Well you do, you just chose to gloss over it until the end.
350,000 people in the UK have already received the 1st Pfizer jab. The Oxford one is about to be greenlit. 20 million will have been vaccinated by March. So, yes, there is extremely good news.
This is a temporary setback but we're on the route out of this virus now. It may be a long drive but we've begun it.
What an appallingly insensitive response. This is the second time this year my son has lost his job. His chances of finding another one are low. He has been made unemployed at a moment's notice and was crying with frustration last night. He will get no support. Daughter's business is on the brink of closure. The family is split up. We cannot be together to support each other. I know the strain this can put on families. My nephew killed himself earlier this year.
Even if all goes well with the vaccine, I will not be vaccinated until March.
Meanwhile people with solid jobs are ok. Those who do not have such jobs are thrown on the scrap heap with little hope, little help but the chance to be patronised by the wealthy better off like the couple who came in yesterday before closing and told him that he would be "on holiday" from today. "No, unemployed" he replied and they looked shocked. Still, they bought some Xmas chocolates so that's OK I suppose.
It would be good if some posters on here took the blindfolds off their eyes and looked at how bleak life is for the young.
I’m sorry to hear of your son’s troubles and hope it all goes well for him. I think you are being harsh on that couple though - I suspect they assumed either the shop was closing for Christmas or that he was going on furlough. It may have been thoughtless but I doubt it was intentional
Furlough is not like being on holiday. You only get 80% of your wages. Describing it as that is thoughtless.
Not that he will get it anyway.
And what is the government doing to help? Nothing. 3 million have had no help at all. Unless you were furloughed before a certain date, you get nothing. All those who lost jobs earlier and got new ones are just being abandoned. The hospitality sector is dying before our eyes.
My son suffered from serious mental health problems. He has - slowly - fought his way back to recovery. He has done volunteer work to help his CV, at your arts place among others. He started a job last year which got canned because of Covid and economic uncertainty. He gets another one. That goes. Now this the third time. What do you think this will do to his confidence? Or his chances of getting another one?
We talk too often on here of the millions getting vaccines, of statistics and polls and numbers. We might usefully remember that behind each number is a person, like my son, like millions like him, and behind them, many worried parents.
I know you have suffered your own personal loss, far worse than losing a job.
But this is not a competition. Just a plea to remember that retail closing in London means him and lots of others being told just like that that they're not wanted and, btw, you can't go meet your friends and family for a bit of comfort.
That's all.
I know. I am fully aware of what it is going on. It’s why we created RAFT as a programme.
But yes, behind every statistic are millions of people. I’m surprised there is no assistance for your son - not even UC such as it is?
On brighter news my 90 year old Mum due to get her Covid jab at 5.40pm tomorrow.
Took my 94 year old uncle for his today and he gets his 2nd one on 9/1/21
A friend of mine's 80 yr-old mum had her first jab in the week. It's underway.
How did the media last night let the govt get away with portraying only 350k jabs in 10 days as good news?
Because it's a fantastic start and much higher than I was expecting given the requirement to get the logistical gears to mesh into place.
This vaccine is a stunning achievement and the Gov't have done absolutely brilliantly on it.
Sorry no. They’ve had all year to worgame its implementation. It’s too slow. Clearly they’re operating on the basis that so far they have taken delivery of 800k doses, which on the sticker is enough for 400k people (though we now know you can eek out 1/6 more).
So they’re operating on the assumption that they take no new deliveries in the next few weeks. Why is that I wonder...
You are clearly angry with the Government as evidenced by your other later reply. However, letting that anger spill over onto the vaccine rollout is a mistake and demeans yourself and your arguments.
The vaccine development is an astonishing success story. Inside 12 months from virus outbreak to the start of vaccinations is astounding in scientific terms. That the UK Government pre-ordered in bulk SEVEN different developers is one of the most brilliant decisions in political judgement. And I write that as someone left of centre and a deep critic of Boris Johnson.
The Pfizer vaccine requires complex logistics and we have not 'had all year' to know whether it would be efficacious and how it needed to be transported and stored. The early rollout has gone far better than I was anticipating. Next week we will be vaccinating 200,000 people a day. This is a stupendous start.
It's a stellar achievement and the route out of this wretched virus.
I switched off before the very end of the Q&A. Where is the 200k a day figure from? Because I’ve read here all week we’d done 500-800k already.
The scientific achievement of the vaccine is a total game changer and I say that without really thinking about covid but the much wider potential of mRNA vaccines.
The logistics requirement is something that has been known about with the Pfizer vax since the start of the pandemic. They have spent $2bn making it idiot proof for their customers.
It has been clear to those with knowledge beyond that in the wider public domain for many months that Pfizer, Moderna and AZN were likely to have the required efficacy and be first to approval.
It’s a basic question. We’ve got something like 900k useful doses in our possession and have used a little more than a third. Why?
We have 800K official does do enough to vaccinate 400K people
We’ve done 350K. So 85% of the possible.
We’ve also just given discretion to nurses on using a 6th dose (although that will probably have little impact on numbers of vaccines from this batch as used vials will already have been disposed of).
85% in 2 weeks is pretty damn good
That’s a politician’s use of figures, though.
People need two doses, but weeks apart, and we have been told that millions more are due to arrive before New Year. So no excuse for not having done 800,000 already.
The government is responsible for the vaccine’s deployment, not its development. We’ve started with the low hanging fruit - people already in hospital, as patients or staff, and elderly patients of the handful of earmarked GP practices who have been phone-called into their local practice. Whether the whole thing is going to be a brilliant piece of organisation, it is still too early to say.
My other reply explains why it’s better to do 400K not 800K with this first batch
I agree it’s too early to say whether they will make a mess of it. But so far it seems to be going reasonably well.
Despite our head start of almost a week, the US is already up to 272,000 administered doses (with a reporting timelag of 24-72 hours) of the Pfizer compared to our c. 350,000.
Hi Ian
Where did you get this figure from? Because official sources put it at 130,000 and are trying to explain massive supply chain problems (with apologies included).
It was reported by CNN four hours ago based on a CDC press release, which made clear that reporting time lags meant the info could be 24-72 hours lagged, varying by location
Do you have a link?
It's in the virus live feed, just over four hours back, below the story about Bozo cancelling Xmas
I think most people will, though it's the sort of question that doesn't always get truthful answers ("Will you commit any burglaries over the next month?").
Yes, it's a "when did you stop beating your wife?" type of question. And we know it doesn't match people's behaviour.
People will find ways to bend and twist interpretation of the rules as best they can.
(1) Meet up with one other person from your extended family on the boundary of the Tier 4 zone, outside, in a public space on Christmas Eve or before. (2) Swap food and presents, as required. (3) Maybe have a nice walk together 2m apart and a chat before parting ways. Get things off your chest. (4) Zoom or Skype yourselves opening presents together on Christmas Day with the buck's fizz - do the same for lunch if you want to as well. (5) Do another one on one walk outside on 26th or 27th if you're both available.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
I think you’ll find a large number of people who decided it was too great a risk to make any plans for Christmas especially after the chaos in the summer when you could book to to x and then find x was no longer acceptable once you got there. The whole pandemic has been plagued by knee jerk changes in strategy and implementation, communication poor and behind that politicians of all strains and of none seeking to get one over the rest of them. Why are they still partaking of adversarial politics when getting together around a table and putting the best minds to work could result in better strategy.
Something that has been a article of faith amongst Covid Deniers is that Lockdown has lead to a spike in suicides. They haven't based this on any actual data, it's is just something they have intuited because they don't like lockdown so there must be bad effects.
It takes a fair while to gather data on suicides and the ONS has been cautious about releasing the data due to a backlog of Coroner's cases but we now have a decent look at the previous year, no Q4 data yet obviously. Figures given as raw numbers and age-standardised per 100,000 figure in brackets
5-year average to 2019 Q1 - 1134 (9.5) Q2 - 1195 (9.9) Q3 - 1240 (10.2)
Suicides in general have been trending up over the last 10 years but the key thing is that absolutely massive dip in the 2020 Q2 figures with no "bounce back" in Q3.
Obviously these numbers are subject to revision, 2020's numbers were only recently declared final, but compared to 2019 suicides are down overall so far with lockdown have a positive impact.
A sole and temporary consolation of the first lockdown was that accommodation was found for the homeless. It wasn't out of any consideration for the wellbeing of those who suffer from that demonstrably solvable unsolvable problem. It was to stop the deplorables from infecting the rest of us. Nevertheless this vulnerable group were looked at the basic level for the first time.
I wonder if that accounts for the much lower suicide rate in the Q2 lockdown period.
Good point. According to Samaritans, Suicide is the second most common cause of death for homeless people, ONS stats show
The regulations are odd. Christmas restricted, yet today I have to drive 40 miles to the border of tier 4 for my son to play contact rugby. No problem with that. But a mince pie thoroughly dangerous.
Sorry to hear about your father.
This is why I think a bit of judgement and common sense is fine on top.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
Superb! don't know whether to laugh or cry?
What did we do as a nation to get this wretched Government and wretched PM? Seriously, what did we do?
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
Basically retaining Christmas was a good idea for the morale and mental health of the nation until it wasn't. I really don't have a problem that the government was keen to retain Christmas and reluctant to cancel it having made promises. But events moved against them. There was an increasing risk that at the base we were at hospitals would have been overwhelmed in January and that required a series of actions in relation to Christmas travel, schools etc. We are where we are and pretty much every country in western Europe is having to do the same.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And yet, that's precisely where Labour is at right now (somewhere between 1983 and 1987) and nowhere near 1992, yet alone 1997.
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
Lots of people think he is right to tighten. Therefore by definition they think his original plans were too optimistic. It would only be damaging if they think he was reckless in formulating his original plans
The problem us the flip-flop. A lot of businesses will now go bust because they orded stock etc based on having some kind of Christmas sales window. They would not have done this if they had known the government would not actually permit that window to open. Remember many businesses are now barely clinging on. Brexit January will bring further disasters because UK business has no idea what to plan for. Alot of people are furious at the abject incompetence that such indecisiveness demonstrates. The Tories will come in for a hell of a lot of flak and rightly so.
And the government didn’t know
You can criticise them for not being tough enough initially but not for changing their mind when it becomes apparent they weren’t strict enough
I agree, and I think most people agree. But the population has consistently been harder line on lockdown than the Government, as shown in poll after poll, and they suspect - rightly in my view - that Ministers shrink from telling them the facts bluntly and taking a cautious view. The Government treats us like parents who can't bear to tell us that they can't afford to buy us new smartphones this year - even children get to the point where they'd rather just be told the facts than fobbed off with false optimism.
I'm not sure that all this will be fatal to the Government's poll ratings. But the effect has been to erose trust in what the Government says, and in a crisis you shouldn't burn through that trust too quickly as you may need it when further difficult issues raise their heads.
Mr. Observer, it's telling that Labour seem to spend as much time knocking Sunak as Johnson.
Regardless of what you think of Sunak, it's hard to believe he would be anything other than a massive improvement (as would be Hunt) over the incumbent cretin.
If the Conservatives have any survival instincts whatsoever they ought to give the PM the Christmas gift of a prolonged period of time in which to contemplate his own magnificence, far away from the onerous burden of high office.
Yep, it is true that Johnson's potent mixture of self-absorption, bone idleness, mendacity, indecisiveness and general incompetence means that the next PM cannot be as bad as he is. No PM in modern British history has been, after all. And I suspect that you could remove modern from that previous sentence and still be spot on.
I feel very sorry for the position in which the Cyclefree family find themselves.
I am now retired and both my wife and I are, although around 80, reasonably fit. We can look after ourselves. We both spent time in public service and have reasonable pensions. Our eldest son, although he has health issues, has a well-paid, secure, job, as does his wife and their children are safe at school. although his son is concerned at what University will look like when he goes, as he expects, in September. Our elder grandchildren are OK; one has gone back to Uni, the other is teaching, as is his wife. Our younger son is in another country, and seems to be doing well. There appear to be no problems with the virus at the school his children attend.
My wife and I feel we have a lot for which to be thankful.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
You can say we identified this variant in September. Maybe. But when did we have a body of scientific research from Porton Down or wherever giving incontrovertible proof that this variant was W-A-Y more infective than the previous versions? Unless you have that knowledge in your back pocket, please exit the outrage bus using the rear doors ONLY.....
It’s possible they already have it. We know it’s in Denmark, and that’s probably because the Danish molecular surveillance capacity is on a similar level to ours. It’s quite likely already in several other European countries.
We are forming a bubble with my solicitor who gets me off speeding fines for Xmas. Her parents are stuck in Portugal and my wife says we have to. I look forward to being excoriated for my recklessness by two different women over the festivities.
Anyway, logging off for now. People are pissed, and want to vent. I understand that.
But, there's still light at the end of the tunnel here - we just have to get through the next few months.
Even if the virus mutates a bit to be more contagious remember: it has to mutate *a lot* to be very very different such that the vaccine to drop below 50% effectiveness, which is the threshold for suppressing it. And we have several vaccines in play - several of which use different mechanisms to neuter it. It can't fundamentally change its genetic code and structure all by itself - it's not a God - so we should be ok.
An alarming report posted on CNN during the night:
President Donald Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter said, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump's aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn's more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.
Flynn had suggested earlier this week that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election that he lost to President-elect Joe Biden -- an idea that arose again during the meeting in the Oval Office, one of the people said. It wasn't clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully pushed back and shot it down.
White House aides who participated in the meeting, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and counsel Pat Cipollone, also pushed back intensely on the suggestion of naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud allegations Trump's own administration has dismissed (or, as seems more feasible, hiring her in the administration for some kind of investigatory role). Powell has focused her conspiracies on voting machines and has floated the notion of having a special counsel inspect the machines for flaws. Another idea floated in the meeting was an executive order that would permit the government to access voting machines to inspect them.
One person described the meeting as "ugly" as Powell and Flynn accused others of abandoning the President as he works to overturn the results of the election.
"It was heated -- people were really fighting it out in the Oval, really forceful about it," one of the sources said. One of the sources described an escalating sense of concern among Trump's aides, even those who have weathered his previous controversies, about what steps he might take next as his term comes to an end.
It's a cliche, but this really does sound like the second half of Downfall ; but with the demagogue still having a little room for manoeuvre.
What would declaring martial law get him? The military hate his guts and both they and the Secret service swear to uphold the Constitution, not the President.
He might have some leverage with the National Guard, but nothing like enough.
All that would happen is he would either be shot, or arrested for treason. Probably the former if the CIA had anything to do with it. Either way, his political career would be over.
It doesn't sound as if he is planning to resign this year!
Carried out in handcuffs on inauguration day, while the Bidens organise an industrial strength deep clean?
More likely in a straight-jacket supervised by Nurse Ratched
Mr. Jonathan, aye, there was widespread support here for an extension given the plague (provided we weren't lumbered with costs of an EU scheme for COVID recovery or the like).
Unfortunately we have a Prime Minister with the intellectual prowess of a baked potato.
That’s harsh.
I’ve eaten baked potatoes with far more brains than this lot.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
You can say we identified this variant in September. Maybe. But when did we have a body of scientific research from Porton Down or wherever giving incontrovertible proof that this variant was W-A-Y more infective than the previous versions? Unless you have that knowledge in your back pocket, please exit the outrage bus using the rear doors ONLY.....
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
I think you’ll find a large number of people who decided it was too great a risk to make any plans for Christmas especially after the chaos in the summer when you could book to to x and then find x was no longer acceptable once you got there. The whole pandemic has been plagued by knee jerk changes in strategy and implementation, communication poor and behind that politicians of all strains and of none seeking to get one over the rest of them. Why are they still partaking of adversarial politics when getting together around a table and putting the best minds to work could result in better strategy.
Because that is what politicians do. Its the way governments operate. How many governments of national unity have been formed around the world? I can't think of any.
Many people on this site and elsewhere like to maintain Sturgeon is much more competent, all evidence to the contrary, but her change of position last night is far more extreme than Westminster's. The whole strategy was that the UK would seek to deal with this together recognising that many, many families are spread across more than 1 jurisdiction. Now it is illegal for Scots to go to other parts of the UK, at all. But as I said last night she got to the position that this was the right thing to do so she did it. Boris is no different, if a bit less extreme.
So if vaccine can’t get through because of brexit chaos who will our libertarians turn their wrath on? It’s not the EUs job to ensure supply to the UK will market forces solve the problem? More importantly why will the voters blame. It’s all well and good saying it won’t happen but it could.
How lucky the vaccines are being manufactured in Essex and Oxfordshire
Thought the Pfizer one was manufactured in Belgium. Surely Pfizer scrapped their manufacturing plants in UK some time ago. Certainly closed the one near Sandwich.
I was thinking of AZN
Edit: I’m more bored by doom-mongers who want to shoehorn Brexit into everything
Yes, the pharmaceutical industry is world-wide, isn't it. Is the AZN Essex factory in Harlow; I thought most oft their places were around Cambridge?
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
You can say we identified this variant in September. Maybe. But when did we have a body of scientific research from Porton Down or wherever giving incontrovertible proof that this variant was W-A-Y more infective than the previous versions? Unless you have that knowledge in your back pocket, please exit the outrage bus using the rear doors ONLY.....
Whether it's on covid-19 or Brexit, Johnson is not capable of telling the hard truth to the British people. We were going to be back to normal by Christmas, we are going to flourish mightily even without a trade deal with the EU. Why can't he just be honest?
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And yet, that's precisely where Labour is at right now (somewhere between 1983 and 1987) and nowhere near 1992, yet alone 1997.
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
Yet on the latest poll Starmer would become PM thanks to support from SNP MPs even though the Tories would have won a majority in England and Wales.
Starmer may not be heading for a Blair style 1997 landslide but he does not need to be, he can still scrape into power basically with a similar platform as Kinnock had in 1992
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
You can say we identified this variant in September. Maybe. But when did we have a body of scientific research from Porton Down or wherever giving incontrovertible proof that this variant was W-A-Y more infective than the previous versions? Unless you have that knowledge in your back pocket, please exit the outrage bus using the rear doors ONLY.....
Here is what we knew according to HuffPost last Monday
I'm not a Christian - although I spent a few hours over the last couple of days singing carols around our neighborhood - but I am fairly sure that "anger" isn't a key part of the Christmas message.
Lots of people think he is right to tighten. Therefore by definition they think his original plans were too optimistic. It would only be damaging if they think he was reckless in formulating his original plans
The problem us the flip-flop. A lot of businesses will now go bust because they orded stock etc based on having some kind of Christmas sales window. They would not have done this if they had known the government would not actually permit that window to open. Remember many businesses are now barely clinging on. Brexit January will bring further disasters because UK business has no idea what to plan for. Alot of people are furious at the abject incompetence that such indecisiveness demonstrates. The Tories will come in for a hell of a lot of flak and rightly so.
And the government didn’t know
You can criticise them for not being tough enough initially but not for changing their mind when it becomes apparent they weren’t strict enough
The government may not of known about the super virus but they knew what they were doing by relaxing the rules to allow ‘Christmas’ which was in many peoples view stupid anything which increases social mixing makes things worse any fool can see that.
Yes. It is a very difficult balance because as others have attested the psychological impact of isolation can be very severe.
I personally think they should have gone with “please don’t travel but if you judge it is essential then it is permitted to do X on Christmas Day only”.
So they made a judgement call on the negative impact of allowing a limited amount of mixing with consequences for infection rates vs the psychological impact (and risk of widespread disobedience). And then back-pedalled when the situation on the ground changed
Trying to score points off Starmer 72 hours before doing what he said was needed is never a good look though.
One problem is Johnson just can’t help political point scoring at every opportunity - no matter how crass or cack-handed he looks as a result.
Johnson doesn't seem to have changed his strategy from when he was facing Corbyn. Point scoring worked just fine against an anti-semitic and unintelligent commie, but looks childish against a much smarter Starmer.
It’s possible they already have it. We know it’s in Denmark, and that’s probably because the Danish molecular surveillance capacity is on a similar level to ours. It’s quite likely already in several other European countries.
The travel restrictions are nonetheless sensible.
If only we had had these sort of travel bans over the summer. Then we wouldn't be in this mess.
Lots of people think he is right to tighten. Therefore by definition they think his original plans were too optimistic. It would only be damaging if they think he was reckless in formulating his original plans
The problem us the flip-flop. A lot of businesses will now go bust because they orded stock etc based on having some kind of Christmas sales window. They would not have done this if they had known the government would not actually permit that window to open. Remember many businesses are now barely clinging on. Brexit January will bring further disasters because UK business has no idea what to plan for. Alot of people are furious at the abject incompetence that such indecisiveness demonstrates. The Tories will come in for a hell of a lot of flak and rightly so.
And the government didn’t know
You can criticise them for not being tough enough initially but not for changing their mind when it becomes apparent they weren’t strict enough
The government may not of known about the super virus but they knew what they were doing by relaxing the rules to allow ‘Christmas’ which was in many peoples view stupid anything which increases social mixing makes things worse any fool can see that.
Yes. It is a very difficult balance because as others have attested the psychological impact of isolation can be very severe.
I personally think they should have gone with “please don’t travel but if you judge it is essential then it is permitted to do X on Christmas Day only”.
So they made a judgement call on the negative impact of allowing a limited amount of mixing with consequences for infection rates vs the psychological impact (and risk of widespread disobedience). And then back-pedalled when the situation on the ground changed
Trying to score points off Starmer 72 hours before doing what he said was needed is never a good look though.
One problem is Johnson just can’t help political point scoring at every opportunity - no matter how crass or cack-handed he looks as a result.
I think that is the point. If Johnson behaved as a national leader, rather than a partisan hack most the time, there would be far more tolerance for his mistakes - whether unavoidable or otherwise.
Good to see Hancock slagging off yesterday evening's exodus.
However, it is a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Too many people thinking that the rules just apply to others and coming up with justifications for their actions. It will be a different story when granny is in ICU.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
You can say we identified this variant in September. Maybe. But when did we have a body of scientific research from Porton Down or wherever giving incontrovertible proof that this variant was W-A-Y more infective than the previous versions? Unless you have that knowledge in your back pocket, please exit the outrage bus using the rear doors ONLY.....
How do you know so much about this new Drakeford-20 virus?
We are forming a bubble with my solicitor who gets me off speeding fines for Xmas. Her parents are stuck in Portugal and my wife says we have to. I look forward to being excoriated for my recklessness by two different women over the festivities.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And yet, that's precisely where Labour is at right now (somewhere between 1983 and 1987) and nowhere near 1992, yet alone 1997.
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
Yet on the latest poll Starmer would become PM thanks to support from SNP MPs even though the Tories would have won a majority in England and Wales.
Starmer may not be heading for a Blair style 1997 landslide but he does not need to be, he can still scrape into power basically with a similar platform as Kinnock had in 1992
Yep - the SNP is not going to enable a Tory government at Westminster if it can prevent one. It would be a disastrous move for them. That's why the most important number in the polling is the Tory vote share. A number below 40% and it gets very tricky for them to stay in power.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
Superb! don't know whether to laugh or cry?
What did we do as a nation to get this wretched Government and wretched PM? Seriously, what did we do?
We voted for it.
Because the nation weighed up the options - and decided not to go for the alternative thick-as-pig-shit anti-semite.
That was the choice Labour gave the nation. Anyone who joyfully sang along to "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" - you gave us Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Well you do, you just chose to gloss over it until the end.
350,000 people in the UK have already received the 1st Pfizer jab. The Oxford one is about to be greenlit. 20 million will have been vaccinated by March. So, yes, there is extremely good news.
This is a temporary setback but we're on the route out of this virus now. It may be a long drive but we've begun it.
What an appallingly insensitive response. This is the second time this year my son has lost his job. His chances of finding another one are low. He has been made unemployed at a moment's notice and was crying with frustration last night. He will get no support. Daughter's business is on the brink of closure. The family is split up. We cannot be together to support each other. I know the strain this can put on families. My nephew killed himself earlier this year.
Even if all goes well with the vaccine, I will not be vaccinated until March.
Meanwhile people with solid jobs are ok. Those who do not have such jobs are thrown on the scrap heap with little hope, little help but the chance to be patronised by the wealthy better off like the couple who came in yesterday before closing and told him that he would be "on holiday" from today. "No, unemployed" he replied and they looked shocked. Still, they bought some Xmas chocolates so that's OK I suppose.
It would be good if some posters on here took the blindfolds off their eyes and looked at how bleak life is for the young.
I’m sorry to hear of your son’s troubles and hope it all goes well for him. I think you are being harsh on that couple though - I suspect they assumed either the shop was closing for Christmas or that he was going on furlough. It may have been thoughtless but I doubt it was intentional
Furlough is not like being on holiday. You only get 80% of your wages. Describing it as that is thoughtless.
Not that he will get it anyway.
And what is the government doing to help? Nothing. 3 million have had no help at all. Unless you were furloughed before a certain date, you get nothing. All those who lost jobs earlier and got new ones are just being abandoned. The hospitality sector is dying before our eyes.
My son suffered from serious mental health problems. He has - slowly - fought his way back to recovery. He has done volunteer work to help his CV, at your arts place among others. He started a job last year which got canned because of Covid and economic uncertainty. He gets another one. That goes. Now this the third time. What do you think this will do to his confidence? Or his chances of getting another one?
We talk too often on here of the millions getting vaccines, of statistics and polls and numbers. We might usefully remember that behind each number is a person, like my son, like millions like him, and behind them, many worried parents.
I know you have suffered your own personal loss, far worse than losing a job.
But this is not a competition. Just a plea to remember that retail closing in London means him and lots of others being told just like that that they're not wanted and, btw, you can't go meet your friends and family for a bit of comfort.
That's all.
I know. I am fully aware of what it is going on. It’s why we created RAFT as a programme.
But yes, behind every statistic are millions of people. I’m surprised there is no assistance for your son - not even UC such as it is?
Yes, probably. But he wants to work. It is good for him. He enjoys it. Sitting at home without work isn't. It makes it harder to get the next job. Trying to get work when you have a history of illness - well, you can imagine.
We have to get through the next 6 months or more hoping that the vaccination programme will find us a way through this. But we should not have to do this without help. But that is what the government is doing - withdrawing or limiting help at just the time when we need it most. And so the next Cyclefree generation finds itself comprehensively screwed over.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
You can say we identified this variant in September. Maybe. But when did we have a body of scientific research from Porton Down or wherever giving incontrovertible proof that this variant was W-A-Y more infective than the previous versions? Unless you have that knowledge in your back pocket, please exit the outrage bus using the rear doors ONLY.....
You can't demand "incontrovertable proof" that it is more transmissible. It's virtually impossible to reach such a state of certainty. Even now it's simply very likely indeed, based on the available evidence, evidence that was available on Monday when Hancock informed the Commons of the same. Yet on Wednesday, knowing this was a strong possibility, Johnson doubled down on "saving Christmas" at PMQs. Why? Why did he not, at the very least, repeat what Hancock had warned two days previously and been less gung ho about the Christmas relaxation - sounding a note of caution about the new strain? To score points off Starmer? If that's the case he may have delayed the lockdown for political advantage. Either way, there is eveidence here that Johnson prevaricated a working week before doing anything.
We are forming a bubble with my solicitor who gets me off speeding fines for Xmas. Her parents are stuck in Portugal and my wife says we have to. I look forward to being excoriated for my recklessness by two different women over the festivities.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And yet, that's precisely where Labour is at right now (somewhere between 1983 and 1987) and nowhere near 1992, yet alone 1997.
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
Yet on the latest poll Starmer would become PM thanks to support from SNP MPs even though the Tories would have won a majority in England and Wales.
Starmer may not be heading for a Blair style 1997 landslide but he does not need to be, he can still scrape into power basically with a similar platform as Kinnock had in 1992
Yep - the SNP is not going to enable a Tory government at Westminster if it can prevent one. It would be a disastrous move for them. That's why the most important number in the polling is the Tory vote share. A number below 40% and it gets very tricky for them to stay in power.
My concern is then a realisation, as regularly outlined by HYUFD, that Starmer's Labour will have facilitated and will be responsible for the break up of the Union. Best leave a minority Conservative Government to carry the can.
The disintegration of the United Kingdom must remain Boris Johnson's legacy and epitaph.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
Without access to the scientific advice/data/modelling, it is really impossible to say.
There is all the difference in the world between identifying a new variant & understanding its properties & effect on the population.
There is also a big difference between SAGE saying "it may be fuelling the rise in new cases" (presumably to Hancock on Monday or before) and SAGE saying the ministers "this is serious you need to act now."
I note even now, we do not know many things about the mutant; whether it really is behind the increase in cases in the SE, how much more infectious it really is.
The CMO knew about this new strain in September. The PM said yesterday that he was following the science. So what do you mean you only found out last Friday?
That is nonsense. I don't know why people keep parroting this.
We knew about the new strain, and all the other strains ages ago, we have been tracking them since the beginning of this crisis. Big deal, that tells us nothing much in the grand scheme of things.
Only this morning I heard one of the members of NERVTAG say that the government was presented with the data about increased transmission being due to changes of the variant a couple of days ago (so Friday from today). That's the thing that matters, and that is new.
The Professor talking about this could not have been more clear, it is new information and the government have acted promptly, those were basically his words.
Whether it's on covid-19 or Brexit, Johnson is not capable of telling the hard truth to the British people. We were going to be back to normal by Christmas, we are going to flourish mightily even without a trade deal with the EU. Why can't he just be honest?
In terms of Johnson the man, because he desparately wants people to like him. So he tells them what they want to hear.
In terms of this Conservative government, because dishonesty is a brilliant electoral strategy until the wheels fall off.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And the trouble is that Kinnock was telling home truths to an opposition party still a long way from government. The need now is greater- the Conservatives have the levers of power- but there's nobody to speak that truth and nobody prepared to listen.
On a practical point, is the London and SE Tier 4 currently time-limited or open-ended?
Open ended. It won't end until we hit 80% vaccinated and achieve here immunity. The whole country is about to head this way and probably most of Europe.
Lots of people think he is right to tighten. Therefore by definition they think his original plans were too optimistic. It would only be damaging if they think he was reckless in formulating his original plans
Which coincidentally is just being discussed on R4, with a scientist claiming that if everyone has followed the previous guidance to the letter (meeting in households of three etc), the R rate would have moved to somewhere around 3.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And yet, that's precisely where Labour is at right now (somewhere between 1983 and 1987) and nowhere near 1992, yet alone 1997.
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
Yet on the latest poll Starmer would become PM thanks to support from SNP MPs even though the Tories would have won a majority in England and Wales.
Starmer may not be heading for a Blair style 1997 landslide but he does not need to be, he can still scrape into power basically with a similar platform as Kinnock had in 1992
Yep - the SNP is not going to enable a Tory government at Westminster if it can prevent one. It would be a disastrous move for them. That's why the most important number in the polling is the Tory vote share. A number below 40% and it gets very tricky for them to stay in power.
My concern is then a realisation, as regularly outlined by HYUFD, that Starmer's Labour will have facilitated and will be responsible for the break up of the Union. Best leave a minority Conservative Government to carry the can.
The disintegration of the United Kingdom must remain Boris Johnson's legacy and epitaph.
I doubt that the pressure for independence would be as great in Scotland if there were a Labour-led government in Westminster.
The CMO knew about this new strain in September. The PM said yesterday that he was following the science. So what do you mean you only found out last Friday?
That is nonsense. I don't know why people keep parroting this.
We knew about the new strain, and all the other strains ages ago, we have been tracking them since the beginning of this crisis. Big deal, that tells us nothing much in the grand scheme of things.
Only this morning I heard one of the members of NERVTAG say that the government was presented with the data about increased transmission being due to changes of the variant a couple of days ago (so Friday from today). That's the thing that matters, and that is new.
The Professor talking about this could not have been more clear, it is new information and the government have acted promptly, those were basically his words.
The clown had this data last weekend, as per the link I posted above
As soon as Covid hit and our revenue dropped to basically nothing the staff asked at weekly town halls "What's the timeframe on redundancies?" and "Can we formalise our WFH arrangements for the long term" every week the Executive officers said "Everything will be fine" and "We'll be back in the office on date X so we won't look at the WFH arragements long term"
Right up until the end of summer when they announced extensive redundancies. Trust in the exec team has been absolutely shattered. And they still talked about returning to the office in Autumn!
We all knew redundancies were coming but the execs snowed us constantly. We were prepared for tough action but the execs told us we were being foolish for expecting it.
That's exactly what it is like with Boris and the government. Sending out an optimistic message of everything going back to normal only works IF EVERYTHING GOES BACK TO NORMAL. If it doesn't then you are fucked. And if it is not in your power to return everything to normal then that is a huge error. It doesn't matter if you then make loads of good decisions - the trust people have in you is gone.
Something that has been a article of faith amongst Covid Deniers is that Lockdown has lead to a spike in suicides. They haven't based this on any actual data, it's is just something they have intuited because they don't like lockdown so there must be bad effects.
It takes a fair while to gather data on suicides and the ONS has been cautious about releasing the data due to a backlog of Coroner's cases but we now have a decent look at the previous year, no Q4 data yet obviously. Figures given as raw numbers and age-standardised per 100,000 figure in brackets
5-year average to 2019 Q1 - 1134 (9.5) Q2 - 1195 (9.9) Q3 - 1240 (10.2)
Suicides in general have been trending up over the last 10 years but the key thing is that absolutely massive dip in the 2020 Q2 figures with no "bounce back" in Q3.
Obviously these numbers are subject to revision, 2020's numbers were only recently declared final, but compared to 2019 suicides are down overall so far with lockdown have a positive impact.
A sole and temporary consolation of the first lockdown was that accommodation was found for the homeless. It wasn't out of any consideration for the wellbeing of those who suffer from that demonstrably solvable unsolvable problem. It was to stop the deplorables from infecting the rest of us. Nevertheless this vulnerable group were looked at the basic level for the first time.
I wonder if that accounts for the much lower suicide rate in the Q2 lockdown period.
Good point. According to Samaritans, Suicide is the second most common cause of death for homeless people, ONS stats show
I really hope those statistics are true but I fear that they may simply reflect a backlog of inquests, etc.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And yet, that's precisely where Labour is at right now (somewhere between 1983 and 1987) and nowhere near 1992, yet alone 1997.
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
Yet on the latest poll Starmer would become PM thanks to support from SNP MPs even though the Tories would have won a majority in England and Wales.
Starmer may not be heading for a Blair style 1997 landslide but he does not need to be, he can still scrape into power basically with a similar platform as Kinnock had in 1992
Yep - the SNP is not going to enable a Tory government at Westminster if it can prevent one. It would be a disastrous move for them. That's why the most important number in the polling is the Tory vote share. A number below 40% and it gets very tricky for them to stay in power.
My concern is then a realisation, as regularly outlined by HYUFD, that Starmer's Labour will have facilitated and will be responsible for the break up of the Union. Best leave a minority Conservative Government to carry the can.
The disintegration of the United Kingdom must remain Boris Johnson's legacy and epitaph.
I doubt that the pressure for independence would be as great in Scotland if there were a Labour-led government in Westminster.
On a practical point, is the London and SE Tier 4 currently time-limited or open-ended?
Open ended. It won't end until we hit 80% vaccinated and achieve here immunity. The whole country is about to head this way and probably most of Europe.
Utterly absurd. Who cares once you’ve vaccinated the group who die from this and the group who bed hog. You have lost all sense of perspective on life if you think this is right.
The CMO knew about this new strain in September. The PM said yesterday that he was following the science. So what do you mean you only found out last Friday?
That is nonsense. I don't know why people keep parroting this.
We knew about the new strain, and all the other strains ages ago, we have been tracking them since the beginning of this crisis. Big deal, that tells us nothing much in the grand scheme of things.
Only this morning I heard one of the members of NERVTAG say that the government was presented with the data about increased transmission being due to changes of the variant a couple of days ago (so Friday from today). That's the thing that matters, and that is new.
The Professor talking about this could not have been more clear, it is new information and the government have acted promptly, those were basically his words.
Really? Yet ManCock told the Commons about it last Monday. Whilst Williamson was threatening schools. And before Shagger grandstanded about Keith wanting to cancel Christmas.
I am not saying that they knew in detail about this strain back then. But the government hides behind the science only when it suits them. They are hypocrites.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
The new variant may have been identified in September but the consequences of it weren't known then.
NERVTAG reported on the R+0.4 on Thursday. Not in September, on Thursday.
We are forming a bubble with my solicitor who gets me off speeding fines for Xmas. Her parents are stuck in Portugal and my wife says we have to. I look forward to being excoriated for my recklessness by two different women over the festivities.
The CMO knew about this new strain in September. The PM said yesterday that he was following the science. So what do you mean you only found out last Friday?
That is nonsense. I don't know why people keep parroting this.
We knew about the new strain, and all the other strains ages ago, we have been tracking them since the beginning of this crisis. Big deal, that tells us nothing much in the grand scheme of things.
Only this morning I heard one of the members of NERVTAG say that the government was presented with the data about increased transmission being due to changes of the variant a couple of days ago (so Friday from today). That's the thing that matters, and that is new.
The Professor talking about this could not have been more clear, it is new information and the government have acted promptly, those were basically his words.
The clown had this data last weekend, as per the link I posted above
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And yet, that's precisely where Labour is at right now (somewhere between 1983 and 1987) and nowhere near 1992, yet alone 1997.
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
Yet on the latest poll Starmer would become PM thanks to support from SNP MPs even though the Tories would have won a majority in England and Wales.
Starmer may not be heading for a Blair style 1997 landslide but he does not need to be, he can still scrape into power basically with a similar platform as Kinnock had in 1992
Yep - the SNP is not going to enable a Tory government at Westminster if it can prevent one. It would be a disastrous move for them. That's why the most important number in the polling is the Tory vote share. A number below 40% and it gets very tricky for them to stay in power.
My concern is then a realisation, as regularly outlined by HYUFD, that Starmer's Labour will have facilitated and will be responsible for the break up of the Union. Best leave a minority Conservative Government to carry the can.
The disintegration of the United Kingdom must remain Boris Johnson's legacy and epitaph.
It won't be, Boris has made clear he will not allow a legal indyref2 as PM.
However Starmer has said he would if the SNP win a Holyrood majority next year and he becomes PM in 2024.
So on current polls Starmer could become PM with SNP support in 2024, allow an indyref2 with a devomax offer soon after, then if he loses it and Scotland goes independent Scottish and SNP MPs would then leave the Commons and Boris would return as PM without an election as the Tories would have a majority of English and Welsh MPs.
Starmer would then have had one of the shortest premierships in British history and be the PM who lost the Union
On a practical point, is the London and SE Tier 4 currently time-limited or open-ended?
Open ended. It won't end until we hit 80% vaccinated and achieve here immunity. The whole country is about to head this way and probably most of Europe.
Utterly absurd. Who cares once you’ve vaccinated the group who die from this and the group who bed hog. You have lost all sense of perspective on life if you think this is right.
It's the hospitalisation rate, not the death rate. We can't afford for hospitals to be jammed with otherwise healthy young people and young people have accounted for half of all hospitalisations so far. If we allow that to happen it means more people dying of cancer or strokes. The solution isn't an indefinite lockdown, it's a rapid scale up of vaccinations to run multiple groups simultaneously rather than what is currently being planned. We should be aiming to jab 1m people per day by the middle of January.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
The new variant may have been identified in September but the consequences of it weren't known then.
NERVTAG reported on the R+0.4 on Thursday. Not in September, on Thursday.
Hancock told the House that it may have been driving a rise in the south east on Monday so there was a strong suspicion on the 14th December that this was the case. Even now the R+0.4 has not been confirmed.
Anyway, logging off for now. People are pissed, and want to vent. I understand that.
But, there's still light at the end of the tunnel here - we just have to get through the next few months.
Even if the virus mutates a bit to be more contagious remember: it has to mutate *a lot* to be very very different such that the vaccine to drop below 50% effectiveness, which is the threshold for suppressing it. And we have several vaccines in play - several of which use different mechanisms to neuter it. It can't fundamentally change its genetic code and structure all by itself - it's not a God - so we should be ok.
So chin up, and we'll find a way through this.
Good day everyone.
I think that’s probably correct, Casino. If it mutated ‘a lot’, sufficient to evade vaccines, which target a lot of bits of the infectious spike, it would likely lose much of what makes it the dangerous virus it is.
If most of us could see this coming a mile away even if Boris and Nicola couldn’t presumably “most of us” didn’t make any plans that needed to be disrupted? Or is that too obvious?
Alternatively, governments dealing with a fast moving and complex situation got fractionally behind the curve and needed to catch up again. Or is that too simple?
The basic issue is one I posted on here last night and has been mentioned on Sky this morning. This new variant was identified in September. On Monday Hancock told the House it may be fuelling the rise in new cases. On Wednesday, however, Johnson was grandstanding about Starmer "wanting to cancel Christmas". Then we have yesterday's announcement. I think it is safe to say that on Monday (and perhaps earlier) there were good indications that this was going to be necessary. Yet they waited five days. That is not "fractionally" behind the curve. That is well behind the curve.
The new variant may have been identified in September but the consequences of it weren't known then.
NERVTAG reported on the R+0.4 on Thursday. Not in September, on Thursday.
Hancock told the House that it may have been driving a rise in the south east on Monday so there was a strong suspicion on the 14th December that this was the case. Even now the R+0.4 has not been confirmed.
And it was pretty clear that something was going wrong towards the end of I Can't Believe It's Not Lockdown, when the numbers weren't falling enough in Extended London.
Even if the ducks of cause and effect were only definitively lined up on Thursday, there was enough information to act on well before that.
We are forming a bubble with my solicitor who gets me off speeding fines for Xmas. Her parents are stuck in Portugal and my wife says we have to. I look forward to being excoriated for my recklessness by two different women over the festivities.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
And yet, that's precisely where Labour is at right now (somewhere between 1983 and 1987) and nowhere near 1992, yet alone 1997.
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
Yet on the latest poll Starmer would become PM thanks to support from SNP MPs even though the Tories would have won a majority in England and Wales.
Starmer may not be heading for a Blair style 1997 landslide but he does not need to be, he can still scrape into power basically with a similar platform as Kinnock had in 1992
Yep - the SNP is not going to enable a Tory government at Westminster if it can prevent one. It would be a disastrous move for them. That's why the most important number in the polling is the Tory vote share. A number below 40% and it gets very tricky for them to stay in power.
My concern is then a realisation, as regularly outlined by HYUFD, that Starmer's Labour will have facilitated and will be responsible for the break up of the Union. Best leave a minority Conservative Government to carry the can.
The disintegration of the United Kingdom must remain Boris Johnson's legacy and epitaph.
I doubt that the pressure for independence would be as great in Scotland if there were a Labour-led government in Westminster.
I think you are wrong, they are seen as Tory lites nowadays, almost as Tory as the Tories and as big liars as Tories. Both are seen as cheeks of the same arse.
Lots of people think he is right to tighten. Therefore by definition they think his original plans were too optimistic. It would only be damaging if they think he was reckless in formulating his original plans
The problem us the flip-flop. A lot of businesses will now go bust because they orded stock etc based on having some kind of Christmas sales window. They would not have done this if they had known the government would not actually permit that window to open. Remember many businesses are now barely clinging on. Brexit January will bring further disasters because UK business has no idea what to plan for. Alot of people are furious at the abject incompetence that such indecisiveness demonstrates. The Tories will come in for a hell of a lot of flak and rightly so.
And the government didn’t know
You can criticise them for not being tough enough initially but not for changing their mind when it becomes apparent they weren’t strict enough
The government may not of known about the super virus but they knew what they were doing by relaxing the rules to allow ‘Christmas’ which was in many peoples view stupid anything which increases social mixing makes things worse any fool can see that.
Yes. It is a very difficult balance because as others have attested the psychological impact of isolation can be very severe.
I personally think they should have gone with “please don’t travel but if you judge it is essential then it is permitted to do X on Christmas Day only”.
So they made a judgement call on the negative impact of allowing a limited amount of mixing with consequences for infection rates vs the psychological impact (and risk of widespread disobedience). And then back-pedalled when the situation on the ground changed
Trying to score points off Starmer 72 hours before doing what he said was needed is never a good look though.
One problem is Johnson just can’t help political point scoring at every opportunity - no matter how crass or cack-handed he looks as a result.
It’s only politicial obsessives who notice that kind of stuff. Real world impact zero.
That’s what people said about Suez.
And to some extent it was true - the Tories only lost one election by a substantial margin in the following 40 years - but I do wonder about the long term damage Johnson is doing to them right now.
Johnson is not a good PM for the times we find ourselves in.
But I was responding on the narrow point of point scoring off Starmer at PMQ
Bottom line is he's only a good PM for a time when nothing much needs doing or thinking about, and he can just go around shaking hands and opening stuff. When were things last like that?
Perhaps he could be an outsize male model. He seems to enjoy dressing up.
I am not sure Rishi Sunak is coming out too well from the pandemic. I guess it partly depends on whether schemes in other countries suffer the same level of fraud. But it fits in with a narrative of a government that tolerates corruption.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a Brexit code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative Government – A Conservative Government - stuck in Brussels negotiating about fish, ignoring the pandemic at home then forced to scuttle round the media to cancel Christmas for its own people".
Superb! don't know whether to laugh or cry?
What did we do as a nation to get this wretched Government and wretched PM? Seriously, what did we do?
We voted for it.
Because the nation weighed up the options - and decided not to go for the alternative thick-as-pig-shit anti-semite.
That was the choice Labour gave the nation. Anyone who joyfully sang along to "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" - you gave us Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Don't often agree with you but you are right on this one. The choice offered the public at the last GE was the worst in my lifetime.
The memberships of both parties are culpable for choosing the leaders they did. The Tories knew Johnson was not up to the job but they ignored it because of their obsession with Brexit and now we are all paying the price. Corbyn would have been as bad.
I doubt things will improve much while to all extents and purposes the choice of PM is made by two tiny groups of members at the extremes of the political spectrum.
On a practical point, is the London and SE Tier 4 currently time-limited or open-ended?
Open ended. It won't end until we hit 80% vaccinated and achieve here immunity. The whole country is about to head this way and probably most of Europe.
Utterly absurd. Who cares once you’ve vaccinated the group who die from this and the group who bed hog. You have lost all sense of perspective on life if you think this is right.
It's the hospitalisation rate, not the death rate. We can't afford for hospitals to be jammed with otherwise healthy young people and young people have accounted for half of all hospitalisations so far. If we allow that to happen it means more people dying of cancer or strokes. The solution isn't an indefinite lockdown, it's a rapid scale up of vaccinations to run multiple groups simultaneously rather than what is currently being planned. We should be aiming to jab 1m people per day by the middle of January.
1. Once nearly all over 75-year-olds are vaccinated, the fatality risk (for the population) reduces by 71%. And vaccinating over 75-year-olds means vaccinating 9%. You should stop thinking about herd immunity. If you seriously think we need to vaccinate 80%, you should be talking about cancelling Xmas 2021. 2. Given that people requiring hospital treatment other than for Covid can't get their treatment when hospitals have many many Covid patients, it surely is desirable [and not "utterly absurd"!] to reduce hospitalisation rates from Covid. But I would object also to "it's the hospitalisation rate, not the death rate, given that any measures to reduce fatality rate will reduce hospitalisation rate.
Comments
But yes, behind every statistic are millions of people. I’m surprised there is no assistance for your son - not even UC such as it is?
People will find ways to bend and twist interpretation of the rules as best they can.
https://twitter.com/johnredwood/status/1340547300473647105?s=20
(1) Meet up with one other person from your extended family on the boundary of the Tier 4 zone, outside, in a public space on Christmas Eve or before.
(2) Swap food and presents, as required.
(3) Maybe have a nice walk together 2m apart and a chat before parting ways. Get things off your chest.
(4) Zoom or Skype yourselves opening presents together on Christmas Day with the buck's fizz - do the same for lunch if you want to as well.
(5) Do another one on one walk outside on 26th or 27th if you're both available.
This is why I think a bit of judgement and common sense is fine on top.
Next.
What did we do as a nation to get this wretched Government and wretched PM? Seriously, what did we do?
If you expect a landslide to fall into your lap, think again.
I'm not sure that all this will be fatal to the Government's poll ratings. But the effect has been to erose trust in what the Government says, and in a crisis you shouldn't burn through that trust too quickly as you may need it when further difficult issues raise their heads.
Those of us who voted for him twice as London Mayor learned our lesson a decade ago
Resign, Johnson, you cretinous fool!
I have heard many times, usually in relation to Brexit, that one cannot rely on Johnson's word and this demonstrates it in spades.
As for Bozo Johnson the sooner that idiot is consigned to the scrap heap the better.
For God's sake rid us of this bleeding idiot before he does any more damage to the country.
This decision has nothing to do with new science, it is just another example of weak Boris and the omnishambles government.
The political consequences are already irreversible, Boris and his useless band of third rate ministers are already toast.
Johnson cancells Christmas after year of total incompetence.
I am now retired and both my wife and I are, although around 80, reasonably fit. We can look after ourselves. We both spent time in public service and have reasonable pensions. Our eldest son, although he has health issues, has a well-paid, secure, job, as does his wife and their children are safe at school. although his son is concerned at what University will look like when he goes, as he expects, in September. Our elder grandchildren are OK; one has gone back to Uni, the other is teaching, as is his wife.
Our younger son is in another country, and seems to be doing well. There appear to be no problems with the virus at the school his children attend.
My wife and I feel we have a lot for which to be thankful.
https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1340573229526740992?s=20
We know it’s in Denmark, and that’s probably because the Danish molecular surveillance capacity is on a similar level to ours. It’s quite likely already in several other European countries.
The travel restrictions are nonetheless sensible.
But, there's still light at the end of the tunnel here - we just have to get through the next few months.
Even if the virus mutates a bit to be more contagious remember: it has to mutate *a lot* to be very very different such that the vaccine to drop below 50% effectiveness, which is the threshold for suppressing it. And we have several vaccines in play - several of which use different mechanisms to neuter it. It can't fundamentally change its genetic code and structure all by itself - it's not a God - so we should be ok.
So chin up, and we'll find a way through this.
Good day everyone.
https://youtu.be/yYOkgCkxj9I
Many people on this site and elsewhere like to maintain Sturgeon is much more competent, all evidence to the contrary, but her change of position last night is far more extreme than Westminster's. The whole strategy was that the UK would seek to deal with this together recognising that many, many families are spread across more than 1 jurisdiction. Now it is illegal for Scots to go to other parts of the UK, at all. But as I said last night she got to the position that this was the right thing to do so she did it. Boris is no different, if a bit less extreme.
Starmer may not be heading for a Blair style 1997 landslide but he does not need to be, he can still scrape into power basically with a similar platform as Kinnock had in 1992
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/new-covid-variant-what-it-means-when-a-virus-changes_uk_5fd789bec5b62f31c1ff2461
Boris Johnson told a Downing Street press conference on Saturday the new variant could be “up to 70% more transmissible
The government believes it is the cause of rising infection rates in London and the south of England
If Johnson behaved as a national leader, rather than a partisan hack most the time, there would be far more tolerance for his mistakes - whether unavoidable or otherwise.
However, it is a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Too many people thinking that the rules just apply to others and coming up with justifications for their actions. It will be a different story when granny is in ICU.
Because the nation weighed up the options - and decided not to go for the alternative thick-as-pig-shit anti-semite.
That was the choice Labour gave the nation. Anyone who joyfully sang along to "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" - you gave us Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
We have to get through the next 6 months or more hoping that the vaccination programme will find us a way through this. But we should not have to do this without help. But that is what the government is doing - withdrawing or limiting help at just the time when we need it most. And so the next Cyclefree generation finds itself comprehensively screwed over.
The disintegration of the United Kingdom must remain Boris Johnson's legacy and epitaph.
There is all the difference in the world between identifying a new variant & understanding its properties & effect on the population.
There is also a big difference between SAGE saying "it may be fuelling the rise in new cases" (presumably to Hancock on Monday or before) and SAGE saying the ministers "this is serious you need to act now."
I note even now, we do not know many things about the mutant; whether it really is behind the increase in cases in the SE, how much more infectious it really is.
We knew about the new strain, and all the other strains ages ago, we have been tracking them since the beginning of this crisis. Big deal, that tells us nothing much in the grand scheme of things.
Only this morning I heard one of the members of NERVTAG say that the government was presented with the data about increased transmission being due to changes of the variant a couple of days ago (so Friday from today). That's the thing that matters, and that is new.
The Professor talking about this could not have been more clear, it is new information and the government have acted promptly, those were basically his words.
In terms of this Conservative government, because dishonesty is a brilliant electoral strategy until the wheels fall off. And the trouble is that Kinnock was telling home truths to an opposition party still a long way from government.
The need now is greater- the Conservatives have the levers of power- but there's nobody to speak that truth and nobody prepared to listen.
As soon as Covid hit and our revenue dropped to basically nothing the staff asked at weekly town halls "What's the timeframe on redundancies?" and "Can we formalise our WFH arrangements for the long term" every week the Executive officers said "Everything will be fine" and "We'll be back in the office on date X so we won't look at the WFH arragements long term"
Right up until the end of summer when they announced extensive redundancies. Trust in the exec team has been absolutely shattered. And they still talked about returning to the office in Autumn!
We all knew redundancies were coming but the execs snowed us constantly. We were prepared for tough action but the execs told us we were being foolish for expecting it.
That's exactly what it is like with Boris and the government. Sending out an optimistic message of everything going back to normal only works IF EVERYTHING GOES BACK TO NORMAL. If it doesn't then you are fucked. And if it is not in your power to return everything to normal then that is a huge error. It doesn't matter if you then make loads of good decisions - the trust people have in you is gone.
Next.
I am not saying that they knew in detail about this strain back then. But the government hides behind the science only when it suits them. They are hypocrites.
NERVTAG reported on the R+0.4 on Thursday. Not in September, on Thursday.
I hope you have a good Christmas nonetheless.
"By Natasha Hinde
14/12/2020 05:48pm GMT | Updated 17 hours ago"
I think I'll trust the Professor from the committee who provided the advice to the government.
However Starmer has said he would if the SNP win a Holyrood majority next year and he becomes PM in 2024.
So on current polls Starmer could become PM with SNP support in 2024, allow an indyref2 with a devomax offer soon after, then if he loses it and Scotland goes independent Scottish and SNP MPs would then leave the Commons and Boris would return as PM without an election as the Tories would have a majority of English and Welsh MPs.
Starmer would then have had one of the shortest premierships in British history and be the PM who lost the Union
If it mutated ‘a lot’, sufficient to evade vaccines, which target a lot of bits of the infectious spike, it would likely lose much of what makes it the dangerous virus it is.
Even if the ducks of cause and effect were only definitively lined up on Thursday, there was enough information to act on well before that.
This bit of Hancock is entirely characteristic.
https://twitter.com/Gilesyb/status/1340589220176510977
The memberships of both parties are culpable for choosing the leaders they did. The Tories knew Johnson was not up to the job but they ignored it because of their obsession with Brexit and now we are all paying the price. Corbyn would have been as bad.
I doubt things will improve much while to all extents and purposes the choice of PM is made by two tiny groups of members at the extremes of the political spectrum.
2. Given that people requiring hospital treatment other than for Covid can't get their treatment when hospitals have many many Covid patients, it surely is desirable [and not "utterly absurd"!] to reduce hospitalisation rates from Covid. But I would object also to "it's the hospitalisation rate, not the death rate, given that any measures to reduce fatality rate will reduce hospitalisation rate.