The problem with "state aid" is that it rapidly ends up going from its stated aims (improving the competitiveness of British firms, ensuring that certain areas of the country don't get left behind) to propping up firms with political connections.
Plus, once you've stepped in once to stop jobs being lost, it becomes increasingly hard not to continue doing it.
I hadn't previously thought of Dominic Cummings as a prototype Ted Heath, but I think they're temperamentally much more similar than they look.
More government money for Friends of Dom.
Went out for lunch on Sunday at a notable local restaurant, which is trying to get going again. Asked the owner, whom we know slightly, whether or not she was going to join the 'Eat Out' scheme. It was n't she said, worth it for her; most of her business was at weekends. I remarked that it seemed rather more suitable for Wetherspoons and other 'friends of Boris' and she agreed.
Nevertheless, if she opens on weeknights, she is still paying overhead and staff, so surely building up her weeknight business is a good idea?
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
Basically the government wants to be seen to be doing "something", so that they can fend off accusations that they did too little, whilst making no effort to make sure that what they are doing has any effect, for fear of worsening the economic situation. Which leaves them, and us, hoping for the best.
It's simply about the political debate, not about combatting the virus. Campaigning, not governing.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
I agree. They shouldn't call it "quarantine" because it's not enforced. Call it something like a "polite request to isolate but it's up to you really".
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
The problem with "state aid" is that it rapidly ends up going from its stated aims (improving the competitiveness of British firms, ensuring that certain areas of the country don't get left behind) to propping up firms with political connections.
Plus, once you've stepped in once to stop jobs being lost, it becomes increasingly hard not to continue doing it.
I hadn't previously thought of Dominic Cummings as a prototype Ted Heath, but I think they're temperamentally much more similar than they look.
More government money for Friends of Dom.
Went out for lunch on Sunday at a notable local restaurant, which is trying to get going again. Asked the owner, whom we know slightly, whether or not she was going to join the 'Eat Out' scheme. It was n't she said, worth it for her; most of her business was at weekends. I remarked that it seemed rather more suitable for Wetherspoons and other 'friends of Boris' and she agreed.
Our favourite restaurant is part of the scheme and opening up Mondays and Tuesday for it. They suspect that with most people working from home it's irrelevant what day of the week they are open.
Substantial extra staff costs though. Wonder what Ms Cyclefree and her daughter think off it.
For Ms Cyclefree's daughter I suspect it makes little difference as most of the lakes will be open 7 days a week at the moment anyway (it's the summer).
And for my favourite restaurant the staff costs are minimal. Owner and owner's wife plus 1 cook who lives above the restaurant.
Separately I should say (and forgot) that we were in the lakes last week and it was very busy. Hawkshead was as busy as any of us could remember it, Grasmere was busy and we were only able to eat in Keswick because we were quick and were able to be slotted in between bookings.
Have looked on the web and there are quite a few smaller pubs and so on round here in the Scheme. One small grumble is that the associated DotGov website only allows one to search in a 2mile radius, or go to a list of chains.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip, are you overlooking that the trailed “anti-obesity measures” are not to be simply “guidance”? They include proposals to ban retailers from offering deals on high fat products. That is where the inconsistency and incoherence comes in.
No, I don't see any hypocrisy. Any bans would come in following a consultation period and notice during which retailers will plan and react accordingly. Prior to the sugar tax coming in the industry did the same thing with by the time the tax was introduced vast amounts of sugar had been removed from lots of drinks so they wouldn't be hit by the tax.
The August deal is about trying to get a devastated industry back on its feet. The consultations on future changes are about long term smart choices, not killing the hospitality industry.
The problem with "state aid" is that it rapidly ends up going from its stated aims (improving the competitiveness of British firms, ensuring that certain areas of the country don't get left behind) to propping up firms with political connections.
Plus, once you've stepped in once to stop jobs being lost, it becomes increasingly hard not to continue doing it.
I hadn't previously thought of Dominic Cummings as a prototype Ted Heath, but I think they're temperamentally much more similar than they look.
More government money for Friends of Dom.
Went out for lunch on Sunday at a notable local restaurant, which is trying to get going again. Asked the owner, whom we know slightly, whether or not she was going to join the 'Eat Out' scheme. It was n't she said, worth it for her; most of her business was at weekends. I remarked that it seemed rather more suitable for Wetherspoons and other 'friends of Boris' and she agreed.
Nevertheless, if she opens on weeknights, she is still paying overhead and staff, so surely building up her weeknight business is a good idea?
Open Fri. pm to Sunday afternoon. At her prices that's viable.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
Advice: steer clear of your friends. They are self-centred arseholes.
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
I suppose the counter argument is that a person who has produced a false negative becomes an exponentially greater risk. They will feel free to act with impunity and disregard all safety measures they might otherwise have taken. Although this would still be at personal risk to themselves even not (they perceive) to others.
Not really, they would still want to socially distance to avoid infection here. This is what was said at the press conferences. A test that was less than 100% reliable was “worse than useless “. I just think that like so many other things they got that wrong. If 80% of cases are isolated early the R rate will fall.
It's\ not necessarily the boffins (as you implied earlier) who made that judgement about 100% reliabilkity - it could be the pols (or boffins acting as pols).
I wonder if they are worried about being sued by people in the situation where false positive rater >> actual incidence?
But I entirely agree with you. People who travel should accept the risk of being quarantined and stop whining, however many of them see Mediterranean holidays as some sort of right.
It was the Chief Scientific Officer I specifically remembered going on about this. It’s quite possible that politicians did too.
I have been really surprised by how many people have been booking holidays in August and September. Most have been working on the basis that there is a right to cancel built in but the mindset is curious. The one set of boffins who were spot on in all of this were the behavioural psychologists who predicted fairly precisely how long the majority could cope with or comply with lockdown.
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
Because the 20% may turn into superspreaders if you inform them they don't have it.
And 100% might if you don’t test.
Sure, though the method of testing 130k arrivals everyday at Heathrow plus another 130k per day at other airports and ensuring they all have somewhere to sit for 6-8 hours while the tests are processed, the legalisms on holding everyone in an effective no man's land for that long, what to do with the 3-4k people testing positive per day (do we treat them and then the NHS becomes the IHS, do we send them back potentially infecting a planeload of people, do we enforce a hard quarantine, what if they can't afford it etc...). Just saying we should test everyone on arrival is simplistic, testing everyone is the easy part, it's everything else that needs to be carefully put into place.
Ideally we need a system that tests people on exit rather than entry so people who test positive aren't allowed to disembark. There seems to be quite a lot of international work being done on the last point as well with airports taking measures into their own hands but they are in talks with governments to essentially turn airports into virus free bubbles as they do for sports teams with daily testing of staff and travellers before they enter the terminal building.
To pretend that nothing is being done is wrong, the issue is getting international agreement on testing on exit rather than firefighting by testing on entry.
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
I suppose the counter argument is that a person who has produced a false negative becomes an exponentially greater risk. They will feel free to act with impunity and disregard all safety measures they might otherwise have taken. Although this would still be at personal risk to themselves even not (they perceive) to others.
Not really, they would still want to socially distance to avoid infection here. This is what was said at the press conferences. A test that was less than 100% reliable was “worse than useless “. I just think that like so many other things they got that wrong. If 80% of cases are isolated early the R rate will fall.
It's\ not necessarily the boffins (as you implied earlier) who made that judgement about 100% reliabilkity - it could be the pols (or boffins acting as pols).
I wonder if they are worried about being sued by people in the situation where false positive rater >> actual incidence?
But I entirely agree with you. People who travel should accept the risk of being quarantined and stop whining, however many of them see Mediterranean holidays as some sort of right.
It was the Chief Scientific Officer I specifically remembered going on about this. It’s quite possible that politicians did too.
I have been really surprised by how many people have been booking holidays in August and September. Most have been working on the basis that there is a right to cancel built in but the mindset is curious. The one set of boffins who were spot on in all of this were the behavioural psychologists who predicted fairly precisely how long the majority could cope with or comply with lockdown.
Me too, re para 2. And how - certainly in the West Country of England, from what the Graun reports and friends tell me - holidaymakers are completely ignoring the virus precautions. My friends, who are locals, are not happy. I have just cancelled a (very expensive) villa booking in a seaside town. It was snapped up within a week. Saved me the cost of cancellation, but I do wonder, although in that case the operatyors do refund if a lockdown is reimposed.
However, there are different behavioral psychoulogists who give different opinions, IIRC. Which makes me wonder how far the Whitehall gmt has used their lot of b. p. as an excuse to give up and seek good headlines and keep people happy (in the short term).
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
Still seems fine to me. Unless you think banning places to eat is a good idea cheap places to get food were always going to be there. Access to cheap food is not the main reason people are overweight, nor is it ignorance, its lack of willpower. And if you couldn't resist a full price McDonalds I doubt a half price one will matter.
Also, the government is trying to do many things at once. Should it hold off on trying to help the economy because off an obesity strategy?
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
Basically the government wants to be seen to be doing "something", so that they can fend off accusations that they did too little, whilst making no effort to make sure that what they are doing has any effect, for fear of worsening the economic situation. Which leaves them, and us, hoping for the best.
It's simply about the political debate, not about combatting the virus.
If I was an evil genius in government who wanted to kill as many people as possible, it's hard to think of too many policies that would have been more successful than what's been implemented.
No travel bans until widespread community transmission was already assured,
"Quarantines" where people can go about as they please and with such mixed messaging that people are incentivised to cheat,
Ramping down testing right when it mattered,
Instituting a lockdown that forced infected people to isolate at home with often vulnerable family members,
Discouraging the use of face masks during the height of the pandemic and only mandating them when the message had sunk in that they were pointless/counter productive,
Spending billions on Covid hospitals that have sat empty while patients with hypertension, cancer and the like have gone untreated,
Fiddling the mortality stats such that a growing portion of the public now think this was a storm in a teacup,
Dumping still infected patients out of hospitals back into care homes without tests. The FRONT LINE in this war.
If this is just about the political debate, they're not doing very well. Because there are 4 long years for people to realise just how inept this has been.
"The Foreign Office later extended its travel advice, telling people to avoid all non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain."
The Canary and Balearic Islands have a lower incidence of the virus than the UK. "Defending the decision to extend advice against non-essential travel to the Spanish islands as well as the mainland, Local Government Minister Simon Clarke said it was taken to "minimise disruption" for travellers.
“Clearly you do have to make decisions on a country-wide basis." he said.
This is clearly nuts. If I were holidaying in the Canaries I would go ahead and simply ignore the government's advice to self isolate for 14 days on my return with no qualms whatsover as it wouldn't increase risk.
I have closely followed the government's advice so far, as a matter of principle, even when it has been a bit confusing. But this latest advice is so clearly nuts that I would stop following the advice on return from the Canaries and go to work and send the kids to school.
That is the danger - that lots of others feel the same way as me and stop following government advice on the Canaries. Having lost credibility on that, it more likely that government advice will be ignored on other matters when it shouldn't be.
This is all academic for me as I don't plan to go the Canaries. I plan to go to Ireland where I will rigorously follow the local rules and there is no self-isolation on my return.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
There are changes (short of full enforced quarantine) that could be introduced to increase the likelihood of adherence. You could enforce informing people's workplaces and/or schools that the individual has been quarantined. These won't be worked out yet, but like anything with this situation, policy is being made in real time.
As so often, Jenkins nails it. From the start the government has been in panic mode, and the whole story of the virus crisis in the UK has been dither and indecision followed by overreaction followed by more dither and often as not then a u-turn.
I used to have a lot of time for Jenkins, but recently, not so much.
Yes, the data are poor, and positives are a function of testing and... incidence! So not really random at all. What does he suggest? The data are poor so we ignore them completely and roll a die to decide what policies to choose?
"The Foreign Office later extended its travel advice, telling people to avoid all non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain."
The Canary and Balearic Islands have a lower incidence of the virus than the UK. "Defending the decision to extend advice against non-essential travel to the Spanish islands as well as the mainland, Local Government Minister Simon Clarke said it was taken to "minimise disruption" for travellers.
“Clearly you do have to make decisions on a country-wide basis." he said.
This is clearly nuts. If I were holidaying in the Canaries I would go ahead and simply ignore the government's advice to self isolate for 14 days on my return with no qualms whatsover as it wouldn't increase risk.
I think its so people can claim on their insurance if they cant travel because of the impact of quarantine on work? I agree if you are happy quarantining there is little problem still going - insurance might be the worst thing but EHIC still works I think?
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
If they are returning from the Canaries there is no common good in self isolating. They are simply harming their employment prospects and their kids for no good reason.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
You are clearly their average consumer.
Perhaps. There is a very snobbish attitude on this site sometimes that people here are "too good" for McDonalds, KFC etc and their customers. Its not big and its not clever.
More than one things can be true at the same time at the moment two things are true. 1: The hospitality industry has been devastated by the virus and the government mandated social distancing and lockdown and needs support to get back on its feet. 2: Obesity is an issue and people need to try and make smart choices.
The government is trying to tackle both truths. No hypocrisy.
I have been really surprised by how many people have been booking holidays in August and September. Most have been working on the basis that there is a right to cancel built in but the mindset is curious. The one set of boffins who were spot on in all of this were the behavioural psychologists who predicted fairly precisely how long the majority could cope with or comply with lockdown.
We cancelled our holiday. Drive through France to spend 2 weeks in Spain with the family then drive back through France is a non-starter. Mrs RP is taking the kids over now for a week, and unlike the previous scrapped holiday is staying with her dad. They don't expect to do much other than family stuff. Perhaps thats "holiday", perhaps not. With school holidays the only option for a trip and all the kids back in school from September turning them into a petridish, flying now into low-incidence Alicante seems like the least worst option if she is to see her dad this year.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
There are changes (short of full enforced quarantine) that could be introduced to increase the likelihood of adherence. You could enforce informing people's workplaces and/or schools that the individual has been quarantined. These won't be worked out yet, but like anything with this situation, policy is being made in real time.
Sorry Big G but it's naive in the extreme to think people will follow these rules unless they are actually enforced. Anyone living their lives in fear of the virus didn't book flights to the Costas and are riding the summer out at home. My friends are not arseholes, they are fairly typical and they have got fed up with the bollocks spewing daily from central government that they're making their own risk estimations. Whoever is running the so called Behavioural Science Unit needs to be sacked by lunchtime.
Forgot to add the snood for the first 20 seconds. After apologising discovered that the policy is "we can't enforce it".
I'd say the answer is "yes, they can - or at least remind". Not impressed with such sloped shoulders.
For some reason they seem to think that nagging or banning customers over trivia is not an ideal strategy for a service industry.
Letting the customers kill each other off is also sub-optimal. There's also a question about deterring customers - I'd definitely be inclined to avoid a supermarket where an effort is not made to get everyone to wear masks.
Anecdotally, they are pretty uiniversal round here (Godalming), but more like 50-50 in a Coop in a rough area of Croydon. BAME use there (the demographics are 50-50 too) seems higher than white use.
It has always been an odd dismissal of a story to call it speculation as it says nothing at all about whether its accurate speculation. It's like the MI5 boss in Yes Prime Minister railing against the ill informed and irresponsible press speculation which he acknowledged was also accurate.
As so often, Jenkins nails it. From the start the government has been in panic mode, and the whole story of the virus crisis in the UK has been dither and indecision followed by overreaction followed by more dither and often as not then a u-turn.
I used to have a lot of time for Jenkins, but recently, not so much.
Yes, the data are poor, and positives are a function of testing and... incidence! So not really random at all. What does he suggest? The data are poor so we ignore them completely and roll a die to decide what policies to choose?
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
I suppose the counter argument is that a person who has produced a false negative becomes an exponentially greater risk. They will feel free to act with impunity and disregard all safety measures they might otherwise have taken. Although this would still be at personal risk to themselves even not (they perceive) to others.
Not really, they would still want to socially distance to avoid infection here. This is what was said at the press conferences. A test that was less than 100% reliable was “worse than useless “. I just think that like so many other things they got that wrong. If 80% of cases are isolated early the R rate will fall.
It's\ not necessarily the boffins (as you implied earlier) who made that judgement about 100% reliabilkity - it could be the pols (or boffins acting as pols).
I wonder if they are worried about being sued by people in the situation where false positive rater >> actual incidence?
But I entirely agree with you. People who travel should accept the risk of being quarantined and stop whining, however many of them see Mediterranean holidays as some sort of right.
It was the Chief Scientific Officer I specifically remembered going on about this. It’s quite possible that politicians did too.
I have been really surprised by how many people have been booking holidays in August and September. Most have been working on the basis that there is a right to cancel built in but the mindset is curious. The one set of boffins who were spot on in all of this were the behavioural psychologists who predicted fairly precisely how long the majority could cope with or comply with lockdown.
Of course Germany is going to test arrivals from (currently) 130 at-risk countries. (A new law has to be passed to mandate this.) This does seem like a better solution to me (given that countries have already allowed people to go on foreign holidays). Interestingly Spain doesn't seem to be on the list (yet) although Luxembourg is... https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Risikogebiete_neu.html
Also, if you want people going abroad to accept the risk of quarantine on return, I think it's a good idea to have warnings for anyone buying tickets etc that this is a risk. Not everybody obsessively follows the coronavirus news, and tend to think "if this is allowed now, it must be ok to do it".
Any links to what behavioural psychologists were actually predicting?
Still seems fine to me. Unless you think banning places to eat is a good idea cheap places to get food were always going to be there. Access to cheap food is not the main reason people are overweight, nor is it ignorance, its lack of willpower. And if you couldn't resist a full price McDonalds I doubt a half price one will matter.
Also, the government is trying to do many things at once. Should it hold off on trying to help the economy because off an obesity strategy?
Plenty of restaurants in other countries without obesity problems. Its the whole structure of society that is to blame, not just fast food joints.
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
I suppose the counter argument is that a person who has produced a false negative becomes an exponentially greater risk. They will feel free to act with impunity and disregard all safety measures they might otherwise have taken. Although this would still be at personal risk to themselves even not (they perceive) to others.
Not really, they would still want to socially distance to avoid infection here. This is what was said at the press conferences. A test that was less than 100% reliable was “worse than useless “. I just think that like so many other things they got that wrong. If 80% of cases are isolated early the R rate will fall.
Do you have a link to a press conference where that was said? Passed me by and I find it hard to believe that any scientist would say that. There's no such thing as a 100% reliable test (not in relatively quick diagnostics anyway) so saying such a thing would effectively be saying no to testing at all.
A sufficiently unreliable test (here sufficiently unreliable varies with the number actually infected) could be worse than nothing.
Forgot to add the snood for the first 20 seconds. After apologising discovered that the policy is "we can't enforce it".
I'd say the answer is "yes, they can - or at least remind". Not impressed with such sloped shoulders.
For some reason they seem to think that nagging or banning customers over trivia is not an ideal strategy for a service industry.
Letting the customers kill each other off is also sub-optimal. There's also a question about deterring customers - I'd definitely be inclined to avoid a supermarket where an effort is not made to get everyone to wear masks.
Anecdotally, they are pretty uiniversal round here (Godalming), but more like 50-50 in a Coop in a rough area of Croydon. BAME use there (the demographics are 50-50 too) seems higher than white use.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
You are clearly their average consumer.
Perhaps. There is a very snobbish attitude on this site sometimes that people here are "too good" for McDonalds, KFC etc and their customers. Its not big and its not clever.
More than one things can be true at the same time at the moment two things are true. 1: The hospitality industry has been devastated by the virus and the government mandated social distancing and lockdown and needs support to get back on its feet. 2: Obesity is an issue and people need to try and make smart choices.
The government is trying to tackle both truths. No hypocrisy.
McDonalds have actually done a lot to offer healthier meals than 10-20 years ago. And healthier fast food joints like Leon have become more popular too.
"The Foreign Office later extended its travel advice, telling people to avoid all non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain."
The Canary and Balearic Islands have a lower incidence of the virus than the UK. "Defending the decision to extend advice against non-essential travel to the Spanish islands as well as the mainland, Local Government Minister Simon Clarke said it was taken to "minimise disruption" for travellers.
“Clearly you do have to make decisions on a country-wide basis." he said.
This is clearly nuts. If I were holidaying in the Canaries I would go ahead and simply ignore the government's advice to self isolate for 14 days on my return with no qualms whatsover as it wouldn't increase risk.
I have closely followed the government's advice so far, as a matter of principle, even when it has been a bit confusing. But this latest advice is so clearly nuts that I would stop following the advice on return from the Canaries and go to work and send the kids to school.
That is the danger - that lots of others feel the same way as me and stop following government advice on the Canaries. Having lost credibility on that, it more likely that government advice will be ignored on other matters when it shouldn't be.
This is all academic for me as I don't plan to go the Canaries. I plan to go to Ireland where I will rigorously follow the local rules and there is no self-isolation on my return.
I thought Ireland restricts brits from travelling there
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
I agree and I dont think that's a libertarian position at all. The implication of this criticism is that the government cannot support eateries of any kind at any time unless it's some kind of vegan takeout I suppose. Its rarely healthier than sitting at home with a home made salad.
Dont eat too much and do some exercise does not contradict saying people should eat out now and again to support businesses, anymore than allowing bars to be open contradicts a don't drink and drive campaign.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
If they are returning from the Canaries there is no common good in self isolating. They are simply harming their employment prospects and their kids for no good reason.
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
I suppose the counter argument is that a person who has produced a false negative becomes an exponentially greater risk. They will feel free to act with impunity and disregard all safety measures they might otherwise have taken. Although this would still be at personal risk to themselves even not (they perceive) to others.
Not really, they would still want to socially distance to avoid infection here. This is what was said at the press conferences. A test that was less than 100% reliable was “worse than useless “. I just think that like so many other things they got that wrong. If 80% of cases are isolated early the R rate will fall.
Do you have a link to a press conference where that was said? Passed me by and I find it hard to believe that any scientist would say that. There's no such thing as a 100% reliable test (not in relatively quick diagnostics anyway) so saying such a thing would effectively be saying no to testing at all.
A sufficiently unreliable test (here sufficiently unreliable varies with the number actually infected) could be worse than nothing.
For sure, a hugely unreliable test would cause chaos.
But the comparison would be of a so-called quarantine policy with the glaring loophole that whether people do it or not relies entirely upon honesty (and even the honest ones can still travel home on the train and go out for myriad reasons), with a testing returning travellers policy with the loophole that some infected people might slip through as false negatives.
As so often, Jenkins nails it. From the start the government has been in panic mode, and the whole story of the virus crisis in the UK has been dither and indecision followed by overreaction followed by more dither and often as not then a u-turn.
I used to have a lot of time for Jenkins, but recently, not so much.
Yes, the data are poor, and positives are a function of testing and... incidence! So not really random at all. What does he suggest? The data are poor so we ignore them completely and roll a die to decide what policies to choose?
No. Go both excess death figures.
Not a good metric at all to be making decisions in realtime with.
When lockdown was enforced excess deaths hadn't really started to be reported at all yet. If we'd waited until they were then it would have been far too late.
Excess deaths are negative at the minute and have been for quite some time so should we simply lift all restrictions? And if we do and they rise again then as deaths are such a lagging indicator by the time we reimpose restrictions it will be too late.
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
Because the 20% may turn into superspreaders if you inform them they don't have it.
"The Foreign Office later extended its travel advice, telling people to avoid all non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain."
The Canary and Balearic Islands have a lower incidence of the virus than the UK. "Defending the decision to extend advice against non-essential travel to the Spanish islands as well as the mainland, Local Government Minister Simon Clarke said it was taken to "minimise disruption" for travellers.
“Clearly you do have to make decisions on a country-wide basis." he said.
This is clearly nuts. If I were holidaying in the Canaries I would go ahead and simply ignore the government's advice to self isolate for 14 days on my return with no qualms whatsover as it wouldn't increase risk.
I have closely followed the government's advice so far, as a matter of principle, even when it has been a bit confusing. But this latest advice is so clearly nuts that I would stop following the advice on return from the Canaries and go to work and send the kids to school.
That is the danger - that lots of others feel the same way as me and stop following government advice on the Canaries. Having lost credibility on that, it more likely that government advice will be ignored on other matters when it shouldn't be.
This is all academic for me as I don't plan to go the Canaries. I plan to go to Ireland where I will rigorously follow the local rules and there is no self-isolation on my return.
I thought Ireland restricts brits from travelling there
You have to self-isolate for 14 days. I'm taking sufficient provisions in my car to do that. I could just sneak out to the local shop but I'm not going to do that.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
There are changes (short of full enforced quarantine) that could be introduced to increase the likelihood of adherence. You could enforce informing people's workplaces and/or schools that the individual has been quarantined. These won't be worked out yet, but like anything with this situation, policy is being made in real time.
Those are actually really good suggestions and relatively easy to implement electronically.
I suspect foreign holidays are over for most for this year
Time to holiday in the UK
It is a grim place, albeit much improved like most places in the sunshine. I should be there in a few weeks.
If it was a ruined castle by the beach. for example Scarborough, instead of a steelworks then it would be viewed as 'romantic' even 'chocolate box'.
But in reality the Redcar steelworks has done more for the UK than any number of ruined castles.
Yes it has. And there are some lovely towns and villages nearby in fact, I like Guisborough, but Redcar and some of its dormitory suburbs can be grim. The steelworks image didnt enter into my mind.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip, are you overlooking that the trailed “anti-obesity measures” are not to be simply “guidance”? They include proposals to ban retailers from offering deals on high fat products. That is where the inconsistency and incoherence comes in.
No, I don't see any hypocrisy. Any bans would come in following a consultation period and notice during which retailers will plan and react accordingly. Prior to the sugar tax coming in the industry did the same thing with by the time the tax was introduced vast amounts of sugar had been removed from lots of drinks so they wouldn't be hit by the tax.
The August deal is about trying to get a devastated industry back on its feet. The consultations on future changes are about long term smart choices, not killing the hospitality industry.
Forgot to add the snood for the first 20 seconds. After apologising discovered that the policy is "we can't enforce it".
I'd say the answer is "yes, they can - or at least remind". Not impressed with such sloped shoulders.
For some reason they seem to think that nagging or banning customers over trivia is not an ideal strategy for a service industry.
Letting the customers kill each other off is also sub-optimal. There's also a question about deterring customers - I'd definitely be inclined to avoid a supermarket where an effort is not made to get everyone to wear masks.
Anecdotally, they are pretty uiniversal round here (Godalming), but more like 50-50 in a Coop in a rough area of Croydon. BAME use there (the demographics are 50-50 too) seems higher than white use.
Sounds like you have some risky shopping habits, there? Maybe you'd be safer in Spain.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
If they are returning from the Canaries there is no common good in self isolating. They are simply harming their employment prospects and their kids for no good reason.
You cannot possibly know that
You can't possibly know anything if you want to get into a philosophical debate.
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
Because the 20% may turn into superspreaders if you inform them they don't have it.
And 100% might if you don’t test.
Sure, though the method of testing 130k arrivals everyday at Heathrow plus another 130k per day at other airports and ensuring they all have somewhere to sit for 6-8 hours while the tests are processed, the legalisms on holding everyone in an effective no man's land for that long, what to do with the 3-4k people testing positive per day (do we treat them and then the NHS becomes the IHS, do we send them back potentially infecting a planeload of people, do we enforce a hard quarantine, what if they can't afford it etc...). Just saying we should test everyone on arrival is simplistic, testing everyone is the easy part, it's everything else that needs to be carefully put into place.
Ideally we need a system that tests people on exit rather than entry so people who test positive aren't allowed to disembark. There seems to be quite a lot of international work being done on the last point as well with airports taking measures into their own hands but they are in talks with governments to essentially turn airports into virus free bubbles as they do for sports teams with daily testing of staff and travellers before they enter the terminal building.
To pretend that nothing is being done is wrong, the issue is getting international agreement on testing on exit rather than firefighting by testing on entry.
With respect I think that again misses the point. What you are describing with the airports may be an optimal solution but this pandemic will (hopefully) be over before it is implemented.
What was needed from the beginning was mandatory quarantine combined with as much testing as we could do to identify as many as possible of those infected before they infected anyone else. Gradually we would improve but the mindset seemed to be that if we couldn't do it all we would do nothing. It was completely wrong and added, at the margins, to our high infection rate.
I suspect foreign holidays are over for most for this year
Time to holiday in the UK
It is a grim place, albeit much improved like most places in the sunshine. I should be there in a few weeks.
If it was a ruined castle by the beach. for example Scarborough, instead of a steelworks then it would be viewed as 'romantic' even 'chocolate box'.
But in reality the Redcar steelworks has done more for the UK than any number of ruined castles.
I suspect castles provided quite a lot of employment, especially in the building phase.
And a lot of that area's scenic interest today derives from former industry, too. The coastal railway, the Whitby and Pickering line, the alum shale quarries.
RE: compliance and enforcement of self isolation/quarantine.
I think there is a distinction here. For the most part self isolation/quarantine is effectively unenforceable. And i think the official rules around it are extreme and draconian. On any realistic risk based standard, there is no reason (when so many activities have opened up) to be banning walking the dog or exercising alone in the park for example. It seems to me to be entirely reasonable for the rules on quarantine to be tweaked to be something more akin to the restrictions applied to the general population under lockdown (sans being able to go to work etc). Even more so when you consider that anybody a quarantined person lives with is not subject to the same measures and is free to go to pubs/restaurants/work/shops etc.
But people who will defy quarantine to the extent that they will go to work and/or send their children to school etc are not only being potentially selfish, but are being stupid. Because i think there is a reasonably high probability that given the tools to enforce an open and shut case, especially where people are acting in blatant defiance of the rules, then i think people will find the police knocking at the door. That they aren't doing so at present may not persist in the future. If a child starts telling their class where they have been (last week) on their holidays, then it will get reported almost certainly. It is perhaps less likely that people will get shopped by their fellow workers, but i think a lot of employers will feel compelled to (if not shop them) tell any transgressors to go home.
There is a difference between generalised enforcement measures - police etc engaging in random spot checks to catch people nipping out to the shops - and specific enforcement where the police can follow up a specific accusation with high chance of success.
Just as police don't generally spend much time investigating burglaries. But catch someone red handed and they will throw the book at them.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
You are clearly their average consumer.
Perhaps. There is a very snobbish attitude on this site sometimes that people here are "too good" for McDonalds, KFC etc and their customers. Its not big and its not clever.
More than one things can be true at the same time at the moment two things are true. 1: The hospitality industry has been devastated by the virus and the government mandated social distancing and lockdown and needs support to get back on its feet. 2: Obesity is an issue and people need to try and make smart choices.
The government is trying to tackle both truths. No hypocrisy.
McDonalds have actually done a lot to offer healthier meals than 10-20 years ago. And healthier fast food joints like Leon have become more popular too.
Indeed. You can tell by some posts here those who are going based off preconceptions of what McDonalds is, versus customers who actually go there and know what it really is.
I worked there while a student at uni 20 years ago when Supersize meals were still an option and Supersize Me came out as a movie. The menu then, compared to the menu now, is completely different. Supersize options were dropped immediately when that movie came out and carrots sticks, fruit bags, salads, grilled chicken and far more other options have long been introduced too. Its entirely possible to have a fully healthy meal at McDonalds now in a way that wasn't possible 20 years ago.
Whackamole is the right analogy and the right tactic.
The Government thinks the pandemic is
1. a game 2. can never be beaten
Awesome.
As someone who knows Game Theory (a bit) -
- Yes, this is a game. Like nuclear war. - The current measures cannot beat the virus. All they can do, at best, is suppress it to a very low level. - The only way to beat the virus is a vaccine.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip, are you overlooking that the trailed “anti-obesity measures” are not to be simply “guidance”? They include proposals to ban retailers from offering deals on high fat products. That is where the inconsistency and incoherence comes in.
No, I don't see any hypocrisy. Any bans would come in following a consultation period and notice during which retailers will plan and react accordingly. Prior to the sugar tax coming in the industry did the same thing with by the time the tax was introduced vast amounts of sugar had been removed from lots of drinks so they wouldn't be hit by the tax.
The August deal is about trying to get a devastated industry back on its feet. The consultations on future changes are about long term smart choices, not killing the hospitality industry.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
If they are returning from the Canaries there is no common good in self isolating. They are simply harming their employment prospects and their kids for no good reason.
You cannot possibly know that
If I had the enforced choice of meeting someone from Leicester or someone just back from the Canaries, Id be choosing the one coming from the place with a 10 times lower infection rate rather than the one that isnt foreign.
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
I suppose the counter argument is that a person who has produced a false negative becomes an exponentially greater risk. They will feel free to act with impunity and disregard all safety measures they might otherwise have taken. Although this would still be at personal risk to themselves even not (they perceive) to others.
Not really, they would still want to socially distance to avoid infection here. This is what was said at the press conferences. A test that was less than 100% reliable was “worse than useless “. I just think that like so many other things they got that wrong. If 80% of cases are isolated early the R rate will fall.
It's\ not necessarily the boffins (as you implied earlier) who made that judgement about 100% reliabilkity - it could be the pols (or boffins acting as pols).
I wonder if they are worried about being sued by people in the situation where false positive rater >> actual incidence?
But I entirely agree with you. People who travel should accept the risk of being quarantined and stop whining, however many of them see Mediterranean holidays as some sort of right.
It was the Chief Scientific Officer I specifically remembered going on about this. It’s quite possible that politicians did too.
I have been really surprised by how many people have been booking holidays in August and September. Most have been working on the basis that there is a right to cancel built in but the mindset is curious. The one set of boffins who were spot on in all of this were the behavioural psychologists who predicted fairly precisely how long the majority could cope with or comply with lockdown.
There is a proportion of the population who's main interest and aim in life seems to be foreign holidays.
Not even exotic travelling to famous or strange places but mere beach holidays in the Mediterranean.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip, are you overlooking that the trailed “anti-obesity measures” are not to be simply “guidance”? They include proposals to ban retailers from offering deals on high fat products. That is where the inconsistency and incoherence comes in.
No, I don't see any hypocrisy. Any bans would come in following a consultation period and notice during which retailers will plan and react accordingly. Prior to the sugar tax coming in the industry did the same thing with by the time the tax was introduced vast amounts of sugar had been removed from lots of drinks so they wouldn't be hit by the tax.
The August deal is about trying to get a devastated industry back on its feet. The consultations on future changes are about long term smart choices, not killing the hospitality industry.
Batting for Boris as ever Phillip
No, sticking by my beliefs as ever.
I was saying on this site more support was needed for the hospitality industry before Sunak announced the changes, so why would I change my mind now that the government have done what I advocated since before they did it?
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
"burger and side salad"
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Yes I am a typical customer there, I'm not ashamed to say that. Are you?
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
If they are returning from the Canaries there is no common good in self isolating. They are simply harming their employment prospects and their kids for no good reason.
You cannot possibly know that
If I had the enforced choice of meeting someone from Leicester or someone just back from the Canaries, Id be choosing the one coming from the place with a 10 times lower infection rate rather than the one that isnt foreign.
Who mentioned the Canaries? The OP Moonshine said "Spain", which implies the mainland, at leasdt in common parlance.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip, are you overlooking that the trailed “anti-obesity measures” are not to be simply “guidance”? They include proposals to ban retailers from offering deals on high fat products. That is where the inconsistency and incoherence comes in.
No, I don't see any hypocrisy. Any bans would come in following a consultation period and notice during which retailers will plan and react accordingly. Prior to the sugar tax coming in the industry did the same thing with by the time the tax was introduced vast amounts of sugar had been removed from lots of drinks so they wouldn't be hit by the tax.
The August deal is about trying to get a devastated industry back on its feet. The consultations on future changes are about long term smart choices, not killing the hospitality industry.
Batting for Boris as ever Phillip
Knocking Boris as ever Mike.
How much money did you lose laying him as favourite? Cuz he really is a festering sore with you, huh?
I suspect foreign holidays are over for most for this year
Time to holiday in the UK
It is a grim place, albeit much improved like most places in the sunshine. I should be there in a few weeks.
If it was a ruined castle by the beach. for example Scarborough, instead of a steelworks then it would be viewed as 'romantic' even 'chocolate box'.
But in reality the Redcar steelworks has done more for the UK than any number of ruined castles.
Yes it has. And there are some lovely towns and villages nearby in fact, I like Guisborough, but Redcar and some of its dormitory suburbs can be grim. The steelworks image didnt enter into my mind.
Why go to Redcar when Saltburn is just a few miles further on?
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
Because the 20% may turn into superspreaders if you inform them they don't have it.
And 100% might if you don’t test.
Sure, though the method of testing 130k arrivals everyday at Heathrow plus another 130k per day at other airports and ensuring they all have somewhere to sit for 6-8 hours while the tests are processed, the legalisms on holding everyone in an effective no man's land for that long, what to do with the 3-4k people testing positive per day (do we treat them and then the NHS becomes the IHS, do we send them back potentially infecting a planeload of people, do we enforce a hard quarantine, what if they can't afford it etc...). Just saying we should test everyone on arrival is simplistic, testing everyone is the easy part, it's everything else that needs to be carefully put into place.
Ideally we need a system that tests people on exit rather than entry so people who test positive aren't allowed to disembark. There seems to be quite a lot of international work being done on the last point as well with airports taking measures into their own hands but they are in talks with governments to essentially turn airports into virus free bubbles as they do for sports teams with daily testing of staff and travellers before they enter the terminal building.
To pretend that nothing is being done is wrong, the issue is getting international agreement on testing on exit rather than firefighting by testing on entry.
The Germans seem up for it.
You wouldnt hold people sitting about infecting each other - under the quarantine policy people are allowed to travel home, so an alternative approach obviously cannot be worse for allowing the same thing. Those that test positive hear back the next day.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
You are clearly their average consumer.
Perhaps. There is a very snobbish attitude on this site sometimes that people here are "too good" for McDonalds, KFC etc and their customers. Its not big and its not clever.
More than one things can be true at the same time at the moment two things are true. 1: The hospitality industry has been devastated by the virus and the government mandated social distancing and lockdown and needs support to get back on its feet. 2: Obesity is an issue and people need to try and make smart choices.
The government is trying to tackle both truths. No hypocrisy.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
You are clearly their average consumer.
Perhaps. There is a very snobbish attitude on this site sometimes that people here are "too good" for McDonalds, KFC etc and their customers. Its not big and its not clever.
More than one things can be true at the same time at the moment two things are true. 1: The hospitality industry has been devastated by the virus and the government mandated social distancing and lockdown and needs support to get back on its feet. 2: Obesity is an issue and people need to try and make smart choices.
The government is trying to tackle both truths. No hypocrisy.
McDonalds have actually done a lot to offer healthier meals than 10-20 years ago. And healthier fast food joints like Leon have become more popular too.
Indeed. You can tell by some posts here those who are going based off preconceptions of what McDonalds is, versus customers who actually go there and know what it really is.
I worked there while a student at uni 20 years ago when Supersize meals were still an option and Supersize Me came out as a movie. The menu then, compared to the menu now, is completely different. Supersize options were dropped immediately when that movie came out and carrots sticks, fruit bags, salads, grilled chicken and far more other options have long been introduced too. Its entirely possible to have a fully healthy meal at McDonalds now in a way that wasn't possible 20 years ago.
I'm actually surprised as a business it still does so well given the image at times. I love McDonalds but still feel a compulsion to justify it if I choose to eat there likes its something to be shameful of, and theyve even run ads based on the premise people think their nuggets are made of crap
Whackamole is the right analogy and the right tactic.
The Government thinks the pandemic is
1. a game 2. can never be beaten
Awesome.
As someone who knows Game Theory (a bit) -
- Yes, this is a game. Like nuclear war. - The current measures cannot beat the virus. All they can do, at best, is suppress it to a very low level. - The only way to beat the virus is a vaccine.
Whackamole is the right analogy and the right tactic.
The Government thinks the pandemic is
1. a game 2. can never be beaten
Awesome.
As someone who knows Game Theory (a bit) -
- Yes, this is a game. Like nuclear war. - The current measures cannot beat the virus. All they can do, at best, is suppress it to a very low level. - The only way to beat the virus is a vaccine.
There are several other ways to beat the virus other than a vaccine, but they are too costly and draconian given the likelihood of a vaccine being available and effective in the not to distant future. Otherwise they would have to be considered.
I suspect foreign holidays are over for most for this year
Time to holiday in the UK
It is a grim place, albeit much improved like most places in the sunshine. I should be there in a few weeks.
If it was a ruined castle by the beach. for example Scarborough, instead of a steelworks then it would be viewed as 'romantic' even 'chocolate box'.
But in reality the Redcar steelworks has done more for the UK than any number of ruined castles.
Yes it has. And there are some lovely towns and villages nearby in fact, I like Guisborough, but Redcar and some of its dormitory suburbs can be grim. The steelworks image didnt enter into my mind.
Why go to Redcar when Saltburn is just a few miles further on?
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
I suppose the counter argument is that a person who has produced a false negative becomes an exponentially greater risk. They will feel free to act with impunity and disregard all safety measures they might otherwise have taken. Although this would still be at personal risk to themselves even not (they perceive) to others.
Not really, they would still want to socially distance to avoid infection here. This is what was said at the press conferences. A test that was less than 100% reliable was “worse than useless “. I just think that like so many other things they got that wrong. If 80% of cases are isolated early the R rate will fall.
It's\ not necessarily the boffins (as you implied earlier) who made that judgement about 100% reliabilkity - it could be the pols (or boffins acting as pols).
I wonder if they are worried about being sued by people in the situation where false positive rater >> actual incidence?
But I entirely agree with you. People who travel should accept the risk of being quarantined and stop whining, however many of them see Mediterranean holidays as some sort of right.
It was the Chief Scientific Officer I specifically remembered going on about this. It’s quite possible that politicians did too.
I have been really surprised by how many people have been booking holidays in August and September. Most have been working on the basis that there is a right to cancel built in but the mindset is curious. The one set of boffins who were spot on in all of this were the behavioural psychologists who predicted fairly precisely how long the majority could cope with or comply with lockdown.
There is a proportion of the population who's main interest and aim in life seems to be foreign holidays.
Not even exotic travelling to famous or strange places but mere beach holidays in the Mediterranean.
I find it odd that people think a real quarantine is somehow too practically difficult to implement. It's happening in many places around the world. Get out your bubble.
Now if the argument is that one isn't needed because UK infection rates are higher than everywhere else, or the numbers don't move the dial, that's a separate matter. So stop all this nonsense about "quarantine". It's making the government look dishonest and foolish.
I suspect foreign holidays are over for most for this year
Time to holiday in the UK
It is a grim place, albeit much improved like most places in the sunshine. I should be there in a few weeks.
If it was a ruined castle by the beach. for example Scarborough, instead of a steelworks then it would be viewed as 'romantic' even 'chocolate box'.
But in reality the Redcar steelworks has done more for the UK than any number of ruined castles.
Yes it has. And there are some lovely towns and villages nearby in fact, I like Guisborough, but Redcar and some of its dormitory suburbs can be grim. The steelworks image didnt enter into my mind.
Why go to Redcar when Saltburn is just a few miles further on?
At most weekends at the moment the nearest parking space for Saltburn is in Redcar
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
I suppose the counter argument is that a person who has produced a false negative becomes an exponentially greater risk. They will feel free to act with impunity and disregard all safety measures they might otherwise have taken. Although this would still be at personal risk to themselves even not (they perceive) to others.
Not really, they would still want to socially distance to avoid infection here. This is what was said at the press conferences. A test that was less than 100% reliable was “worse than useless “. I just think that like so many other things they got that wrong. If 80% of cases are isolated early the R rate will fall.
It's\ not necessarily the boffins (as you implied earlier) who made that judgement about 100% reliabilkity - it could be the pols (or boffins acting as pols).
I wonder if they are worried about being sued by people in the situation where false positive rater >> actual incidence?
But I entirely agree with you. People who travel should accept the risk of being quarantined and stop whining, however many of them see Mediterranean holidays as some sort of right.
It was the Chief Scientific Officer I specifically remembered going on about this. It’s quite possible that politicians did too.
I have been really surprised by how many people have been booking holidays in August and September. Most have been working on the basis that there is a right to cancel built in but the mindset is curious. The one set of boffins who were spot on in all of this were the behavioural psychologists who predicted fairly precisely how long the majority could cope with or comply with lockdown.
There is a proportion of the population who's main interest and aim in life seems to be foreign holidays.
Not even exotic travelling to famous or strange places but mere beach holidays in the Mediterranean.
I really like a bit of sun, it soaks into the bones and relaxes you like nothing else (probably vitamin D for the less romantic). And July deluges like yesterday hardly help. But not this year, no.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
"burger and side salad"
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Yes I am a typical customer there, I'm not ashamed to say that. Are you?
Or are you too posh and too good for McDonalds?
Oh dear God it gets worse with the sneering. Philip. Its just possible that what *you* choose to order isn't what *most people* choose to order. And yes, I eat at Maccie D's and yes on the odd occasion I've had a salad pot instead of fries. You and I both know that the vast majority of customers choose fries so drop the idiocy that you are a typical customer.
Is McDonalds healthier than it used to be? Absolutely. Its like eating 3/4s of the pack of lard instead of the whole thing. Healthier? Yes. Healthy? No.
Half price Big Macs. Paid for by government. As part of its healthy living drive.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
There are changes (short of full enforced quarantine) that could be introduced to increase the likelihood of adherence. You could enforce informing people's workplaces and/or schools that the individual has been quarantined. These won't be worked out yet, but like anything with this situation, policy is being made in real time.
Sorry Big G but it's naive in the extreme to think people will follow these rules unless they are actually enforced. Anyone living their lives in fear of the virus didn't book flights to the Costas and are riding the summer out at home. My friends are not arseholes, they are fairly typical and they have got fed up with the bollocks spewing daily from central government that they're making their own risk estimations. Whoever is running the so called Behavioural Science Unit needs to be sacked by lunchtime.
Its very good of them to make those risk estimations on behalf of their fellow workers.
If I discovered one of my workers had just sneaked back to the office after two weeks in Spain, I'd fire them on the spot.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
"burger and side salad"
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Yes I am a typical customer there, I'm not ashamed to say that. Are you?
Or are you too posh and too good for McDonalds?
LOL x2
When you need a McDonald's you need a McDonalds, me included, but I can tell you now when I go I don't have a "burger and side salad".
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
If they are returning from the Canaries there is no common good in self isolating. They are simply harming their employment prospects and their kids for no good reason.
You cannot possibly know that
If I had the enforced choice of meeting someone from Leicester or someone just back from the Canaries, Id be choosing the one coming from the place with a 10 times lower infection rate rather than the one that isnt foreign.
Who mentioned the Canaries? The OP Moonshine said "Spain", which implies the mainland, at leasdt in common parlance.
The Foreign Office. Foreign Office also extended its travel advice for Spain, now telling people to avoid non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain on grounds that it was simpler and countries had to be treated as whole.
The Canaries are technically part of Spain but are isolated far away and have a much lower incidence of the virus than the UK. That's what this discussion was about.
I support the Government's actions on Spain as a whole but the Canaries bit was rubbish and undermines the Government's credibity - which is a bad thing in controlling the virus.
As so often, Jenkins nails it. From the start the government has been in panic mode, and the whole story of the virus crisis in the UK has been dither and indecision followed by overreaction followed by more dither and often as not then a u-turn.
I used to have a lot of time for Jenkins, but recently, not so much.
Yes, the data are poor, and positives are a function of testing and... incidence! So not really random at all. What does he suggest? The data are poor so we ignore them completely and roll a die to decide what policies to choose?
No. Go both excess death figures.
Not a good metric at all to be making decisions in realtime with.
When lockdown was enforced excess deaths hadn't really started to be reported at all yet. If we'd waited until they were then it would have been far too late.
Excess deaths are negative at the minute and have been for quite some time so should we simply lift all restrictions? And if we do and they rise again then as deaths are such a lagging indicator by the time we reimpose restrictions it will be too late.
We have plenty of data, in lots of detail. The government has more - mainly in terms of ultra low level and splitting of pillar 1 and 2 testing.
The header is poor. Simon Jenkins is a photo-Heffer - a weird reactionary on a number of subjects.
As usual, he is wrong - the government advice isn't from Imperial. Just about everyone in the country in the field is providing input - all with their own models. Jenkins is just too lazy to go beyond a few sneers.
Managing this epidemic is a matter of snap decisions, made within days. This is because of the rate of take off (potentially exponential).
I suspect foreign holidays are over for most for this year
Time to holiday in the UK
It is a grim place, albeit much improved like most places in the sunshine. I should be there in a few weeks.
If it was a ruined castle by the beach. for example Scarborough, instead of a steelworks then it would be viewed as 'romantic' even 'chocolate box'.
But in reality the Redcar steelworks has done more for the UK than any number of ruined castles.
Yes it has. And there are some lovely towns and villages nearby in fact, I like Guisborough, but Redcar and some of its dormitory suburbs can be grim. The steelworks image didnt enter into my mind.
Why go to Redcar when Saltburn is just a few miles further on?
At most weekends at the moment the nearest parking space for Saltburn is in Redcar
lol yeah thats fair. Plenty of places to park my bike though!
I currently have a stoma, and have had one for the past 2 years. It’s due to be removed in 3 weeks time, however having it has given me an appreciation and quite a deep understanding of how the body digests food - what digests well, and what does not. I’ll tell you that in my experience, McDonalds burgers digest pretty well however the chips are awful.
Doesn’t stop me getting a Big Mac and Fries, although it really should. You can tell the body does not like them.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
"burger and side salad"
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Yes I am a typical customer there, I'm not ashamed to say that. Are you?
Or are you too posh and too good for McDonalds?
LOL x2
When you need a McDonald's you need a McDonalds, me included, but I can tell you now when I go I don't have a "burger and side salad".
Would you like to tell us more about this McDonalds addiction you have Toppo ?
Personally I only go when I receive the 'meal for £2' vouchers.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
If they are returning from the Canaries there is no common good in self isolating. They are simply harming their employment prospects and their kids for no good reason.
You cannot possibly know that
If I had the enforced choice of meeting someone from Leicester or someone just back from the Canaries, Id be choosing the one coming from the place with a 10 times lower infection rate rather than the one that isnt foreign.
Who mentioned the Canaries? The OP Moonshine said "Spain", which implies the mainland, at leasdt in common parlance.
The Foreign Office. Foreign Office also extended its travel advice for Spain, now telling people to avoid non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain on grounds that it was simpler and countries had to be treated as whole.
The Canaries are technically part of Spain but are isolated far away and have a much lower incidence of the virus than the UK. That's what this discussion was about.
I support the Government's actions on Spain as a whole but the Canaries bit was rubbish and undermines the Government's credibity - which is a bad thing in controlling the virus.
I don't think the government's announcement on Spain was entirely about Spain. It's about making sure the man in the street knows this isn't over.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
"burger and side salad"
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Yes I am a typical customer there, I'm not ashamed to say that. Are you?
Or are you too posh and too good for McDonalds?
Oh dear God it gets worse with the sneering. Philip. Its just possible that what *you* choose to order isn't what *most people* choose to order. And yes, I eat at Maccie D's and yes on the odd occasion I've had a salad pot instead of fries. You and I both know that the vast majority of customers choose fries so drop the idiocy that you are a typical customer.
Is McDonalds healthier than it used to be? Absolutely. Its like eating 3/4s of the pack of lard instead of the whole thing. Healthier? Yes. Healthy? No.
Half price Big Macs. Paid for by government. As part of its healthy living drive.
So what? Again, this just means any eatery should not be supported unless it is the 'right' kind.
I am genuinely baffled at the conclusions reached on this one which seem to rely on government not being able to have more than one priority, and an assumption people are idiots and cannot understand a message of moderation where you could reward yourself with a big mac occasionally.
Seriously were they supposed to not support businesses at all or delay talking about obesity until after the pandemic?
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
You are clearly their average consumer.
Perhaps. There is a very snobbish attitude on this site sometimes that people here are "too good" for McDonalds, KFC etc and their customers. Its not big and its not clever.
More than one things can be true at the same time at the moment two things are true. 1: The hospitality industry has been devastated by the virus and the government mandated social distancing and lockdown and needs support to get back on its feet. 2: Obesity is an issue and people need to try and make smart choices.
The government is trying to tackle both truths. No hypocrisy.
McDonalds have actually done a lot to offer healthier meals than 10-20 years ago. And healthier fast food joints like Leon have become more popular too.
Indeed. You can tell by some posts here those who are going based off preconceptions of what McDonalds is, versus customers who actually go there and know what it really is.
I worked there while a student at uni 20 years ago when Supersize meals were still an option and Supersize Me came out as a movie. The menu then, compared to the menu now, is completely different. Supersize options were dropped immediately when that movie came out and carrots sticks, fruit bags, salads, grilled chicken and far more other options have long been introduced too. Its entirely possible to have a fully healthy meal at McDonalds now in a way that wasn't possible 20 years ago.
This is true. You can play Macs safely if you keep your wits about you. I, for example, never have fries unless it's with a single burger, and even then it's small fries. So if I'm doing a Big Mac that is all I'm doing. A Big Mac. And no puddings obviously.
Others get it all wrong. I've seen it many times, heard people ordering in ways that make no sense at all -
"Quarterpounder with cheese, large fries, apple pie, please ... and a diet coke."
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
"burger and side salad"
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Yes I am a typical customer there, I'm not ashamed to say that. Are you?
Or are you too posh and too good for McDonalds?
Oh dear God it gets worse with the sneering. Philip. Its just possible that what *you* choose to order isn't what *most people* choose to order. And yes, I eat at Maccie D's and yes on the odd occasion I've had a salad pot instead of fries. You and I both know that the vast majority of customers choose fries so drop the idiocy that you are a typical customer.
Is McDonalds healthier than it used to be? Absolutely. Its like eating 3/4s of the pack of lard instead of the whole thing. Healthier? Yes. Healthy? No.
Half price Big Macs. Paid for by government. As part of its healthy living drive.
That's very unfair to lard. Lard from a healthy pig is one of the best fats you can eat.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
"burger and side salad"
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Yes I am a typical customer there, I'm not ashamed to say that. Are you?
Or are you too posh and too good for McDonalds?
Oh dear God it gets worse with the sneering. Philip. Its just possible that what *you* choose to order isn't what *most people* choose to order. And yes, I eat at Maccie D's and yes on the odd occasion I've had a salad pot instead of fries. You and I both know that the vast majority of customers choose fries so drop the idiocy that you are a typical customer.
Is McDonalds healthier than it used to be? Absolutely. Its like eating 3/4s of the pack of lard instead of the whole thing. Healthier? Yes. Healthy? No.
Half price Big Macs. Paid for by government. As part of its healthy living drive.
Except your last paragraph is wrong, categorically wrong.
The government can have more that one drive going on at the same time.
Half price food (not just Big Macs, all food) as part of its drive to help save the beleaguered hospitality sector. And separate to that an education drive to try and get people to make smart choices with what they eat.
I think both of those drives are appropriate. Which one of them would you like to see axed? Would you like to axe the support for the beleaguered hospitality industry? Or would you like to axe any anti-obesity efforts?
One thing that is obvious from things like that is that until we get a vaccine, you really really don't want to catch it.
Absolutely. It's one of three things the cadre of people who go around saying, "hey, the death rate for those who aren't old or obese or have co-morbidities is tiny; we're safe, right?"
1 - It ain't just about me. Even if I'm safe as houses, if I infect three people and they each infect three people, and so on, in five steps, I've caused more than 350 people to come down with this. Three or four will likely die, and that's on me. If I could have stopped the spread with a bit of inconvenience or discomfort, then I've rated my comfort and convenience over their lives, and I'd find it difficult to live with myself for that. If I kill your Mum, or Dad, or wife, or husband, or son, or daughter - no. But, yeah, I'm not dead.
2 - The difference in the rate for getting seriously ill or even into ICU is a lot different from the death rates. The main difference is that your far more likely to recover, but that doesn't make comas, intubation, forced ventilation, or weeks of serious illness that much more attractive, thanks. But, yeah, I'm not dead.
3 - There are occurrence after occurrence of incidents of younger, healthy people getting lingering and sometimes life-changing conditions from this. But, hey, they're not dead...
Analogy: with the latest advances in treating HIV, people tend to live a lot longer with it, and pretty much any STD isn't going to kill you now (or at least, not rapidly). Life altering, painful, horrible... but not into the death statistics. Pregnancy is rarely lethal now (not like in years gone by) - it'll change your life, but very rarely will it kill you. So - who here would merrily tell their teenage kids not to worry about unprotected sex? "You won't actually die from it; at least not in the near term. And maybe you'll just cause bad effects to others and escape them yourself!"
So the polling which shows support for the travel ban counts for nought? The mistake made was actually to allow foreign travel too soon. The public knows this which is why the vast majority were not travelling abroad this year. As suual the press opts for the cheap headline blaming the government for acting too quickly, after weeks of whining that they acted too slowly.
Agreed. I don't give a flying f*ck about public opinion on this anyway. Governing is about doing what is right not what is popular.
It is remarkable how what is right changes so frequently and quickly.
In the fast moving environment of a pandemic absolutely it does.
Not back and forth in the way that government decision making is doing.
In any event, what we have is ‘honesty box’ quarantine, which people who are generally sensible and who will have travelled taking every precaution will generally observe, and people who are reckless and who have been careless or worse on their holiday will take no notice of whatsoever.
Germany - which has done much better than us so far - is currently preparing to test everyone returning from areas it considers at risk. Are we doing anything so proactive? Answer on a postcard (no need to write anything on it).
I just do not understand why the government seems so unwilling to use testing as a tool to better target measures like quarantine etc. So they don’t want to test people on arrival because apparently people may be incubating the virus but not produce positive results for a few days. But what is the risk of this? Are we talking about 1% “false negative”? Or 10%? Or 50%? It shouldn’t matter if a very low % slip through if the overall risk is acceptable - that’s risk management. 2m isn’t a “safe distance” for social distancing, it is relatively safe on the balance of risks.
And if the risks are unacceptably high for testing on entry, then do testing after, say 4 days. Or what ever period is considered acceptably safe. All is better than 14 days, no testing, and then do what you want. Because there is even a risk then that some percentage will slip through undetected. And that’s even before you factor in non compliance.
I agree. Testing is a numbers game. If it identifies 80% of those infected allowing them to be isolated this is a very positive result. I have never understood the boffins obsession with 100% accuracy.
Because the 20% may turn into superspreaders if you inform them they don't have it.
And 100% might if you don’t test.
Sure, though the method of testing 130k arrivals everyday at Heathrow plus another 130k per day at other airports and ensuring they all have somewhere to sit for 6-8 hours while the tests are processed, the legalisms on holding everyone in an effective no man's land for that long, what to do with the 3-4k people testing positive per day (do we treat them and then the NHS becomes the IHS, do we send them back potentially infecting a planeload of people, do we enforce a hard quarantine, what if they can't afford it etc...). Just saying we should test everyone on arrival is simplistic, testing everyone is the easy part, it's everything else that needs to be carefully put into place.
Ideally we need a system that tests people on exit rather than entry so people who test positive aren't allowed to disembark. There seems to be quite a lot of international work being done on the last point as well with airports taking measures into their own hands but they are in talks with governments to essentially turn airports into virus free bubbles as they do for sports teams with daily testing of staff and travellers before they enter the terminal building.
To pretend that nothing is being done is wrong, the issue is getting international agreement on testing on exit rather than firefighting by testing on entry.
The Germans seem up for it.
You wouldnt hold people sitting about infecting each other - under the quarantine policy people are allowed to travel home, so an alternative approach obviously cannot be worse for allowing the same thing. Those that test positive hear back the next day.
Yes, you would only hold people who also had symptoms (if that).
Everyone I know* who has had a test avoids other people while waiting for the test results - it would be a bit awkward saying to people "when we met up the other day I was waiting for a covid test result and it came back positive so you might want to get yourself tested".
* Well not the symptom-free people working in hospitals who get routinely tested every week, they tend to carry on as normal.
I won't be at all surprised if the government don't swiftly rescind the Spain thing following the obvious pressure from the entire travel sector about how many people they are about to make redundant. Contradiction and hypocrisy to do so? Perhaps, but as they're making it up every day with no clue what they did previous days (cf eat half price burgers / don't eat burgers) it fits the pattern of behaviour.
If the "quarantine" was actually quarantine then perhaps they had a point. As it is if someone is even there at the airport to collect your form the authorities appear to spend zero enforcing it as them calling on you and you not being there is fine for a whole host of reasons. As with so much of their stuff it is nonsense on stilts.
That would require the Government to admit that they made a mistake. And as with Cummings when forced to choose between admitting they made a mistake and doubling down the Government will double down.
So if we all need to lose weight and the government is announcing a stack of anti-obesity measures from August including the plan to scrap buy one get one free on food, was not buy one burger get one free in August a mistake...? Or just the usual disorganised chaos.
QTWAIN.
Not a mistake. The industry is devastated at the minute. And while going out it's entirely possible to think about what you order and choose a healthier option and not a supersized meal with sugary drinks.
The key to having a healthy weight is to make smart choices ... it is categorically NOT to never go out!
I know you are on the libertarian end of the spectrum and I respect that. Which means that you know as well as I do what people are in most cases likely to be eating. It is not "sneering condescension" to point out that half price burgers in McDonalds paid for by the government is a direct contradiction to "stop eating burgers" said by the government. Yes its a fine balance between jobs and health. They don't attempt a balance or nuance. Its "eat burgers / don't eat burgers" in the same breath.
No hypocrisy. It's half price anything but be careful and don't overeat.
One meal does not obesity cause. A lifetime of smart choices is required to keep healthy.
The government should not be saying all or nothing. Education and moderation are key, what is wrong with that?
Philip. "Be careful and don't overeat". In McDonalds. On Half Price Big Macs. With restaurants specifically reopened to allow people to do so.
Come on. You know what McDonalds punters are in there for. Its not for a salad bowl.
How often do you eat at McDonald's? I do, do you with your sneering pretensions?
If you actually eat their nobody puts a gun against your head and forces you to buy a meal with large fries and large sugary Coke.
When we go we get out children chicken nuggets with carrot sticks instead of fries in their happy meal. I tend to get a burger and side salad instead of fries and Coke Zero.
Personal choice and responsibilities are things for people to learn.
"burger and side salad"
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Yes I am a typical customer there, I'm not ashamed to say that. Are you?
Or are you too posh and too good for McDonalds?
LOL x2
When you need a McDonald's you need a McDonalds, me included, but I can tell you now when I go I don't have a "burger and side salad".
I'm guessing you don't go in and order a Supersize fries and Supersize sugary Coke either.
My anecdata from two different friends that were in Spain when "quarantine" measures were re-introduced is that they have no intention whatsoever of following the advice. One is already back at work in his office (for the first time since March ironically). The other intends to fly back 48 hours before the school term starts.
What annoys me most about this government is that they insult our intelligence with the messaging. Stop playing games. Either imported cases matter, in which case stop fucking about and ban RyanAir from flying and take arrivals to central quarantine facilities. Or it doesn't matter in the grand scheme with good flight hygiene and pre-boarding testing and let people do what they want.
It's like the country is being run by the two facets of Tyler Durden.
My first reaction on hearing the news on Spanish holiday returnees was that a lot of people would ignore the quarantine rule.
Some will but I would expect many will either work from home or respect their responsibilty for the common good
If they are returning from the Canaries there is no common good in self isolating. They are simply harming their employment prospects and their kids for no good reason.
You cannot possibly know that
If I had the enforced choice of meeting someone from Leicester or someone just back from the Canaries, Id be choosing the one coming from the place with a 10 times lower infection rate rather than the one that isnt foreign.
Who mentioned the Canaries? The OP Moonshine said "Spain", which implies the mainland, at leasdt in common parlance.
The Foreign Office. Foreign Office also extended its travel advice for Spain, now telling people to avoid non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain on grounds that it was simpler and countries had to be treated as whole.
The Canaries are technically part of Spain but are isolated far away and have a much lower incidence of the virus than the UK. That's what this discussion was about.
I support the Government's actions on Spain as a whole but the Canaries bit was rubbish and undermines the Government's credibity - which is a bad thing in controlling the virus.
From what I understand the government are in discussions on exempting the Canaries from quarantine which makes sense as they are closer to Africa than mainland Spain
Comments
It's simply about the political debate, not about combatting the virus. Campaigning, not governing.
The August deal is about trying to get a devastated industry back on its feet. The consultations on future changes are about long term smart choices, not killing the hospitality industry.
I have been really surprised by how many people have been booking holidays in August and September. Most have been working on the basis that there is a right to cancel built in but the mindset is curious. The one set of boffins who were spot on in all of this were the behavioural psychologists who predicted fairly precisely how long the majority could cope with or comply with lockdown.
Ideally we need a system that tests people on exit rather than entry so people who test positive aren't allowed to disembark. There seems to be quite a lot of international work being done on the last point as well with airports taking measures into their own hands but they are in talks with governments to essentially turn airports into virus free bubbles as they do for sports teams with daily testing of staff and travellers before they enter the terminal building.
To pretend that nothing is being done is wrong, the issue is getting international agreement on testing on exit rather than firefighting by testing on entry.
However, there are different behavioral psychoulogists who give different opinions, IIRC. Which makes me wonder how far the Whitehall gmt has used their lot of b. p. as an excuse to give up and seek good headlines and keep people happy (in the short term).
Also, the government is trying to do many things at once. Should it hold off on trying to help the economy because off an obesity strategy?
If this is just about the political debate, they're not doing very well. Because there are 4 long years for people to realise just how inept this has been.
That is the danger - that lots of others feel the same way as me and stop following government advice on the Canaries. Having lost credibility on that, it more likely that government advice will be ignored on other matters when it shouldn't be.
This is all academic for me as I don't plan to go the Canaries. I plan to go to Ireland where I will rigorously follow the local rules and there is no self-isolation on my return.
Yes, the data are poor, and positives are a function of testing and... incidence! So not really random at all. What does he suggest? The data are poor so we ignore them completely and roll a die to decide what policies to choose?
More than one things can be true at the same time at the moment two things are true.
1: The hospitality industry has been devastated by the virus and the government mandated social distancing and lockdown and needs support to get back on its feet.
2: Obesity is an issue and people need to try and make smart choices.
The government is trying to tackle both truths. No hypocrisy.
The plan is for an arc furnace I'm not sure what else is going there.
And I like Redcar, might well head there on Friday to see the Penguins.
Or we could all stay in our beds and do nothing ever.
Anecdotally, they are pretty uiniversal round here (Godalming), but more like 50-50 in a Coop in a rough area of Croydon. BAME use there (the demographics are 50-50 too) seems higher than white use.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/28/taxing-over-40s-not-way-address-problem-social-care/
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Risikogebiete_neu.html
Also, if you want people going abroad to accept the risk of quarantine on return, I think it's a good idea to have warnings for anyone buying tickets etc that this is a risk. Not everybody obsessively follows the coronavirus news, and tend to think "if this is allowed now, it must be ok to do it".
Any links to what behavioural psychologists were actually predicting?
A sufficiently unreliable test (here sufficiently unreliable varies with the number actually infected) could be worse than nothing.
Dont eat too much and do some exercise does not contradict saying people should eat out now and again to support businesses, anymore than allowing bars to be open contradicts a don't drink and drive campaign.
But the comparison would be of a so-called quarantine policy with the glaring loophole that whether people do it or not relies entirely upon honesty (and even the honest ones can still travel home on the train and go out for myriad reasons), with a testing returning travellers policy with the loophole that some infected people might slip through as false negatives.
When lockdown was enforced excess deaths hadn't really started to be reported at all yet. If we'd waited until they were then it would have been far too late.
Excess deaths are negative at the minute and have been for quite some time so should we simply lift all restrictions? And if we do and they rise again then as deaths are such a lagging indicator by the time we reimpose restrictions it will be too late.
But in reality the Redcar steelworks has done more for the UK than any number of ruined castles.
What was needed from the beginning was mandatory quarantine combined with as much testing as we could do to identify as many as possible of those infected before they infected anyone else. Gradually we would improve but the mindset seemed to be that if we couldn't do it all we would do nothing. It was completely wrong and added, at the margins, to our high infection rate.
I think there is a distinction here. For the most part self isolation/quarantine is effectively unenforceable. And i think the official rules around it are extreme and draconian. On any realistic risk based standard, there is no reason (when so many activities have opened up) to be banning walking the dog or exercising alone in the park for example. It seems to me to be entirely reasonable for the rules on quarantine to be tweaked to be something more akin to the restrictions applied to the general population under lockdown (sans being able to go to work etc). Even more so when you consider that anybody a quarantined person lives with is not subject to the same measures and is free to go to pubs/restaurants/work/shops etc.
But people who will defy quarantine to the extent that they will go to work and/or send their children to school etc are not only being potentially selfish, but are being stupid. Because i think there is a reasonably high probability that given the tools to enforce an open and shut case, especially where people are acting in blatant defiance of the rules, then i think people will find the police knocking at the door. That they aren't doing so at present may not persist in the future. If a child starts telling their class where they have been (last week) on their holidays, then it will get reported almost certainly. It is perhaps less likely that people will get shopped by their fellow workers, but i think a lot of employers will feel compelled to (if not shop them) tell any transgressors to go home.
There is a difference between generalised enforcement measures - police etc engaging in random spot checks to catch people nipping out to the shops - and specific enforcement where the police can follow up a specific accusation with high chance of success.
Just as police don't generally spend much time investigating burglaries. But catch someone red handed and they will throw the book at them.
The UK's first wave came from 1,300 separate people travelling to France, Spain and Italy. 0.1% were linked to people travelling from China.
Of course, if you insist on crossing the road in a blindfold....
I worked there while a student at uni 20 years ago when Supersize meals were still an option and Supersize Me came out as a movie. The menu then, compared to the menu now, is completely different. Supersize options were dropped immediately when that movie came out and carrots sticks, fruit bags, salads, grilled chicken and far more other options have long been introduced too. Its entirely possible to have a fully healthy meal at McDonalds now in a way that wasn't possible 20 years ago.
- Yes, this is a game. Like nuclear war.
- The current measures cannot beat the virus. All they can do, at best, is suppress it to a very low level.
- The only way to beat the virus is a vaccine.
Not even exotic travelling to famous or strange places but mere beach holidays in the Mediterranean.
I was saying on this site more support was needed for the hospitality industry before Sunak announced the changes, so why would I change my mind now that the government have done what I advocated since before they did it?
LOL
A typical Mickey D's customer writes...
Or are you too posh and too good for McDonalds?
How much money did you lose laying him as favourite? Cuz he really is a festering sore with you, huh?
You wouldnt hold people sitting about infecting each other - under the quarantine policy people are allowed to travel home, so an alternative approach obviously cannot be worse for allowing the same thing. Those that test positive hear back the next day.
Now if the argument is that one isn't needed because UK infection rates are higher than everywhere else, or the numbers don't move the dial, that's a separate matter. So stop all this nonsense about "quarantine". It's making the government look dishonest and foolish.
Is McDonalds healthier than it used to be? Absolutely. Its like eating 3/4s of the pack of lard instead of the whole thing. Healthier? Yes. Healthy? No.
Half price Big Macs. Paid for by government. As part of its healthy living drive.
If I discovered one of my workers had just sneaked back to the office after two weeks in Spain, I'd fire them on the spot.
When you need a McDonald's you need a McDonalds, me included, but I can tell you now when I go I don't have a "burger and side salad".
The Canaries are technically part of Spain but are isolated far away and have a much lower incidence of the virus than the UK. That's what this discussion was about.
I support the Government's actions on Spain as a whole but the Canaries bit was rubbish and undermines the Government's credibity - which is a bad thing in controlling the virus.
The header is poor. Simon Jenkins is a photo-Heffer - a weird reactionary on a number of subjects.
As usual, he is wrong - the government advice isn't from Imperial. Just about everyone in the country in the field is providing input - all with their own models. Jenkins is just too lazy to go beyond a few sneers.
Managing this epidemic is a matter of snap decisions, made within days. This is because of the rate of take off (potentially exponential).
I currently have a stoma, and have had one for the past 2 years. It’s due to be removed in 3 weeks time, however having it has given me an appreciation and quite a deep understanding of how the body digests food - what digests well, and what does not. I’ll tell you that in my experience, McDonalds burgers digest pretty well however the chips are awful.
Doesn’t stop me getting a Big Mac and Fries, although it really should. You can tell the body does not like them.
Personally I only go when I receive the 'meal for £2' vouchers.
I am genuinely baffled at the conclusions reached on this one which seem to rely on government not being able to have more than one priority, and an assumption people are idiots and cannot understand a message of moderation where you could reward yourself with a big mac occasionally.
Seriously were they supposed to not support businesses at all or delay talking about obesity until after the pandemic?
Pleasant morning to all.
Others get it all wrong. I've seen it many times, heard people ordering in ways that make no sense at all -
"Quarterpounder with cheese, large fries, apple pie, please ... and a diet coke."
I mean, c'mon.
The government can have more that one drive going on at the same time.
Half price food (not just Big Macs, all food) as part of its drive to help save the beleaguered hospitality sector.
And separate to that an education drive to try and get people to make smart choices with what they eat.
I think both of those drives are appropriate. Which one of them would you like to see axed? Would you like to axe the support for the beleaguered hospitality industry? Or would you like to axe any anti-obesity efforts?
It's one of three things the cadre of people who go around saying, "hey, the death rate for those who aren't old or obese or have co-morbidities is tiny; we're safe, right?"
1 - It ain't just about me. Even if I'm safe as houses, if I infect three people and they each infect three people, and so on, in five steps, I've caused more than 350 people to come down with this. Three or four will likely die, and that's on me. If I could have stopped the spread with a bit of inconvenience or discomfort, then I've rated my comfort and convenience over their lives, and I'd find it difficult to live with myself for that. If I kill your Mum, or Dad, or wife, or husband, or son, or daughter - no. But, yeah, I'm not dead.
2 - The difference in the rate for getting seriously ill or even into ICU is a lot different from the death rates. The main difference is that your far more likely to recover, but that doesn't make comas, intubation, forced ventilation, or weeks of serious illness that much more attractive, thanks. But, yeah, I'm not dead.
3 - There are occurrence after occurrence of incidents of younger, healthy people getting lingering and sometimes life-changing conditions from this. But, hey, they're not dead...
Analogy: with the latest advances in treating HIV, people tend to live a lot longer with it, and pretty much any STD isn't going to kill you now (or at least, not rapidly). Life altering, painful, horrible... but not into the death statistics. Pregnancy is rarely lethal now (not like in years gone by) - it'll change your life, but very rarely will it kill you.
So - who here would merrily tell their teenage kids not to worry about unprotected sex? "You won't actually die from it; at least not in the near term. And maybe you'll just cause bad effects to others and escape them yourself!"
Nope. Me neither.
Everyone I know* who has had a test avoids other people while waiting for the test results - it would be a bit awkward saying to people "when we met up the other day I was waiting for a covid test result and it came back positive so you might want to get yourself tested".
* Well not the symptom-free people working in hospitals who get routinely tested every week, they tend to carry on as normal.