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.
You wouldn't believe that reading this forum. As one respected Welsh poster might say.
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.
So you're not criticising the Welsh lockdown, or its relatively early timing, just the failure to extend it or to put something in place afterwards. Fair enough, I agree with you on that.
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'd be amazed if it goes to Leeds this side of 2040 - and much beyond that it might well be irrelevant anyway.
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.
I agree strongly. I'd love to have seen a longer school holidays timetable set in September, 2 week half terms, 3 week end of terms and I think I said as much. The benefit of that type of sector specific firebreak would have been worthwhile and the approach to schools now contrasts with the approach to universities.
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?
Making proposals is not his job
To some degree it is, not to the government but to the public. He needs to spell out what the "Labour way" would be to the public and that means making proposals.
Interesting to note. When the virus was rampant in the North it was due to poor behaviour. Now it's in the Home Counties it is a different strain of the virus. So nobody's fault.
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?
Making proposals is not his job
Sure it is.
Being a credible Prime Minister-in-waiting is his job. Showing the country that he could be trusted to do the job is his job.
When the Leader of the Opposition is incapable of coming up with any good ideas - why put him into office to implement them in the future?
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.
So you're not criticising the Welsh lockdown, or its relatively early timing, just the failure to extend it or to put something in place afterwards. Fair enough, I agree with you on that.
What I'm criticising is the way Starmer and the Welsh government pitched it to the public as some kind of solution to the virus, that if we did this then it would go away and we could all go back to normal. It was completely irresponsible and the case numbers in Wales show it.
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.
Also every constituency in Tyne and Wear except for Tynemouth, and as far as I can tell every constituency in the West Midlands CA except for Solihull and Sutton Coldfield.
Interesting to note. When the virus was rampant in the North it was due to poor behaviour. Now it's in the Home Counties it is a different strain of the virus. So nobody's fault.
That mutant strain is PR for different reasons.
It'll get more people staying at home if they think there's a zombie strain of the plague.
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'd be amazed if it goes to Leeds this side of 2040 - and much beyond that it might well be irrelevant anyway.
Beyond Leeds there aren't the capacity issues - what is required is the straightening of the East Coast mainline route which is supposedly a separate project that is planned as part of Northern Powerhouse Rail.
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.
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'd be amazed if it goes to Leeds this side of 2040 - and much beyond that it might well be irrelevant anyway.
Beyond Leeds there aren't the capacity issues - what is required is the straightening of the East Coast mainline route which is supposedly a separate project that is planned as part of Northern Powerhouse Rail.
There's always capacity issues at York which feed through to Leeds.
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.
So you're not criticising the Welsh lockdown, or its relatively early timing, just the failure to extend it or to put something in place afterwards. Fair enough, I agree with you on that.
What I'm criticising is the way Starmer and the Welsh government pitched it to the public as some kind of solution to the virus, that if we did this then it would go away and we could all go back to normal. It was completely irresponsible and the case numbers in Wales show it.
I don't think Keir ever said a two week lockdown was the solution? He said it would bring down cases - which it did - and then he said we needed a proper track and trace and tier system when we came out.
The Welsh Government failed on the latter. In my view they should have just extended the lockdown.
But then you can equally attack the UK Gov as they did exactly the same thing. If we were to come out we needed a proper track + trace and tier system, which we don't have. So again we should have extended the lockdown.
This website is rather hating of the Welsh Government it seems
Why shouldn't we be, their actions are going to lead to more cases and deaths. It was a rubbish policy and unsurprisingly neither the Welsh government nor Starmer are talking about it, in fact both are pretending they never supported it because it's been such a disaster.
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'd be amazed if it goes to Leeds this side of 2040 - and much beyond that it might well be irrelevant anyway.
Beyond Leeds there aren't the capacity issues - what is required is the straightening of the East Coast mainline route which is supposedly a separate project that is planned as part of Northern Powerhouse Rail.
There's always capacity issues at York which feed through to Leeds.
But that's an individual station issue which HS2 won't fix - Leeds has the advantage that East West trains are on their own tracks to the north of the other lines (it's why everything ends up on platform 17), York doesn't have that luxury.
Interesting to note. When the virus was rampant in the North it was due to poor behaviour. Now it's in the Home Counties it is a different strain of the virus. So nobody's fault.
That mutant strain is PR for different reasons.
It'll get more people staying at home if they think there's a zombie strain of the plague.
It may well be so. But it is telling in itself. Have lost count of the number of media stories about how wonderful it is to have crowds back in theatres and in London football grounds in the past few days. But, no. Mutant strain must be the reason.
This website is rather hating of the Welsh Government it seems
Why shouldn't we be, their actions are going to lead to more cases and deaths. It was a rubbish policy and unsurprisingly neither the Welsh government nor Starmer are talking about it, in fact both are pretending they never supported it because it's been such a disaster.
Because to support the Tories and attack the Welsh Government is hypocritical to the extreme.
Both have made obvious mistakes, that much is obvious. The UK Government however has done much, much worse.
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?
Making proposals is not his job
However, it is the job of Labour (plus the solitary LibDem) to run Wales.
If SKS has brilliant ideas on how to control the pandemic, you might think he'd help Mark out by telling him, no?
And what could be more convincing evidence for Labour's competence in handling the pandemic than an excellent performance in Wales ?
I don't know ultimately whether there will be any statistically significant differences between the various countries, I suspect they will all be towards the bottom of the lower stream.
Whether Mark will pay a price for bungling is also not clear -- but it is the Welsh Labour heartlands that are primarily affected.
Still, Mark has safely garnered the Assembly votes of the Labour posters from the West Midlands & Bedford 😀
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.
So you're not criticising the Welsh lockdown, or its relatively early timing, just the failure to extend it or to put something in place afterwards. Fair enough, I agree with you on that.
What I'm criticising is the way Starmer and the Welsh government pitched it to the public as some kind of solution to the virus, that if we did this then it would go away and we could all go back to normal. It was completely irresponsible and the case numbers in Wales show it.
I don't think Keir ever said a two week lockdown was the solution? He said it would bring down cases - which it did - and then he said we needed a proper track and trace and tier system when we came out.
He did and he also said falsely that England's 4 week lockdown wouldn't be needed if we had done the 2 weeks instead.
Total nonsense. Plus of course because Johnson unlike the Welsh tried the Tier system first we had knowledge about Tiers to use when coming out of lockdown so what we came out of was different to what we went in with. The Labour solution in Wales skipped trying Tiers first so nothing was learnt and they came out of the mere 2 week circuit break that Starmer wanted into very weak and failed Tiers as a result.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
I'm not actually sure it was an idiotic idea - people were going to ignore it anyway so it was better to suggest limits rather than watching people completely ignore the rules.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
No but people would either way. Those who want a family gathering are going to do it either way, so if they're going to then tell them how to do it with the least amount of risk. Lets not pretend everyone's going to stay at home due to fear of the Bobbies banging on their door if they don't - it was never going to happen and everyone knew that.
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?
Since it is up to 2 weeks for an individual infection to be seen, it was slightly obvious that committing to a further course of action (ending the lockdown) at the end of 2 weeks was a blatantly reckless thing to do.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
No but people would either way. Those who want a family gathering are going to do it either way, so if they're going to then tell them how to do it with the least amount of risk. Lets not pretend everyone's going to stay at home due to fear of the Bobbies banging on their door if they don't - it was never going to happen and everyone knew that.
Which is why Merkel has done the same thing.
But we have vaccines, the PM should have told the nation that we're a gnat's fart away from mass vaccination, a bit of self restraint and we could have an epic 2021, heck we could have Christmas in July 2021.
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?
Making proposals is not his job
Sure it is.
Being a credible Prime Minister-in-waiting is his job. Showing the country that he could be trusted to do the job is his job.
When the Leader of the Opposition is incapable of coming up with any good ideas - why put him into office to implement them in the future?
This is why LAB can expect to be in opposition for the foreseeable future including after the next GE.
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'd be amazed if it goes to Leeds this side of 2040 - and much beyond that it might well be irrelevant anyway.
Beyond Leeds there aren't the capacity issues - what is required is the straightening of the East Coast mainline route which is supposedly a separate project that is planned as part of Northern Powerhouse Rail.
There's always capacity issues at York which feed through to Leeds.
But that's an individual station issue which HS2 won't fix - Leeds has the advantage that East West trains are on their own tracks to the north of the other lines (it's why everything ends up on platform 17), York doesn't have that luxury.
If HS2 were to be new build North of Leeds to an appropriate point where ECML becomes the sensible routing, that point would not be York. Why even loop out that far when the A1 upgrade through North Yorkshire has already flattened out so many of the bumps on the road route.
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.
So you're not criticising the Welsh lockdown, or its relatively early timing, just the failure to extend it or to put something in place afterwards. Fair enough, I agree with you on that.
What I'm criticising is the way Starmer and the Welsh government pitched it to the public as some kind of solution to the virus, that if we did this then it would go away and we could all go back to normal. It was completely irresponsible and the case numbers in Wales show it.
I don't think Keir ever said a two week lockdown was the solution? He said it would bring down cases - which it did - and then he said we needed a proper track and trace and tier system when we came out.
The Welsh Government failed on the latter. In my view they should have just extended the lockdown.
But then you can equally attack the UK Gov as they did exactly the same thing. If we were to come out we needed a proper track + trace and tier system, which we don't have. So again we should have extended the lockdown.
How do you do that in two weeks? What reorganisation of track and trace can be effected in a two week period? It was a rubbish policy.
Again, you seem to be mistaking my criticism of the Welsh government as praise of Westminster. It isn't. I think the government has been a complete shower of shit for months, in case you don't remember I actually put my money where my mouth is and resigned my membership over it.
I think all 4 nations have had a very poor virus, England, Scotland and Wales especially so. The lack of joined up thinking by the three has been awful, the lack of quarantine measures, the lack of any kind of isolation scheme, the lack of a door to door tracing system. It's all been a disaster. The only thing I can credit Westminster with is vaccine procurement and roll out which has been absolutely brilliant. I'm almost certain that if Scotland and Wales were in charge of their own vaccine procurement they would be waiting a lot longer because they'd be in the rubbish EU scheme.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
No but people would either way. Those who want a family gathering are going to do it either way, so if they're going to then tell them how to do it with the least amount of risk. Lets not pretend everyone's going to stay at home due to fear of the Bobbies banging on their door if they don't - it was never going to happen and everyone knew that.
Which is why Merkel has done the same thing.
The call to tighten restrictions is not to guard against there being a spike in the new year. It is to guard against the opposite - there not being one.
If its shown people can make their own decisions then we can depower the medics who have arbitrarily and unaccountably controlled our lives in the last nine months.
Wait until you hear my economic policies. You'll flee for the hills.
I'm still the fiscally dry conservative I've always been.
I think I'm less socialist than you might think I am but still.
With you at least I have something to argue against from an ideological perspective. Others here are so inconsistent because they are almost brainwashed by Johnson.
I can't remember if I said here or to somebody else but the sensible - IMHO -thing would have been to extend the lockdown to the New Year and dangle the promise of a vaccine as a way out of it.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
No but people would either way. Those who want a family gathering are going to do it either way, so if they're going to then tell them how to do it with the least amount of risk. Lets not pretend everyone's going to stay at home due to fear of the Bobbies banging on their door if they don't - it was never going to happen and everyone knew that.
Which is why Merkel has done the same thing.
But we have vaccines, the PM should have told the nation that we're a gnat's fart away from mass vaccination, a bit of self restraint and we could have an epic 2021, heck we could have Christmas in July 2021.
Yeah I think the late May bank holiday weekend should have been extended to Thursday and Friday and we could have had a massive national party.
Two days ago it looked like my area was heading for a third wave and the Xmas relaxation was madness. So far this week the figures have dived again - locally to 2 cases today [ ironically with 3 deaths]. My point is the biggest idiots are those who rush to knee-jerk reactions every 10 seconds. The truth is these decisions are not easy and it is painfully obvious that the loudest voices on here, to be charitable, have somewhat mixed motives. At the moment the message about the need for extreme caution seems sensible to me. I suspect most of the public have far more common sense in these matters than most of the media and politicos on all sides.
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...
Yes I should have added that the Swiss deal is something the EU have regretted and was never on offer to us anyway.
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.
But that's the point about HS2. In order to get journey times down it has to by-pass just about everywhere, since stopping and starting from high speed takes up a lot of time. And the regeneration it brings to the very limited places it would stop is of no benefit to places it bypasses and comes at enormous expense.
Also, exactly the same issue about lack of connectivity arises with the Curzon Street terminus at Birmingham. The entire rail hub of the West Midlands revolves around Birmingham New Street. That means that most who need to travel to London from Birmingham and the Black Country are going to continue to travel into London using the West Coast Main LIne, which will still be quicker and no doubt much cheaper. That's assuming that the amount of long distance rail travel ever recovers which is a moot point now that business has spent a year learning how to cope using Zoom.
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.
Both Cromer and Sheringham are quite poor, like many coastal areas.
Clearly popularity for holidays doesn't make for a wealthy area, maybe just low wage seasonal employment.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
I'm not actually sure it was an idiotic idea - people were going to ignore it anyway so it was better to suggest limits rather than watching people completely ignore the rules.
That's true, but the statements of government have a massive anchoring effect on people's judgement of what's reasonable. I've got a pretty good idea of how numbers work, and I wouldn't know how to balance the risks of my actions on my family with the risks of my actions on the community, the community's effect on me and the community's effect on the community.
Besides, the really important point is that the key variable is the number of infectious people on December 23. That's unknowable in advance, but it doesn't look like the government has done a good job of creating a situation where it's nice and low.
My friend who's doing a PHD at Imperial College got a train ticket back to Newcastle for £12 today.
What a bargain.
In its GNER days I once bought tickets from King's X to Edinburgh for a tenner, first class.
Ah! But have you ever been on a train from Leeds to Kings X, got off and crossed the road to St Pancras to get a train back to Canterbury, got on that latter train only to realise you left your case on the train from Leeds, ran back accross the road to Kings X to get it back only for the doors to lock for its trip back up North, end up in York, and get a penalty fare for using the same ticket twice?
I have. Still, I got the case back, although I got home 12 hours late.
BBC: FDA approves Moderna vaccine The US' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it has found Moderna's vaccine to be safe and 95% effective.
The move clears the way for US emergency authorisation.
Interesting - ahead of the MHRA on this one. Wonder why? Is it to do with availability? AIUI we don't expect any of the this one until 2021, so less urgency to approve?
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
No but people would either way. Those who want a family gathering are going to do it either way, so if they're going to then tell them how to do it with the least amount of risk. Lets not pretend everyone's going to stay at home due to fear of the Bobbies banging on their door if they don't - it was never going to happen and everyone knew that.
Which is why Merkel has done the same thing.
But we have vaccines, the PM should have told the nation that we're a gnat's fart away from mass vaccination, a bit of self restraint and we could have an epic 2021, heck we could have Christmas in July 2021.
That is what the Government have said though. They've said time and again to show restraint and that things should be better by Easter. The PM made that awful pun about "tis the season to be jolly careful".
If people don't want to listen or if the media only ever want to talk about the absolute boundaries of the law then what more do you expect? The PM's policy is virtually identical to Merkel's.
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.
So you're not criticising the Welsh lockdown, or its relatively early timing, just the failure to extend it or to put something in place afterwards. Fair enough, I agree with you on that.
What I'm criticising is the way Starmer and the Welsh government pitched it to the public as some kind of solution to the virus, that if we did this then it would go away and we could all go back to normal. It was completely irresponsible and the case numbers in Wales show it.
I don't think Keir ever said a two week lockdown was the solution? He said it would bring down cases - which it did - and then he said we needed a proper track and trace and tier system when we came out.
The Welsh Government failed on the latter. In my view they should have just extended the lockdown.
But then you can equally attack the UK Gov as they did exactly the same thing. If we were to come out we needed a proper track + trace and tier system, which we don't have. So again we should have extended the lockdown.
He called for a 2-3 week lockdown over half term. October 13th or thereabouts.
BBC: FDA approves Moderna vaccine The US' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it has found Moderna's vaccine to be safe and 95% effective.
The move clears the way for US emergency authorisation.
Interesting - ahead of the MHRA on this one. Wonder why? Is it to do with availability? AIUI we don't expect any of the this one until 2021, so less urgency to approve?
Yes, it wasn't submitted here until much later because we're not going to get any of it until late in Q1. The US has an effective monopoly on supply for most of Q1.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
No but people would either way. Those who want a family gathering are going to do it either way, so if they're going to then tell them how to do it with the least amount of risk. Lets not pretend everyone's going to stay at home due to fear of the Bobbies banging on their door if they don't - it was never going to happen and everyone knew that.
Which is why Merkel has done the same thing.
The call to tighten restrictions is not to guard against there being a spike in the new year. It is to guard against the opposite - there not being one.
If its shown people can make their own decisions then we can depower the medics who have arbitrarily and unaccountably controlled our lives in the last nine months.
You're ridiculous sorry. Cases are going up already now pre-Christmas.
The idea that the government or anyone else is afraid of there not being a rise in numbers is absolutely for the birds. You spend too long with conspiracy loons and Trumpists if that's your worldview.
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.
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.
So you're not criticising the Welsh lockdown, or its relatively early timing, just the failure to extend it or to put something in place afterwards. Fair enough, I agree with you on that.
What I'm criticising is the way Starmer and the Welsh government pitched it to the public as some kind of solution to the virus, that if we did this then it would go away and we could all go back to normal. It was completely irresponsible and the case numbers in Wales show it.
I don't think Keir ever said a two week lockdown was the solution? He said it would bring down cases - which it did - and then he said we needed a proper track and trace and tier system when we came out.
The Welsh Government failed on the latter. In my view they should have just extended the lockdown.
But then you can equally attack the UK Gov as they did exactly the same thing. If we were to come out we needed a proper track + trace and tier system, which we don't have. So again we should have extended the lockdown.
He called for a 2-3 week lockdown over half term. October 20th or thereabouts.
He suggested it would also provide a chance for the government to "fix" problems by handing over track and trace responsibilities to local authorities.
The Government didn't do that. The cases came down even in the two week Welsh circuit breaker but like us they didn't have a working track and trace + tier system to come out into.
Our track + trace system + tiers also don't work.
So actually I honestly think Keir's advice wasn't really followed so it's hard to conclude he got it wrong.
I still would have extended it past two weeks in Wales, the Welsh Government got it wrong, absolutely. But the UK Government should have extended it too. They got it wrong as well.
An area-based approach would be a disaster, this guy is a moron.
And we have the empirical evidence too. Greater Manchester during the first Tier system. Different boroughs in different Tiers is the quickest way to "levelling up".
Let's be honest if Labour had made this move and was seemingly about to U-turn some here would be jumping up and down and shouting "U-turn! U-turn!".
Hypocrisy as always.
Labour have made this move. 🤦🏻♂️
Who do you think runs Wales?
I'm not sure what Welsh Labour has to do with Keir Starmer.
Same party following the same policies.
Labour is in government. Labour agreed the Christmas break. Labour went ahead with the disastrous 2 week circuit break. For you to be banging on about "if Labour had made this move" totally ignores the fact that Labour did make this move.
If you want to pretend Labour don't exist in government because you find the existance of Labour in office to be an embarrassment then who exactly does run Wales? Fairies? Pixies? Unicorns?
Let's be honest if Labour had made this move and was seemingly about to U-turn some here would be jumping up and down and shouting "U-turn! U-turn!".
Hypocrisy as always.
Labour have made this move. 🤦🏻♂️
Who do you think runs Wales?
I'm not sure what Welsh Labour has to do with Keir Starmer.
Basically everything. AIUIit is just another part of the Labour Party, with someone elected to be "Leader of Welsh Labour" since 2016. And a regional office which runs Welsh Labour political stuff. Though I am sure there are lots of nuances and parallel things, and someone could elucidate further.
(That surprised me - I thought there was some institutional separation).
"Welsh Labour is formally part of the Labour Party. It is not separately registered with the Electoral Commission under the terms of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act.[8] In 2016, the Labour Party Conference voted for the office of leader of Welsh Labour to exist; as such, Mark Drakeford is now leader of Welsh Labour." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Labour
An area-based approach would be a disaster, this guy is a moron.
It's a shame that people don't ask the follow up question - how would it work?
Bailey is a dreadful candidate. A wholly negative campaign, deeply dishonest, and things like this which aren't in any way serious proposals. I'd have seriously considered him as second choice, or at least not given my second choice to Khan, but he just makes it impossible. I'm no Khan fan, but if it's him or Bailey then I'm afraid there's only one choice.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
No but people would either way. Those who want a family gathering are going to do it either way, so if they're going to then tell them how to do it with the least amount of risk. Lets not pretend everyone's going to stay at home due to fear of the Bobbies banging on their door if they don't - it was never going to happen and everyone knew that.
Which is why Merkel has done the same thing.
The call to tighten restrictions is not to guard against there being a spike in the new year. It is to guard against the opposite - there not being one.
If its shown people can make their own decisions then we can depower the medics who have arbitrarily and unaccountably controlled our lives in the last nine months.
You're ridiculous sorry. Cases are going up already now pre-Christmas.
The idea that the government or anyone else is afraid of there not being a rise in numbers is absolutely for the birds. You spend too long with conspiracy loons and Trumpists if that's your worldview.
What dies this represent, if COVID isn't a problem -
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
Oh yes? He's an unionist who preaches slavish devotion to the UK, dominated by the Conservatives of England., and at the same time admits the Tory leader is shite? Bit fo cognitive dissonancxe there.
The Government didn't do that. The cases came down even in the two week Welsh circuit breaker but like us they didn't have a working track and trace + tier system to come out into.
Our track + trace system + tiers also don't work.
So actually I honestly think Keir's advice wasn't really followed so it's hard to conclude he got it wrong.
I still would have extended it past two weeks in Wales, the Welsh Government got it wrong, absolutely. But the UK Government should have extended it too. They got it wrong as well.
Did you see the article on the BBC as to *why* track and trace is not working?
According to the people who work in it, people refusing to follow advice, abuse at the operators, refusing to answer calls etc etc.
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.
Both Cromer and Sheringham are quite poor, like many coastal areas.
Clearly popularity for holidays doesn't make for a wealthy area, maybe just low wage seasonal employment.
Hence bits of Cornwall where the restaurants charge London prices - while the locals regard them as no-go areas.
Being part of the country that Scots voted to be part of?
Slavery's notable for many things, including the lack of voting and voluntary participation.
"Conservatives of England" - the blues stand in England, Wales, and Scotland. Maybe people would be less likely to think certain pro-independence types are anti-English if terms like that weren't used.
Why be provocative and call it a U-turn, if its merely changing stance based on new evidence?
Because it was an idiotic policy at the time and it still is.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
No but people would either way. Those who want a family gathering are going to do it either way, so if they're going to then tell them how to do it with the least amount of risk. Lets not pretend everyone's going to stay at home due to fear of the Bobbies banging on their door if they don't - it was never going to happen and everyone knew that.
Which is why Merkel has done the same thing.
The call to tighten restrictions is not to guard against there being a spike in the new year. It is to guard against the opposite - there not being one.
If its shown people can make their own decisions then we can depower the medics who have arbitrarily and unaccountably controlled our lives in the last nine months.
You're ridiculous sorry. Cases are going up already now pre-Christmas.
The idea that the government or anyone else is afraid of there not being a rise in numbers is absolutely for the birds. You spend too long with conspiracy loons and Trumpists if that's your worldview.
What dies this represent, if COVID isn't a problem -
??
Big spike in admissions in Leicester this week. Looking bad again.
Being part of the country that Scots voted to be part of?
Slavery's notable for many things, including the lack of voting and voluntary participation.
"Conservatives of England" - the blues stand in England, Wales, and Scotland. Maybe people would be less likely to think certain pro-independence types are anti-English if terms like that weren't used.
Not intended that way, unfortunate wording, sorry! Rather the objection is to a political party ruling the country at least in the non-devolved areas which has not been elected with a majority in Scotland since before I was born.
Comments
As one respected Welsh poster might say.
Now it's in the Home Counties it is a different strain of the virus. So nobody's fault.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1338803063193284609
Honestly if they can't collate stats like this....
Being a credible Prime Minister-in-waiting is his job. Showing the country that he could be trusted to do the job is his job.
When the Leader of the Opposition is incapable of coming up with any good ideas - why put him into office to implement them in the future?
maybe they shouldn't be taking decisions that are destroying millions of livelihoods???
It'll get more people staying at home if they think there's a zombie strain of the plague.
Just the link, the site then embeds it automatically.
The Welsh Government failed on the latter. In my view they should have just extended the lockdown.
But then you can equally attack the UK Gov as they did exactly the same thing. If we were to come out we needed a proper track + trace and tier system, which we don't have. So again we should have extended the lockdown.
Have lost count of the number of media stories about how wonderful it is to have crowds back in theatres and in London football grounds in the past few days.
But, no. Mutant strain must be the reason.
Both have made obvious mistakes, that much is obvious. The UK Government however has done much, much worse.
I mean it wasn't like Covid-19 was going to declare a Christmas truce.
If SKS has brilliant ideas on how to control the pandemic, you might think he'd help Mark out by telling him, no?
And what could be more convincing evidence for Labour's competence in handling the pandemic than an excellent performance in Wales ?
I don't know ultimately whether there will be any statistically significant differences between the various countries, I suspect they will all be towards the bottom of the lower stream.
Whether Mark will pay a price for bungling is also not clear -- but it is the Welsh Labour heartlands that are primarily affected.
Still, Mark has safely garnered the Assembly votes of the Labour posters from the West Midlands & Bedford 😀
Total nonsense. Plus of course because Johnson unlike the Welsh tried the Tier system first we had knowledge about Tiers to use when coming out of lockdown so what we came out of was different to what we went in with. The Labour solution in Wales skipped trying Tiers first so nothing was learnt and they came out of the mere 2 week circuit break that Starmer wanted into very weak and failed Tiers as a result.
What a bargain.
Which is why Merkel has done the same thing.
Again, you seem to be mistaking my criticism of the Welsh government as praise of Westminster. It isn't. I think the government has been a complete shower of shit for months, in case you don't remember I actually put my money where my mouth is and resigned my membership over it.
I think all 4 nations have had a very poor virus, England, Scotland and Wales especially so. The lack of joined up thinking by the three has been awful, the lack of quarantine measures, the lack of any kind of isolation scheme, the lack of a door to door tracing system. It's all been a disaster. The only thing I can credit Westminster with is vaccine procurement and roll out which has been absolutely brilliant. I'm almost certain that if Scotland and Wales were in charge of their own vaccine procurement they would be waiting a lot longer because they'd be in the rubbish EU scheme.
I'm still the fiscally dry conservative I've always been.
If its shown people can make their own decisions then we can depower the medics who have arbitrarily and unaccountably controlled our lives in the last nine months.
With you at least I have something to argue against from an ideological perspective. Others here are so inconsistent because they are almost brainwashed by Johnson.
U-turn!
The US' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it has found Moderna's vaccine to be safe and 95% effective.
The move clears the way for US emergency authorisation.
Also, exactly the same issue about lack of connectivity arises with the Curzon Street terminus at Birmingham. The entire rail hub of the West Midlands revolves around Birmingham New Street. That means that most who need to travel to London from Birmingham and the Black Country are going to continue to travel into London using the West Coast Main LIne, which will still be quicker and no doubt much cheaper. That's assuming that the amount of long distance rail travel ever recovers which is a moot point now that business has spent a year learning how to cope using Zoom.
An area-based approach would be a disaster, this guy is a moron.
Both Cromer and Sheringham are quite poor, like many coastal areas.
Clearly popularity for holidays doesn't make for a wealthy area, maybe just low wage seasonal employment.
Besides, the really important point is that the key variable is the number of infectious people on December 23. That's unknowable in advance, but it doesn't look like the government has done a good job of creating a situation where it's nice and low.
He'll be even more insufferable, and will get a Snood to go with his Trainers.
I have. Still, I got the case back, although I got home 12 hours late.
If people don't want to listen or if the media only ever want to talk about the absolute boundaries of the law then what more do you expect? The PM's policy is virtually identical to Merkel's.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54528807
In my view the December 2nd should have been extended by 2 weeks to push numbers further down, then a slight opening up for Christmas.
But it's all history now.
Hypocrisy as always.
The idea that the government or anyone else is afraid of there not being a rise in numbers is absolutely for the birds. You spend too long with conspiracy loons and Trumpists if that's your worldview.
☺☺☺
A harsher lockdown makes sense. But if people ignore it utterly, a more modest (if less medically sensible) policy might actually be listened to more.
Our track + trace system + tiers also don't work.
So actually I honestly think Keir's advice wasn't really followed so it's hard to conclude he got it wrong.
I still would have extended it past two weeks in Wales, the Welsh Government got it wrong, absolutely. But the UK Government should have extended it too. They got it wrong as well.
Who do you think runs Wales?
https://twitter.com/DanCrenshawTX/status/1338568003617759233
Greater Manchester during the first Tier system. Different boroughs in different Tiers is the quickest way to "levelling up".
Labour is in government. Labour agreed the Christmas break. Labour went ahead with the disastrous 2 week circuit break. For you to be banging on about "if Labour had made this move" totally ignores the fact that Labour did make this move.
If you want to pretend Labour don't exist in government because you find the existance of Labour in office to be an embarrassment then who exactly does run Wales? Fairies? Pixies? Unicorns?
Well there is only 1 way to find out.
(That surprised me - I thought there was some institutional separation).
"Welsh Labour is formally part of the Labour Party. It is not separately registered with the Electoral Commission under the terms of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act.[8] In 2016, the Labour Party Conference voted for the office of leader of Welsh Labour to exist; as such, Mark Drakeford is now leader of Welsh Labour."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Labour
Plus they are comfortable and I'm helping the economy, the epitome of Conservatism.
??
I think the most expensive running shoes/trainers I've seen are around £300, so I am curious what the extra cost is when they are for general use!
Did you see the article on the BBC as to *why* track and trace is not working?
According to the people who work in it, people refusing to follow advice, abuse at the operators, refusing to answer calls etc etc.
And perhaps it has given them cause to blink. If so, THEN we will have the deal you think was so automatic.
Completely wrong.
Being part of the country that Scots voted to be part of?
Slavery's notable for many things, including the lack of voting and voluntary participation.
"Conservatives of England" - the blues stand in England, Wales, and Scotland. Maybe people would be less likely to think certain pro-independence types are anti-English if terms like that weren't used.
Funny how he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut until after the EU appeared to blink.
I'm spending a lot of time furious
Presumably Tories will be consistent as usual and call out this?