearly all its goodwill on one man and there will be many more flashpoints coming down the track that will now be seen more and more through the prism of a government that played fast and loose with health advice designed to keep us all safe for political and personal ends.
I'm normally on the side of the police in difficult matters resulting in the death of a suspect (De Menezes officers correctly never faced court for murder or manslaughter, or who would be a firearms officer ?), but this wasn't an officer reaching to his gun too quickly in the heat of the moment; it is worthy of the fullest murder charge for the officer possible in MN.
Comments
Great minds, etc!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/uk-to-name-scientific-advisers-on-emergency-coronavirus-group-sage
If the later, is that for life, or what?
It may not suit your narragive but the one thing I give Nicola is how she has held up her hand and admitted mistakes were made in all three areas, Nike ground zero, lockdown and care homes
Remember she is on Sky every day at lunchtime and I have listened to virtually all her conferences and the Q& A
My finest work...
I can remember some on the not-so-right who praised the Chinese Government for standing up to Western Imperialism (demands for representative democracy), unlike Russia.
Have a look what it is now (or what it was pre-referendum even) and contrast. Having a locked in, overvalued currency would have made it harder to compete.
Edit: it does reflect the Blairite devolution settlement that the UK and English Gmts are one and the same - with the English numerical domination, control of most fiscal levers, the borders, immigration (quarantine), and so on, the devolved gmts are in an unenviable position.
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1266423039320821760
https://twitter.com/peston/status/1266423933391253507?s=21
https://guernseypress.com/news/2020/05/28/back-on-the-big-screen-mallard-cinema-opens-saturday/
Note that if you thought our greatest economic problem was inflation then you might welcome deflation through joining the Euro at too high a rate.
There is another, separate problem with joining at all. Because our economic cycles are not synchronised, then whatever rate we joined at, it would be too high for part of the cycle and too low at another time. This leads us to Gordon Brown's five tests, and keeping us out of the Euro.
My guess is that a Starmer government would have been broadly similar, though the mistakes would have been different ones.
As a caveat I would not expect any large organisation to better 8/10 - mistakes are inevitably part of any complex process with lots of unknowns. Better to know and accept this at the start, be flexible, absorb the lesson, then move on.
I think maybe they need a strong voice in addition to Starmer who can play an attack dog role.
Sunak 9/10 - Excellent thus far but of course giving away the money is the easy part
Hancock 5/10 - He's had the hardest gig to run through the whole crisis, has handled it OK. Some failures such as care homes look bad right now but how do they compare to other european countries.
Johnson 4/10 - Good messaging at the start but badly off track now. Asleep at the wheel pre crisis.
Our deputy leader has been invisible.
Personally I would be far more concerned about people such as Ian Austin, John Woodcock and Gisela Stuart who openly campaigned for Labour voters to support Johnson. They deserve a life ban - as would a BNP member - and to be confronted with the consequences of what they have helped foist on the country.
OTOH maybe the rioting scares white people towards Trump and makes Minnesota more marginal, in which case he'll need Baemy to save it...
https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1265991708539576322?s=19
This government, unlike Sturgeon, has no humility and refuses to acknowledge any mistakes. For example, Hancock and Johnson: "we threw a protective ring around care homes right from the start". They clearly didn't, and should just acknowledge that.
And the same for D** C******s (don't want to bring the name up again) - if they, and he, had simply said "sorry, bit of an error, should have cleared it in advance", I suspect only about 10% of the mud would have stuck.
There are several other examples.
It is, sadly, the Trump modus operandi: never, ever admit that you may have erred.
Even perfectly rational citizens have been caught up in the politicisation of the virus
BY JUSTIN WEBB"
https://unherd.com/2020/05/how-covid-drove-america-mad/
I personally would be happy to have as many people who are willing to fight for a Labour victory back in the fold, its definitely in the rule book though.
Plus Rochdale is disruptive to local activity if his inability to stop going on and on about the previous regime on here is anything like how he behaves in front of fellow party members.
But just think about it. When the UK stopped testing everyone with symptoms on 11 March, the daily rate of confirmed cases was about 100. Now the estimated true infection rate is about 8000 a day.
I really don't think it's tenable to suggest we have a smaller infection rate now than we did then - just 12 days before lockdown.
Even those restaurants and pubs doing takeaways are losing money, just losing it less slowly than they might otherwise.
You could always rejoin the LDs or start a local anti "Jezbollah" party.
Move on mate you have a problem
The very early stages will be the most interesting. I don't think Boris had his eye on the ball but you may well be right that the the advice from SAGE was incorrect. I still remain intrigued as to why Sturgeon's ratings seem to be doing very well and Johnson's have declined significantly during the crisis. Not sure where Drakeford's polling was before or now to be honest.
I hope that the easing of lockdown hasn't just be an attempt to create a diversion away from the Cummings problem. I am concerned that our infections seem to still be in the thousands every day whereas the Italians, Spanish, French and Germans are in the hundreds. (Even accepting that the Worldometer figures are imperfect)
From what I can see on my limited trips out people don't seem to be taking many precautions. We seem to have far fewer mask wearers than elsewhere - I think RCS commented even in LA 60-70% of people were wearing a mask.
What is going to kill Boris and, more importantly, kill any economic recovery is if we suffer a second wave which others avoid. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't.
Even Peston managed it.
There are 1,141,400 people according 2018 numbers.
So that's a death rate of 0.092%
Many in banking were startled that the Germans had managed to lock in such a low rate. There were articles in the Economist etc about the effects on the rest of Europe...
They acted together on stay at home
They only varied when Boris changed to stay alert
And indeed they both seem to be playing catch up with England now
It's all rather confused by testing differences though - the testing rate has increased (literally) 100x since that date, so we're picking up a vastly higher % of our infections. Also, anyone infected on Mar11th might not be tested until say the 21st (?), by when the daily case rate had cleared 1k.
But as my daughter keeps pointing out if Environmental Health Officers start saying that this - and similar - guidance must be followed even in venues where it is not possible to do so, even physically, then she and many other places (not just pubs) are stuffed.
That is why the advice to EHOs must be that what is done / required is what is reasonable for the venue and why, if the government wanted to keep the hospitality and other similar sectors alive or in with a fighting chance, they need to say and pass legislation to the effect that such places will not be liable if a customer catches the virus. This is a virus which affects us all and can be caught from anyone anywhere. No reason why one or a few sectors should bear the burden.
It would protect the NHS as well since that is one place where the risk of catching it is high.
Fair play to the SNP for fooling people though
This forum is at it's best when arguments are made and discussed and so often we have more that unites us than divides us
Rinse, repeat.
The reason I chose 11 March was because that was when they gave up testing non-hospital cases. No doubt it was a severe underestimate, but not by a factor of 80, I think! You can add a period for the lag between infection and test results if you like, but the point is that we still have an infection rate as high as that in early March, soon before a lockdown had to be put into effect.
Does the government have any idea of what this means in practice for large areas of the country?
BTW my MP Trudi Harrison responded on Cummings by writing a lengthy email setting out his version of events and saying that we should all move on. She didn’t even say that she would have acted differently. To be expected, given that she is Boris’s PPS, I suppose.
They might suddenly want to go back to Barnard Castle...
Not just in terms of deaths, but in terms of the economic effect. Not just on a particular sector, but for the whole economy.
Sonia Purnell, Boris Johnson's biographer, on her anger at the Dominic Cummings saga, after she was unable to say goodbye to her mother
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/ignored-instincts-mum-died-alone-care-home/
More bikes than cars, I was amazed at fellow cyclists who breezed through red traffic lights. Maybe I missed a trick and they don't apply to cyclists?!
Frustrated though I am at still being under house arrest, the logic behind the steady as she goes programme makes sense if we are to avoid the second wave following quickly on the heels of the first.
It is true I don't like Johnson, but neither do I rate Drakeford, however Johnson seems to be making it up as he goes along, throwing us scraps to divert our attention from issues he doesn't want us to see. I hope I am wrong.
This kind of thing seems a bit of a waste of time.
Maybe some politicians just think it's the right thing to do.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1266439222283636737?s=20
I don't see anyone being allowed to do different to that, in the near future.
It's fair enough to point out the lag between infection and test results, though.