Not much time for Keir to move from worried to opposed. I'd get a move on.
Not exactly fleet of foot, is he? He hasn't fastened himself to any coherent strategy that would have worked better than the Government's efforts. Can't see him being able to make any political capital out of Covid when we are through this.
you need to zoom in and take a look at the city seats
Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London and of course cities like Birmingham, Nottingham and Sheffield, Hull and Coventry and Sunderland for example voted Leave anyway.
The poorer parts of Manchester and Liverpool and Newcastle perhaps the only exceptions
Ha ha very few areas from London? You need to master the use of the zoom function. I counted around 40 London constituencies on that map, more than half of the city's 73 constituencies. And if the map were extended to Scotland and N Ireland you'd find plenty of poor Remain-voting areas too. If I recall correctly income is not a robust predictor of Brexit opinion once education is controlled for but I may be wrong.
Even if the division was less marked than education level.
The tricky bit is that income/education/age all correlate pretty strongly. The age bracket that was most strongly Brexit-voting were young at a time when hardly anyone went to University, and are now old enough to be pensioners, which will cap their incomes significantly.
So which one is the key factor?
Aren't we overlooking the obvious, that areas with large non "White UK" populations were Remain, even if they were areas with low income/educational attainment?
Not true, Slough is mostly non "White UK" it voted leave
Approx. 1/3 of BAME voters voted leave.
The New European have a delightful article about it:
Normal warnings about early polling apply but do we think Michelle Obama would run if she was the only person who could stop a Kamala Harris nomination and the resulting GOP presidency?
No and you are begging the question of Kamala's electoral toxicity. By 2024 she'll have been Vice President for four years.
The problem isn't her current polling, the problem is that she isn't very good.
Why?
Her speech introducing Biden on the night that the networks called the result for Biden/Harris was absolutely fantastic. She really looked like a future President then.
She can do the lines they give her, the problem is her strategy is kind of terrible; See how she managed to flame out in the primary after letting Bernie Sanders pied piper her off to the left then getting scared and walking that back and losing both sides. And her debate against Pence was pretty weak, although TBF it didn't need to be strong.
Who would have predicted a Biden presidency after his first couple of efforts ?
I definitely didn't expect him to win the nomination but on the assumption that he got that he was always a clear winner against Trump.
I dont think it was that clear. The electoral college margin looks healthy but Biden won some states by very small margins.
The margins are small but the states are quite diverse, and it happened on top of a very healthy turnout for Trump, so it's not as if there was a big latent Trump vote that could have come out on top of that - he was pretty much maxed out. It's just really hard to win if most of the voters consistently dislike you, and they quite like the other guy.
Who knows what would have happened if Trump had gone for vote postal instead of the election rigging. I think it is quite plausible he could have won. Also if the vaccine news came through a week earlier, again it may have tipped the balance.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
Thanks for that link. The correlation and causation risk there is high.
I'm worried by what that guy said that c.3% of over 80 year olds will die of natural causes within 3 months of taking the vaccine *anyway*, due to general life expectancy stats, which will probably be reported and some people will put down to the vaccine and create conspiracy memes from to fuel suspicion and fear.
So it seems the Government is ramping up fears of the new, super variant of COVID to quell any protest from their backbenchers when the promised downgrading to Tier 2 (or even 1) of the leafy suburbs doesn’t happen on Wednesday. Will they pull the same stunt to do a 180 u-turn on Christmas? Guess we will find out soon, though I’d expect widespread ignoring of any restrictions by those who have already planned family get-togethers - especially in areas with falling rates of new cases.
On another matter, some irony in the Government legally threatening schools to stay open on the same day that Hancock tells everyone to start self-isolating if they want to see Granny for Christmas. Moving schools to remote learning this week, backed up with readily available testing for teachers/pupils next week would perhaps have been a more effective approach.
Agree on the schools - the fanatical insistence on in-person learning for a critical week by both both party leaderships is just odd....
It's worse than odd - given the Xmas easing of rules, it's irresponsible and dangerous.
Things must have changed. The last week of this term at my school in Chester (also attended by Matt Hancock) was filled with non-educational games and carol services. Not sure they would be missed.
But you hadn't missed most school from the end of March onwards had you? There is a clear need to get as much done as possible, and playing board games/watching 'The Longest Journey' (or whatever it was called) don't really cut the mustard.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
He gives a fairly wide ranging interview and Brexit is about fourth on the list, which is about how the EU in general now views the UK. This quote was interesting I thought:
"The Brits were never all the way in. This goes back a long way to how they refused to partake in the project after WWII and were rebutted twice by President de Gaulle after that…
I have mixed feelings when it comes to the Brits. On the one hand, they were persistent proponents or market economy – entrepreneurial freedom, free trade… They were always on hand in those matters. But dealing with them in pretty much everything else was such a pain…"
I´m sure the Brexit crew will have a few patronizing insults to lay on Kallas, but TBH he was a pretty good friend of the UK and most Estonians just view the whole Brexit fiasco as a bit sad. It certainly is not an existential crisis, however much Farage, Redwood and the Leave-their-senses crew might wish it to be so.
Eventually we will overcome the split, but it will take decades and will have cost the UK a staggering amount of money. The Leavers will be seen as having taken the UK into a cul-de-sac that was stupid and expensive.
The quote is entirely reasonable I doubt any Brexiteers should object to it.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
But Christmas bubbles mean inviting Granny and Aunt Flo for a three-household mix.
However, if Nigel and Nigella come back from their pox-ridden universities, they count as part of your household, and surely that is more of a risk?
In Guernsey Nigel & Nigella were tested on arrival and have to self isolate for 14 days when they're tested again. If they can't self isolate the whole household has to self isolate - and they are prosecuted and fined if they don't.
Yesterday cases in Guernsey doubled - to two - one caught on arrival, one clear on arrival but developed symptoms in quarantine and tested positive.
I don't condone it at all, but I must admit a sneaking admiration for the sheer dangerous insanity of that plan. Even Dura Ace would struggle to match it. I definitely hope that relationship works out for him!
Swollen nuts and a bad back before he even got to knock the nail in.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
I'm not a fan of lockdowns, but I actually think the government should have just taken the bad headlines and put everywhere into tier 3 yesterday until the 24th and then back in on the 26th for a couple of weeks. That's the cost of relaxing over Xmas given they seem to be incapable of reducing transmission any other way.
In Scotland it is. Big news, or at least the reiteration of existing news. It's already caused one MSP to resign, AIUI, in the case of Michelle Ballantyne.
After all, having a PM whose name you daren't mention isn't a great look for someone who's supposed to be praising his glorious Union-leading party leader. Is he for independence, or something?!
you need to zoom in and take a look at the city seats
Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London and of course cities like Birmingham, Nottingham and Sheffield, Hull and Coventry and Sunderland for example voted Leave anyway.
The poorer parts of Manchester and Liverpool and Newcastle perhaps the only exceptions
Ha ha very few areas from London? You need to master the use of the zoom function. I counted around 40 London constituencies on that map, more than half of the city's 73 constituencies. And if the map were extended to Scotland and N Ireland you'd find plenty of poor Remain-voting areas too. If I recall correctly income is not a robust predictor of Brexit opinion once education is controlled for but I may be wrong.
Even if the division was less marked than education level.
Yes but is income an independent source of variation in Leave support or is it a proxy for education? As I recall once you put in education income is no longer significant. You said "very few areas" in London are on the map of deprived areas we are discussing, but that map shows a bit over half of London constituencies are in the most deprived 50% in England, so your comment was clearly inaccurate.
On average most higher income earners also have a high level of education so that is hardly a surprise and my original point therefore stands absolutely, income and education are a far higher indicator of how you voted in the EU referendum than they are of whether you voted Tory or Labour at the last general election.
Given areas of London which are deprived include Barking and Dagenham which also voted Leave you also cannot even claim all London deprived areas as Remain areas anyway, so my original point that there are barely any Remain areas on the map of the most deprived areas again stands correct. The vast majority of the deprived constituencies on that map of England voted Leave in 2016.
Hackney, Lambeth, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Lewisham, Greenwich, Waltham Forest, Islington, Southwark, Brent etc etc all have loads of deprivation and voted Remain. Also, not on this map, areas of Scotland and N Ireland with loads of deprivation and voted remain. I don't deny poorer areas tended to vote leave but it's far from black and white. Loads of wealthy Tory shires (except a few bits of Surrey and the M4 corridor) voted leave, for instance. Also, you didn't mention education until I did!
So you have managed to name precisely 10 areas out of the 325 constituencies on that map that comprise the 50% most deprived constituencies in England.
Given Scotland and N Ireland combined make up only 12% of UK constituencies even when you include them the picture does not change much UK wide.
More of the wealthiest constituencies voted Remain in 2016 than voted Tory in 2019 eg the Surrey Remain voting seats and wealthy bits of West London like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster and Chelsea and Fulham and Remain voting Tunbridge Wells for instance voted Remain in 2016 and Tory in 2019.
However other wealthy Remain voting areas in 2016 like St Albans, Oxford West and Abingdon, Richmond Park, Twickenham and Kingston and Surbiton voted LD in 2019 and Hampstead and Highgate, which voted Remain in 2016, voted Labour in 2019.
Er, you do know that each London Borough contains multiple constituencies, right? We have already established that London has a disproportionately high share of constituencies in the most deprived 50% of English constituencies, through the magic of the zoom function and counting, so we know that your statement that the map contains "Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London" is simply wrong.
Even if you treble the 10 areas you named to reflect the fact that London boroughs may have 2 or 3 constituencies within them that 30 is still a tiny fraction of the 325 most deprived constituencies in the UK identified in that map, with most of that 325 overwhelmingly voting Leave in 2016.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
The kids are in school till Thursday / Friday. We're all in tier 3. It's home with the nuclear family this year, and we're eyeing Easter with intent to have a very substantial extended family get together. A couple of hour round trip for a present drop at the front door might be the extent of it, but most have been boxed and sent already.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
The problem is that only people in white-collar, work from home jobs can do that.
So government would be saying that the middle classes can see their parents over Christmas, but the working classes can’t.
At this point they just have to hope people use their judgement, for better or worse. Nothing they say is going to change the situation much, but a slightly more cautious tone might be useful.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Interesting question. I think the answer on this occasion is that Johnson's lockdown policy has more of a feel for the human side - it was specifically geared towards saving Christmas to some degree, rather than the more pure medically led Wales approach, where the advisers probably did envision the possibility of multiple firebreaks and perhaps were indifferent to one of those falling slap bang over Christmas. The Welsh firebreaks did work and resulted in cases lowering, they just didn't last for that long. The 4 nation approach for Christmas was not something Wales had positioned itself for.
That is a plausible answer.
Can I ask, does your new avatar now show the Bear in question, the Bear whose activities in the Pro Rata Household have been a cause for concern ... the Philandering Boris Bear ?
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
I commend you both for it. Unfortunately we can see from the numbers that most people are not doing likewise and this is priming a situation for a lot of intergenerational spread over Christmas.
you need to zoom in and take a look at the city seats
Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London and of course cities like Birmingham, Nottingham and Sheffield, Hull and Coventry and Sunderland for example voted Leave anyway.
The poorer parts of Manchester and Liverpool and Newcastle perhaps the only exceptions
Ha ha very few areas from London? You need to master the use of the zoom function. I counted around 40 London constituencies on that map, more than half of the city's 73 constituencies. And if the map were extended to Scotland and N Ireland you'd find plenty of poor Remain-voting areas too. If I recall correctly income is not a robust predictor of Brexit opinion once education is controlled for but I may be wrong.
Even if the division was less marked than education level.
The tricky bit is that income/education/age all correlate pretty strongly. The age bracket that was most strongly Brexit-voting were young at a time when hardly anyone went to University, and are now old enough to be pensioners, which will cap their incomes significantly.
So which one is the key factor?
Aren't we overlooking the obvious, that areas with large non "White UK" populations were Remain, even if they were areas with low income/educational attainment?
Not true, Slough is mostly non "White UK" it voted leave
Approx. 1/3 of BAME voters voted leave.
The New European have a delightful article about it:
Let us be honest, people not the government will determine the spread of Covid over Christmas.
We're not seeing anyone over Christmas, we could but we're choosing not to do so. Our choice, informed.
While others, even if it were banned, would still gather on Christmas even if they were told not to do so. Because many people would view it as unreasonable and ignore the rules.
There needs to be as much discussion on what should be done than what can be lawfully done.
If you convince people to stay at home because they want to then the virus won't spread. If you tell people they're not allowed to but they choose to disregard that and there's no real risk of the Police showing up then people will just ignore the law and you lose all credibility.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Interesting question. I think the answer on this occasion is that Johnson's lockdown policy has more of a feel for the human side - it was specifically geared towards saving Christmas to some degree, rather than the more pure medically led Wales approach, where the advisers probably did envision the possibility of multiple firebreaks and perhaps were indifferent to one of those falling slap bang over Christmas. The Welsh firebreaks did work and resulted in cases lowering, they just didn't last for that long. The 4 nation approach for Christmas was not something Wales had positioned itself for.
That is a plausible answer.
Can I ask, does your new avatar now show the Bear in question, the Bear whose activities in the Pro Rata Household have been a cause for concern ... the Philandering Boris Bear ?
It is indeed! After harvesting the number of Likes that post managed, how could I not?
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
The problem is that only people in white-collar, work from home jobs can do that.
So government would be saying that the middle classes can see their parents over Christmas, but the working classes can’t.
At this point they just have to hope people use their judgement, for better or worse. Nothing they say is going to change the situation much, but a slightly more cautious tone might be useful.
I think the same advice applies during national lockdowns - work from home whenever you can.
Yes, it's not fair. Covid-19 isn't fair. But what I wouldn't do is restrict everyone, absolutely, just because some can't take advantage of it, and some others have been irresponsible.
We're in a world of picking imperfect answers to awful problems.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
I'm not a fan of lockdowns, but I actually think the government should have just taken the bad headlines and put everywhere into tier 3 yesterday until the 24th and then back in on the 26th for a couple of weeks. That's the cost of relaxing over Xmas given they seem to be incapable of reducing transmission any other way.
I think the tiered approach is the right one, but I'd review each area each week and not pussyfoot around changes.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
It is a tricky problem. Do we want to lock down everyone who is taking very sensible precautions like yourselves because we don't trust other people to behave?
My brother in law is supposed to be taking things carefully before Christmas - but somehow contrived to give someone a lift in his car yesterday (unmasked, risky demographic) which is totally against the 'rules' in Tier 3. He seems to be incapable of doing things properly.
It would probably help any arguments if we continued with a lockdown, but he'll probably visit his parents anyway whatever the government says..
This will no doubt be replicated widely. Families are going to be even more tense than usual this Christmas.
you need to zoom in and take a look at the city seats
Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London and of course cities like Birmingham, Nottingham and Sheffield, Hull and Coventry and Sunderland for example voted Leave anyway.
The poorer parts of Manchester and Liverpool and Newcastle perhaps the only exceptions
Ha ha very few areas from London? You need to master the use of the zoom function. I counted around 40 London constituencies on that map, more than half of the city's 73 constituencies. And if the map were extended to Scotland and N Ireland you'd find plenty of poor Remain-voting areas too. If I recall correctly income is not a robust predictor of Brexit opinion once education is controlled for but I may be wrong.
Even if the division was less marked than education level.
Yes but is income an independent source of variation in Leave support or is it a proxy for education? As I recall once you put in education income is no longer significant. You said "very few areas" in London are on the map of deprived areas we are discussing, but that map shows a bit over half of London constituencies are in the most deprived 50% in England, so your comment was clearly inaccurate.
On average most higher income earners also have a high level of education so that is hardly a surprise and my original point therefore stands absolutely, income and education are a far higher indicator of how you voted in the EU referendum than they are of whether you voted Tory or Labour at the last general election.
Given areas of London which are deprived include Barking and Dagenham which also voted Leave you also cannot even claim all London deprived areas as Remain areas anyway, so my original point that there are barely any Remain areas on the map of the most deprived areas again stands correct. The vast majority of the deprived constituencies on that map of England voted Leave in 2016.
Hackney, Lambeth, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Lewisham, Greenwich, Waltham Forest, Islington, Southwark, Brent etc etc all have loads of deprivation and voted Remain. Also, not on this map, areas of Scotland and N Ireland with loads of deprivation and voted remain. I don't deny poorer areas tended to vote leave but it's far from black and white. Loads of wealthy Tory shires (except a few bits of Surrey and the M4 corridor) voted leave, for instance. Also, you didn't mention education until I did!
So you have managed to name precisely 10 areas out of the 325 constituencies on that map that comprise the 50% most deprived constituencies in England.
Given Scotland and N Ireland combined make up only 12% of UK constituencies even when you include them the picture does not change much UK wide.
More of the wealthiest constituencies voted Remain in 2016 than voted Tory in 2019 eg the Surrey Remain voting seats and wealthy bits of West London like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster and Chelsea and Fulham and Remain voting Tunbridge Wells for instance voted Remain in 2016 and Tory in 2019.
However other wealthy Remain voting areas in 2016 like St Albans, Oxford West and Abingdon, Richmond Park, Twickenham and Kingston and Surbiton voted LD in 2019 and Hampstead and Highgate, which voted Remain in 2016, voted Labour in 2019.
Er, you do know that each London Borough contains multiple constituencies, right? We have already established that London has a disproportionately high share of constituencies in the most deprived 50% of English constituencies, through the magic of the zoom function and counting, so we know that your statement that the map contains "Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London" is simply wrong.
Even if you treble the 10 areas you named to reflect the fact that London boroughs may have 2 or 3 constituencies within them that 30 is still a tiny fraction of the 325 most deprived constituencies in the UK identified in that map, with most of that 325 overwhelmingly voting Leave in 2016.
London has 73 constituencies of which more than half are in the top 50% of most deprived, in other words it has a disproportionately high share.
London contains all but 1 of the 10 most weathy constituencies in the UK every one of which voted Remain, most of the most deprived constituencies in the UK are not in London and most of them voted Leave
He gives a fairly wide ranging interview and Brexit is about fourth on the list, which is about how the EU in general now views the UK. This quote was interesting I thought:
"The Brits were never all the way in. This goes back a long way to how they refused to partake in the project after WWII and were rebutted twice by President de Gaulle after that…
I have mixed feelings when it comes to the Brits. On the one hand, they were persistent proponents or market economy – entrepreneurial freedom, free trade… They were always on hand in those matters. But dealing with them in pretty much everything else was such a pain…"
I´m sure the Brexit crew will have a few patronizing insults to lay on Kallas, but TBH he was a pretty good friend of the UK and most Estonians just view the whole Brexit fiasco as a bit sad. It certainly is not an existential crisis, however much Farage, Redwood and the Leave-their-senses crew might wish it to be so.
Eventually we will overcome the split, but it will take decades and will have cost the UK a staggering amount of money. The Leavers will be seen as having taken the UK into a cul-de-sac that was stupid and expensive.
The quote is entirely reasonable I doubt any Brexiteers should object to it.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
Neither leaving nor joining are a cul de sac, they're both part of the M25. I think we'll keep circling through different levels of integration, because neither being in nor out makes perfect sense for us.
In Scotland it is. Big news, or at least the reiteration of existing news. It's already caused one MSP to resign, AIUI, in the case of Michelle Ballantyne.
After all, having a PM whose name you daren't mention isn't a great look for someone who's supposed to be praising his glorious Union-leading party leader. Is he for independence, or something?!
I am not wanting to fall out over indy2 as it is likely it will happen sometime in the next few years but Douglas Ross is a strong supporter of the Union and he will make the case, along with others at the time, and I still believe the union will win the debate again
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
The problem is that only people in white-collar, work from home jobs can do that.
So government would be saying that the middle classes can see their parents over Christmas, but the working classes can’t.
At this point they just have to hope people use their judgement, for better or worse. Nothing they say is going to change the situation much, but a slightly more cautious tone might be useful.
You can't really pre-self-isolate if you have kids at school, either.
He gives a fairly wide ranging interview and Brexit is about fourth on the list, which is about how the EU in general now views the UK. This quote was interesting I thought:
"The Brits were never all the way in. This goes back a long way to how they refused to partake in the project after WWII and were rebutted twice by President de Gaulle after that…
I have mixed feelings when it comes to the Brits. On the one hand, they were persistent proponents or market economy – entrepreneurial freedom, free trade… They were always on hand in those matters. But dealing with them in pretty much everything else was such a pain…"
I´m sure the Brexit crew will have a few patronizing insults to lay on Kallas, but TBH he was a pretty good friend of the UK and most Estonians just view the whole Brexit fiasco as a bit sad. It certainly is not an existential crisis, however much Farage, Redwood and the Leave-their-senses crew might wish it to be so.
Eventually we will overcome the split, but it will take decades and will have cost the UK a staggering amount of money. The Leavers will be seen as having taken the UK into a cul-de-sac that was stupid and expensive.
The quote is entirely reasonable I doubt any Brexiteers should object to it.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
Neither leaving nor joining are a cul de sac, they're both part of the M25. I think we'll keep circling through different levels of integration, because neither being in nor out makes perfect sense for us.
In Scotland it is. Big news, or at least the reiteration of existing news. It's already caused one MSP to resign, AIUI, in the case of Michelle Ballantyne.
After all, having a PM whose name you daren't mention isn't a great look for someone who's supposed to be praising his glorious Union-leading party leader. Is he for independence, or something?!
I am not wanting to fall out over indy2 as it is likely it will happen sometime in the next few years but Douglas Ross is a strong supporter of the Union and he will make the case, along with others at the time, and I still believe the union will win the debate again
Plus it is a Scotland only election in which Boris will not be standing and in which Ross will be the party leader for at Holyrood
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
I'm not a fan of lockdowns, but I actually think the government should have just taken the bad headlines and put everywhere into tier 3 yesterday until the 24th and then back in on the 26th for a couple of weeks. That's the cost of relaxing over Xmas given they seem to be incapable of reducing transmission any other way.
I think the tiered approach is the right one, but I'd review each area each week and not pussyfoot around changes.
Tier 3 the default. You can go down to Tier 2 if rates are less than 50/100 000/week for two consecutive weeks; back up to Tier 3 if rates go above 80 for two weeks; to Tier 4 / lockdown if rates go above 200 for two weeks.
Based on Scottish tier system and rate outcomes and current levels of compliance.
Authorities may have other reasons for refusing a downgrade or insisting on an upgrade, but these would be the minimum requirements
He gives a fairly wide ranging interview and Brexit is about fourth on the list, which is about how the EU in general now views the UK. This quote was interesting I thought:
"The Brits were never all the way in. This goes back a long way to how they refused to partake in the project after WWII and were rebutted twice by President de Gaulle after that…
I have mixed feelings when it comes to the Brits. On the one hand, they were persistent proponents or market economy – entrepreneurial freedom, free trade… They were always on hand in those matters. But dealing with them in pretty much everything else was such a pain…"
I´m sure the Brexit crew will have a few patronizing insults to lay on Kallas, but TBH he was a pretty good friend of the UK and most Estonians just view the whole Brexit fiasco as a bit sad. It certainly is not an existential crisis, however much Farage, Redwood and the Leave-their-senses crew might wish it to be so.
Eventually we will overcome the split, but it will take decades and will have cost the UK a staggering amount of money. The Leavers will be seen as having taken the UK into a cul-de-sac that was stupid and expensive.
The quote is entirely reasonable I doubt any Brexiteers should object to it.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
Neither leaving nor joining are a cul de sac, they're both part of the M25. I think we'll keep circling through different levels of integration, because neither being in nor out makes perfect sense for us.
I don't think we will ever rejoin but I certainly think we will be like a (slightly more divorced) version of the Swiss.
Trade and other agreements with Europe, frequently tweaked, as an alternative to full fat membership of the European Union.
you need to zoom in and take a look at the city seats
Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London and of course cities like Birmingham, Nottingham and Sheffield, Hull and Coventry and Sunderland for example voted Leave anyway.
The poorer parts of Manchester and Liverpool and Newcastle perhaps the only exceptions
Ha ha very few areas from London? You need to master the use of the zoom function. I counted around 40 London constituencies on that map, more than half of the city's 73 constituencies. And if the map were extended to Scotland and N Ireland you'd find plenty of poor Remain-voting areas too. If I recall correctly income is not a robust predictor of Brexit opinion once education is controlled for but I may be wrong.
Even if the division was less marked than education level.
Yes but is income an independent source of variation in Leave support or is it a proxy for education? As I recall once you put in education income is no longer significant. You said "very few areas" in London are on the map of deprived areas we are discussing, but that map shows a bit over half of London constituencies are in the most deprived 50% in England, so your comment was clearly inaccurate.
On average most higher income earners also have a high level of education so that is hardly a surprise and my original point therefore stands absolutely, income and education are a far higher indicator of how you voted in the EU referendum than they are of whether you voted Tory or Labour at the last general election.
Given areas of London which are deprived include Barking and Dagenham which also voted Leave you also cannot even claim all London deprived areas as Remain areas anyway, so my original point that there are barely any Remain areas on the map of the most deprived areas again stands correct. The vast majority of the deprived constituencies on that map of England voted Leave in 2016.
Hackney, Lambeth, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Lewisham, Greenwich, Waltham Forest, Islington, Southwark, Brent etc etc all have loads of deprivation and voted Remain. Also, not on this map, areas of Scotland and N Ireland with loads of deprivation and voted remain. I don't deny poorer areas tended to vote leave but it's far from black and white. Loads of wealthy Tory shires (except a few bits of Surrey and the M4 corridor) voted leave, for instance. Also, you didn't mention education until I did!
So you have managed to name precisely 10 areas out of the 325 constituencies on that map that comprise the 50% most deprived constituencies in England.
Given Scotland and N Ireland combined make up only 12% of UK constituencies even when you include them the picture does not change much UK wide.
More of the wealthiest constituencies voted Remain in 2016 than voted Tory in 2019 eg the Surrey Remain voting seats and wealthy bits of West London like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster and Chelsea and Fulham and Remain voting Tunbridge Wells for instance voted Remain in 2016 and Tory in 2019.
However other wealthy Remain voting areas in 2016 like St Albans, Oxford West and Abingdon, Richmond Park, Twickenham and Kingston and Surbiton voted LD in 2019 and Hampstead and Highgate, which voted Remain in 2016, voted Labour in 2019.
Er, you do know that each London Borough contains multiple constituencies, right? We have already established that London has a disproportionately high share of constituencies in the most deprived 50% of English constituencies, through the magic of the zoom function and counting, so we know that your statement that the map contains "Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London" is simply wrong.
Even if you treble the 10 areas you named to reflect the fact that London boroughs may have 2 or 3 constituencies within them that 30 is still a tiny fraction of the 325 most deprived constituencies in the UK identified in that map, with most of that 325 overwhelmingly voting Leave in 2016.
London has 73 constituencies of which more than half are in the top 50% of most deprived, in other words it has a disproportionately high share.
London contains all but 1 of the 10 most weathy constituencies in the UK every one of which voted Remain, most of the most deprived constituencies in the UK are not in London and most of them voted Leave
Your comment that most of the most deprived constituencies are not in London says nothing at all about relative levels of deprivation, it's basic arithmetic (total of 73 constituencies in London vs 325 in the top 50% of deprived constituencies). Do you agree that there a disproportionately high number of deprived constituencies in London?
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
Would you be offended if the people you are referring to turned round and told you to mind your own business?
you need to zoom in and take a look at the city seats
Very few areas from wealthy Remain heavy London and of course cities like Birmingham, Nottingham and Sheffield, Hull and Coventry and Sunderland for example voted Leave anyway.
The poorer parts of Manchester and Liverpool and Newcastle perhaps the only exceptions
Ha ha very few areas from London? You need to master the use of the zoom function. I counted around 40 London constituencies on that map, more than half of the city's 73 constituencies. And if the map were extended to Scotland and N Ireland you'd find plenty of poor Remain-voting areas too. If I recall correctly income is not a robust predictor of Brexit opinion once education is controlled for but I may be wrong.
Even if the division was less marked than education level.
The tricky bit is that income/education/age all correlate pretty strongly. The age bracket that was most strongly Brexit-voting were young at a time when hardly anyone went to University, and are now old enough to be pensioners, which will cap their incomes significantly.
So which one is the key factor?
Aren't we overlooking the obvious, that areas with large non "White UK" populations were Remain, even if they were areas with low income/educational attainment?
Not true, Slough is mostly non "White UK" it voted leave
Approx. 1/3 of BAME voters voted leave.
The New European have a delightful article about it:
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
Would you be offended if the people you are referring to turned round and told you to mind your own business?
Not at all, but I'd also tell them to get fucked if they start moaning about their dead parents and grandparents.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
I'm not a fan of lockdowns, but I actually think the government should have just taken the bad headlines and put everywhere into tier 3 yesterday until the 24th and then back in on the 26th for a couple of weeks. That's the cost of relaxing over Xmas given they seem to be incapable of reducing transmission any other way.
I think the tiered approach is the right one, but I'd review each area each week and not pussyfoot around changes.
To be fair the government didn't wait until the 16th to review what to do about London, or try and fudge it, and they are moving to a weekly review from now on. It's good to see that they are being proactive.
The government are openly telling people they should travel the length of the country for Christmas. Look, we've cancelled road works, postponed rail engineering, got operators to lay on additional coaches! Never mind telling people it could be their last Christmas with gran if they do this like Merkel, our lot want people to meet up with Gran.
And in January? When we have a massive spike and Granny dies they will be out in the media saying "who knew"? A message their parrots on here will happily skwark.
It is unfair to blame the mass stupidity we are seeing on the people doing it. They are being directly encouraged to do stupid by the government.
Let us be honest, people not the government will determine the spread of Covid over Christmas.
We're not seeing anyone over Christmas, we could but we're choosing not to do so. Our choice, informed.
While others, even if it were banned, would still gather on Christmas even if they were told not to do so. Because many people would view it as unreasonable and ignore the rules.
There needs to be as much discussion on what should be done than what can be lawfully done.
If you convince people to stay at home because they want to then the virus won't spread. If you tell people they're not allowed to but they choose to disregard that and there's no real risk of the Police showing up then people will just ignore the law and you lose all credibility.
Imagine Christmas goes ahead as planned and there isn;t a big spike in 'cases' and hospitalisations.
That would lead to the devastating conclusion the vast majority of Brits are aware of the risks and are capable of managing them themselves.
It would also mean the depowering of the likes of Susan Michie and that cannot come soon enough.
Will the Gavin be teaching the classes themselves? As I understand it the issue in Greenwich schools is a shortage of teachers caused by Covid. So the government is ordering teachers to ignore government instructions on self-isolating...
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Interesting question. I think the answer on this occasion is that Johnson's lockdown policy has more of a feel for the human side - it was specifically geared towards saving Christmas to some degree, rather than the more pure medically led Wales approach, where the advisers probably did envision the possibility of multiple firebreaks and perhaps were indifferent to one of those falling slap bang over Christmas. The Welsh firebreaks did work and resulted in cases lowering, they just didn't last for that long. The 4 nation approach for Christmas was not something Wales had positioned itself for...
Whatever you think of the Xmas policy it is very foolish to insist that one of the large recent drivers of infection - schools - remain open at all costs until days before the event. Sensible planning would have seem them close a week early, to everyone's benefit. As it is, some will close with little notice, and get in a fight with government in the process.
The government are openly telling people they should travel the length of the country for Christmas. Look, we've cancelled road works, postponed rail engineering, got operators to lay on additional coaches! Never mind telling people it could be their last Christmas with gran if they do this like Merkel, our lot want people to meet up with Gran.
And in January? When we have a massive spike and Granny dies they will be out in the media saying "who knew"? A message their parrots on here will happily skwark.
It is unfair to blame the mass stupidity we are seeing on the people doing it. They are being directly encouraged to do stupid by the government.
The government is literally saying that you should do the minimum over Christmas - but if you are going to meet someone then do so as safely as you can.
If the government was saying that Christmas is cancelled and nobody is allowed to meet up then millions up and down the country would just ignore that and do as they please. We wouldn't have Police Officers raiding family homes as people share presents or during the Queen's Speech and everybody knows that.
People need to be encouraged to make smart choices. You can't make every choice for everyone or they stop listening to you. At least now people who do meet up hopefully are doing the least possible and not everyone having mass parties or all meeting in the local pub with other families.
He gives a fairly wide ranging interview and Brexit is about fourth on the list, which is about how the EU in general now views the UK. This quote was interesting I thought:
"The Brits were never all the way in. This goes back a long way to how they refused to partake in the project after WWII and were rebutted twice by President de Gaulle after that…
I have mixed feelings when it comes to the Brits. On the one hand, they were persistent proponents or market economy – entrepreneurial freedom, free trade… They were always on hand in those matters. But dealing with them in pretty much everything else was such a pain…"
I´m sure the Brexit crew will have a few patronizing insults to lay on Kallas, but TBH he was a pretty good friend of the UK and most Estonians just view the whole Brexit fiasco as a bit sad. It certainly is not an existential crisis, however much Farage, Redwood and the Leave-their-senses crew might wish it to be so.
Eventually we will overcome the split, but it will take decades and will have cost the UK a staggering amount of money. The Leavers will be seen as having taken the UK into a cul-de-sac that was stupid and expensive.
The quote is entirely reasonable I doubt any Brexiteers should object to it.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
Neither leaving nor joining are a cul de sac, they're both part of the M25. I think we'll keep circling through different levels of integration, because neither being in nor out makes perfect sense for us.
I don't think we will ever rejoin but I certainly think we will be like a (slightly more divorced) version of the Swiss.
Trade and other agreements with Europe, frequently tweaked, as an alternative to full fat membership of the European Union.
I love how the Swiss managed their fishing issue by arranging to have their country landlocked.
They are right to lay out the options, but it will definitely go to Sheffield and Leeds.
HS2 already isn't going to Sheffield. I don't count HS2 trains trundling along existing infrastructure to Midland station to be HS2 going to Sheffield. They *could* have had a Meadowhall station on the main route and used it as a fulcrum to drive the regeneration of a largely post-industrial shithole, but oh no.
He gives a fairly wide ranging interview and Brexit is about fourth on the list, which is about how the EU in general now views the UK. This quote was interesting I thought:
"The Brits were never all the way in. This goes back a long way to how they refused to partake in the project after WWII and were rebutted twice by President de Gaulle after that…
I have mixed feelings when it comes to the Brits. On the one hand, they were persistent proponents or market economy – entrepreneurial freedom, free trade… They were always on hand in those matters. But dealing with them in pretty much everything else was such a pain…"
I´m sure the Brexit crew will have a few patronizing insults to lay on Kallas, but TBH he was a pretty good friend of the UK and most Estonians just view the whole Brexit fiasco as a bit sad. It certainly is not an existential crisis, however much Farage, Redwood and the Leave-their-senses crew might wish it to be so.
Eventually we will overcome the split, but it will take decades and will have cost the UK a staggering amount of money. The Leavers will be seen as having taken the UK into a cul-de-sac that was stupid and expensive.
The quote is entirely reasonable I doubt any Brexiteers should object to it.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
Neither leaving nor joining are a cul de sac, they're both part of the M25. I think we'll keep circling through different levels of integration, because neither being in nor out makes perfect sense for us.
I don't think we will ever rejoin but I certainly think we will be like a (slightly more divorced) version of the Swiss.
Trade and other agreements with Europe, frequently tweaked, as an alternative to full fat membership of the European Union.
I think we will rejoin but not for at least 10 years, probably 20 or more. The problem for us is that whatever level of integration we achieve, it will always make sense for us to integrate a little bit more, from an economic point of view. And once we achieve a certain level of integration, it will become obvious that we will gain sovereignty by rejoining, not lose it (to gain some say over rules we are following already). Switzerland is a very different case from us, they have a far richer and more successful economy and a long history of avoiding international entanglements. We on the other hand are probably the most historically entangled country in the world, and our economy has far less advantageous geography than Switzerland's as well as many structural weaknesses dating back to the late 19th century.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
Yes Drakeford's error wasn't implementing the lockdown, it was not extending it. It should still be in place now.
Imagine Christmas goes ahead as planned and there isn;t a big spike in 'cases' and hospitalisations.
That would lead to the devastating conclusion the vast majority of Brits are aware of the risks and are capable of managing them themselves.
It would also mean the depowering of the likes of Susan Michie and that cannot come soon enough.
The US and Canada have both seen rises in cases after their Thanksgiving holidays. It would be prudent to think we will see a similar effect from Christmas celebrations.
The government are openly telling people they should travel the length of the country for Christmas. Look, we've cancelled road works, postponed rail engineering, got operators to lay on additional coaches! Never mind telling people it could be their last Christmas with gran if they do this like Merkel, our lot want people to meet up with Gran.
And in January? When we have a massive spike and Granny dies they will be out in the media saying "who knew"? A message their parrots on here will happily skwark.
It is unfair to blame the mass stupidity we are seeing on the people doing it. They are being directly encouraged to do stupid by the government.
The government is literally saying that you should do the minimum over Christmas - but if you are going to meet someone then do so as safely as you can.
If the government was saying that Christmas is cancelled and nobody is allowed to meet up then millions up and down the country would just ignore that and do as they please. We wouldn't have Police Officers raiding family homes as people share presents or during the Queen's Speech and everybody knows that.
People need to be encouraged to make smart choices. You can't make every choice for everyone or they stop listening to you. At least now people who do meet up hopefully are doing the least possible and not everyone having mass parties or all meeting in the local pub with other families.
Amen.
Its only a shame they didn't adopt this attitude sooner.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
PS. From that same YouGov poll:
"Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, Wales and England have differed in their approach to tackling the crisis and implementing lockdown rules. Thinking generally, do you prefer the approach that has been taken in Wales or the approach that has been taken in England?"
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
Yes Drakeford's error wasn't implementing the lockdown, it was not extending it. It should still be in place now.
No, his mistake was buying into the rubbish about 2 week circuit breaker lockdowns actually making any real difference. It was clear from the outset that hyping it up as a solution was going to end badly and now Wales is going to end up in an even longer "don't leave the house" lockdown as a result.
Edit: this is also before contending with a possibly more infectious strain that is spreading in London and the SE.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
The problem is that only people in white-collar, work from home jobs can do that.
So government would be saying that the middle classes can see their parents over Christmas, but the working classes can’t.
At this point they just have to hope people use their judgement, for better or worse. Nothing they say is going to change the situation much, but a slightly more cautious tone might be useful.
I think the same advice applies during national lockdowns - work from home whenever you can.
Yes, it's not fair. Covid-19 isn't fair. But what I wouldn't do is restrict everyone, absolutely, just because some can't take advantage of it, and some others have been irresponsible.
We're in a world of picking imperfect answers to awful problems.
Maybe, but “Christmas cancelled for the workers, not for the Bankers” isn’t the most favourable headline for the government!
In Scotland it is. Big news, or at least the reiteration of existing news. It's already caused one MSP to resign, AIUI, in the case of Michelle Ballantyne.
After all, having a PM whose name you daren't mention isn't a great look for someone who's supposed to be praising his glorious Union-leading party leader. Is he for independence, or something?!
I am not wanting to fall out over indy2 as it is likely it will happen sometime in the next few years but Douglas Ross is a strong supporter of the Union and he will make the case, along with others at the time, and I still believe the union will win the debate again
The most effective argument for the Union right now is "Scotland, we don't need to repeat the Brexit disaster for ourselves"
Two points about this. Tories aren't the best placed to make this argument. Unionists need Scots to see Brexit as an actual disaster that was in some way overturned. If the perceived Brexit disaster is still in place the argument doesn't work.
Put me down as someone who doesn't want to cancel Christmas.
Most people are very sensible, and it's unfair to "ban" it nationwide due to rising cases in a few areas.
People should be warned of the risks, voluntarily isolate in advance if they can for the next week to ensure they're clear (as we have been) and use their own judgement to meet up for a couple of days.
I think with vaccinations already underway the extent of relaxation is too much. My wife and I started isolating yesterday and we're going to stay with my parents from the 24th until the 2nd so neither of us are leaving the flat and my dad is driving down from Enfield to come and get us on Xmas eve. We're obviously doing what we think is necessary to prevent my parents from catching this because neither of them will be due the vaccine until at least Feb/March. My worry is that not everyone is going to be taking the same precautions and it will lead to unnecessary deaths of their parents and grandparents.
I am doing the same.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
The problem is that only people in white-collar, work from home jobs can do that.
So government would be saying that the middle classes can see their parents over Christmas, but the working classes can’t.
At this point they just have to hope people use their judgement, for better or worse. Nothing they say is going to change the situation much, but a slightly more cautious tone might be useful.
Yes, I think the government message should be "It's not safe. The virus is at large. Please do not take bigger risks than you otherwise would just because it's Christmas." If that can be boiled down into one of their 3 worders.
Then you have to leave it to people to do as they see fit. These are unpoliced guidelines (as they should be) and I reckon most will do what they judge right regardless anyway.
For example, I'm not seeing family at Christmas and I'd decided that a while ago. If the government were to say it's fine for us to hang out, because it's Christmas, this would have made no difference to us. We still wouldn't be.
By the same token, if we'd decided we WERE having the big family Christmas, because it was just so important to us to do so, virus nothwithstanding, then we would still do it even if the government said we shouldn't.
The government are openly telling people they should travel the length of the country for Christmas. Look, we've cancelled road works, postponed rail engineering, got operators to lay on additional coaches! Never mind telling people it could be their last Christmas with gran if they do this like Merkel, our lot want people to meet up with Gran.
And in January? When we have a massive spike and Granny dies they will be out in the media saying "who knew"? A message their parrots on here will happily skwark.
It is unfair to blame the mass stupidity we are seeing on the people doing it. They are being directly encouraged to do stupid by the government.
The government is literally saying that you should do the minimum over Christmas - but if you are going to meet someone then do so as safely as you can.
If the government was saying that Christmas is cancelled and nobody is allowed to meet up then millions up and down the country would just ignore that and do as they please. We wouldn't have Police Officers raiding family homes as people share presents or during the Queen's Speech and everybody knows that.
People need to be encouraged to make smart choices. You can't make every choice for everyone or they stop listening to you. At least now people who do meet up hopefully are doing the least possible and not everyone having mass parties or all meeting in the local pub with other families.
You have a brain. You understand nuance (sometimes...). A lot of people out there don't do politics and don't follow the news in detail and only get messages that literally get trowelled on. Hence the need for idiotic three part phrases repeated ad nauseum.
What normals are hearing is that Christmas is ok. Don't worry too much, indeed we're making it really easy for you to do that 500 mile round trip. Yes, if they abruptly said "Christmas is banned" many would ignore them because they have minimal credibility.
Even now they could reduce the coming slaughter. Shagger is good at emotive language. Do a broadcast to the nation and say largely what Merkel said. In reality nobody can stop you from meeting up. But stop and think. Is it worth meeting up with your family if it could be your last Christmas together? Do you want to celebrate Christmas with them in December and have to attend their funeral in January?
I see that many of those in the media going on about the Christmas break, are also those who were opposed to earlier restrictions.
They’re just blatant oppositionists, who reflexively disagree with the government no matter what they do.
I've heard a lot of pundits asked about what to do about Christmas, but only one of them I've heard has given a straight answer about what they personally will do. I would expect that a lot of the people talking of "cancel Christmas" to do no such thing.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
Yes Drakeford's error wasn't implementing the lockdown, it was not extending it. It should still be in place now.
No, his mistake was buying into the rubbish about 2 week circuit breaker lockdowns actually making any real difference. It was clear from the outset that hyping it up as a solution was going to end badly and now Wales is going to end up in an even longer "don't leave the house" lockdown as a result.
Edit: this is also before contending with a possibly more infectious strain that is spreading in London and the SE.
It's easy to say with hindsight that a 2 week circuit breaker wouldn't work, but had it been tried anywhere and failed already?
Surprising that North Norfolk is included. I wonder if it takes the cost of living into account? Everything is much more expensive in London and less expensive in the north-east but that doesn't necessarily mean an area is deprived or not deprived.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
Yes Drakeford's error wasn't implementing the lockdown, it was not extending it. It should still be in place now.
No, his mistake was buying into the rubbish about 2 week circuit breaker lockdowns actually making any real difference. It was clear from the outset that hyping it up as a solution was going to end badly and now Wales is going to end up in an even longer "don't leave the house" lockdown as a result.
Edit: this is also before contending with a possibly more infectious strain that is spreading in London and the SE.
It's easy to say with hindsight that a 2 week circuit breaker wouldn't work, but had it been tried anywhere and failed already?
Yes, Israel. It's not hindsight either, many people said this is exactly what would happen and it happened.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
Yes Drakeford's error wasn't implementing the lockdown, it was not extending it. It should still be in place now.
No, his mistake was buying into the rubbish about 2 week circuit breaker lockdowns actually making any real difference. It was clear from the outset that hyping it up as a solution was going to end badly and now Wales is going to end up in an even longer "don't leave the house" lockdown as a result.
It wasn't rubbish. Wales had an early 17 day lockdown that took note of the SAGE recommendation, England had a late 27 day lockdown starting when cases were much higher. The difference in length wasn't that great and both succeeded in bringing down case rates. The Welsh problem was the failure to have nothing significant in place when the lockdown ended, which undid all the good work and more.
Yeah that two week circuit breaker worked so well in Wales didn't it. Your guy is useless.
I think he would be a massive improvement on Johnson.
We'd be in the EU vaccine scheme waiting until March or April for our first deliveries from Pfizer. He wouldn't be better. His decision making is poor and has been from the start.
He gives a fairly wide ranging interview and Brexit is about fourth on the list, which is about how the EU in general now views the UK. This quote was interesting I thought:
"The Brits were never all the way in. This goes back a long way to how they refused to partake in the project after WWII and were rebutted twice by President de Gaulle after that…
I have mixed feelings when it comes to the Brits. On the one hand, they were persistent proponents or market economy – entrepreneurial freedom, free trade… They were always on hand in those matters. But dealing with them in pretty much everything else was such a pain…"
I´m sure the Brexit crew will have a few patronizing insults to lay on Kallas, but TBH he was a pretty good friend of the UK and most Estonians just view the whole Brexit fiasco as a bit sad. It certainly is not an existential crisis, however much Farage, Redwood and the Leave-their-senses crew might wish it to be so.
Eventually we will overcome the split, but it will take decades and will have cost the UK a staggering amount of money. The Leavers will be seen as having taken the UK into a cul-de-sac that was stupid and expensive.
The quote is entirely reasonable I doubt any Brexiteers should object to it.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
Neither leaving nor joining are a cul de sac, they're both part of the M25. I think we'll keep circling through different levels of integration, because neither being in nor out makes perfect sense for us.
I don't think we will ever rejoin but I certainly think we will be like a (slightly more divorced) version of the Swiss.
Trade and other agreements with Europe, frequently tweaked, as an alternative to full fat membership of the European Union.
I think we will rejoin but not for at least 10 years, probably 20 or more. The problem for us is that whatever level of integration we achieve, it will always make sense for us to integrate a little bit more, from an economic point of view. And once we achieve a certain level of integration, it will become obvious that we will gain sovereignty by rejoining, not lose it (to gain some say over rules we are following already). Switzerland is a very different case from us, they have a far richer and more successful economy and a long history of avoiding international entanglements. We on the other hand are probably the most historically entangled country in the world, and our economy has far less advantageous geography than Switzerland's as well as many structural weaknesses dating back to the late 19th century.
The EU reckons the Swiss bilaterals were a mistake. Two problems: lack of dynamic alignment and general inability for non-Swiss entities to sue the Swiss government and entities in the courts for not complying with rules set out in the treaties. Similar bilaterals won't be offered to the UK. The EU meanwhile has a Swiss problem. Switzerland refuses to budge from previously agreed bilaterals, so the EU turns the screw...
Yeah that two week circuit breaker worked so well in Wales didn't it. Your guy is useless.
I think he would be a massive improvement on Johnson.
We'd be in the EU vaccine scheme waiting until March or April for our first deliveries from Pfizer. He wouldn't be better. His decision making is poor and has been from the start.
And the Tories have been a mark of competence? Max you've gone off the deep end of late.
He proposed the catastrophically disastrous two week circuit break that has brought Wales to its knees. He mocked Boris for introducing Tiers and a 4 week lockdown that has worked far better.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
Yes Drakeford's error wasn't implementing the lockdown, it was not extending it. It should still be in place now.
No, his mistake was buying into the rubbish about 2 week circuit breaker lockdowns actually making any real difference. It was clear from the outset that hyping it up as a solution was going to end badly and now Wales is going to end up in an even longer "don't leave the house" lockdown as a result.
It wasn't rubbish. Wales had an early 17 day lockdown that took note of the SAGE recommendation, England had a late 27 day lockdown starting when cases were much higher. The difference in length wasn't that great and both succeeded in bringing down case rates. The Welsh problem was the failure to have nothing significant in place when the lockdown ended, which undid all the good work and more.
That was the whole idea behind the "circuit breaker" that you could have two weeks in lockdown and then go "normality" equivalent to England or Scotland's tier 1. It was bullshit and pointed out as such at the time. I even said I'd rather support a longer lockdown to reorganise testing and the tiering system for the longer term rather than just two weeks where we could achieve nothing.
Yeah that two week circuit breaker worked so well in Wales didn't it. Your guy is useless.
I think he would be a massive improvement on Johnson.
Which is also what the Welsh think. 53% prefer the Welsh approach with 15% preferring the English approach. Welsh Tories are split 32% to 34%, if not Welsh PB Tories.
Yeah that two week circuit breaker worked so well in Wales didn't it. Your guy is useless.
I think he would be a massive improvement on Johnson.
We'd be in the EU vaccine scheme waiting until March or April for our first deliveries from Pfizer. He wouldn't be better. His decision making is poor and has been from the start.
And the Tories have been a mark of competence? Max you've gone off the deep end of late.
I didn't say that. Just saying that Starmer would be another shade of shit.
I doubt it, plenty of room for a shift in tone instead. Regardless of whether the rules were right or wrong, we are not planning on actively enforcing them anyway. Strong advice not to mix households may well happen, but changing the rules wont. Come January we will all be moving up the tiers again.
They are right to lay out the options, but it will definitely go to Sheffield and Leeds.
HS2 already isn't going to Sheffield. I don't count HS2 trains trundling along existing infrastructure to Midland station to be HS2 going to Sheffield. They *could* have had a Meadowhall station on the main route and used it as a fulcrum to drive the regeneration of a largely post-industrial shithole, but oh no.
If you are going Parkway a stonkingly excellent City Centre rapid transit connection is requisite. Meadowhall to Sheff Midland via train or tram is decent enough, but not really that level of excellent. But the sheer number of people that could access a Meadowhall station far better than Midland station as the preferred HS2 hub was considerable (including a hell of a lot of Sheffielders, tbh). And Meadowhall would have been a massively quicker gateway onto HS2 for me.
Surprising that North Norfolk is included. I wonder if it takes the cost of living into account? Everything is much more expensive in London and less expensive in the north-east but that doesn't necessarily mean an area is deprived or not deprived.
Interesting that the only 2 Tory seats in the North East prior to Dec 2019 - Berwick upon Tweed and Hexham, do not appear.
He gives a fairly wide ranging interview and Brexit is about fourth on the list, which is about how the EU in general now views the UK. This quote was interesting I thought:
"The Brits were never all the way in. This goes back a long way to how they refused to partake in the project after WWII and were rebutted twice by President de Gaulle after that…
I have mixed feelings when it comes to the Brits. On the one hand, they were persistent proponents or market economy – entrepreneurial freedom, free trade… They were always on hand in those matters. But dealing with them in pretty much everything else was such a pain…"
I´m sure the Brexit crew will have a few patronizing insults to lay on Kallas, but TBH he was a pretty good friend of the UK and most Estonians just view the whole Brexit fiasco as a bit sad. It certainly is not an existential crisis, however much Farage, Redwood and the Leave-their-senses crew might wish it to be so.
Eventually we will overcome the split, but it will take decades and will have cost the UK a staggering amount of money. The Leavers will be seen as having taken the UK into a cul-de-sac that was stupid and expensive.
The quote is entirely reasonable I doubt any Brexiteers should object to it.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
Neither leaving nor joining are a cul de sac, they're both part of the M25. I think we'll keep circling through different levels of integration, because neither being in nor out makes perfect sense for us.
I don't think we will ever rejoin but I certainly think we will be like a (slightly more divorced) version of the Swiss.
Trade and other agreements with Europe, frequently tweaked, as an alternative to full fat membership of the European Union.
I think we will rejoin but not for at least 10 years, probably 20 or more. The problem for us is that whatever level of integration we achieve, it will always make sense for us to integrate a little bit more, from an economic point of view. And once we achieve a certain level of integration, it will become obvious that we will gain sovereignty by rejoining, not lose it (to gain some say over rules we are following already). Switzerland is a very different case from us, they have a far richer and more successful economy and a long history of avoiding international entanglements. We on the other hand are probably the most historically entangled country in the world, and our economy has far less advantageous geography than Switzerland's as well as many structural weaknesses dating back to the late 19th century.
What's interesting is the number of Boris backers, for example here, who expect/hope that the UK will move back to some sort of EEA arrangement pretty much as soon as Boris departs the scene. Makes me wonder why we are insisting on going the long way round.
But yes, a decade or so after that, the "being in the corridor while decisions are taken in the meeting room" status will chafe, and Boris, Nigel etc will be an awkward memory. Basically, once you accept that there isn't a pot of gold at the bottom of Barnier's staircase, the logic which encourages most countries to seek closer relationships with Europe is pretty damn compelling. It will just take time.
It is still not entirely clear to me why or how Mark Drakeford has so mismanaged this.
Drakeford is a very cautious person -- as far from the reckless chancer, the laughing blonde bounder, as it is possible to be. Drakeford is not very imaginative or very creative or very bright.
He is the sort of political leader who has actually done very well in the pandemic -- his natural instincts are to panic, to shut things down, to ban things, to stay tight and to not move.
I wonder whether his lockdowns -- in the end -- proved counterproductive. For example, parts of the Valleys have been in very restrictive measures since the beginning of September. It is the Valleys -- the Welsh Labour heartlands --where the pandemic is out of control.
Maybe in the end, there are only so many sacrifices you can ask people to make. Maybe in the end, after too long in a straitjacket, enough people go WTF, I am going out, I am going to party, I am going to drink, I am going to socialise.
I am not a huge fan of Drakeford.
But, I am still very surprised that the cautious, bumbling, tedious Professor of Social Studies had managed to bungle this worse than the sexually obsessive, cocky, conniving Knave.
There is something yet to be explained here.
Those graphs show that the Welsh public has been strongly supportive of Drakeford, up until the very recent polling, even though from reading these pages you might have concluded otherwise.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
Yes Drakeford's error wasn't implementing the lockdown, it was not extending it. It should still be in place now.
No, his mistake was buying into the rubbish about 2 week circuit breaker lockdowns actually making any real difference. It was clear from the outset that hyping it up as a solution was going to end badly and now Wales is going to end up in an even longer "don't leave the house" lockdown as a result.
Edit: this is also before contending with a possibly more infectious strain that is spreading in London and the SE.
It's easy to say with hindsight that a 2 week circuit breaker wouldn't work, but had it been tried anywhere and failed already?
I think anyone with scientific training would worry if the time of the circuit breaker is comparable to the time taken to (on average) catch, develop, transmit and recover from the disease (roughly, the isolation time).
So, I think it is obvious a priori that a 2 week circuit breaker is too short.
There are probably no scientists on the Labour front bench. Or Tory, for that matter.
They are right to lay out the options, but it will definitely go to Sheffield and Leeds.
HS2 already isn't going to Sheffield. I don't count HS2 trains trundling along existing infrastructure to Midland station to be HS2 going to Sheffield. They *could* have had a Meadowhall station on the main route and used it as a fulcrum to drive the regeneration of a largely post-industrial shithole, but oh no.
I can't comprehend why they didn't go for Meadowhall. It is just such an obvious choice and as well as the Sheffield tram it has direct links to Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley (although Doncaster is only 90 minutes from King's Cross as it is).
The current route just blights parts of South Yorkshire for absolutely no benefit, other than being able to wave at people on their way to Leeds.
He proposed the catastrophically disastrous two week circuit break that has brought Wales to its knees. He mocked Boris for introducing Tiers and a 4 week lockdown that has worked far better.
Comments
The New European have a delightful article about it:
BAME to blame: How minorities got it so wrong
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/yasmin-alibhai-brown-minorities-22078
Thanks for that link. The correlation and causation risk there is high.
I'm worried by what that guy said that c.3% of over 80 year olds will die of natural causes within 3 months of taking the vaccine *anyway*, due to general life expectancy stats, which will probably be reported and some people will put down to the vaccine and create conspiracy memes from to fuel suspicion and fear.
It's a real fear.
If I were the Government I would have given out similar advice to what you've done for the final 7-10 days before Christmas.
Your own views on the other hand do not follow at all from that two paragraph quote, quite the opposite.
He is right that Brits were "never all the way in" and President de Gaulle in hindsight was probably right to twice veto British membership. In hindsight Heath and even Thatcher were probably wrong to take us into Europe.
Brits wanted an EEC that was a Common Market, not an EU that was a political union. But the groundwork of political as well as economic union had been there all along even if we never properly signed up to it.
In hindsight British membership of the EU was the cul-de-sac. We are now leaving that cul-de-sac never to return, the EU will move on without us. We will move on. We will evolve different paths.
Good effort.
https://twitter.com/grantshapps/status/1337684787897774081?s=21
After all, having a PM whose name you daren't mention isn't a great look for someone who's supposed to be praising his glorious Union-leading party leader. Is he for independence, or something?!
So government would be saying that the middle classes can see their parents over Christmas, but the working classes can’t.
At this point they just have to hope people use their judgement, for better or worse. Nothing they say is going to change the situation much, but a slightly more cautious tone might be useful.
Can I ask, does your new avatar now show the Bear in question, the Bear whose activities in the Pro Rata Household have been a cause for concern ... the Philandering Boris Bear ?
The biggest problem with YAB is that she takes political disagreement with her prejudices personally.
We're not seeing anyone over Christmas, we could but we're choosing not to do so. Our choice, informed.
While others, even if it were banned, would still gather on Christmas even if they were told not to do so. Because many people would view it as unreasonable and ignore the rules.
There needs to be as much discussion on what should be done than what can be lawfully done.
If you convince people to stay at home because they want to then the virus won't spread. If you tell people they're not allowed to but they choose to disregard that and there's no real risk of the Police showing up then people will just ignore the law and you lose all credibility.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-55303978
Yes, it's not fair. Covid-19 isn't fair. But what I wouldn't do is restrict everyone, absolutely, just because some can't take advantage of it, and some others have been irresponsible.
We're in a world of picking imperfect answers to awful problems.
The actual recommendations in the newsletter are rather Blairite:
1 Make speeches more human
2 Fight woke-ism (cf: forces of conservatism)
3 Support the Working Class as well as the Middle Class
4 Rapid Rebuttal
https://mcusercontent.com/a3fe91df70df73b35c6d6fab0/files/a5c33245-3383-47cc-aa1e-7c28f9cca1f1/WCA_Newsletter_58.pdf
Lib Dems would all find that rather too principled.
My brother in law is supposed to be taking things carefully before Christmas - but somehow contrived to give someone a lift in his car yesterday (unmasked, risky demographic) which is totally against the 'rules' in Tier 3. He seems to be incapable of doing things properly.
It would probably help any arguments if we continued with a lockdown, but he'll probably visit his parents anyway whatever the government says..
This will no doubt be replicated widely. Families are going to be even more tense than usual this Christmas.
They are right to lay out the options, but it will definitely go to Sheffield and Leeds.
A one size fits all model is rarely a good one.
Based on Scottish tier system and rate outcomes and current levels of compliance.
Authorities may have other reasons for refusing a downgrade or insisting on an upgrade, but these would be the minimum requirements
Trade and other agreements with Europe, frequently tweaked, as an alternative to full fat membership of the European Union.
Do you agree that there a disproportionately high number of deprived constituencies in London?
And in January? When we have a massive spike and Granny dies they will be out in the media saying "who knew"? A message their parrots on here will happily skwark.
It is unfair to blame the mass stupidity we are seeing on the people doing it. They are being directly encouraged to do stupid by the government.
That would lead to the devastating conclusion the vast majority of Brits are aware of the risks and are capable of managing them themselves.
It would also mean the depowering of the likes of Susan Michie and that cannot come soon enough.
Drakeford's major error was overconfidence in the effect of Wales' early lockdown. He let Wales emerge from lockdown on 9th November without any significant restrictions in place (i.e. broad equivalent of current England Tier 1) in any part of the Wales, even while England was barely into lockdown, and failed to put renewed restrictions in place on hospitality until 5th December, making matters worse by giving drinkers the best part of a weeks notice to make a last visit to a crowded pub.
Apart from that, Drakeford still seems to have handled the rest of the crisis pretty well, and he's at least reverted to the cautious approach now. We see the Welsh school Christmas break sensibly extended from 2 to 3 weeks, with online learning for the first week, whilst Johnson has forbidden English local authorities from following suit.
Sensible planning would have seem them close a week early, to everyone's benefit. As it is, some will close with little notice, and get in a fight with government in the process.
They’re just blatant oppositionists, who reflexively disagree with the government no matter what they do.
If the government was saying that Christmas is cancelled and nobody is allowed to meet up then millions up and down the country would just ignore that and do as they please. We wouldn't have Police Officers raiding family homes as people share presents or during the Queen's Speech and everybody knows that.
People need to be encouraged to make smart choices. You can't make every choice for everyone or they stop listening to you. At least now people who do meet up hopefully are doing the least possible and not everyone having mass parties or all meeting in the local pub with other families.
So efficient, as usual.
Switzerland is a very different case from us, they have a far richer and more successful economy and a long history of avoiding international entanglements. We on the other hand are probably the most historically entangled country in the world, and our economy has far less advantageous geography than Switzerland's as well as many structural weaknesses dating back to the late 19th century.
U-turn incoming
Its only a shame they didn't adopt this attitude sooner.
"Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, Wales and
England have differed in their approach to tackling
the crisis and implementing lockdown rules. Thinking
generally, do you prefer the approach that has been
taken in Wales or the approach that has been taken in
England?"
Wales 53%
England 15%
Neither 25%
DK 8%
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/c119vzukmj/Internal_WalesResults_201211_w.pdf
Edit: this is also before contending with a possibly more infectious strain that is spreading in London and the SE.
Two points about this. Tories aren't the best placed to make this argument. Unionists need Scots to see Brexit as an actual disaster that was in some way overturned. If the perceived Brexit disaster is still in place the argument doesn't work.
Then you have to leave it to people to do as they see fit. These are unpoliced guidelines (as they should be) and I reckon most will do what they judge right regardless anyway.
For example, I'm not seeing family at Christmas and I'd decided that a while ago. If the government were to say it's fine for us to hang out, because it's Christmas, this would have made no difference to us. We still wouldn't be.
By the same token, if we'd decided we WERE having the big family Christmas, because it was just so important to us to do so, virus nothwithstanding, then we would still do it even if the government said we shouldn't.
What normals are hearing is that Christmas is ok. Don't worry too much, indeed we're making it really easy for you to do that 500 mile round trip. Yes, if they abruptly said "Christmas is banned" many would ignore them because they have minimal credibility.
Even now they could reduce the coming slaughter. Shagger is good at emotive language. Do a broadcast to the nation and say largely what Merkel said. In reality nobody can stop you from meeting up. But stop and think. Is it worth meeting up with your family if it could be your last Christmas together? Do you want to celebrate Christmas with them in December and have to attend their funeral in January?
But he won't. Because he is a fool.
Captain Foresight once again.
This is what happens if you go around endorsing Donald Trump when you're a famous and (up to then) respected sportsman.
Your granddaughter goes and does that.
He proposed the catastrophically disastrous two week circuit break that has brought Wales to its knees. He mocked Boris for introducing Tiers and a 4 week lockdown that has worked far better.
What else has he proposed?
Christmas transport will be made much more convenient.
We must take immediate and firm action to contain the virus!
One of these things is not like the others.
But yes, a decade or so after that, the "being in the corridor while decisions are taken in the meeting room" status will chafe, and Boris, Nigel etc will be an awkward memory. Basically, once you accept that there isn't a pot of gold at the bottom of Barnier's staircase, the logic which encourages most countries to seek closer relationships with Europe is pretty damn compelling. It will just take time.
More interesting, is whether the current Lab Leadership support it. The 2019 Manifesto said it would support extending it to Scotland.
So, I think it is obvious a priori that a 2 week circuit breaker is too short.
There are probably no scientists on the Labour front bench. Or Tory, for that matter.
The current route just blights parts of South Yorkshire for absolutely no benefit, other than being able to wave at people on their way to Leeds.
Sense you're getting there too, Hyufd.
I can't seem to paste tweets in on here like you and others can. Mine come out small and just text without the picture, not sure why.